Lucid knelt before the bodies, but he wasn't seeing them. Inside his head, a war raged.
One voice, sharp and cold, spoke with certainty. 'You are responsible. Again. The maid in Tyriana. Ayame, missing, probably dead because of you. Neptune, a goddess, dead by your hands. You are a walking curse. And so weak... How are you even alive...This is just the pattern repeating.'
Another voice, weaker, more desperate, pushed back. 'No. I didn't force them here. I didn't kill them. This is the rift. This is Miguel, Anya, the Chapeu. This isn't my fault.'
'Isn't it? You led them. You are the catalyst. Death follows you because you were supposed to be dead... when they betrayed you...'
'I'm trying to survive. That's all.'
The three spectral figures drew closer, their ghostly forms a mockery of life. Mary's silhouette, clearer now, floated forward. She had no glasses. Her eyes were deep, empty pools. She cupped his face with cold, insubstantial hands, her face inches from his. "Kill yourself, Lucid."
"Yeah," Brian's form rumbled, a hollow echo.
"Do yourself a service..." Garfield's ghost sighed.
Lucid was beyond broken. His mind and body had endured a torture meant to shatter gods and the most strongest Illumnated. He didn't cry. He didn't try to hug the ghosts. He didn't scream apologies. He just stood there, perfectly still, a hollow vessel filling with a poison he recognized.
He knew what was happening.
Then, a different light. A soft, green glow flowed forward, materializing in the air. It was a figure with translucent, silky hair and faint outlines—a ghost, but a different kind. Her form was captivating, ethereal. It was Alice. Or a manifestation of her. She wrapped spectral, warm arms around him from behind. The touch was soft, soothing. The other voices, the accusing ghosts, began to fade, pushed back by her gentle light.
'It's her...' The thought was a painful stab of clarity in Lucid's shattered mind. 'She's the one making me see all this. The ghosts, the voices. But why?'
He didn't hug back. He didn't lean into the comfort. He just breathed. In. Out. Deep, measured breaths, pushing against the fog in his head.
The green figure rested its forehead against the back of his neck. "Shh," it whispered, a sound only in his soul. "It's okay. I'm here. You don't have to feel guilty."
The world snapped back into focus with a violent clarity. The burning shelves, the oppressive heat, the smell of ash and burnt grass. A muffled voice broke through.
"Lucid!"
Fredrick had his hands on Lucid's shoulders, shaking him gently, his face etched with concern.
Lucid saw it. He placed his own hand over Frederick's, a brief, silent acknowledgment, then removed it. He got up deliberately, his movements slow but steady. He turned to face the three bodies of his friends. An old, forgotten ritual surfaced from the depths of his past on Earth. He put his hands together in a silent, secular prayer of mourning. It wasn't for a god. It was for them. For the memory of what was.
Fredrick watched him for a moment, then, understanding, stepped beside him and did the same. The six rescued silver-badge students, seeing the solemnity, quietly followed suit.
After a hasty, somber burial marked only by stacked stones from the fallen shelves, Lucid turned. His breath was calm, his eyes flat but clear. "Let's go."
Alice spoke within, her voice soft again. "Yes. Continue forward. Do not look back. Our survival is the important thing now."
A dark realization, subtle but ice-cold, solidified in Lucid's thoughts. Alice wasn't a savior. She wasn't a martyr sharing his burden. She wanted him alive. Him, alone. That didn't pose a problem in itself — he wanted to survive too. But the play, that spectacle of Mary's ghost, of Brian and Garfield... that didn't stem from his own psyche, it had to be something else. Maybe A manipulation to break him, or to steer him, disguised as a haunting.
He tested the waters. "Alice... did you see... the..." He trailed off, unsure how to phrase the accusation.
"Hm? See what?" Her voice was innocent, concerned.
"Nevermind," he said inwardly.
"It must have been psychological, Lucid," she soothed. "An individual undergoing so much physical and mental pain is bound to experience breaks from reality at some point. Here... let me help you."
The green glow, her passive healing aura, flared up again, knitting his wounds anew. But it did more. It dulled his sharp, painful thoughts. It smoothed the edges of the knot of grief and guilt in his stomach, wrapping it in a numb, fuzzy blanket. He remembered, then. The promise they had made to each other. One should not influence the other's physical or mental state without permission. Alice didn't have permission to move his body or pry into his mind.
Yet this... this subtle manipulation, disguised as healing and comfort, was it crossing the line? He didn't know. The numbness felt so good. It was a relief from the agony.
"It feels so good," he murmured aloud, the words slipping out.
Fredrick looked at Lucid as they walked. He saw Lucid's head hunched over as if a great weight sat on his shoulders, as if an invisible being were draped over his back, arms draped over his shoulder. Frederick thought it was the crushing weight of guilt, the burden of the dead.
But it had to be something else. Lucid doesn't seem like a normal person.
He brushed that thought aside. For now, they had to continue. They had to find safety, an objective, a way to shatter the hell they were trapped in. Lucid walked, carrying not just the memory of his friends, but the new, chilling awareness of the presence intertwined with his soul, a presence that might soothe or shatter him based on its own inscrutable needs.
They entered what seemed to be another building, similar to the one he'd first entered upon arriving in the rift. Lucid remembered that there had been others like it dotting the endless horizon — archive-like structures storing endless manuscripts and scrolls. Now, they needed shelter from the fire, the burning air, and the smoke.
The six other silver-badge second years entered behind them. The air inside was marginally better, thick with the smell of burning, but not the open furnace outside. They huddled together, pressing cloth over their mouths and nostrils, a gesture Frederick had shown them.
Lucid and Frederick sat a short distance away, a silent watch in the dim, flickering orange light that seeped through cracks in the soot-blackened walls.
"You okay, partner?" Frederick asked, his voice low.
Lucid looked at him and managed a faint, slow nod. "Yeah."
"That seemed like a long 'yeah,'" Frederick said, trying to lighten the oppressive mood.
"Yeah," Lucid replied again, the word just as flat.
"Can I ask you something, Lucid?" Frederick's tone shifted, becoming more serious.
Lucid looked up at him, his gaze dull. He hesitated, his eyes flicking to the huddled students. They weren't looking at their rescuers with gratitude. If anything, they looked at Frederick and Lucid with the same wary fear they'd had for the Unfaithfuls—a threat, just a different kind.
"D…do you blame yourself?" Frederick asked.
Lucid looked up, and for a moment, the carefully constructed numbness shattered. An overwhelming wave of guilt, hot and immediate, crashed over him. A single tear traced a clean path through the soot on his right cheek.
"Shhhh…" Alice's voice whispered within, a gentle, silencing wave.
The tear dried up as if it had never been. The raw emotion vanished, smoothed back into that neutral, fuzzy blankness. He blinked, his expression empty once more.
Frederick noticed the shift. It wasn't normal. He inched closer, peering intently into the space where Lucid's eyes should be behind the mist. "Do you blame yourself?" His voice was firmer now, demanding a real answer.
"I… don't know…" Lucid said softly, putting a little more distance between them.
Frederick said nothing, but his silence was heavy with unspoken concern. In that moment, Lucid felt a sharp, unfamiliar pang—a sense that he had failed some unspoken test, that he had disappointed this knight who kept trying to reach him.
"Excuse me." A dark-haired silver-badge girl broke the tense silence, approaching them cautiously. She held something in both hands. "Thank you for saving my comrades. Here… this is a fate-essence gemstone." She extended it toward them.
Fredrick noticing Lucid's considerable time to respond answers, "I'm not an Illuminated... However, my partner seems to be one." Hearing his words she nudged it closer to Lucid.
Lucid shot the stone a lazy, dismissive glance. "Tch…" He took it in one motion, his grip careless.
Then he stood up. "Listen up!" His voice, usually flat, now carried a sharp, biting edge. The huddled students flinched as one. Frederick watched, a faint, curious smile touching his lips.
"Do you guys seriously... expect me to save you?" Lucid barked.
They stared, wide-eyed.
"This thing here is useless! I don't need it. I have a competent unawakened knight who doesn't even use fate essence." He jerked a thumb at Frederick. "And I have an unlimited amount of it myself." He held up the gemstone, its faint glow pathetic in his soot-streaked hand.
"So if any of you are a Latent or an Awakened, I suggest you take this shit! Or die! Because no one is coming to save you! Not me, not this gentleman, not even the professors. You are in a Beta rift now!"
He threw the fate-essence gemstone. It flew in a lazy arc and landed in the lap of a stern-looking young boy with a shaved head. The boy caught it, his hands trembling slightly, then looked up at Lucid. His eyes were no longer just fearful. There was a spark there now, determination, and a flicker of defiance.
"If you can't keep up, you'll be left behind," Frederick said, standing up beside Lucid, his presence solid and reinforcing the harsh message. "So fight! You guys are the future of the kingdom Vex!"
The words hung in the smoky air. For a second, there was only the crackle of distant fire. Then, something shifted in the huddle. Shoulders straightened. The boy with the gemstone clutched it tighter, his jaw setting. The dark-haired girl who had offered it nodded slowly, her own fear hardening into resolve. The blank, helpless terror in their eyes began to recede, replaced by a grim, understanding. They were not just victims to be saved. They were survivors in a fight for their lives.
Hope didn't bloom, it was too grim for that. But a spark was struck. A will to fight, kindled not by gentle encouragement, but by Lucid's brutal, honest refusal to carry their dead weight, and Frederick's unwavering challenge to rise to the occasion, from duty.