Tom placed the book down gently on the table, then looked Moon dead in the eyes.

"Let me ask you a question." His voice was calm now, the gravity of the topic settling fully across the room. Yara and Selene grew more curious, including Kael himself.

The dark book seems to have more secrets than any of them thought. "Do you know that there are tiers to secret realms?"

Moon nodded.

He had entered two of them already. The first was deep within the First Sanctuary, where he and his team had encountered the Winter Beast and the arctic wolves under its command. The second had been the one housing the Island of Lunaris. The pavilion of the mysterious figure known as The World’s Flaw. The island in the sea with the Golden Fish whose blood still sat in vials inside his storage ring.

Both had felt significant in different ways, and Moon had always knew they weren’t equal in nature.

Tom continued.

"Since the Great Collapse, humanity has encountered two distinct types of Secret Realms."

He held up one finger.

"The first type is what most talented people experience once in their lifetime. You stumble into it, you clear it, the system grants you rewards based on your performance, and you leave. There are no entry requirements. No prerequisites. No conditions you need to meet beforehand.

We call these first tier realms. Not because they’re weak, mind you. Most of them are extremely dangerous. We call them first tier because anyone can enter them freely. They are open by nature, whether by deliberate design or not doesn’t concern us."

Tom then held up his second finger.

"The second type is different. These secret realms cannot be entered freely. They require a condition. Something specific. A key, a specific item, an action performed in a specific order, or some other criteria that the realm itself demands before it allows entry.

These are second tier realms. Not stronger than first tier necessarily, though many of them are, but certainly more difficult to access. The nuance of entry makes them harder to find and rarer to clear."

Tom tapped the table lightly with one finger.

"This book in your hand. The writing. The signature woven into the script. This is a key."

He looked up at Moon.

"It’s without a doubt the key to entering The Chamber Secret Realm. I’ve seen it too many times to not recognise it."

Moon’s eyes narrowed slightly.

"The Chamber Secret Realm?"

The name was unfamiliar to him. He had never heard it mentioned before, not in the forums he had searched, not in any of his conversations with Selene, not in any of the briefings he had received from the Association.

But the fact that it had a name was significant.

A realm that appeared once and vanished forever wouldn’t have a stable name. Names belonged to places that humanity had encountered multiple times, studied, and marked.

Tom nodded slowly.

"The Chamber Secret Realm is a place that exists within the Second Sanctuary." He explained. "For reasons we still don’t fully understand, it manifests an entrance once every five years."

Moon listened intently, his mind already filling in the blanks that Tom had yet to fill.

"To enter the realm, you need to possess a key. The book you’re holding is one such key."

"Why is this book a key?" Moon asked. "What makes it different from any other natural treasure?"

Tom shook his head.

"Honestly, we have no real clue. The Association has been studying The Chamber for decades, and the mechanism by which keys are determined or why they exist in the first place remains a mystery."

He sighed, leaning back in his chair.

"Still, that doesn’t mean we don’t have our own guesses." He grinned, before continuing.

"There are several competing theories. One school of thought believes that twenty keys are distributed across the Second Sanctuary every five years. Random natural treasures, selected by the system, becoming temporary keys until used. Another school of thought argues that there’s a fixed number of keys hidden across the Sanctuary, and that they don’t regenerate. According to this theory, each successful entry into The Chamber permanently consumes a key, and eventually all of them will be claimed."

He shrugged.

"Both theories have evidence supporting them. Both have evidence against them. Neither has been confirmed. But the practical truth is the same regardless of which one is correct. They keys to enter are incredibly precious, almost impossible to find, and have no real monetary value. They are so rare, you could only trade them for two or more treasures of equal grade."

He looked at Moon directly.

"This book will allow you to enter The Chamber Secret Realm. And that means you’ve stumbled into something that, every five years, the strongest factions in the kingdom move the earth and what’s beneath trying to acquire it."

Once Tom finished speaking, the orbital became dead silent.

Selene and Yara had gone completely still. Even Kael, who had been listening from the side, was now leaning forward in his chair. Shockingly, he had never been told about this secret realm by his father, which made him ponder why.

Moon stared at the book on the table. Then he looked back at Tom.

"How much time do I have until the next cycle?"

Tom grinned. The expression on Moon’s face, focused, intent, already calculating, was clearly the reaction he had been hoping for.

"Six months."

Six months was long enough for him to prepare. Short enough that wasting time wasn’t exactly an option.

He gestured to the book.

"When I use this to enter the Chamber, do I lose the treasure entirely? Is it consumed?"

Tom shook his head.

"No. The book itself stays with you. Only the runes embedded into it, the ones that mark it as a key, will dissipate once you use it. After that, it reverts to what it would have been. So you keep the floating island control function. You keep the natural treasure value. You just can’t use the book to enter the Chamber again the next time it opens."