After a while.
Gloria and Sanders gradually woke from the illusion of Shadow of the Cage.
Unlike Sparrow Sparrow and Bobota, neither of them persisted in asking about the vanished ending Angel had shown them. Instead, they quietly fell into thought.
Gloria had experienced many illusions created by Angel, including the one within the Feather Earring, which Angel had refined for her so she could remember Toby; there was also Dreamscape Twins. The fact that she had been able to create Birth Art owed no small part to Dreamscape Twins.
Yet whether it was the Feather Earring or Dreamscape Twins, neither presented itself in the same way as the Shadow of the Cage before them.
The first two offered a kind of free exploration, an enlightenment born from scenes stirring one's feelings. Moreover, because there were faint traces of the Nightmare Realm within the illusions, people unconsciously immersed themselves in them, pondering the hidden stories behind every single thing.
But Shadow of the Cage was different. It was simply an illusion, with no aura of the Nightmare Realm within it. Through its swift transformations, it presented an interesting story.
This viewing experience restricted the range of movement within the illusion, while using the progression of the story and the passage of time to drive the illusion's changes. Although it did not offer as much freedom to explore as the Feather Earring and Dreamscape Twins, it highlighted the story itself.
Simply put, although the Feather Earring and Dreamscape Twins contained stories, they basically left people to fill in the blanks themselves. You might not even know whether your guesses were right. Shadow of the Cage, on the other hand, simply and brutally told the story outright.
By analogy, the former were stream-of-consciousness essays, while the latter was a standard tale being