"Argh… what's happening… am I high?" Solved muttered, his voice slurred as consciousness clawed its way back. His vision spun, blurred colors dripping into one another.
"Wake up, sleepyhead…" a soft voice chimed.
His eyes fluttered open. Tokyo. Neon lights buzzing in the distance. The hum of trains. And in front of him—
A little girl.
He staggered, nearly collapsing as he tried to stand. "What the… a dream? This has to be a dream. What was I—where was I?"
Her face snapped into clarity. Familiar. Too familiar.
The case. The girl he never saved.
"Thanks for saving me," she smiled. Or maybe she did—his vision still trembled around the edges.
"Argh…" He clutched his head, kneeling, fingers digging into his temples.
"Thaaank you, Mister…" Her voice warped, stretching, rigged and sharp like a broken violin string.
His eyes jerked upward.
The girl now held a gun.
The barrel flared—
Bang.
He gasped awake, breath tearing through his throat. Reality slammed back into place. Cold. Chains biting into his wrists. His body pinned, suspended at the center of the manor's grand hall.
He turned his head, heart hammering.
There she was. Elera. Sitting across from him. Perfectly calm. Perfectly patient.
Watching.
But Solved ceased to believe—appearances meant nothing here.
He had never met Elera before; for him, the Truth Sight was the only compass. Without it, every face could be a mask, every word a lie.
"Are you Elera?" he asked at last, voice low, tilting his head as though weighing her against evidence. "The miller's daughter?"
Silence.
Her auburn hair spilled across her shoulders, eerily familiar—the same shade he had glimpsed at Valamore Gate. But hair was no fingerprint. Others could have shared the same flame-colored crown. They could all have been chasing the wrong girl from the start.
He narrowed his eyes. He needed answers. Concrete. Verifiable.
Yet the figure across from him didn't speak, didn't stir. She lingered in the shadows like a statue carved to mock patience—watching him, unblinking.
The chains clinked as he adjusted his wrists, a detective's instinct burning in him:
If she won't reveal the truth… I'll drag it out myself.
Solved narrowed his eyes, voice steady despite the weight in his chest.
"Tell me…" His gaze swept the room before locking on her face. "Are you the one they call the plasma vessel?"
He waited for the shimmer, the familiar flicker of runes across his vision.
Nothing.
His stomach tightened.
The silence in his head was louder than her silence in the room. The system always answered. Always.
Why not now?
So you're going to ditch me now? he thought bitterly.
He leaned forward against his chains, words sharpened like bait.
"Or should I call you Elera—the miller's daughter?"
Her lips parted. A voice finally spilled into the air, calm and unhurried.
"Does it matter?"
The air crackled. At last, the system chimed—late, almost reluctant.
[Truth Sight: Active]
[Target: Unknown]
[Status: Reading Obscured]
[Emotion: ???]
[Identity: ???]
[Conclusion: Access Denied]
Solved's pulse spiked. Unknown? Obscured? He had never seen the system falter—never seen its certainty collapse into question marks.
For the first time, he realized the one in front of him wasn't just another case file.
And for the first time, he regretted ever trusting the system.
Then Solved's gaze shifted upward.
On the balcony stood a figure—long hair cascading over a black noble suit, ornaments glinting faintly against the dim light. He leaned against the handrail, arms spread, looking down at Solved.
Silent.
"Guess it's in your blood," Solved muttered under his breath.
The man's lips curved faintly. His voice carried down, smooth and measured.
"What is your name?"
"Oh, you talk," Solved replied, feigning surprise. "Thought you were mute for a second."
The man tilted his head, studying him.
"You should be afraid. You stand before death itself, yet you still joke." His hand dragged along the rail as he descended the steps with deliberate calm.
Solved gave a short, sharp laugh—one that didn't reach his eyes.
"Afraid? I already died once. Funny thing—death likes to keep its distance when it talks big."
The man's gaze sharpened, but before the tension could snap—
Whack!
Elera's hand cracked across Solved's face. His head jerked to the side, lip splitting under the force. She didn't say a word. Just turned, walked back, and leaned against the wall as though nothing had happened.
This is good tension — I like that you're layering psychological probing (the noble man talking about beliefs) with Solved's inner frustration at the system's silence. To make it sharper and creepier, I'd suggest:
Let the noble man's words feel like he's peeling into Solved's soul.
Show Solved's skepticism but also his growing unease since the system isn't backing him up.
Give Elera's earlier slap more weight by contrasting her raw physicality with this man's unsettling calm.
The sting still burned across his cheek. The force of that strike—no sixteen-year-old should've carried it.
The man above didn't flinch at the sound. He only leaned forward over the balcony rail. His voice came low, steady, like a judge pronouncing sentence.
"I will ask again. What is your name?"
"Where's she—Elera?" Solved cut him off, chains rattling as he shifted.
A faint chuckle slipped from the man.
"Elera… so that's her name." He tilted his head toward the girl, then back at Solved. "And who sent you, nameless one?"
"My name's Solved," he shot back. "And I came here on my own."
The man repeated the name, tasting it like wine.
"Solved. An unusual name." His shoes clicked against the stairway as he descended, each step slow, deliberate. Shadows clung to his frame.
"A man with many beliefs—I can see it etched into your soul."
His words rolled like scripture in a ruined chapel, echoing down the chamber.
"You believe in justice.
You believe in Heaven. And Hell.
You believe in things most men have forgotten how to name."
Solved forced a scoff, though unease tightened his chest. Could've been a lucky guess. But what gnawed at him deeper than the man's words was the silence inside his head.
No flicker of runes.
No guiding prompts.
Not even the faint hum of Truth Sight.
The system—his system—wasn't answering at all.
The man finally closed the distance, his shadow swallowing Solved whole.
"The one you love the most," he said, voice calm, almost reverent, "you believe the dead can still hear us."
The words pierced deeper than the chains on his wrists. Memories clawed out from the dark—kneeling in the rain by a lonely grave, whispering broken prayers to the earth, hoping somehow his mother could hear.
Solved's throat tightened. His eyes glistened, but he forced them steady, refusing to give the man the satisfaction.
"So what?" his voice cracked with defiance. "What are you going to do with it?"
The man crouched until they were eye to eye. His cologne was sharp, his presence suffocating. He leaned close, lips nearly brushing Solved's ear, and whispered:
"It plays a huge role here."
Solved's heart skipped. His breath caught.
What role? Why here?
The noble rose back to his full height, his expression unreadable, as if he'd just dropped a prophecy instead of a taunt.
Solved squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to breathe. Think. Think, damn it.
What am I missing? His mind scraped for patterns, for cracks in the scene—but every thread unraveled into noise. The pounding in his chest, the sting of his split lip, the memory of the girl in Tokyo—all of it tangled into a fog.
He tried to separate evidence from feeling, but the emotions pressed too close, smothering his reason.
His instincts screamed at him, but for once, he couldn't tell if they were his own… or planted.