Walking through the towering white archives, Lucid couldn't help but feel a dull sense of awe. He had left the central building and was now navigating the endless maze of shelves under the flat, grey sky. In his hand, he held the Seed Rift, the dark, smooth stone he'd bought from the strange fortune teller. He rolled it in his palm, feeling its potential.
'Should I use it now?'
He looked out at the silent, repeating landscape. Mary, Brian, and Garfield were in here somewhere. He could faintly sense Mary's unique signature, a mix of fresh faith and untrained fate essence, but it was a directionless hum, impossible to pinpoint. A part of him was starting to twist with a quiet worry. Had he made the right choice, coming here alone? Was it selfish to even think about leaving them behind in this place?
"Use it, Lucid. We have a task at hand. The others may hinder it," Alice's voice spoke within his mind, clear and pragmatic.
Her suggestion was a shock. It was selfish. It would mean disregarding the others completely. Yet, he couldn't deny the cold logic of it that resonated with a deeper part of him, the part that just wanted to complete the mission and be done.
He looked down at the dark stone, considering. He had to get that blueprint. It didn't matter if he got expelled, imprisoned, or nearly killed. It was his one goal, his only line leading forward, his tether back to... something. What did Karmen even have to offer him? He didn't know. But it was the only path he had.
He began to channel a trickle of essence into the stone. It grew warm in his hand.
"Yes. Let's leave this behind, Lucid," Alice said, her voice more confident, reassuring.
THUD.
An impact. Something slammed into his back, punching through muscle and bone with brutal force. An arrow. Pain, immediate and blinding, erupted in his shoulder. His fingers spasmed. The Seed Rift stone fell from his grip, clattering onto the white stone path and rolling forward out of reach.
He looked at his empty hand, a wave of fear cutting through the pain. Another arrow whistled through the air and thudded into the side of his neck. He collapsed, hitting the ground hard, the world tilting.
In the distance, he could hear voices.
"Gosh... what an easy job."
A voice echoed down the long aisle of white shelves. He looked up at the grey sky, his vision blurring.
"Lucid, no!" Alice sounded genuinely worried, a sharp spike of fear in her mental voice.
"Professor Anya warned us about him," another voice said, closer now.
One of the figures walked forward. Black badges. Lucid's fading vision registered their uniforms, the slight blue trim marking them as third-years. There were three of them. Two girls and one boy. Three individuals sent after him. Just him. The absurdity of it made a weak, bloody laugh bubble in his ruined throat.
"Is he dead?"
"I made sure to hit his arteries. He should have died by now."
"You're always so merciful," one of them snickered.
A white-haired girl with a cleric's calm bearing knelt beside him, holding a bow. Another, red-haired and stern, stood with a sword at her hip. The boy hung back, holding a staff.
The white-haired girl looked down at him, her expression peaceful. "May Mother Alisia grant you eternal rest and guide your soul to oblivion's end... in her final embrace." Something soft, like a prayer, touched his ears as his eyes began to close.
"Amen..."
"Geez, what's with the religious act? You took a bribe to kill someone. Mother Alisia won't forgive you easily."
"..."
"Hey, didn't you hear me?"
The red-haired girl looked back. An arrow was lodged in the white-haired girl's neck. She choked, gurgling, her peaceful expression shattering into wide-eyed shock as she struggled for air.
"Huh...?" The redhead stared, confused. Then she whirled back to her target.
The boy she had just shot down had his hand pressed against the side of his own throat. Blood was everywhere, but the horrific flow had slowed to a seep. A faint green light glimmered under his palm.
"You!" she snarled.
"Hey, second-year! Get into position!" she yelled at the boy with the staff.
Something shot past her head, too quick to register. She heard a wet thump and a gasp. She glanced back. The second-year was on his knees, a glowing white chain made of pure light piercing straight through his chest from behind. His staff clattered to the ground.
A sound reached her then. A low, wet, hysterical laugh.
"My... oh... my..."
A stronger green glow enveloped Lucid, and the ragged hole in his neck sealed over with a sickening rasp of knitting flesh. He pushed himself to one knee.
"You really should have listened to your Professor, girl," Lucid uttered, his voice a ruined scrape.
He lunged. She was fast, bringing her sword up in a diagonal cut. Lucid stepped inside the swing, not away. The blade sliced across his chest, opening a deep gash. He didn't seem to feel it. Blood sprayed.
She cut again, a horizontal slash aimed at his neck. He leaned back, the tip grazing his chin. More blood.
Lucid stumbled but didn't fall.
She stepped in, driving her sword forward with all her strength. The point punched through his stomach and out his back.
"Die!" she shrieked, a desperate, furious breath.
Arms wrapped around her from behind.
Behind the obscuring mist of his face, Lucid made a shocking, terrifying grin that was visible in the cruel curve of his mouth and the glint in his visible eye.
It wasn't a hug. He pulled her tight against him, the sword still impaling him, pinning them together. He enhanced his muscles, a surge of raw power from the Chain of Heart. Her ribs popped. Bones in her back cracked audibly.
She struggled, her breath coming in pained wheezes. "Please..."
'No mercy. Don't show any.' The thought was a command from his own core.
"Kill her, Lucid," Alice's voice was a cold, hard echo inside him.
He felt exhausted by the word, by the act. But it was him or them. If he didn't enact it now, she would kill him. It was a simple, brutal fact. Her sword was still in his guts. Her friends were dead or dying. There was no other possible outcome here.
His arms tightened further. There was a final, sickening crunch. The struggle stopped. He let go, and she slid off the blade still stuck in him, collapsing into a heap on the pristine white stone. Lucid stood, swaying, impaled by a sword, surrounded by three bodies, in the silent, judging expanse of the white archive.
Lucid gripped the hilt of the sword still protruding from his stomach. With a ragged scream that was more rage than pain, he pulled it out in one brutal motion. A fresh gout of his own blood spilled over the fallen redhead, mixing with the others on the white stone. He stood, swaying, the bloody sword now in his hand, three bodies at his feet. The green glow of Alice's healing was already struggling to close the new, terrible wound.
Then Frederick arrived. He emerged from between two shelves, his uniform stained not with red, but with the sickly green blood of the rift's creatures. He took in the scene—the three fallen third-years, the blood, Lucid standing over them with a stolen sword, impaled and healing. Frederick's face, usually composed, was a mask of hard evaluation. He looked at Lucid as if seeing a stranger, a dangerous variable that had just exploded.
"Insanity," Frederick stated, his voice low and cutting. "What have you just done?"
Lucid's mind, feverish with pain and adrenaline, processed the sight. Frederick was here. Covered in the evidence of his own fight. The third-years had been sent for him. Professor Anya had warned them. The pattern was obvious. His first instinct was clear: Frederick was part of it. He had sent these people. He was working with the professor who wanted him dead. He was the enemy.
Lucid set that instinct aside. It was too neat, too reactive. He forced himself to consider what didn't fit the pattern. Frederick looked at him not with triumph, but with stark assessment, even shock. He was alone. He was asking a question, not issuing a threat.
Choosing an option that shared no obvious pattern with the instinct to attack, Lucid did not answer the question. He did not explain or accuse. Instead, he acted on a different impulse entirely—one of pure, practical survival. He threw the blood-slicked sword he held. Not at Frederick, but to the side, where it clattered harmlessly against a shelf.
The movement was sudden, aggressive, but not an attack. Frederick's hand went to his own hilt, his body coiling into a defensive stance, but he did not draw.
Seeing Frederick's ready stance, Lucid's own wariness solidified. He couldn't trust him. But fighting another exhausting battle here, now, was likely suicide. So he manifested the Chain of Heart. The white, luminous links burst from his hands, not lashing out at Frederick, but coiling around his own forearms and torso like glowing bandages, a silent display of readiness, a warning, and a desperate measure to hold his own body together. He stood there, bleeding, encircled in light, facing the knight, waiting. Not attacking, not fleeing, but presenting a fortified, painful question of his own.