The air grew so thick with the cloying, sweet stench of corruption that it felt like wading through syrup. The architecture of the archive twisted here, shelves bent into agonized arches, white stone bleeding streaks of pulsating violet. They weren't navigating a building anymore, but the monstrous, beating heart of the rift itself.
They entered a narrow, place of burning shelves where the fires started to touch at them, its high ceiling was lost in smoke. Just past ahead, the floor dropped away into a seething pool of raw, purple energy, the nexus. And standing between them and the pool, arranged in a loose semi-circle, were not more Unfaithful beasts, but people.
Seven of them. They wore the deep blue school uniforms and black badges of third-year Academy students, but their faces were grim, their eyes holding none of the terrified confusion of the silver badges they'd hunted. These were predators, not prey.
One was a tall, hawk-nosed young man with close-cropped brown hair, his bearing radiating a cold, aristocratic authority. The other was a girl with sharp features and silver hair tied in a severe knot. They were the ringleaders from the upper district as third years.
The silver haired girl shot Lucid a glare "It's you You... you killed her... my cousin"
The hawk-nosed leader's eyes swept over them, and a slow, predatory smile spread across his face. "Well, well. The clean-up crew arrives. And what a curious assortment."
His gaze landed first on Frederick. "The Commoner Knight. Sir Frederick, isn't it? The professors have a special note about you. A non-noble, elevated beyond your station by the misplaced sentiment of our soon-to-be-former princess. A symbol of her 'progressive' weakness. You're a primary target. Your death is to be a message."
Frederick's face didn't change, it was if he had heard these ominous words a million times.
The leader's eyes slid to Ayame. His smile faltered, replaced by a flicker of wary calculation. "And you… Number Four, was it? An operative of our… associates. There was some debate on whether you'd succeed or fail your side mission. I see you've chosen to fail. The Chapeu does not look kindly on traitors. Consider yourself a secondary target."
Ayame offered no reaction. She simply stared back, her expression a blank slate.
Finally, the leader looked at Lucid. His smile returned, wider, more contemptuous. "And the fog-faced anomaly. The unawakened silver badge who keeps stumbling out of graves. You're not even on the list. You're just… garbage that needs taking out. A tertiary nuisance."
"Charmed," Lucid said, his voice dry.
The leader's smirk vanished. "Kill the knight. Subdue the Oni for the Chapeu to deal with. Crush the nuisance."
He didn't even have to gesture. The six other black badges moved as one, their movements synchronized, their hands already glowing with gathered Fate Essence or clutching honed weapons. They weren't panicked students; they were trained combatants.
"We cannot fight them all head-on here," Frederick hissed, his eyes darting, assessing angles and numbers. "The ground is unstable and it's to narrow!"
Lucid looked down, the ground was indeed cracked, the white polished stone with the purple scorched grass.
He was right. The chamber floor was cracked and veined with the same purple energy, and the churning pool's pull was a tangible force. A protracted battle here was a death sentence.
Lucid's mind raced. Instinct said stand and fight, make a last stand. Memory said find a choke point, use the environment. Emotion was a cold knot of fury at their arrogance.
He set them all aside.
"Split up!" Lucid barked, the command cutting through the building tension.
Frederick and Ayame both shot him a glance, but there was no time for debate.
"Ayame, you're a ghost. Get past them, find the source of the ritual, break it! That's your mission now!" He pointed towards a jagged, less-guarded archway on the left that seemed to lead into the chaotic energy of what seemed to be corrosive fate essence.
"Frederick, you're the rock. Draw their heavy hitters. Lead them on a chase through the backends, use the instability! They want you most, make them work for it!"
"What about you?" Frederick demanded, already shifting his stance as the black badges advanced.
Lucid looked at the sneering leader and the hawk-nosed girl beside him. "I'll handle the welcoming committee."
It was madness. It was their only chance.
For a fraction of a second, Frederick's eyes met his. He gave a sharp nod. Ayame, without a word, seemed to dissolve into the deeper shadows along the wall, her form blurring as she flowed toward the archway.
"The Oni is fleeing!" one of the black badges yelled.
"Let her go! The Chapeu can have her corpse later!" the leader snapped. "Focus on the knight and the fog!"
As two of the black badges broke off to pursue Ayame's fleeting shadow, Frederick let out a sharp, piercing whistle.
"I'm here you fools!" He yelled.
He turned and sprinted, not away, but up, leaping onto a leaning, burning bookshelf and scaling it with impossible agility, heading for the treacherous upper galleries.
"After him!" the leader commanded, and three of the black badges, including a dilver badged girl, gave chase, their movements swift and acrobatic.
That left the leader, the hawk-nosed boy and one other third-year girl facing Lucid in the suddenly emptier narrow burning shelves.
"Splitting up was your last mistake, trash," the leader sneered, blue energy crackling around his fists. "Now you die alone."
Lucid stood his ground, the Chain of Heart inside him activated, his mind cold and clear. He was alone, facing two trained, Awakened third-years. But they were between him and source of corruption. And Alice was a silent, coiled presence in his mind, no longer mocking, but intently watching.
"Alone is how I work best," Lucid said, and he took a step forward tword the three students who blocked his path. The real fight was just beginning, and it was a distraction, a gambit to buy time for a ghost and a knight to do their work.
The world narrowed to pain and fury.
"Chain.."
Lucid tried to summon the Chain of Heart, to lash out with the cold, precise power he'd come to rely on. Nothing happened. A mental wall slammed down. Inside his own skull, Alice's voice was a silken, venomous purr.
"You think you can reject my embrace, and yet wield my gifts? My, my. Why don't you handle this yourself?"
It was too late for a retort. The leader's fist, wreathed in violet energy, slammed into Lucid's ribs. He heard a sickening crack, felt the breath explode from his lungs. He staggered, and the burly third-year's kick caught him in the kidney, sending him sprawling towards shelves slamming in a violent velocity.
Agony bloomed, hot and bright. Then, the familiar, unwelcome green glow surged from his core, knitting bone, sealing ruptures, a forced mending that felt like being stitched together with burning wire.
"Heal," Alice crooned, her voice echoing in the hollows of his mind. "Heal until you lose yourself. Then you will understand. Why I am here. Why I am not to be rejected."
Lucid pushed himself to his knees, blood and spit dripping from his lips.
"What do you mean, rejected? I haven't rejected you at all!"
"Hmmm," she cooed, the sound a reverberating, feminine grace that somehow made his ears ache.
"You keep rejecting my numbness. The world is cruel, and you choose to feel every cut. I can make it all go away."
" You have me. You only need to think of me, of us. Yet it's always others."
"The world. That's what fills your mind. Showing compassion to weaklings."
She laughed, a sound that started as a tinkle and spiraled into manic glee as the black badged girl lunged. Her dagger, sliced across Lucid's thigh. He grunted, falling to one knee. A boot from the leader cracked against his jaw.
And with each blow, he felt it, a phantom pressure around his heart, a cold, tightening grip that had nothing to do with the physical attacks. It squeezed in time with Alice's voice, making him gag, throwing up a fresh mouthful of blood.
'Come on fight back!' Lucid yelled internally at himself.
"Do you remember," she whispered as the world tilted, "That 'cleansing' with your little silver misfits? You fought a golem. You refused my power. Can you believe it? Fist-fighting a golem!"
"Were it not for me, you would have been long dead since."
The leader stared, frustration and disbelief warring on his face. "Tch! How is he still alive?!"
"Sever his head!" the girl shrieked, darting in again.
Alice's voice rose. "Accept me, Lucid. Were it not for me, you would have died in the Red Mountains. In the Omega Rift. In Tyriana…"
The words were a battering ram against his will. But they also ignited the last, stubborn ember of his defiance. As the girl thrust her dagger at his throat, Lucid didn't try to block. He let it come. At the last possible second, he twisted, the blade scoring a deep gash along his collarbone instead. With a raw, wordless yell that was more pain than rage, he surged upward from his kneeling position, his own fist, unglamorous, human, fueled only by sheer, cussed refusal, smashed upward.
It connected with the leader's sneering face with a wet, satisfying crunch of cartilage. The man reeled back, howling, clutching his shattered nose.
"FINE THEN!" Lucid roared, the sound tearing from his raw throat. He wasn't just shouting at his aggressors. "GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
For a single, terrifying moment, his heart thrummed a frantic, wild rhythm in his chest… and then it seemed to stutter, to hesitate, as if the invisible hand squeezing it had clenched tight.
Alice's presence didn't vanish. It recoiled, shock and fury radiating from it.
Lucid swayed, the sudden, strange emptiness where her constant pressure had been almost as disorienting as the pain. He took a weak, wobbly step backward, towards the burning shelves burning his hand to support himself.
The girl saw her opening. With a cry of triumph, she lunged past her staggering leader. Her dagger plunged, not for a limb, but straight for Lucid's chest. The blade punched through cloth, skin, muscle, scraping against bone. The force drove the air from his lungs and toppled him onto his back.
She didn't stop. She ripped the dagger free and brought it down again. And again. Methodical. Vicious. "Just die! Just die, you freak!"
Each stab was a burst of white-hot agony. But worse was the voice, rushing back into the void, no longer silken, but commanding, imperious, filling the cracks of his breaking consciousness.
"SAY IT, LUCID."
His vision swam, everything tinged with red. His ears rang with a high-pitched whine.
"DEVOTE YOUR FAITH TO ME."
The dagger rose and fell. The green glow tried to keep up, knitting flesh only for it to be torn anew. It was a grotesque race.
"YOU BELIEVE IN ONLY ME."
Blood filled his mouth, his throat. He was drowning in it.
"YOU SHALL WORSHIP ME."
The dagger hovered for a final thrust. The girl's face, twisted in furious effort, was the last thing he saw clearly.
"YOUR ONLY MISSION IS TO SERVE ME."
With the hot scorching feeling of the ground and the heat of his own blood soaking his front, Lucid's lips, broken and swollen, moved. No sound came out. But in the deepest, most shattered part of his mind, where Alice's voice was the only law, a thought formed. It wasn't acceptance. It wasn't a prayer.
It was a simple, final, and absolute decision.
"Fuck off."
The green light receded. The wounds did not reknit. Lucid was dying. His eyes felt heavy, the world dimming at the edges.
Alice's voice, when it came, was tense, thick with a strange, choked sadness. "Fine then. We shall die together."
"It was... fun."
Lucid managed a twisted, bloody grin, a final act of defiance with the last of his strength.
The dagger came down as the girl yelled. It pierced his eye, driving deep through bone into the brain.
The world went dark.