Hope didn't bloom. It was too grim for that. But a spark had been struck. A grim understanding settled over the six students, a hardening in their eyes that replaced the blank terror. They were not victims waiting for rescue. They were survivors in a fight.
The group huddled in the archive building, a fragile pocket of less-hellish air. Frederick looked at Lucid, his earlier calm now edged with sharp, professional curiosity.
"Lucid," he said, his voice low. "What exactly is a Beta rift? I've only ever encountered Epsilon class before."
Lucid leaned against a charred shelf. "A Beta rift is the third strongest type, just before Alpha. Its whole purpose is to anchor to a single person's thread of fate. It uses them as a conduit to... suck the faith out of them."
He thought of Karmen's words. *Rifts are devoid of faith.* It clicked. A rift is a void. A Beta rift uses a person to fill that void, draining their faith until nothing is left but corruption. The process turns them into an Unfaithful.
Frederick's brow furrowed. "And when the process is complete? What happens?"
Lucid looked up, his gaze distant, seeing not the burning shelves but memories of Earth, of other endings. "The person transforms completely. Becomes an Unfaithful permanently. And if we're still inside the rift when that happens..." He didn't need to finish. The answer was in the hollow look in his eyes. They would die, trapped in a nightmare made flesh.
"But I still don't understand," Frederick pressed. "We were just in an Epsilon rift before this. How did we end up *here*?"
He paused. The dots connected in his mind. He remembered Miguel's taunting words in the previous battle. *'The First Knight is dead... she's alone in the palace... it would be a shame if something happened to her...'*
Frederick's eyes went wide for a second. Realization settled in, cold and heavy. He cursed under his breath, his jaw tightening, his fists clenching. The calm, kindhearted knight was gone, replaced by a man seeing a trap spring shut.
Lucid watched him. The raw emotion on Frederick's face was jarring. Lucid felt nothing but a dull, distant curiosity. He shouldn't care. His emotions were supposed to be dull.
"Is she important to you?" Lucid asked, his tone flat.
Frederick looked at him, and the familiar, friendly mask slipped back into place, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Yes. But it's nothing I can't handle. I'll do what I do best. Uphold my duty."
Lucid's lips softened, almost imperceptibly. "Well. We're in this mess together. Partner." The word felt strange and unfamiliar in his mouth.
"Guys!" a voice called out. It was the dark-haired girl who had offered the gemstone. She was holding a scroll. "This scroll... it's blank!"
Lucid walked over. She was right. The parchment was pristine, empty white. He pulled another book from a nearby shelf and opened it. Also blank. Every page was empty.
Frederick inched closer to look. The moment their eyes focused on the blank pages, a sharp, synchronized pang of headache lanced through both their skulls.
"Ouch! What is that?" one of the other students yelped, rubbing his own temples.
Lucid shook his head, dispelling the pain. They couldn't stay here. He looked up. At the far end of the chamber, a winding staircase was carved from the same white stone as the archive. "Let's go," he commanded.
Frederick followed without hesitation. The six students, after a shared glance, fell in behind them. They moved as a unit now, ragged but resolved.
Lucid looked back at Frederick. They nodded to each other, a silent agreement passing between them. The students echoed the motion, a ragged chorus of quiet "Yes"es.
Frederick led the way up the staircase, his movements efficient and sure despite the precarious, swaying structure. Lucid followed, his steps silent, more like a ghost than a man. The upper floor was a maze of towering shelves, many tilting dangerously, their contents, endless blank scrolls and books, spilled across the floor. The hellish orange light from outside seeped in through high windows, painting everything in a feverish glow.
"Your method is harsh," Frederick murmured, not looking back as he tested the stability of the white carved stones.
"It's the only method that works here," Lucid replied. "False hope gets people killed faster than any Unfaithful."
"And what of your hope, Lucid?" Frederick asked, pausing on the steps. "Where does it lie?"
The question hung in the hot, still air. Lucid's first instinct was to scoff. Hope was a weakness. It got you killed. He pushed that instinct aside. This wasn't a philosophical debate. It was a tactical question from an ally.
"It lies in breaking things," Lucid said, his voice low. "The rift. The Unfaithfuls. That stupid Fenshore house. That's the only kind of hope this place understands."
Frederick chuckled, a dry, grim sound. "A destructive hope. I can work with that." He continued upward.
After a moment, he shot Lucid another glance over his shoulder. "Lucid," he said, his voice quieter. "If anything happens... and you have to abandon me... take my sword. Run with the students to the exit."
Lucid looked back, his expression unchanged. "Of course I will. If you're gladly offering."
Frederick looked surprised for a moment, choked on a breath, then his face softened into a gentle, genuine smile. The other students, led by the shaven-headed boy and the dark-haired girl who had been listening to their exchange, had small, tense smiles of their own on their lips.
After climbing the white cracked stones of stair cases, they stood in the shadow of the towering white shelves, a momentary respite in the burning archive. From behind a collapsed pile of blank scrolls, a pair of low-grade Unfaithfuls emerged, the same sickly-furred, green-eyed rat-like creatures Lucid had first encountered coming here.
"I'll take them," Frederick said, his hand settling on the hilt of his sword, recognizing what they were he had fought them before.
Lucid evaluated the rats. They weren't the D-rank pests from before. These two pulsed with a denser, more malicious energy. 'C-rank. Huh. So, it's different here,' he thought with a detached curiosity. He saw Frederick tense, ready to engage.
"Wait," Lucid said, his voice cutting the tense air.
Frederick looked bewildered for a second. "Lucid, why are you—"
Lucid didn't answer him. He turned his head slowly and looked back at the group of silver-badge students. His eyes landed on the determined, shaven-headed boy and the dark-haired girl.
"Silver trash," Lucid stated, his tone flat and devoid of insult, simply stating a fact. "Now's your time. Prove your worth."
The bald boy's jaw tightened. He stepped forward without a word, withdrawing a simple, rusty practice sword he had found. The dark-haired girl fell into a low, ready stance holding a shattered dagger she also had found, her hands seemed sort of empty but her expression was fierce. Neither of them were Illuminated, but neither of them were backing down.
Snorts of disbelief came from behind them. Two other boys stepped forward, one with a square, stubborn jaw, the other with a nose so sharp it looked like a triangle.
"Who are you to call us 'Silver trash'?" the square-chinned boy spat. "You've been barking orders at us ever since we got here!"
"Yeah!" the triangle-nosed boy chimed in, thrusting an accusing finger. "Look at his badge! He's a silver badge too!"
The other two students in the group, a boy and a girl who had stayed mostly quiet, watched the interaction, their eyes slightly fatigued.
Lucid shot the two defiant boys a lazy look. "What?"
"You handle it!" Square-Chin challenged. "What's so special about you? You're only alive because of Sir Frederick, the strongest unawakened proto-knight!"
Triangle-Nose nodded vigorously. "Yeah! And We're the same age! Why should we listen to you?"
Frederick glanced at Lucid, an awkward expression on his face. This was a rebellion, and a stupid one at that, given Lucid was the only reason they were alive.
Lucid tilted his head. "You are well aware that I lifted a burning bookshelf off you?"
"No! It was Sir Frederick!" they both yelled in unison.
Lucid sighed. He wasn't sure what to do with them. The huge-sized rats, sensing the distraction, began to inch closer, their green eyes fixed on the group. The bald boy tightened his grip on his sword. The dark haired girl hefted a jagged piece of broken white stone she'd picked up from the floor.
As the two rebel boys hurled more insults—"mist-face," "fogged shit"—Lucid acted.
His first impulse was to ignore them, to let Frederick stand back and let these fools fend for themselves. He set it aside.
His second thought, born of twisted memory from the academy, was to punish them directly, to make an example. He set that aside too.
The emotion rising in him was a cold, clean anger at their stupidity and ingratitude. He pushed it down.
He chose an option that shared no obvious pattern with any of those.
In two swift motions, he grabbed the two boys by the fronts of their shirts. They were the same size as him, but he lifted them as if they were weightless. With a grunt of effort, he hurled them, not at the rats, but into the open space directly between our group and the advancing creatures.
They landed in a heap, scrambling on the ground, their bravado replaced by instant, gibbering fear. The two C-rank rats, seeing easy prey, lunged.
The rats' claws swiped, tearing huge gashes in their shirts. Their jaws snapped, missing flesh by inches as the boys screamed and crawled backward in a panic.
"Lucid, this is dangerous!" Frederick called out, his voice tight. "I know they were acting harsh, but this is unfit for a punishment!"
The square-chinned boy scrambled away as a rat took another step forward, chasing him. "GYAHHHH! HELP!"
Now, looking at them screaming, Lucid recognized them. That triangle-nosed boy... he was the same one who had harassed Mary back at the academy gates and shot a weak spell at him.
'Weren't they in that blonde boy's party? That boy from Fenshore...'
He struggled to remember the name.
"Alaric! Save us!" the square-chinned boy wailed.
"Oh, yeah," Lucid murmured to himself. "That one. Alaric."
'But even so weren't they also Black badges, did they fake being black badges... well not like it say of my business'
"Game's up." Lucid declared.
White chains, luminescent and sharp, materialized from the ground at his feet. They shot forward with a soft chime, not at the boys, but past them. The chains pierced upward through the bellies of the two C-rank rats, impaling them in mid-lunge. The creatures shrieked, a wet, gurgling sound, then dissolved into foul-smelling green mist and green blood.
The two boys on the floor stared, wide-eyed and panting, at the spot where the monsters had just been. They looked from the fading chains to Lucid, utterly shocked.
Frederick had his arms crossed now, a small, relieved smile on his face.
"Gosh," Lucid said, his voice dripping with false sweetness. "You can't even handle rats. I thought we were not so different after all..."
The other four students, the ones ready to engage and the two quiet ones — looked from Lucid to the two rebels on the floor. The message was clear.
The two rebels scrambled to their knees, bowing their heads low. "I-I'm... I'm sorry!" Square-Chin stammered.
"We won't do it again!" Triangle-Nose whined, his whole body shaking.
Lucid exhaled, a sound more of profound disappointment than anger. "I'll kiss your boot!" one of them babbled, inching closer on his knees toward Lucid's worn boot.
Something snapped inside Lucid. What followed was a kick square in the squared boy's chin so sharp and loud it echoed through the cavernous archive. The square-chinned boy was flung sideways in the air, tumbling across the floor to land in a groaning heap among the blank scrolls.
"What the fuck are you doing?!" Lucid yelled, his calm completely shattered, his voice raw with protest at the sheer idiocy of it.
Frederick, seeing the boy flung across the space was more shocked than concerned, he couldn't help it. He let out a short, sharp laugh.
The triangle-nosed boy on the floor began sweating profusely.
"You!" Lucid barked at him. "Get up!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
"If you ever do something like that again, I will feed you to the rats myself! Do you understand? You fight, or you die. You don't lick boots."
The boy nodded frantically, muttering a stream of apologies.
Lucid shot a glare at Frederick, who was still wearing a faint, weary grin.
"Stop smiling!" He yelled.
Frederick put his hands up in a gesture of peace. "Yes, partner."
As the thought faded, Lucid's attention returned to the spot where the rats had died. A small pool of viscous fluid remained. It wasn't the deep purple ichor of typical Unfaithfuls. It was a pale, sickly green.
He stared at it. Something wasn't adding up. The green blood, the way they behaved. Normally Unfaithfuls had purple blood and were erratic, these were more calm... and odd... Beyond the orange glow of the hellscape outside, through a high, arched window made of carved crystal, a faint, distant orange inferno could be seen flickering on the horizon. A second light. A second source.
The pieces were there, but the picture they made was wrong.
He would have to plan further.