[Ronan doesn't set out to create this thing. His dreams get away from him, as dreams often do, and deliver fragments of memories best left buried. He dreams of sticky Henrietta summer, drugs pulsing through his veins, eruptions of flames and explosives bursting into a thousand colors.

In the real world, there's only Ronan, sprawled out on the grass asleep while his headphones thump something bass-heavy into his ears. In the twilight, it would be easy to overlook him there. That is, until there's suddenly a self-combusting tree beside him, illuminating him with a rain of sparks. The thing doesn't so much appear as it seems to have always been there, somehow unnoticed until it's noticed.

Ronan is awake, but there's nothing to indicate that beyond the tree's abrupt making. His body is paralyzed in these first few minutes. He's close enough to the tree that the sparks trickle onto him and skitter down his cheeks. Strangely enough, they don't scorch his skin. In fact, nothing appears to be catching fire, even as the tree remains a perpetual firework caught in nonstop ignition.]

[What puzzles and unnerves Ronan about the library is that it isn't his own. Most of the books belong to Gansey, and the ones that don't have been inherited from Niall Lynch's collection. That isn't so strange at a glance. The strange part comes when he opens the books to find that they're all complete. Not prop replicas but real books, hundreds of thousands of pages brimming with knowledge Ronan himself couldn't possibly have known. Just like the puzzle box.

Appearances aside, he's never been an illiterate oaf. School was boring, not beyond his grasp. But on Earth, it was always Adam and Gansey tucked away with their books while Ronan was out finding or making trouble. Strange, then, for him to be found in the library now. What seemed at first like a simple shrine to Gansey's memory is now a place for Ronan to peek into his own mind.

Seated cross-legged on top of the work table, he has a great tome spread open across his lap, ancient-looking and bound in leather. This is The Red Book by Jung, a manuscript Ronan remembers his father describing, but something he's never read for himself or even laid his eyes upon. There's something chilling about turning its pages now, finding words there that must have come from somewhere beyond Ronan's own mind. The truth of it has him looking shaken, as terrified as he is exhilarated.]

[Like the rest of St. Monmouth, Ronan's room is a mixture of memories and wishes. In terms of layout, it's a more spacious version of his room at Monmouth Manufacturing. His bed is the same, as are various bits of furniture and the posters on the wall and the enormous stereo system. These are the things belonging to the teenage exile Ronan. Other objects go back further, remnants of his childhood bedroom at the Barns. Many of these are dream things, replicas of his father's creations. Whimsical little marvels, like toy cars that play music when their wheels turn.

And then there are Ronan's newer creations, half-formed experiments in the art of reality-bending. He's seated on the floor in the middle of his room with such a creation right now, his shoulders hunched as if he means to protect the thing in his palm. Whatever it is, it's hidden from view, but it's emitting a soft pink glow between his fingers.

From the look on his face, it isn't correct. This secret he's guarding will have to be attempted again.]