The moment stretched between them like a blade held at rest.
Lucid turned. Ayame stood just behind him, her small form silhouetted against the burning shelves. Her usual calm demeanor was intact, the stillness, the watchful eyes, the absolute control. But something was off. Her face carried a disturbance he had never seen before, as if something gnawed at her from within.
He stood deliberately, meeting her gaze. Relief washed through him, whether he liked to admit it or not. She was a constant in all this chaos. Frederick too, but Frederick was elsewhere, fighting his own battles. Here, now, Ayame was the thread that connected him to something familiar.
Her eyes drifted to the side. To the girl. The body lay where it had fallen, blood pooled beneath her in a dark, spreading stain.
Ayame looked at the corpse with a cold, assessing glance. Then back at Lucid.
No words were exchanged.
He did not look away.
"Did you kill her?"
A pause. The flames crackled. Somewhere, a shelf groaned and collapsed.
"Yes."
Ayame looked at him, undisturbed. As if it were normal. As if death were simply another fact to be recorded and filed away.
The silence stretched between them, thick and heavy. Lucid felt it pressing against his chest, demanding something he could not name. Absolution? Judgment? Understanding?
None came.
"Let's go," he said finally, breaking the moment. A deep part of him felt guilt, hot and shameful. But beneath it, something else stirred. Relief. That it was her who found him, not Frederick. That he did not have to explain, to justify, to defend.
If Frederick had discovered him standing over the body of a student—even one who had tried to kill him, the proto-knight would not have hesitated. He would have demanded answers. He would have passed judgment. He might have drawn his sword.
Ayame simply accepted.
She closed the gap between them in less than a second, shoulder to shoulder now. She had resumed her smaller form, the agile one that let her move through shadows like smoke through cracks. Her presence was a cool pressure at his side.
"Did you scout ahead?" he asked.
"Yes."
"How does it look?"
"Hopeless."
They walked. The flames painted their faces in orange and black. Ayame spoke in her usual way, simple sentences, precise words, no embellishment. The princess hung from the tree. The corruption had spread. Miguel was somewhere in the inner circle, feeding on threads. The professors maintained the ritual. The B-rank shadow beast roamed freely.
The memories Lucid had absorbed from the girl filled in what Ayame's sparse words omitted. The man in black. The orders. The tree of agony. The circular arena where the princess hung suspended between life and damnation. He saw it all with terrible clarity.
He winced. "Gyah..."
Ayame stopped. She observed him, but she did not tend to him. She only watched, her dark eyes tracking his discomfort with clinical detachment.
Now that he understood what was happening, the pieces clicked together. Frederick had told him the truth, but not the whole truth. The omission was strategic, perhaps even kind. But it left Lucid walking into a situation he did not fully grasp.
"That bastard," he muttered under his breath.
Ayame observed him in his pitiful state. "Lucid."
He looked up.
"What is your next plan?"
The question landed strangely. He had expected her to help him, to piece together a strategy and offer the optimal solution the way Alice would have. But she was oddly quiet. Watching. Waiting.
Then it hit him.
Prove to me that you can defy this world's wish. If not, then I will save you from it.
The parallels between Ayame and Alice blurred in his mind. One demanded he submit, prove himself worthy of her devotion. The other defined herself as a weapon, offering collective suicide as a way to defy the world imposed upon them. They both shared a single thought: that he could not resist fate. That he was bound to follow the path laid out for him.
It pissed him off.
Ayame was not a partner now. She was not a friend. She was not even a foe. She was a spectator, watching from the sidelines, curious to see what he would do.
He gritted his teeth. "We need to take down the professors first. There should be two of them, plus the B-rank monster. That's our goal for now."
He focused on the ambient fate essence around them, feeling for disturbances, for concentrations of power. For now, he pushed aside the thought of having a partner who would gladly die with him if he failed. He needed all the help he could get.
Frederick. The name surfaced like a prayer.
"I sense someone with concentrated fate essence nearby," Ayame said. "Mid-tier Awakened. Nothing we cannot handle, but—"
"Didn't we almost take down an S-rank wolf in the Red Mountains?" Lucid interrupted.
Ayame only observed him. But something shifted in her expression. An imperceptible twitch at the corner of her lips. A softness that might have been the ghost of a smile.
They continued into the smoke.
***
Frederick's spirit had been pushed to its absolute limit.
He walked through corridors of death. Every step revealed new horrors—faces he recognized, silver badges he had trained beside, friends he had shared meals with. They lay scattered and mangled, burned and torn, their bodies arranged in grotesque tableaus by whatever had killed them.
This plan.
The thought surfaced unbidden. He had agreed to hold the oath. To uphold the duty to the princess. But where had this stubborn will to serve come from? When had devotion become obsession?
Something terrible stirred in the depths of his memory. He shook his head violently.
"No."
His voice was a ragged whisper.
"I am not with them anymore."
He was not. He had chosen differently. He had chosen better. The past was buried, and he would not dig it up.
The corridor opened into a wider space. His eyes narrowed, focusing through the smoke and heat.
A creature waited there.
It was hideous. Twisted. A formless shadow with two bright, burning eyes, feasting on something that had once been human. Its black fangs tore through flesh and bone with wet, sickening crunches. Shards of shattered skeleton scattered across the floor with each violent pull.
Frederick's face grimaced in disgust.
The worst part—
He recognized the student. What remained of them, anyway. A flash of familiar color in the tattered uniform. A hint of features beneath the ruin.
The shadow paused.
Without effort, without hurry, it twisted its amorphous neck and looked directly at where Frederick stood.
Its eyes found him.
He had no sword. No weapon. Nothing but his hands and his training and the burning oath in his chest.
The creature's fangs dripped with gore. Its eyes gleamed with ancient, patient hunger.
Frederick did not run.
He planted his feet. He raised his empty hands. And in the depths of his memory, something terrible stirred again—but this time, he did not push it away.
He let it rise.
Let it come.
If he was going to die here, he would die as what he had become. Not what he had been.
The shadow lunged.
Memories... a foreign land, chained and beaten, awaiting execution for crimes he did not commit and could not remember. The princess had seen him there. Had seen him cup rainwater in his bound hands and press it to the cracked lips of the horse that had dragged him in chains. Had seen him shift his body to shield the very guards who mocked him from the harsh sun.
She had freed him. Given him purpose. Given him her.
And now—
The shadow was faster than anything he had faced since teeth.
He had no sword. No armor. No fate essence to wield.
But he had been something.
And this something did not fall to shadows.
The creature's next attack caught him across the chest. He felt ribs crack, felt the hot gush of blood beneath his skin. He did not stop. He could not stop. The oath burned in his chest, brighter than the pain, louder than the memory of that distant empire and the things he had done in its name.
"Please live."
Her voice. Small hand on his wrist. The only thing that mattered.
He drove his hand into the shadow's core.