Wrath Domain, Behind the Wall, January 20, 2026
Perhaps Sabrina thought that his request for some paper and a pen was too modest, so she brought several… notebooks.
Ashen found them neatly stacked the day after in the meal slot. The notebooks sat there alongside their breakfast, pristine and waiting.
His mind wasn't on that at all, however… because he had finally discovered the reason for Somatic Autonomy acting up.
'We are being poisoned…' He concluded grimly.
…And it wasn't an overt poison that killed in seconds like the green death he had encountered in the History Fragment… this one was insidious.
It was sneaky enough to remain unnoticed for this long despite Somatic Autonomy passively monitoring his body at all times for anomalies.
What was more frightening was that this poison, despite being seemingly harmless for now, was everywhere.
It was in the air, as Ashen now finally noticed that he inhaled more of it with each breath, and even in his own meals.
Ashen didn't keep it to himself and informed his new cellmate of his discovery.
"It's probably harmless as long as we stay in the Pit." She nonchalantly concluded.
"Hey… Why are you so relaxed…? Do you know something?" Ashen raised an eyebrow at her indifference to the matter.
"No…" Alice shook her head, "But, we aren't the only ones in this prison, nor were we the first ones. If this were truly harmful, the ones who were already here would have been dead."
"True." He agreed. "Then that means that this poison is still dormant, or…"
"...We are being administered the cure alongside the poison." Alice finished. "As to why they are doing this…"
"...It's, of course, to keep us here. If, in the impossible case of someone managing to break out, they'd die soon after due to not inhaling the cure that's only present here." Ashen concluded.
""Truly despicable."" They both sighed.
"Well, it's not like I was planning a jail break any time soon, so it doesn't really matter." He smirked, and Alice pouted at that.
"Really? And here I thought we were going to have fun with this, just like the movies…"
"Miss, this is not a movie, so we'll probably end up dead if we try…" He helplessly shrugged.
"Fii~ne," She relented. "So what do we do now?"
"Well, let me put you up to date on what I've been doing here first…"
And just like that, Ashen spent the next hour explaining how he planned to get out of here by waiting for Cassius to make his move and the Riven State he managed to create, from its functions to its requirements… Alice gave him a smug grin when he reached the body tempering part.
"So even though you've been calling me a weeb, you've been listening to me when I talked about my fictional stories…" Her gaze was unimpressed, but there was fondness behind it.
Who wouldn't like their significant other to pay attention to them, even if they were talking nonsense, after all?
"Well, yeah, thanks to that, I've had this idea, and it seemed to be working well until now…" Ashen scratched his cheek, but appreciation wasn't lost on him, and he made sure that he conveyed it from his gaze alone.
Alice then tilted her head in thought, before remarking, "It's your body, so you should know better, especially with that skill of yours, but my advice is that you should also focus on your nervous system and blood viscosity, since those could also be problems down the line. Blood viscosity will induce cardiac strain and an inferior nervous system won't be able to keep up with a superior body."
"Yeah, I thought about it too, but you know how low my mana is… SA can only do so much if we're talking about permanent changes…"
Mana was one of the most frustrating subjects to Ashen, and it showed from his irritated look.
"Hmm… How about we try that?" Alice poked a full lower lip with her nail.
"That…?"
"Yes… that. The thing we did so you could siphon my mana." Alice's eyes sparkled.
"Ah, you mean increasing our affinity with SA so we can freely share mana? … But you don't have nine tails worth of mana anymore, even if you have the bloodline, so it would take days to reach the same state we did in the History Fragment…"
He then looked at her curiously. "Also, I'm guessing you want to share your mana, but don't you also need it?"
Alice shrugged. "Looks like you need it more right now. Also, I can just monopolize both our capacities when I truly need them. We can swap based on need."
"Also…" She then added, "Don't look at our current amount of mana. We'll keep accumulating more as time passes, especially with my innate ability in play, giving me those fox tails for extra storage, so it's not a loss if we improve our affinity now. And unlike back then, we're both human now, so I'm sure it'll be easier this time around."
"Alright." Ashen easily agreed. "It looks like a really good investment, if you put it like that."
"So… Is there anything else I can help with?" She curiously tilted her head, index finger on her lower lip.
Ashen was shameless enough to nod his head. "Yeah, you remember my step epithet, right?"
"Idle Chronicler."
"And to embody this stage I have to…"
"—Chronicle historical events, and they must be completely true, and not what the majority believes."
"Yup," he nodded once. "Problem is, I can only feel the advancement if I write the events physically. It doesn't count if I do it in the dreamscape, and I even feel my advancement stalling and actually regressing if I destroy them after writing them…"
Alice hummed in understanding. "And I'm guessing you want to write the events that we lived in the History Fragment, but you don't want others to know about them…"
"Yeah," He agreed. "Although most won't believe the wild shit we witnessed, I don't wanna leave it to chance. That could give too many clues about my ability, as well as compromise my plan to leave this place."
"Understandable." Alice got serious and straightened up. "What do you need me for?"
He shot her a grin. "First, what are your thoughts on creating a crypted language, decipherable just by the two of us…"
"Oh." She exclaimed softly, then mirrored his own grin. "How romantic."
And then nibbling on her own lower lip, she saluted, "Count me in~."
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Their days settled into an almost domestic rhythm, if one ignored the iron bars and stone walls framing their existence.
Surprisingly, there were no intimate moments aside from hugs, cuddling, and kissing.
Not because the desire wasn't there since Alice's golden eyes lingered on him often enough, and Ashen caught himself watching the way she moved through their shared space with increasing frequency, but simply because they had work to do.
They were two incredibly focused individuals when it came down to it. More than that, they'd had over ten years of each other.
They were practically an old married couple at this point, even if no official ceremony had ever taken place. The joke made Ashen smile whenever it crossed his mind: they knew each other's rhythms, moods, and needs well enough that physical expression could wait when more pressing matters demanded attention.
Each of their mornings began the same way.
Ashen would wake first, consciousness surfacing from whatever dreamscape training he'd subjected himself to the night before. Alice would be curled against him, breath steady, hands and feet draped across his torso like blankets.
He'd carefully extract himself, dress in the simple prison pants, and begin.
{Activated Path Skill: Somatic Autonomy}
Ten percent of his mana, channeled through SA, spent on a single purpose: Make our mana recognize each other. Make our bodies accept what the other offers.
The process was gentler than it had been in the Fragment. No blood vessels rupturing, nor catastrophic rejections. It was just a slow, steady adjustment that left him with a faint warmth in his circuits and Alice stirring awake with a smile.
"Morning," she'd murmur, stretching like a cat.
"Morning."
After that came his training.
The mana point blazed to life, now brighter than before, concentrated tighter, and Ashen moved.
His spear forms unfolded with phantom preciseness, his body carving through the air in increasingly lethal arcs. The point traced geometric constellations across his skin, through his muscles, along his bones.
RRIP—SNAP—POP—
Tissue tore. Blood vessels burst. Microfractures spiderwebbed through his skeleton.
Alice would be sitting on the bed with one leg over the other by then, travel bag emptied beside her, various gadgets and components spread across the mattress like surgical instruments.
Her hands moved with efficiency, assembling, disassembling, and testing. Her skills, Spark and Fervor Compiler, worked in tandem on her creations, gaining rudimentary autonomy while her focus honed with each successful iteration.
But her gaze kept drifting.
She should have been worried, maybe even terrified for him as he put himself through this borderline torture, but all she could feel was… pride.
Pride, that this man was hers.
And an uncomfortable amount of lust for his bloody appearance.
The way his muscles coiled and released beneath scarred skin. The way crimson painted abstract patterns down his torso. The way he moved with such control, even as his body destroyed itself—
She bit her lower lip and forced her attention back to the circuit board in her hands.
'Focus, Alice. You can jump him later.'
When his body finally broke, and the last of his mana exhausted itself, allowing Vital Drift to take over… that's when their little project unfolded in earnest.
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Ashen sat cross-legged on the floor, body mending, while Alice settled opposite him with one of the notebooks open between them.
"So," she began, tapping her pen against the blank page, "encryption fundamentals. We need something that's complex enough to resist casual decryption but simple enough that we can encode and decode it reliably without external tools."
"Right." Ashen nodded, still breathing slightly heavy from exertion. "Classical ciphers are too simple. Substitution, transposition… anyone with basic cryptanalysis knowledge could crack those."
"Agreed. We need layered complexity." Alice's eyes gleamed with the particular intensity she got when solving problems. "Multiple encryption passes, variable keys, maybe incorporating mathematical operations…"
"What about a polyalphabetic cipher as the base?" Ashen suggested. "Something like Vigenère, but modified."
Alice's pen stilled. "Vigenère is vulnerable to frequency analysis if the key is short or repeated."
"Which is why we don't use a static key." He leaned forward, ignoring the fresh blood seeping from a not-quite-healed wound on his shoulder. "What if the key itself changes based on something external? Something we can both track without needing to write it down?"
That made her pause.
Her Determinant's Eye trait was already working, showing her patterns forming and calculating outcomes. She could see where this was going, but… the elegance of letting him articulate it himself appealed to her.
"Go on," she said softly.
"Dates," Ashen continued, voice gaining confidence. "Lunar cycles, seasonal markers, astronomical events. Things that are predictable but not obvious. We could create a key generation algorithm that takes those inputs and produces cipher keys on demand."
Alice's smile widened. "You've been thinking about this."
"Had nothing but time." He grinned back. "Your turn. How do we make the algorithm?"
She flipped to a fresh page, pen already moving.
"We start by establishing a base alphabet. Not the standard twenty-six letters… we'll create our own character set. Symbols that look like decorative script to anyone else but have specific phonetic or semantic meanings for us."
As she spoke, her hand sketched flowing curves that resembled calligraphy but contained deliberate structure. Each symbol looked both beautiful and alien, but still utterly unreadable to outsiders.
"Then," she continued, "we can assign each symbol a numerical value. How about Prime numbers?"
"That's preferable. It will avoid simple mathematical relationships. And the key generation?"
"Polynomial equations." Alice's eyes gleamed. "We'll create a formula that takes the date, lunar phase, and a personal constant… maybe something meaningful to both of us… Then it will output a series of shift values. Those shifts get applied to our base alphabet in sequence."
Ashen watched her work, and the way her fingers moved with certainty… the way her mind processed complexity like breathing.
"You're enjoying this," he hummed.
"Immensely." She didn't look up. "Aren't you?"
"More than I probably should be, hehe."
They worked in companionable silence for a while, the scratch of pen on paper punctuated by occasional suggestions, corrections, and refinements.
"What about semantic layers?" Ashen asked eventually. "The symbols represent sounds, but what if certain combinations have deeper meanings? Context-dependent interpretations?"
Alice's pen paused mid-stroke.
"...Steganography," she breathed. "Hide messages within messages."
"Exactly. Surface level reads one way, but if you know the underlying structure…"
"...It says something completely different." She looked at him with something approaching reverence. "That's brilliant."
"Learned from the best." He gestured at her notes. "You're the one who taught me to think in systems."
The warm moment hung between them.
Then Alice cleared her throat and returned to writing.
"We'll need to test it," she said, voice slightly rougher. "Let's create sample texts, encode them, decode them. We should also make sure that the process is reversible and consistent."
"Tomorrow," Ashen agreed. "After training."
"Tomorrow."
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"This isn't working."
Alice frowned at the encoded text in front of her, then at the decoded attempt beside it. The output was gibberish.
"The polynomial is too sensitive," Ashen observed, leaning over her shoulder. "Small variations in input are producing wildly different outputs. We need to introduce some kind of… dampening function."
"Or we recalibrate the constants." Alice tapped her pen against her lips—a habit Ashen had noticed emerged when she was thinking hard. "What if we use modular arithmetic? Keep the values within a defined range?"
"Could work. What range?"
She pulled out one of her gadgets. It was a calculator she'd assembled from spare components.
"Let's try a modulo based on our character set size. That way, the output always maps to a valid symbol."
They spent the next hour testing, adjusting, and then testing again.
"Better," Ashen said, comparing encoded and decoded versions. "Still not perfect. There's slippage in the third layer."
"Because we're compounding rounding errors." Alice made a note. "We need to preserve precision through each encryption pass. Maybe switch to exact fractions instead of decimals?"
"In our heads?"
She shot him a look. "You have an IQ of 160. I have pattern recognition that borders on precognition. I think we can handle fractions."
He laughed. "Fair point."
The work continued, each problem spawning solutions that spawned new problems. It was frustrating, meticulous, and utterly engrossing.
Ashen would make a suggestion. Alice would build on it, see three steps ahead, and propose modifications. He'd catch edge cases she'd missed… not because her analysis was flawed, but because his intuition for language structure complemented her systematic approach.
It was a collaboration of intuition and logic.
By the time Vital Drift finished its work and he needed to return to training, they'd made significant progress.
"Tomorrow," Alice said, gathering her notes.
"Tomorrow," he agreed.
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January 23, 2026
The cell had become their workspace.
Encoded samples covered one wall. Ashen had used a mana finger to write directly on stone when paper ran out. Alice's gadgets occupied most of the bed, organized with obsessive precision.
"I've been thinking about the key," Ashen said during their afternoon session. "The personal constant we use for the polynomial."
"Mmm?" Alice was testing a new symbol set, pen moving in rapid strokes.
"It should be something that changes but predictably. Something we both experience simultaneously."
That made her look up. "Our heartbeats?"
"Too variable. Stress, exercise, emotional state… all of that affects heart rate."
"True." She considered. "What about… our anniversary?"
"We have, like, five different dates we could call an anniversary." He smiled wryly. "First meeting, first date, first kiss, first time we—"
"The first time you made me breakfast," Alice interrupted, cheeks pinkening slightly. "That was when I knew."
Ashen blinked. "Really?"
"You burned the eggs. The toast was charcoal. The coffee was somehow both too strong and too weak." Her smile turned soft. "But you tried so hard. Got up early, made a complete mess of our mom's kitchen, and looked so proud when you presented it."
"I remember you ate it all anyway."
"Because it was made with love." She reached across their workspace and took his hand. "That was the moment I realized you weren't going anywhere. That was April 3rd, 2015."
"April 3rd, 2015," he repeated. "That's… actually perfect. Numerically rich, personally significant, and it gives us a stable base for calculations."
"Plus," Alice added, squeezing his hand before releasing it, "every time we decrypt something, we'll remember that morning."
They incorporated the date into their polynomial. The results were satisfying. The encryption became noticeably more stable.
"It's almost like the system wants to work," Ashen joked.
"Maybe it does." Alice smiled. "We built it on something real."
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January 30, 2026
Ashen stood in the center of the cell, mana point blazing at full intensity.
One hundred percent of his reserves, compressed into a space smaller than a pinhead.
His body had been ready for this moment. Every system was reinforced. Muscles dense as steel cable, bones like forged iron, blood optimized for oxygen carrying capacity, nervous system enhanced for signal transmission, and finally, the organs strengthened to handle the load.
He launched into his spear forms.
Thrust—slash—parry—pivot—
The mana point danced. It traced paths through his entire body like a fish gliding through a current, following the wake of every activated muscle fiber.
One minute.
That's how long his body held with no catastrophic ruptures orcritical failures. There was just a controlled strain, managed stress, and the sweet burn of pushing limits without breaking them.
When he finally stopped, he was bleeding from minor vessels, bruised from the internal pressure, but he was still intact and wholly functional.
Alice watched from the bed, calculator abandoned, expression cool, but eyes bright with an emotion that warred between pride and hunger.
"You did it," she said softly.
"We did it." He collapsed beside her, breathing hard. "Your recommendations made the difference. The nervous system improvements, and the blood viscosity work… without those, I'd have stroked out halfway through."
"Partnership." She pressed a quick kiss to his temple. "Now rest. Vital Drift needs to do its job."
He closed his eyes, allowing his body to mend, while Alice returned to their encryption work.
Behind them, the stone wall was covered in encoded text… chronicled events from the Fragment, written in a language only two people alive could read.
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February 2, 2026
The daily mana affinity sessions had become… different.
It started minutely. Where before, the exchange of mana through Somatic Autonomy had been merely painless, now it was pleasant and warm.
Ashen would channel his ten percent, directing SA to continue building their compatibility, and he'd feel Alice's presence in his circuits, which was not invasive anymore but more like it was a long-lost part of him that finally came back home.
"Do you feel that?" she asked one morning, voice slightly breathless.
"Yeah." His eyes were closed, while he focus internaly. "It's like… you're right here. Inside my mana network."
"Same." Her hand found his, fingers interlacing. "It's getting easier every day."
By evening, when they worked on their encryption, that connection remained. Faint but persistent.
Alice would reach for a component, and Ashen would hand it to her before she asked. He'd start a sentence, and she'd finish it. Their collaboration was approaching something beyond mere teamwork.
"It's like we're synchronizing," Alice observed, studying her calculator's readout. "Neurologically, energetically… our patterns are starting to mirror each other."
"Is that bad?"
"No." She set the device aside and looked at him directly. "Just… intimate, I guess. More intimate than I expected."
Ashen held her gaze. "Having second thoughts?"
"Never." Her smile turned mischievous. "Just warning you that when this is done, when our affinity maxes out… I'm going to make good on all those hungry looks I've been giving you."
"Looking forward to it." He smirked.
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February 9, 2026
The moment SA completed its work, they both felt it.
Even though their pathways were shaped by different Sins, they became compatible. Perfectly, seamlessly compatible.
Ashen channeled a thread of his mana toward her, just testing.
It flowed like water into water. without resistance or rejection.
Alice gasped. "That felt…"
"Yeah."
She sent mana back to him, tentative at first, then with growing confidence.
The sensation was electric… Pleasurable in a way that had nothing to do with pain relief or healing. It felt like intimacy distilled to its purest form… an exchange without barriers, and a presence accepted unconditionally.
"Oh." Alice's pupils dilated. "Oh, this is…"
"Dangerous…" Ashen supplied, voice strained.
"...And addictive." She pulled her mana back with visible effort. "We should… probably not do this casually. At least we shouldn't abuse it."
"Agreed." He took a steadying breath. "But good to know it works."
"Very good to know." Her smile widened. "I'm going to have so much fun with you once we're done here."
They forced themselves back to the encryption work, but the awareness of what they could now do lingered between them, further electrifying the heated atmosphere.
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February 10, 2026
"I think we're close," Alice said, reviewing their latest test samples.
The encoded text was beautiful. Not just the flowing symbols that resembled ancient calligraphy, but each sequence that tied to the next, all while staying mathematically sound.
And the decoded version matched perfectly.
"Let's try something complex." Ashen picked up a fresh notebook. "I'll encode a full chronicle entry. You decode it without watching me write. If you can read it back perfectly…"
"...Then it's done." Alice nodded. "Do it."
He spent the next hour encoding, using every layer of their system. Base substitution, polyalphabetic shifts, semantic embedding, and the full polynomial key generation based on today's date and their anniversary constant.
When he finished, he passed the notebook to Alice.
She studied it, calculator in hand, pen poised.
Time stretched.
Ashen tried not to watch too obviously, but he couldn't help tracking the way her brow furrowed in concentration, the way her lips moved silently as she worked through decryption steps.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity but was probably only thirty minutes, Alice looked up.
"'On the sixth day,'" she read aloud, "'the Narkal tide pressed close enough that I could smell rot on their breath. Alice's killing circles carved a hemisphere of safety, but even she was tiring. I knew then that if we survived, it would only be because we refused every other option.'"
She met his eyes. "That's the chronicle entry? Word for word?"
"Word for word." Ashen felt something tight in his chest release. "You did it."
"We did it." She set the notebook aside carefully. "Our language. Ours. humhum ♪"
They sat in silence for a moment, the satisfaction of a work well done settling over them.
Three weeks of work. Of iteration and refinement… of building something that belonged only to them…
It was a private language born from shared experience and mutual understanding.
"We should finish it properly," Ashen said. "Let's make the full documentation. Character set, encryption algorithms, and key generation formulas. Everything written down in case we need to reference it later."
"Agreed." Alice pulled out the last unused notebook. "Together?"
"Do you still need to ask? Together."
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February 11, 2026
The final documentation filled an entire notebook, front to back.
Every symbol defined and every mathematical operation explained. The complete process of encoding and decoding, step by step, with examples and edge cases, and all the refinements they'd discovered through trial and error.
It was comprehensive.
Alice made the last notation, a small flourish at the bottom of the final page, and set her pen down.
"Done," she said simply.
Ashen looked at the notebook, then at the encoded chronicles covering the stone walls, then at Alice.
"Haah… We're finally done."
"Indeed." She closed the notebook with deliberate care, then turned to face him fully.
Her golden eyes gleamed in the dim cell light. She leaned in slowly, giving him time to meet her halfway, and pressed her lips to his.
The kiss deepened immediately. Three weeks of restrained affection poured into the contact. Her hand cupped his jaw, his fingers threaded through her hair, both of them tilting closer, closer—
"Mmm~"
Tongues met. The kiss turned messy, as if compensating for the time they'd been holding back.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, Alice kept her forehead pressed to his.
Her next words were whispered directly against his lips:
"Happy birthday, darling~♡."
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