Ashen walked down the night road toward his rented apartment in light steps, his thoughts lingering on Alice.
He briefly worried that making her pick Lust would just be a redo of Seraphine's situation, but the thought didn't last long.
Unlike Seraphine, he was confident Alice could actually control herself. She was just that disciplined.
Ashen had known her since childhood. No matter what, she would never allow herself to sink into desires so much that they stripped away reason.
Seraphine's purity made her dangerously easy to corrupt, but Alice… Alice had something rarer: Control.
Falling that deep into Lust was a talent in itself, one that had brought Seraphine to eighty percent compatibility. But diving into the same abyss and still keeping your mind clear—that was far greater.
That, Ashen suspected, was the secret behind Alice's superior affinity.
He judged that her gift for maintaining composure would carry her farther along the path of Lust than Seraphine ever could.
But in the end, it didn't matter.
If he had to, he would be Seraphine's leash.
And he would be Alice's object of desire—gladly.
He just had to make her pick that path now.
Remembering how that "persuading" went, Ashen smiled bitterly.
At first, he'd thought he was going to persuade her with logic, showing her the clues to the Astrologer, recounting the struggles of the Bloodwall… things that would make her realize that she didn't have the luxury of choosing to stay weak.
But seeing how emotional she was, he knew it was a fool's errand. He knew then that no matter how much Alice liked to think logically, even she was not immune to the paradox of emotions.
Ashen could only improvise on the spot, hoping for a miracle while he took it as it came.
'But will this be enough to protect her from that?' he silently asked, remembering that bizarre creature that dared to call itself an Outer God in that nightmare.
Even now, he couldn't think of it for more than a few seconds before he got intense chills.
The only thing keeping him from losing hope was that even with all its incomprehensible power, that strange being still ended up being slain by his first timeline's self.
Eventually, he shook his head, deciding that no matter how powerful she got, he ought to kill whatever threatened her first, before she had to put herself in danger.
Tok.
Finally, Ashen arrived at his humble apartment.
One of the few perks of being part of the Bloodwall meat grinder was the fat paycheck, and it was thanks to that he could afford this place.
He passed the cramped kitchen and flopped onto the sofa, ready to call it a night.
The so-called apartment had only a kitchen and a bathroom, with the living room doubling as a bedroom. Calling it an "apartment" was honestly a stretch.
As he emptied his pockets and reclined back, he pulled out his slimslate to check how many points he'd accumulated. Tomorrow, he was planning to buy a new spear, after all.
[11.4M]
His monthly salary as a soldier sat at an impressive four million. The rent for this modest place cost him just 500,000 points a month, and even with other expenses, it barely scratched his finances.
There was simply no comparison to the pitiful amount he'd owned back in the tutorial.
But really, what was the point of fattening your purse if you might not live long enough to spend it?
There was a saying among the women of Seravelle: "Bloodwall men are great for a fling, but never for settling."
And it was true. They might shower you with gifts and points, but sooner or later, they'd vanish—not because they'd left, but because they'd died.
Ashen didn't worry too much, though. He now had enough faith in himself not to share the same fate as his fallen companions, after all.
With that last thought echoing in his mind, he let himself drift into the dreamscape.
⛧⛧⛧
Lust.
That was all she felt.
Not just desire. Not just want.
Hunger.
For connection. For touch. For the validation that came from being wanted in return.
Alice stood abruptly, pacing to the window, pressing her forehead against the cool glass.
"Get it together," she whispered to herself. "You're not some hormone-drunk teenager. You're a genius, a strategist. You can control this."
But even as she said it, her fingers drifted to her lips, tracing where he'd kissed her.
While Ashen left in good spirits after their parting, Alice, unfortunately, couldn't share the sentiment.
Unlike Sloth pathwalkers, which barely showed any changes at the seventh step, Lust struck hard from the start.
It did with Seraphine, and now it was doing the same with Alice.
And it didn't help that she was aroused before she'd chosen this path.
The warmth was a fire now, licking at her insides, demanding attention.
Alice gripped the windowsill, nails digging into the wood, while she mentally cursed how easy Sloth had it, while she had to deal with this.
But it couldn't be helped. That was just how Sloth operated. Even when it had to affect its host, it chose to do it slothfully.
For Lust, though, it always started strong, and the more you indulged, the more you drowned in it.
It was a race between the desire threatening to overwhelm her and her own resistance.
She tried to think of anything else, some distraction to pull her mind away from the scandalous thoughts assaulting her.
Finally, her focus landed on a single fact: Ashen had spoken as if he already knew she hadn't chosen a Sin, as if he'd already explained everything.
What he hadn't explained was how he was so certain she was the most compatible with Lust.
No matter how observant he was, no matter what path he'd taken, it shouldn't make sense for him to pierce her secrets this easily, this early.
She reminded herself he'd been in Seravelle for less than a year. Even she, after more than two years, had never heard of abilities capable of this.
And yet, Ashen's inexplicable knowledge was enough to challenge her preconceptions and open her to possibility.
If he had such a skill, then others might as well.
So when he glossed over the part where he would have explained how he knew, she took the hint and didn't press.
She trusted his judgment. If he deemed some truths too dangerous for her to know, so be it.
'Mental scrying… memory reading… precognition…' Alice cataloged the possibilities, each one more unsettling than the last. 'Or something else entirely.'
Poor Alice. Her conjecture about mental scrying had been accurate, yet she would never have guessed that her lover harbored a regressed version of another timeline living rent-free in his head.
The irony was almost poetic.
She was searching for answers about his mysterious knowledge, trying to piece together clues like the genius she was, while the truth was so fantastical she'd never consider it.
Time travel. Regression. A second chance purchased with blood and failure.
The very concepts would sound like delusional fantasy to someone as grounded in logic as Alice.
And Ashen knew it.
That's why he'd never tell her. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Some truths were too heavy to share, too dangerous to speak aloud. The knowledge of what was coming, of how she'd died, of the choices that led to ruin—
'She'd try to fix everything herself,' Ashen had once thought in the dreamscape, discussing it with his older self. 'She'd calculate every variable, plan every contingency, and drive herself mad trying to prevent a future I've already changed.'
Better to let her think he had some exotic ability. Better to let her speculate about mental skills or prophetic visions.
Better that than the soul-crushing weight of knowing she'd died in his arms once before.
✦⟡⟲⟡✦