They ventured back into the fiery maze. The air had grown hotter, the shelves crumbling faster, as if the rift's heart was beating toward some violent climax. They encountered more of the C-rank rat-creatures. Frederick made quick work of them, his sword a blur of disciplined motion, each strike swift and fatal. Ayame stood nearby, not fighting, but watching—specifically, watching Lucid. It was a visible, almost unsettling attachment. She wasn't just near him; she was glued to his side, a silent shadow mirroring his every pause and step.
Frederick shot a confused glance back at them after dispatching the last beast. Lucid could only offer a weary shrug.
But soon, Lucid came to a halt at a crossroads of ash and flame. "Is this the right way, Ayame?"
"Yes," she said, nodding once. Her voice was flat, offering no explanation.
Frederick moved to one of the still-standing shelves, intending to climb and get a better vantage. He placed his hands on the white stone and immediately yanked them back with a sharp hiss. "Ouch! It's too hot. It's too hot to touch." The stone wasn't just warm; it pulsed with a deep, burning heat, as if the shelves themselves were conduits for the hellscape's energy. He shook his head. "I suggest we continue on the ground. We have no other choice."
Ayame interrupted, her dark eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance. "However. There are a lot of members of the Chapeu ahead. And there seems to be another party. The Fenshore, I believe. We cannot go there and kill her."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Frederick said, turning to face her fully, his confusion sharpening into anxiety. "Who said anything about killing *her*?"
Ayame looked at him, perhaps for the first time truly registering his presence. Her gaze was cool, assessing. "We kill her. To achieve the objective of the rift. To close it."
"No. No, there is another way. There must be."
"There isn't."
A tangible tension stretched between Frederick's knightly conviction and Ayame's fatalistic certainty. Lucid felt the urge to step between them, to mediate, to find a third option. But as things stood, the brutal logic of the rift was undeniable. The nature of a Beta rift was clear: sever the corrupted thread anchoring it, or remove the source of the corruption. The princess, transformed into that monstrous beacon, was both. It was kill her, or let the rift consume them all, and then spill its poison into the world above.
He sighed, the sound lost in the crackle of fire. In his mind, there was no logical conclusion, only a dead end.
Alice's voice cut through his thoughts, but her tone was different. It wasn't soothing or analytical. It was dripping with a disdainful, almost amused pity. "You are trapped now, Lucid. It is checkmate."
"Yeah, I know. Do you have any suggestions?" he shot back inwardly.
Alice was quiet for a beat. "Hmm. No. I was just sharing the pitiful state of your mission." A soft, mocking laugh echoed in his skull. "You are a useless human. But I certainly do admire your effort in saving others. You are alive only because I allow you to be."
This was new. This was her first time insulting him so directly. Was it the stress of the recent events? The proximity of so much corrupted faith?
"So prove to me, Lucid," she continued, her voice a cold whisper. "Prove that you can reject this so-called world, its force, and its fate. I am watching."
Her disdain was a spark on dry tinder. Instead of crushing him, it ignited a defiant heat in his chest. Fine. If this was the game, he would just have to burn twice as bright in this inferno.
He forced his mind to work, pushing past despair. *Think. Variable. The princess. Someone of such high regard, with so much collective awareness and faith placed upon her, enters an Epsilon rift—the smallest, weakest rift that can form.*
He started connecting the pieces. *A faith overload. It changed the properties of the rift, warping it into a Beta class. The issue isn't the princess herself. It's the faith inside her, turning into corrosive fate essence. I… I just need to fix her thread of fate.*
But by what? How do you mend a soul being unmade?
"Oh, Lucid," Alice sighed in his mind, the mockery returning. "You are deep in thought. Give it up. You will die a needless death. Just listen to me. You keep rejecting me and my advice…"
He ignored her. This voice, this taunting—it was devoid of her usual cadence. It wasn't like her at all. What did she stand to gain from breaking his spirit? A cold truth answered: if Lucid died, she died too. Her existence was tied to his. So why the sabotage? Unless…
He shoved the thought aside. He needed facts, not theories about his parasitic passenger.
"Frederick," Lucid said aloud, his voice cutting through the argument. "How strong is Miguel?"
Frederick broke his stare-down with Ayame. "He is pretty strong for an Awakened. But I have bested him many times. His true strength lies in numbers and tactics. Right now, he is probably surrounded by others of equal strength. Why?"
"Okay." Lucid turned to Ayame. "How many of your organization are here?"
"Many," she stated simply.
That confirmed his suspicions. Two unawakened individuals—one a knight, one a borrowed-power anomaly—against a noble house, an assassin organization, and the entire, hostile reality of the rift. And somewhere in this burning inferno, the B-rank shadow beast still roamed.
"Fuck," he muttered under his breath, the word a soft exhale of pure, overwhelmed frustration.
The numbers were impossible. A direct fight was suicide. A stealth mission to reach the princess through that gauntlet was fantasy. Ayame's solution was monstrous, but it was a solution. Frederick's hope for another way was just that—hope, with no shape or substance.
He looked from Frederick's resolute, worried face to Ayame's impassive, expectant one. They were waiting for him. The students, huddled and sleeping back in the archive, were waiting for him. The princess, pinned to her tree of agony, was waiting.
Alice's challenge rang in his ears. *Prove you can reject this world.*
His first impulse was to choose a side. To side with Frederick's morality and march to a noble, futile end. Or to side with Ayame's brutal practicality and become an executioner to save the rest.
He set that impulse aside. Choosing a side meant accepting the rift's terms.
His memory supplied another option: run. Find a corner, hide, and wait for the inevitable. He had survived that way before. He set that aside, too. Survival alone was not enough. Not here, not now.
The emotion rising in him was a complex stew—fear, anger, a fierce protectiveness for the sleeping students, and a strange, stubborn refusal to let Ayame define her own worth as just a weapon or a sacrifice.
He chose an option that shared no obvious pattern with fighting, fleeing, or choosing.
"We're not killing her," Lucid stated, his voice gaining a hard edge. He looked directly at Ayame. "And we're not charging in to die. You said the rift's objective is to sever the thread. The objective isn't *murder*. It's *separation*."
He paced a few steps on the hot stone, thinking aloud. "The rift is using her as a conduit, sucking the faith out and twisting it. What if we… plug the drain? What if we give it something else to consume?"
Frederick frowned. "Like what?"
"Like a distraction. A bigger, brighter source of faith for it to latch onto." Lucid's mind was racing, pieces clicking into a reckless, terrible plan. "The rift is hungry. It's a void. Right now, it's feasting on her. But what if we offered it a… a feast it can't refuse? One that would overload its systems, break its connection to her?"
Ayame's expression remained neutral, but she was listening. "What source?"
Lucid stopped pacing and looked at both of them. "Me."
Frederick's eyes widened. "Lucid, no. You are not even Awakened. Your thread is…"
"Complicated," Lucid finished for him. "It's tied to something else. Something old." He thought of Alice, of the vast, unknown power sleeping within him, the power she doled out in reluctant dribbles. "The rift wants faith. I have a passenger with a lot of it. Or something like it. If I can draw the rift's attention, make it try to consume *my* connection instead of hers… it might break its hold on the princess. It would have to re-anchor. And in that moment of instability…"
"We strike at the true source," Frederick said, understanding dawning. "At the mechanism binding her. At the tree."
"Or at the people sustaining it," Ayame added, her voice low. "Miguel. Anya. The Chapeu operatives maintaining the ritual."
Lucid nodded. "It's a gamble. It might kill me. It might just piss off my… passenger." He could feel Alice's sudden, sharp attention in his mind, a silent, furious pressure. "But it doesn't involve killing an innocent girl who's already being tortured. And it gives us a chance, however small, to actually *win*, not just survive or commit an atrocity."
He looked at Ayame. "You wanted me to prove there's something special. To prove this world's rules can be rejected. This is how. Not by accepting the choice it gives us, but by forcing a new one."
Ayame stared at him for a long moment. The indifference on her face wavered, replaced by something more complex, curiosity, perhaps, or the faintest echo of that hope she claimed was poison. Finally, she gave a single, slow nod.
"Fine. We will try your way, human. But if you fail…" She let the sentence hang, the unspoken promise of her blade finishing it.
Frederick placed a hand on Lucid's shoulder. "It is a mad plan, one that might kill you..."
He sighed, "but it's better than our other options."
"I am with you."
"Good," Lucid said, the defiant heat in his chest solidifying into a cold, clear purpose. "Then let's go give a hungry rift the worst case of indigestion it's ever had."