A light touch on his toe made him dodge. One, two, three more cuts sliced through the air, sharp cleaves of wind that whistled past his ears. He was more focused than ever. This was his last chance in this cycle. He could not let this wicked woman win. He hated Karmen. He hated Ivy. He just wanted it to be over.
The translucent chains wrapped around her arm with a snap, and he pulled hard, using the force to dash forward on the balls of his feet. He slammed his other fist, the one wrapped in glowing links, into her lower abdomen. The shock sent her flying a few meters back, the impact sounding like a muffled thunderclap. He had pulled her toward him and pushed himself toward her in the same violent motion.
"It worked!" he gasped.
"Lucid, do not lose focus. We are so close," Alice's voice whispered in his mind, a thread of strength in the chaos. "Use the Chain of Heart. Focus your Fate Essence through it, and I will help."
He stood his ground, widening his stance. He focused on the chains wrapped around his forearm, the chains that hung freely from his hands, pulsing with borrowed light.
"Karmen's fate essence is still within.. odd...."
They pulsed, brightening two times over, their glow intensifying until they cast sharp shadows on the torn grass.
From the distance, a rumbling came from the ground. Ivy was preparing another attack. The earth shook. He sensed the urgency and jumped back just as about twenty violet, whip-like limbs shot out from the soil where he had been standing. They were like hungry tentacles, seeking to devour him. He stood firm, fastening his chains around their rear ends as they lashed the air.
He breathed in, then out.
He threw one chain like a whip, then the other, the movements in perfect, harmonious sync. They tore through each limb with a sound like ripping silk. He spun amidst the flailing energy, his movements almost like a desperate, brutal dance. The field was soon littered with the fading remnants of the limbs, nothing more than dissipating energy and dust. It was a horrifying spectacle. This was it. This was the moment.
Ivy was now defenseless, wide open. This was his moment to attack, his one and only chance.
"Tch! How are your attacks getting through?" she yelled, her voice thick with frustration.
"Don't ask me," he said under his breath, already moving.
A chain shot out, wrapping around her ankle. He yanked it hard, pulling her down to one knee as he dashed forward.
"Maybe I have a Primordial Maiden backing me up."
"That is ludicrous!" she shrieked, struggling against the luminous bond.
That was the primary reason why his attacks were getting through her. With Karmen's body and power as a mere Awakened, he was not capable of touching an Enlightened, not even minimally. But with Alice's fate essence and trait flowing through him, it felt different. His attacks were not just landing; they were damaging her very soul. His guess, sharp and sudden, was that it might be because Alice held a rank of a Primordial. On her knees, she was helpless, he was preparing his final attack, the decisive hit, the blow that would decide everything. He was about to kill an Enlightened, something unheard of, never done before, not even in the old world. This was the chance. This was the opportunity.
He planted his left foot and breathed. His other free arm, wrapped in chain, shot out and coiled around her neck. He tightened it.
Ivy struggled now, a raw, primal emotion she had never shown before pronounced on her face.
Fear.
Fear of death. Fear of pain. Fear of agony.
The tables had turned.
"Who, who are you?" she managed to say through choked breaths.
"A puppy, apparently," he shot back.
She was clawing at her throat, trying to breathe, trying to do anything.
But the fight was not over. She was an Enlightened, a being of immense power and pride. With a final, guttural cry, she slammed her palms together. The violet energy around her did not explode outward. Instead, it imploded, collapsing into her body with a sound like a dying star. The chain around her neck shattered into a thousand motes of light. The force of the detonation threw Lucid back, skidding across the muddy ground.
He looked up, panting. Ivy was standing again, but she was changed. Her skin was cracked like porcelain, glowing lines of violet fire visible beneath. Her eyes were pure, pupil-less amethyst light. This was not a tactic. This was a last resort, a burning of her core essence.
"You," she said, her voice a distorted, multi-layered echo. "You have forced me to this. To shed this mortal shell and reveal the truth. I am not merely an agent of Materna. I am a shard of its will. A covenant made flesh to reclaim what was sworn."
The air grew thick and heavy, pressing down on Lucid's shoulders with physical weight. Above them, the grey summer clouds churned, darkening to the color of a bruise. The violet energy bled into the environment itself. The rose bushes nearby withered, their petals turning black and crumbling to ash. The grass at her feet died in a perfect, expanding circle.
"This land was promised," Ivy intoned, the words vibrating in the air. "Its essence will be reclaimed. You are a weed in the garden. And I am the gardener."
Lucid felt the drain immediately. It was not an attack he could block. It was a sapping of vitality, a claim on the very life force of the territory and on him, standing within it. The green healing light around him flickered, fighting a losing battle. His legs felt like lead.
'This is...' he realized, despair clawing at his throat. 'Domain control. She is changing the world to suit her.'
He remembered Renji's lessons. 'When they change the world, you have two choices. Run, or change your own.'
He could not run. Lyle was still huddled with the servants. His mother lay dead by the tree. This was his world now, too. No matter how grim things seemed he had to protect it.
He stopped straining against the oppressive air. He closed his eyes, blocking out Ivy's sneer, the groans of the wounded, the thunder of his own heart. He focused inward, on the pulse of the luminous heart in his chest, on the feel of the chains. Not as shackles, but as bonds. A bond to Alice. A bond to this place, however forced.
'Alice,' he thought, not as a plea, but as a statement of fact. 'This is not just about envy. It is about a heart that kept loving even when it was bound. The chain is the restraint, but the heart inside never stopped.'
A warmth bloomed in his chest, different from the healing light. It was a feeling of profound, unshakable connection.
He opened his eyes. The chains at his wrists dissolved into light. For a moment, Ivy's smile widened, thinking he had surrendered.
Then, the light did not fade. It spread.
It pulsed out from Lucid in a silent, expanding wave. It did not push back the violet corruption. It did not attack. It simply existed. Where the wave passed, the grass did not grow back, but the creeping death stopped. A small circle of neutral ground formed around him, a sanctuary a few meters wide. The oppressive weight lifted from his shoulders.
Ivy's smile vanished. "What is this? A child's barrier? It changes nothing."
But it did. It changed everything for Lucid. This was his domain. A territory defined not by conquest, but by stubborn, defensive will. By a refusal to be erased.
"I am not claiming this land," Lucid said, taking a strong step forward on his own stable ground. "I am just refusing to let you have it."
He raised a hand. From the boundary of his glowing sanctuary, new chains erupted from the ground, not to bind her, but to weave a complex, shimmering lattice in the air around him. A fence. A declaration.
Ivy screamed in pure frustration. A dozen spears of violet energy shot toward him.
The spears hit the lattice. Light flashed, blindingly bright. When it cleared, the spears were gone. The chains held, but their light dimmed. Lucid staggered, a nosebleed starting. The cost was immense.
"You cannot hide in there forever, mouse," Ivy snarled, stalking forward to place a hand on the chain-lattice. It sizzled, and a link cracked.
"Don't worry by the time I'm done" Lucid said, his gaze shifting past her to karmen's dead mother. "you'll understand."
With a final, wrenching effort, he pushed.
His small domain focused. All the light, all the intent, all the power of the Chain of Heart, coalesced into a single, brilliant line. It lanced out from him, not toward Ivy, but across the garden, connecting directly with Lady Livia, karmens's mother.
A surge of pure, white healing energy, fueled by a will to protect, flowed into her.
Ivy saw it and understood too late. Her victory was not just about killing Karmen. It was about breaking the House of Valrious, ending its legacy in despair. By saving the mother, Lucid had spoiled the narrative.
With a shriek of pure rage, Ivy turned her full, furious attention back to Lucid. Her domain crushed inward. The chain-lattice shattered.
But it did not matter.
As the last of his light faded, Lucid saw Lady Livia stir, her hand reaching up to touch Lyle's face. He saw Gerald, the old butler, struggle to his feet with a fire iron, placing himself between his mistress and the monster.
Lucid fell to his knees, utterly spent. The world began to blur.
Ivy stood over him, her form cracking with violet light, a blade of pure energy raised high. "Well done little mouse... You lose," she spat.
Lucid looked up, a tired, bloody smile on his face. "Check again."
Ivy watched the scene before her. Her expression shifted from triumph to disbelief, then into a profound and chilling discontempt. Before she could form a reply, her form began to dissolve, fading not into a white shadow, but into particles of bright, white light.
He did not see the blade fall. he didn't die. The black darkness didn't consume him after a loss.
Instead it crept in slowly and gently, everything went dark.
***
Time Synchronization...
Error.... Error.
Attempting... Time Synchronization...
Error... The participant has altered Fate's desired outcome.
Cannot enact penalty.
Cannot reset.
***
He awoke with a gasp in the plain, grey, featureless room between cycles. A single line of text hung before him.
***
Primary Objective Updated.
Penalty Threshold Re-calibrated.
Continue?
***
The victory was not clean. Karmen's father was gone. Jane was dead. He was more intertwined with Karmen than ever. The enemy was still out there, wounded but not destroyed, but it was an illusion in a trial. But he had saved Karmen's mother and older brother. He had forced a change. He had used a power born of protection in a way it was never meant to be used, and in doing so, he had changed the rules of the game. Though reviving the dead was impossible, much less for an Enlightened, these were not true deaths, but conjured beings of fate and memory. A simple, brutal tweak to the thread of their existence, pulled by the chains of his will, was all he had needed to revive Karmen's mother.
And that act had sapped all of his energy.
"But that is not the answer I guessed, right, Karmen?"
He looked around. The figure of a painfully familiar nobleman, with long-sleeved buttons and white pants, stood there. Karmen. His face was obscured, cast in shadow.
He spoke.
"My… you really are something else. Perhaps you can change the fate of this world. Perhaps you truly can steal the world's destiny back from Mother Fate's grasp."
Lucid smiled, a weary acknowledgment of Karmen. He wasn't angry anymore. He simply understood now what Karmen wanted, what had been haunting him.
"The fate I sought to change… it was selfish of me to ask it of you."
"It wasn't," Lucid said softly. "It really wasn't. I mean, I hate you, don't get me wrong. But… I can't just watch someone in need struggle. I had people help me, too. Some betrayed me. But by helping, it's one step closer to making the world a better place."
Karmen smiled and nodded.
"Yes...." He broke his noble formality. "This time… I just need one thing. And I trust you know what it is."
Lucid nodded.
He reached out a trembling hand, his fingers passing through the shimmering text hanging in the air before him.
"Continue," he said.
***
Time synchronization reset.
Trial iteration: 7.
***
The grey void faded. A new summer morning, whole and unbroken, began to take shape around him. The room twisted and changed into a book-lined study. Shelves rose around him. A gilded clock hung on the wall. An oak desk, wide and large, stood in the center, resembling something from a painfully familiar memory. He sat in the chair now, the light entering between the curtains highlighting his features, black hair, fair skin, blue eyes.
He was Karmen again.
He was in that study once more.