James and Jasper finally stepped onto the white bridge that connected the Citadel to Evodil's Manor, the smooth surface reflecting the dim glow of the floating lights beneath it. Jasper looked back inside the white, roofless building, catching sight of one of the Civil Control shades standing near the entrance. Its trapezoid head tilted slightly, the single large red eye fixed on him without blinking. Jasper shivered, lowering his voice as he spoke to his father.
"Those things give me the creeps."
James only gave a slight smirk, hands clasped behind his back as they walked, as if it pleased him that the people were unsettled by the very things meant to protect them.
Finally, their feet met the violet grass of the Manor's front yard, the soft blades bending under their weight. Jasper glanced at the trees lining both sides of the path leading forward and clicked his tongue.
"I swear, every time I walk through here, I think something's going to jump me from the bushes."
James rolled his eyes, not slowing his pace. "There's nothing to be scared of. Nothing gets past the Citadel or its gates. And nothing makes it all the way here in one piece while I or Civil Control are watching."
They walked deeper along the dense pathway, Jasper's gaze constantly shifting as he scanned the bushes and the strange trees around them. In the underground district, the trees were mostly normal. Some twisted into spirals, sure, but they still carried green leaves and brown wood. Here, among the floating islands and the cliffs pressed against the mountains surrounding Menystria, the trees were different. Their bark was dark blue, almost navy, with wood that looked slick and aquatic. The leaves shimmered violet, sometimes blue, as if the entire place was designed to weigh on anyone who walked through it.
As they passed the last tree of the left row, the oak front door of the Manor came into view, embedded deep into the mountain itself. Above it, the observatory loomed, casting a long shadow that made the entrance far more intimidating than a single door carved into stone had any right to be. Jasper looked over at James and nudged him with his elbow.
James shot him a glare, but Jasper didn't care. He smirked and muttered, "Maybe there's a shade hiding in the shadows, just waiting to toss us off the cliff. No bodies. No witnesses."
James responded immediately, nudging Jasper back with the back of his hand and sending him stumbling sideways into a tree.
Jasper hit the tree with his right side, the bark biting into his ribs as the impact knocked the air out of him. The katana slipped loose from his belt and clattered onto the ground at his feet. He groaned, rubbing his side with his left hand as he glared up at James.
"Asshole."
James didn't bother helping him. He just stood there with his arms folded, watching as if fully expecting Jasper to get up without another word. Jasper huffed but did exactly that, pushing himself upright, brushing dirt off his leather jacket and quickly checking the red shirt underneath for tears or stains.
James turned and continued toward the door before Jasper could finish inspecting himself. Muttering under his breath, Jasper bent down, grabbed the sheathed blade, and tied it back to his belt, pulling it tighter this time so it wouldn't slip again. If anything was going to happen at the Manor, he wasn't about to be caught unarmed.
He jogged the last few steps and caught up to his father, giving him a light pat on the back as he straightened his posture. James raised his hand, about to knock on the door and wait for a response. It was unusual for him. Normally, he would have barged in without warning, dragged Evodil out by the collar, or launched straight into a lecture about order and responsibility. But with the world beyond Menystria reduced to dying embers and scattered bones, there were no meetings left to force anyone into.
Before his knuckles could touch the wood, a sound carried up from the air below the cliff to their right. The land there was bare, free of trees, opening into a sheer drop. Jasper turned his head immediately, stepping closer to the edge and peering down. James followed for a moment, saw nothing but the wind rushing up from below, and turned back toward the door.
Jasper didn't move.
He stood there, staring into the abyss as if waiting for it to answer him, half-expecting something to stare back. The sound of falling rocks broke the silence, followed by air rushing faster, louder. Jasper tensed. James snapped his head back toward him.
"Get over here," James barked. "Stop wasting time."
Then they both heard it. A yell. Young. Familiar. It echoed up the cliffside, followed by a quiet, exhausted sigh that sounded far too calm to belong to someone falling.
James barely had time to turn before two figures burst up from the darkness below.
The first was Noah. A slab of rock beneath him surged upward before crumbling apart, chunks breaking off as he pushed himself into the air. The second figure followed close behind. Ethan. The usually quiet boy was screaming at the top of his lungs.
"HELP— HE'S TRYING TO KILL ME!"
Noah held him by the back of his black suit like an unruly animal, completely unfazed. "You're fine," he said flatly as they descended.
They landed hard on the ground between James and Jasper. Ethan's hands slammed into the violet grass, fingers digging in as if the earth itself was the only thing keeping him alive. He scrambled forward a bit before turning his head back, staring up at Noah with wide eyes.
"You were trying to murder me!" Ethan shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at him. "That was not how you get to the Manor!"
Noah said nothing. He simply adjusted his glasses, lifting them slightly up his nose. A faint smirk tugged at his lips as he looked down at Ethan in silence.
Noah finally sighed, lifting his gaze from Ethan to the other two as if only now registering that they were actually standing there. He tilted his head slightly, confusion flickering across his face.
"Why are you here?" he asked, then added before either of them could answer, "Did your projects get stolen too?"
James frowned at the question. "What do you mean?" he asked curtly, already turning away as he started back toward the door. He clearly had no interest in continuing the conversation with half the group still standing out in the open.
Jasper clicked his tongue at James' predictable lack of patience and stepped closer to Ethan instead. He held out a hand in front of him. Ethan looked at it for a second, sighed, and took it. Jasper pulled him up with a short grunt.
"You're heavier than you look," Jasper said. "Kind of impressive for someone who's, what, a few weeks old?"
Ethan brushed the grass off his gloves and nodded seriously. "My father said being heavy is good for combat. Makes it harder to push you around."
Jasper raised an eyebrow at that but chose not to comment, instead glancing over at Noah. "Alright," he said. "What do you mean by stolen projects?"
Noah adjusted his glasses again. "Mine," he said. "Ethan came by when I finished it. We took a break and went to the underground district. Just a walk. Looking for new plants or creatures." His expression darkened slightly. "When we got back, it was gone. Taken straight out of the cabin."
Jasper let out a short laugh. "So the god of knowledge misplaced his toy."
Noah didn't react verbally. A chunk of rock formed at his foot, small and dense. He kicked it into Jasper's ankle. It hit with a dull thud, not nearly hard enough to hurt, but deliberate enough to make the point.
Ethan glanced between them before finally looking back at Jasper. "Why did you and your father come here?" he asked. "You didn't lose anything. Wouldn't Evodil be annoyed?"
Jasper chuckled and turned toward James and Noah, already starting to walk as if assuming they'd follow. Ethan fell into step beside him.
"We were bored," Jasper said casually. "Pub gets dull after a while. James heard Evodil was working on something not too long ago, or at least making noise like he always does." He shrugged. "Figured nothing's wrong with checking on the little darkness hut he's been hiding in lately."
Finally, as all of them approached the door, James pushed it open. It didn't move. He tried again with a low grunt, his boots scraping slightly against the stone, but the door stayed shut. Behind him, Jasper raised an eyebrow. Noah coughed into his hand, staring at James with thinly veiled disappointment.
James tried a third time, this time driving his shoulder into the wood. The door refused to budge. Jasper chuckled into his sleeve while Noah rolled his eyes openly. Heat began to ripple faintly around James as his jaw tightened. He raised an arm, fingers curling, ready to strike the door and reduce it to splinters out of sheer principle.
Before he could, Ethan stepped in front of him.
He gently patted James on the shoulder. "Can I try?" he asked.
The tension drained out of James almost instantly. He stared at the boy for a moment, then exhaled sharply and stepped aside, gesturing toward the door. "Be my guest."
Ethan nodded. "Technically," he said, "you'd be my guest. I live here. Sort of." The sarcasm slipped past him as he raised a hand and knocked on the door.
Once. Twice.
They all watched.
Just as Noah opened his mouth to comment, the door creaked and slowly swung inward, revealing the entrance hallway. It was unusually dark. The lamp in the center of the room, normally dim but present, was completely unlit. Shadows pooled thickly along the walls and ceiling, swallowing most of the familiar shapes.
Ethan glanced back at them. "The doors are… weird," he said quietly. "Even by Menystria standards. Evodil enchanted them. I don't really understand how." He hesitated, then added, "The shadows have been answering to him lately. And to me. Especially the front door."
Noah entered first, already pulling a tablet from his pocket. He scanned the darkness with narrowed eyes. "Shadow recognition enchantment," he muttered. "Selective response. Autonomous identification." He glanced at Ethan. "Any pattern? Clothing? Presence? Intent?"
"I don't know," Ethan said. "They just… know."
Noah looked down at Ethan's red shirt beneath the black suit and tapped rapidly on the screen. "Noted," he said flatly. "Preference for black. And red shirts."
Jasper stepped in next, one hand resting loosely on the hilt of his katana. He squinted into the darkness, then snorted. "It's dark as hell," he said, his voice echoing slightly through the hallway. He smirked at the sound of it.
James entered last. He paused just inside the doorway, eyes lingering on Ethan for a moment longer than necessary before he sighed and looked away, visibly deflated. Losing to a knock instead of brute force sat poorly with him.
Zero to one, he thought grimly, for the god of law versus a few-weeks-old god of spirits.
Finally, as everyone came into the room, the front door closed on its own with a dull, final thud, once again proving that Ethan hadn't been lying about it being enchanted by Evodil. The sound echoed briefly before being swallowed by the dark. Tension settled instantly. In the near total darkness, the only visible things were Ethan's silver eyes and the low orange glow burning behind James' shades.
Noah groaned when he accidentally bumped into Jasper's shoulder. "Watch it," he muttered.
"Sorry," Jasper replied quickly, raising his hands in the dark and shifting aside.
Ethan took a few cautious steps forward, arms slightly raised, clearly trying to find a wall or some kind of switch. Instead, he bumped into something smooth and solid in the center of the room. The dull sound made all of them turn toward him.
"What is it?" Jasper asked.
Ethan didn't answer right away.
The silence stretched, uncomfortable and heavy. James straightened slightly, eyes narrowing. Noah tilted his head, trying to pinpoint where Ethan was standing.
"Ethan," James said, sharper now. "Answer."
"I think…" Ethan finally said, his voice uncertain, "I think I found some kind of glass square."
Jasper sighed audibly. Noah stepped closer, careful with his footing. "Don't just go quiet like that," James added. "Respond faster next time."
Before Noah could reach him, Ethan bumped into something else. The sound was identical to the first. A soft click followed.
The lights came on.
Jasper hissed under his breath and blinked rapidly, his eyes struggling to adjust from the darkness to the dim, steady glow now filling the room. The others didn't react nearly as much, simply walking closer as the space revealed itself.
It wasn't just one glass square.
There were four of them, mounted on a metal pillar that rose from the floor and connected toward the ceiling, each screen facing a different direction. Cables ran upward along the structure, disappearing above. Seven chairs were arranged around the pillar, all angled toward the screens. They were the same chairs that usually lined the yellow, flower-patterned walls of the entrance hall.
Aside from the lights and the pillar, the room itself hadn't changed much. The archways leading deeper into the manor were still there. The walls were the same. The atmosphere, however, wasn't.
Jasper approached one of the chairs slowly, then sat down. When nothing happened, he relaxed slightly. "Alright," he said, looking around. "What the hell is this?" He glanced at Noah. "You didn't build this, did you?"
James moved to stand beside Jasper, arms folded as he scanned the room. "We're not splitting up," he said flatly. "If we check anything, we do it together."
Ethan walked around the pillar to the fourth screen and stopped in front of it. He stared at the dark glass for a moment before speaking. "What's supposed to happen now?" he asked quietly, looking back toward Noah. "Did Evodil take the camera? Was this… recorded?"
Noah didn't answer immediately.
Instead of sitting with the others, he moved to the far side of the room, toward the darker corner where a small table and a few chairs still lined the wall. He sat down slowly, resting his right hand on the table's surface.
The candle that was usually there was gone.
So was the fruit bowl.
And the broken radio.
Noah stared at the empty space for a long moment, jaw tightening.
"I don't like this," he said finally.
As everyone continued to stare at the TVs, the room fell into a thick, uncomfortable silence. No one spoke. The questions they all carried were aimed at the same absent figure, the one who had forced them here without explanation. Evodil. But he wasn't here. Only the contraption he had left behind, humming faintly, existing in his place.
All of them watched it.
All except Noah.
The god of knowledge sat rigid in the corner, his thoughts racing far faster than his body moved. The structure, the placement, the number of screens. None of it felt random. None of it felt unnecessary. That was what bothered him the most. A machine that could move on its own. A camera without power supply. Four lenses instead of one. No instructions. No warning. No explanation.
For what reason would he make this.
For what reason would he need them watching.
For what reason would he tell no one his plan.
Noah suddenly stood up.
The chair scraped violently across the floor as he grabbed it, his movement sharp and uncontrolled. Before anyone could react, he rushed one of the screens and swung the chair with everything he had.
The impact was loud. Wood splintered. Fragments flew across the room.
James reacted instantly, heat flaring as he raised a hand. The splinters that would have struck his suit burned to ash midair, falling harmlessly as dust that he brushed off without even looking down. Jasper jerked upright from his chair. Ethan flinched hard, eyes wide as he turned toward Noah.
"What are you doing—" Ethan started.
"Shut the hell up," Noah snapped, his voice raw and furious.
He grabbed another chair, one that hadn't been occupied, and smashed it into the same screen. The wood cracked cleanly this time, breaking apart in his hands. Gasps filled the room.
The screen didn't shatter.
On the second impact, something shifted. The glass darkened instantly, swallowing the reflected light. The chair didn't strike glass at all. It hit something dense, heavy, unreal. Condensed shadow rippled outward from the point of impact, unmistakable in shape and texture.
Evodil.
Noah stared at it for half a second, then screamed.
"Do you think you're better than us?" he shouted at the screen, his voice echoing off the walls. "Do you think you're so far above everyone else that you don't have to tell us anything? That you can just go and face it alone?"
His breathing was ragged now, words spilling out faster, sharper.
"You think we should just sit here and watch you die? Because that's what this is, isn't it? A front row seat to your own stupidity!"
He lunged forward and threw a punch at the screen.
The shadows reacted instantly. They coiled around his arm, cold and forceful, before slamming him backward. Noah hit the floor hard with a grunt, the wood beneath him creaking from the impact. The shadows withdrew just as quickly, dissolving back into the surface of the screen.
The TV flickered.
Static crackled softly through the room as the image struggled to stabilize.
The buzzing suddenly grew louder, sharp and uneven, as the room fell into absolute darkness again. For a moment, all of them thought the power had cut out entirely. Then the screens stirred.
The image crawled back into existence from the bottom up. First, the black cloak. Then the segmented armor covering his stomach and chest, a narrow gap between the plates revealing a gray shirt beneath. The scarf wrapped around his neck, brushing his chin. Finally, the horns came into view, black and curved, blending almost seamlessly into the long black hair that fell to his shoulders and obscured much of his upper face. The white blindfold followed. Then the dark marks on his skin, shaped like old wounds.
Evodil.
He cleared his throat and leaned closer to the camera, the angle slightly off as if he hadn't adjusted it properly yet. Ethan stared at the screen, breath shallow, lips parting without sound. The word father stayed trapped in his chest, half-formed and unreal.
Evodil lifted a hand and tapped the lens with two fingers.
"Is this thing working?" he asked, his voice echoing faintly through the speakers. "Can you hear me?"
Jasper nodded without thinking.
James answered quietly, "Yes."
Ethan raised a hand and gave a small, uncertain wave, forcing a tired smirk onto his face.
Noah said nothing.
"He can't hear you," Noah muttered instead, pushing himself off the floor with a groan and dropping heavily into one of the chairs. He pulled his legs up, arms wrapping around them as he stared at the screen from beneath his glasses, curled in on himself.
Evodil laughed on the other side of the glass.
"Right. Of course I can't hear you," he said, exhaling through his nose. "I never told Noah to install a speaker. No point. You'd all be yelling by now anyway."
The image shifted as the drone rose from the ground, circling him in a slow, steady rotation. His cape came into view from behind, the dark ponytail trailing down his back. The room around him resolved into something sterile and broken at the same time. A laboratory. Shattered glass stretched across the floor behind him, the fragments leading toward a massive opening that dropped straight into darkness. There was nothing visible below. No floor. No light. Just depth.
Evodil chuckled softly as he walked toward the edge and crouched down. Some unseen light or magic peeled the shadows from his face as he leaned closer to the broken glass, the blindfold catching the glow.
"I should probably apologize," he said, tone almost casual. "For not saying anything sooner."
He rested his forearms on his knees, looking directly into the lens.
"But you already know how I am. I've never liked working with people on things like this. I'm not a duo kind of person." He paused, then added, "And if I manage to do this alone… well. That would be something, wouldn't it?"
The drone hovered, steady.
"Ending the loops. Azraem. Everything he caused." His mouth curved slightly. "Doing it myself."
He straightened slowly.
"I'd never let you hear the end of it."
James' eyes widened as Evodil kept talking, the meaning settling in all at once. He stepped forward instinctively, heat flaring around him as his jaw tightened.
"Noah," he said sharply, voice cutting through the room, "how do we find him?"
Noah didn't look up at first. He exhaled through his nose, tired, irritated, already knowing the answer.
"He didn't tell me to install a tracker," Noah replied flatly. "No locator. No signal beacon. Nothing." He glanced briefly at the screens. "Unless the camera shows where he is, we're blind."
The image shifted again.
Red emergency lights flickered on inside the laboratory, bathing everything in a dull crimson glow. The gray walls came into view, a single white line running horizontally through their center, broken and uneven where the structure had decayed. Mold and dried mud clung to the surfaces, thick in the corners. The floor was riddled with holes, patches of what used to be white marble barely visible beneath layers of grime. Torn rugs lay half-rotted in places where the dirt hadn't fully consumed them.
Broken pots rested along the edges of the room. Some still held wilted plants, long dead but not entirely gone.
As the drone drifted farther back, more of the room revealed itself. A control panel stood crooked against one wall, its screens shattered, metal bent inward as if something had torn through it in a rage. Several monitors still glowed faintly, flickering just enough to be readable.
"Project Event Horizon."
The words hung on the screens for a moment before the drone shifted again.
Evodil stood up with a slow breath, rubbing his chin as he looked down toward the opening. He stepped closer to the broken glass and extended one leg through it. The shadows wrapped around him peeled away as he moved, leaving only black steel and the dark fabric clinging to his shin.
He laughed quietly.
"I wonder if you can even see this," he said, glancing toward the drone. "No idea if this thing works properly down here. Especially this close."
The drone hovered uncertainly, adjusting its distance.
"Bit of a gamble," Evodil continued, tone light but strained beneath it. "A stupid one. I know."
He looked back at the darkness below.
"But I'm not letting anyone else die. Not today. Not tomorrow." His voice lowered slightly. "It's either both of us… or I come back."
The drone drifted closer, almost hesitant, as if waiting for a command.
Evodil turned toward it again, forcing a familiar smirk onto his face. It didn't quite reach his mouth this time.
"You can count on me," he said. "After all, one hundred and sixty-seven tries. They say that's when it finally works."
He leaned forward fully, arms spreading wide as the shadows abandoned him entirely. For a split second, his figure was outlined against the red-lit ruin.
Then he let himself fall.