The Banquet Wears Familiar Faces

The blue portal opened into elegance that could not keep its shape. At first, the room looked like a banquet: a table, guests, the promise of a meal, the uneasy comfort of something recognizable after the mirror maze. Then the illusion tightened and rotted, shrinking into a shabbier chamber with the meal still waiting and the wrong people seated at it. Jeff was there. Solar was there. Morgan Draxler was there too, and Darius woke into the scene with the party instead of against it. The familiar faces made the room worse. Gertie's realm knew how to weaponize memory, guilt, and recent fear, and Solar's face still carried the shape of the hallway chase and the fake Nick head. Then the lie peeled back. Jeff and Solar were not Jeff and Solar. They were hags wearing useful faces, turning grief and threat into masks. Morgan, though, was still Morgan: trapped inside a cannibal dinner trance, charmed into believing the room's horror was refined service instead of a setup. The banquet was not a social scene. It was an ambush built out of recognition. Darius had not been taken by the trance the same way. He woke into the nightmare, assessed the table, and became an ally in the room while Morgan remained a temporary danger waiting to be pulled back from the spell.