Somatic Autonomy might have seemed like Ashen's best skill at first glance, but Alice would have picked Lucid Dreamweaving over it any time.
How could she not, when she was currently experiencing a whole new world: the world of her mind.
As long as she understood it, she could manifest it; as long as she knew it, she could summon it. A whole dreamscape dedicated solely to her.
The possibilities were endless!
Alice knew that Somatic Autonomy dealt with the body with arguably the same finesse that Lucid Dreamweaving dealt with the mind, but as a person who primarily used her brain for most tasks, she naturally preferred the latter.
But for now, she was still testing the skill's limits and not doing anything outrageous yet.
...If one didn't count her crafting a hundred thousand of her gadgets and trying to command them simultaneously, then almost frying her brain in the process.
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When she willed herself to wake up, she found Ashen playing with wiggling mana tendrils and grinning creepily.
Such a sight would have creeped out anyone else, but Alice's love-tinted glasses were firmly in place, so she only found him 'cute'.
"What are you grinning about?" Her voice interrupted whatever scheming was going on in his mind.
"Nothing." Ashen's grin widened. "Just had an idea."
"Should I be worried?"
"Probably not."
"That's not reassuring."
"Good."
Alice made a sound somewhere between amusement and exasperation, then settled comfortably on the bed.
She knew he would explain everything once he'd sorted out his thoughts, so she waited patiently.
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While Ashen made it sound easy in his head, the execution of his idea was anything but.
There were many hurdles to his dream of becoming the Pit's tentacle man, so he turned to his trusty partner and cellmate for help, as always.
"So, you need to make the process of casting Lucid Dreamweaving on people unnoticed?"
Nod.
After explaining his thought process to her, Ashen asked to use her as his first "guinea pig" to train the skill.
"Alright, I'm in." And of course she was. When it came to Ashen, she was simply a fool in love, after all.
This phase didn't even take a single day. Ashen's skill was already at Skilled+ mastery, and he'd abused it in so many ways before, so making it unnoticed upon activation only required finding the right timing to imbue his will with subtlety in mind.
"Oh. I didn't feel anything this time. It's like I naturally got sleepy and had a good, vivid dream when I dozed off." Alice gave him a thumbs-up.
"If I didn't know it was you, I would have never guessed." She added with an impressed look.
Ashen laughed. "Nice. I'm finally acting like a real Sloth, haha."
"More like a nightmare, if those prisoners had any say in it…" Alice muttered under her breath, lips twitching in amusement.
"Alright, let's try it!"
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Long story short, it worked.
But the process was riddled with so many uncertainties and variables that the duo aborted the mission soon after.
The test run was valuable in itself, though, since they'd identified what they had to work on next.
The first and most urgent issue was detection. The mana threads Ashen wove could be detected by the guards, or worse, Sabrina herself.
While she only acted with goodwill toward them, they never forgot that she was there for surveillance as much as protection.
Ashen and Alice had a precedent of disappearing under everyone's nose, after all.
But if even after that, Cornelia still chose to trust Sabrina with them both in a single room, then that only highlighted the maid's ability more, so Ashen had to be extra careful in the next step.
"Ugh… this is probably a dead end." Ashen decided at last.
"True. We don't even know her full capabilities, but from inference alone, I'd say we're totally outmatched." Alice nodded, crouching to meet the frustrated Ashen's eyes.
He'd been sitting cross-legged on the floor. Now he was sitting on his head in a completely inverted cross-sitting position from sheer frustration.
Alice amusedly tapped his cheek. "Don't despair yet. Don't you have me?"
"Hmmm? You thought of a way?" His bored eyes suddenly lit up.
"Yeah, but I don't think it's foolproof. Well, nothing would be foolproof with our lack of information… but it's a start, I'd say."
He flipped upright in an instant, and Alice suddenly found herself in his embrace. Settling on the bed, he looked at her like an eager kid. "Tell me."
Alice settled her head comfortably on his shoulder. "We shouldn't do it."
"Huh?"
"...We've been thinking of hiding the mana threads from the eyes of others, but that's a long shot, so we should just abort the mission if we're detected." She elaborated.
"...As in fully dissipate the mana?" Ashen asked, trying to follow her thought process.
"Yes. Even if they notice something is wrong, if the link is cut, they won't tie it to us immediately. But it's more ideal that we detect them first and retreat."
"...That could work, but we'd have to embed more commands in the mana thread. Anti-spying, dissipation, and finally Dreamweaving upon contact…"
Ashen let a thread manifest from his finger and tried it, but his limit, as he already knew, was two commands at a time.
Three commands and everything started falling apart.
He looked down and smiled apologetically to his girl. She'd thought of this method, but his lack of skill had held them back.
Alice herself didn't blame Ashen since she knew how much more powerful he was than the average sixth-step pathwalker already. All he needed was time, so it wasn't a lack of skill on his part but simply a matter of circumstances in her mind.
She did glare at the mana thread in resentment, though. 'How dare you make my man feel so down? Even though he looks cute just like that… But still! Can't you just dissipate?!'
It seemed that the system wasn't mistaken when it labeled her as a fool despite all her intellect in the traits section.
But something happened that proved that sometimes, being foolish was the right answer.
The mana thread had… dissipated.
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What was affinity?
Objectively, it was the natural connection, attraction, or similarity between things.
So what happened when two people's affinity reached an absurd height?
The answer appeared before Ashen and Alice when the latter tried to imbue her will in his mana in a moment of frustration.
It had obeyed as if it were Ashen's own will.
As if it was attracted to her. As if she was the one who'd refined it. As if it was connected to her like it was hers in the first place. The mana couldn't differ between her and its original host.
So it simply obeyed both.
"Oh." Alice softly exclaimed.
"Ah." Ashen's eyes widened.
Normally, he would be scared out of his wits to find that someone else could manipulate his mana as freely as he did.
It was like his life wasn't solely in his hands anymore, since one will to detonate the mana would make it forfeit.
But he knew it was Alice who'd done it, so he was able to think calmly without fearing that his heart would go ka-boom.
And Ashen arrived at the answer soon enough. Truthfully, it wasn't that hard to guess, and they should have thought about it at least once at some point.
""It's our affinity.""
It seemed Alice had also naturally arrived at the same conclusion.
"Hehe… now we're finally going to get some work done." Ashen grinned as he thought of the possibilities that could be achieved with two wills working together in one mana pool.
In the back of his mind, though, he resolved to never raise his affinity with anyone so lightheartedly anymore.
It was a stroke of good luck that his first was with Alice; otherwise, if it were with someone he trusted less… He didn't want to think about it.
"So now we don't need to refine each other's mana before use. That's neat." Alice didn't seem to think much of this—or rather, since it was Ashen who shared control over her life and death, she didn't even think it was a negative thing but just a convenience with absolutely zero drawbacks.
"Neat? This is great! C'mon, let's do it again. We gotta synchronize better. Let's delegate tasks. I'll be responsible for anti-spying, and you'll take mana dissipation, how 'bout it?"
Ashen was already gushing over it, pulling Alice along. She could only be dragged around with these ideas as she helplessly smiled.
'What a kid.' She secretly smiled while answering every question with the patience of a mother indulging her child.
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With their new idea in place, the mana thread became much harder to detect, since it simply dissipated at the first sign of presence.
The first victim was the closest cell to them on the third layer.
Ashen had made the thread thinner than a millimeter in girth to save on mana and render detection through the naked eye almost impossible.
The thread waited for the prisoner to fall asleep at the periphery of his cell like a stalker, and when the lull of slumber finally took him, it latched.
Ashen, who had his eyes closed in concentration, with Alice next to him as they both held onto the other end of the thread, triggered the skill immediately.
{Activated Path Skill: Lucid Dreamweaving}
And just like that, the couple had caught their first prey. It was one of many, but Ashen simply focused on the one fish in his hands rather than the countless still free in the ocean.
Combing through the man's unconsciousness took more time than Ashen would have liked.
There was so much useless baggage he had to wade through.
The first barrier he encountered was learned skills… from walking and typing to even riding a bike.
Then came the emotional associations… afterwards, patterns, habits, and instincts.
Forgotten details. Trauma. Suppressed experiences.
Amid all the clutter, Ashen started picking up scenes from his past, just like a fisherman sorting through his catch.
And by the third hour, he finally had enough information to put together a decent story.
Alice passed Ashen an empty notebook, and he started writing.
Mustafa Zid. Born and raised in Paradise. He had loving parents… perhaps a bit too loving.
He grew up spoiled rotten under their affection and committed countless crimes, but they were all swept under the rug by his father, who was a member of the City Regiment—also known as the Bastion Guard, one of Seravelle's three great armies.
The Bastion Guard was the only one among the three armies that was responsible for protecting humans from themselves instead of the Narkals.
They handled thieves, murderers, rule-breakers, and everything in between… but such authority in his father's hands allowed Mustafa Zid to run amok when coupled with his dad's indulgent behavior.
As he grew up, so did his atrocities.
From bullying as a kid, to murdering as a teenager, to raping and extorting as an adult.
He eventually inherited his father's position in the army, and that made him even more reckless.
Reckless enough to dare have designs on one of the Chapel's nuns.
He didn't even last one day after he announced his next conquest to his "trusted" band of friends.
The next day, he found himself castrated three layers underground.
…Right where he belonged. In the third layer of the Pit.
"Done…"
"Good job." Alice nodded as she read the encrypted text over his shoulder.
"But it's too slow…" He ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair.
She gently patted his head. "Don't worry, you'll get better at it. Just keep going."
"Hn, right…" He answered with a kiss on her collarbone.
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Alice was right. With every new prey, he got absurdly more skilled. The process became faster and more fluid.
By the tenth prisoner, Ashen could identify the relevant memories within an hour instead of three.
Yara Khoury. A textile worker from the Envy Domain who'd spoken too loudly about wage discrepancies in the factories. Not a criminal in the true sense of the word… just an inconvenience. She'd witnessed corruption among the factory overseers and tried to organize the workers.
Two weeks later, evidence of theft appeared in her quarters. It was planted, obviously, but no one questioned it.
She'd been in Layer Two for six years now, still protesting her innocence to anyone who'd listen. And of course, no one did.
'Political prisoner,' Ashen noted mentally as he wrote. Truly innocent.
By the twentieth, the fragments he needed seemed to rise to the surface on their own, drawn by his intent.
Karim Daher. A merchant's son from Gluttony who'd gotten too curious about the prison's supply chains. He'd noticed something odd. The food deliveries that never quite matched consumption records… The Medicine that arrived but never reached the infirmary.
Someone was skimming. Someone powerful.
Three days after he filed a formal complaint, he was arrested for "conspiracy against domain interests." Layer Three, isolation cell, thought-conditioning cycles twice daily.
The funny thing? His memories revealed the truth about the prison's poison system.
'So that's how they do it,' Ashen thought, pen moving rapidly across the page.
The poison wasn't only administered through water or food, where it could be isolated and identified. It was also environmental.
In the cafeteria, it smelled like overcooked vegetables and stale bread—perfectly normal for prison food.
In the recreational yards, it blended with sweat and body odor. Near the latrines, it carried the stench of waste. In the sleeping quarters, it mingled with unwashed bedding and human musk.
Odorless, colorless, tasteless in its pure form—but always masked by the prison's natural miasma.
And the antidote was delivered the same way. Constant low-level exposure in the air filtration systems, calibrated to exactly counteract the poison's buildup.
Leave the prison, and within three days, the poison would activate. Fever first. Then convulsions. Then hemorrhaging from every orifice as your blood turned to sludge.
No one escaped the Pit. Not because they couldn't break out, but because leaving was simply… a death sentence.
By the fiftieth prisoner, Ashen's speed had doubled again.
Noor Sabbagh. A cultist. Her mind had protections… amateur ones, but present. Wards against mental scrying and barriers against telepathic intrusion, even some rudimentary defenses against memory extraction.
All of them were useless against Dreamweaving.
Because Dreamweaving didn't scry or intrude or extract. It simply… joined. Became part of the dream and observed from within.
Her memories spilled out like water from a cracked cup.
The cult operated out of the old sewers beneath the Greed Domain's capital. Seventeen members. Their goal wasn't worship of some dark entity: it was revolution.
They wanted to overthrow the Council, believing humanity's leadership had grown complacent while the Narkal threat intensified.
Noble intentions, perhaps. But their methods involved kidnapping Council members' families to force policy changes.
That's where nobility ended.
Ashen wrote it all down: the sewer entrance locations, the members' names, their meeting schedules, even the pathetic manifesto they'd drafted in secret.
'This could be useful,' he mused.
By the hundredth prisoner, the process had become almost meditative.
Omar Fayed. A former Bloodwall soldier who'd deserted during a Narkal assault. Not out of cowardice but because his squad had been ordered to hold a tactically worthless position… a sacrifice to buy time for a general's retreat.
He'd refused and pulled his men back. Saved nineteen lives.
Court-martialed for insubordination. Sent to Layer Three.
More interestingly, his memories included detailed knowledge of Seravelle's military hierarchy. Who held which positions. Which generals were competent versus politically appointed. Which domains cooperated genuinely versus which ones played games.
Ashen filed it all away.
By the hundred-and-fiftieth, patterns emerged.
Layla Mansour. Another political prisoner. She'd been a scribe in the Greed Domain's administrative offices and had seen documents she wasn't supposed to see.
Contracts with demihuman intermediaries. Secret trade agreements that violated the Council's public stance. Evidence that some domains were profiting from the war while others bled.
She'd made copies and hid them.
Then disappeared into the Pit before she could reveal them.
Her memories showed the documents' contents, and Ashen recorded every word: Trade routes. Contact names. Monetary figures and the entire shadow economy that operated beneath Seravelle's official stance of unified resistance against external threats.
'So much corruption,' Ashen thought in exasperation…
By the two-hundredth prisoner, the Chronicle of each story had become comprehensive, detailed, and almost literary in its completeness.
Tariq Younes. A scholar from the Lust Domain who'd researched forbidden topics—specifically, the history of the Sins themselves. How they'd manifested. Why seven specifically? What came before the system's arrival?
He was a bit too loud and started asking dangerous questions…
He was branded a heretic and buried in Layer Four —the Experimental Depths.
Ashen wrote everything and harvested every detail. All of it went into the chronicle.
'This is bigger than I thought,' Ashen realized as he wrote. 'I'm not just recording individual lives anymore. I'm assembling a hidden history of Seravelle itself.'
The corruption. The political prisoners. The cult networks. The military secrets. The forbidden knowledge.
Thread by thread, prisoner by prisoner, he was weaving together a tapestry that showed the true face of humanity's last bastion.
And with each completed chronicle, the Candlebearer walked steadily forward in the darkness of his soul.
The crimson flame flickered.
Red, yes… but shifting, brightening, and edging closer to amber with each passing story.
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"Done…" Ashen set down the pen, flexing his cramped fingers.
Alice looked up from her own notes—she'd been cataloging useful information from the chronicles, organizing it by domain and relevance.
"Two hundred and seven," she said. "That's impressive progress."
"And barely scratching the surface." Ashen rubbed his eyes. "There are thousands more in just this layer alone."
"You'll get to them." Alice moved closer, resting her head on his shoulder. "But maybe take a break first? You've been at this for eighteen hours straight."
Had it been that long?
Ashen glanced at the cell's dim lighting. It was unchanged and timeless, offering no indication of day or night.
But his body confirmed it. The exhaustion and mental strain, the dull ache behind his eyes from processing so many memories… They were his mental clock.
"Yeah," he agreed. "A break sounds good."
"Food first," Alice decided, standing and moving to retrieve their meal tray from the slot. "Then sleep. Real sleep, not dreamscape training."
"Yes, ma'am."
She shot him an amused look but didn't comment.
They ate in comfortable silence, surrounded by notebooks filled with encrypted chronicles. Stories of lives lived and lost, crimes committed and injustices suffered, truths buried and lies perpetuated.
The Pit held millions of such stories, and Ashen intended to record as many as he could.
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Of course, the process wasn't smooth sailing. Many more hindrances reared their heads.
The first one was the limitation of his total mana capacity.
After the first couple hundred prisoners—those whose cells were closest to him—the thread of mana simply wasn't long enough to reach any further, no matter how much thinner he made it.
Alice's mana doubled the radius, but the Pit was much larger than the kilometer the mana thread could reach with their combined effort.
Ashen and Alice could only settle for gradually lengthening the mana thread as they regenerated mana with their breathing techniques.
Progress would be slower than he'd hoped.
Sadly, Ashen's dream of becoming the Pit's tentacle man was put on the shelf since he could barely handle one thread as it was.
But that was fine.
He had time.
And the Candlebearer walked forward, patient and eternal, carrying his crimson flame through the endless dark.
One step at a time.
One story at a time.
The chronicle would be complete eventually.
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# Prisoner Alice