Lucid found himself in a white room. He looked down at himself. His body had been restored. Whole again. The severed limbs were gone. No gaping wounds. He only remembered the phantom ache of pain.
He looked around. He saw a figure with white robes and blonde lush hair, hugging their knees, looking down. Their back faced against him.
Lucid sighed, having escaped that monstrosity outside. The only reason he even got so far was because of the regeneration from Alice. Had he not been able to heal, he would have been dead before he could even manage his first step.
'There is no way that was an Awakened. That paladin had to be an Enlightened. Stronger than that one I encountered. Ivy, in Tyriana.'
He brushed that thought aside. He needed to approach her. He needed to save her. For Fredrick. For the kingdom's sake.
'Huh?' he muttered to himself. 'Since when did I care for the kingdom?'
He shook his head. Come on. Focus.
He walked with measured steps, making his way toward her. Each step felt like he was walking through water. Then a pain hit his head. So loud. So hard that it made him wince.
He took a step. Another scream echoed in his skull.
"Killer!"
Voices. Of his previous victims.
"Die!"
"Lucid, I love you. Stay with me."
"Fogged bastard!"
He tried to push these thoughts aside. These screams aside. He had to continue until he found himself in front of her.
Looking at her now, she was just a kid. Entrusted with the role to protect the kingdom. Lucid could not help but feel pity toward her. Maybe that was why Fredrick felt such a need to protect her.
She looked so fragile. Her legs bent up, tucked against her chest. Her skin, the collarbone visible above her robes, looked deathly pale. Had it been because of the corrosive fate essence?
He tried to remember her name. Elara? Was it? It was a name he knew from the girl's inherited memories. Bitter memories of his actions resurfacing.
She looked up. Her eyes were damp with tears. Her lips trembled. She looked like the princess of a kingdom. Innocent. Vulnerable. Maybe because she was trying to.
Lucid crouched down. He held up his arm.
"Come. There are lots of people waiting for you."
She looked at his hand, staring at it for a long moment. Not accepting it. She sunk her head back down to her knees.
"I see," she said softly, voice barely above a whisper.
Lucid looked at her, putting his hand down.
'Who does she think she is?' he yelled internally, wearing a patient smile while his eyes were shut.
"Tell me, brave one," she said, her voice formal, gentle. "What prompted you to venture so far to save me? Such admirable courage, especially for one of your... particular circumstances."
Lucid's eye twitched at the phrasing, but he answered. "Your stubborn knight. But in title only."
"Ah, yes. Dear Fredrick." Her voice carried warmth, genuine affection. "How very fortunate you are to have crossed paths with such a noble soul. I imagine without his intervention, you would have perished long before reaching this moment. Quite the debt you carry, I should think."
The words were kind. The meaning was not.
"I see." Lucid kept his voice neutral.
She lifted her head slightly, tears still glistening in her eyes. "You would have been dead had it not been for him. Multiple times, from what I understand. Such remarkable luck you possess, brave one. Or perhaps not luck at all."
She paused, letting the words settle.
"I ordered for you to be hanged, you know."
Lucid recoiled back, slowly backing away. "What the hell?"
"Oh, do forgive my bluntness." Her voice remained soft, apologetic even. "Public opinion grew quite weary after the incident in the Golden Pathways. So much destruction. So many casualties. But dear Fredrick, my righteous knight, suggested a most ingenious alternative to me."
She lifted her head a bit more, tears drying on her cheeks.
"We keep watch on you instead. To observe whether the Chapeu would follow. And they did, of course. Like moths to a flame. You do have a certain... magnetism for violence, do you not?"
"Yeah, I know. I attract death wherever I go. For that, I apolo—"
She looked up at him fully now. Her eyes were different. Still tear-stained, but something else lurked beneath. Something cold.
"For what do you apologize, brave one? Surely not for being precisely what you are. A most efficient tool, if I may say so."
Her voice remained gentle, formal.
"I did this. I caused all of this."
"You?" Lucid sounded shocked.
"Are you surprised?" She tilted her head, and the innocent gesture looked wrong now. "I am the ruler of this kingdom, after all. It is my duty to make difficult decisions. Decisions that require... sacrifice."
Reevaluating her now, this girl did not seem so innocent anymore.
"No. Stop lying. Fredrick did all of this. He made me enter this rift."
"But who gave Fredrick his orders, brave one?" Her voice was calm, measured, still achingly polite. "Do you truly believe I would allow one of my most trusted subjects to venture into a rift without purpose? I would have kept him by my side, safe and sound."
She smiled, small and sad.
"But I did not. Because I needed them to take the bait. I needed them to believe they had won."
Lucid's eyes went wide. He reevaluated this young princess. She seemed like more of a menace than a kind, gentle one.
"But no. That does not make any sense."
Lucid rose back to his feet, anger building.
"They threw you through a rift, causing the rift's properties to change from an Epsilon to a Beta. A Beta! Do you have any fucking idea how dangerous those are?"
His mind briefly went back to Mary. Brian. Garfield. And the countless black badges he killed.
"Do you have any idea how many silver badges died? No, how many students died?"
The princess's eyes lit up with fascination, like a scholar presented with an interesting theorem.
"Oh, I am quite aware, brave one. How very passionate you are about their deaths. Such compassion for strangers. Truly commendable, especially coming from someone who has taken so many lives himself."
She let that sit for a moment.
"The status disparity between noble and commoner remains a prominent issue in Vex, does it not? I trust now that you have lived in the academy for a while, you understand precisely what it looks like. How the strong prey upon the weak. How corruption festers in the highest places."
She paused, her formal tone never wavering.
"Moreover, a great deal of the professors were under the influence of the Chapeau. Were, I should say. Past tense. Thanks to your most thorough work."
"But that does not give you the right to—"
"To what, brave one?" She interrupted, tilting her head with an expression of genuine curiosity. "To eliminate threats to my kingdom? To remove corruption? Or do you mean to kill them, as you so eloquently put it?"
She smiled, small and sharp.
"How very noble of you to take offense on their behalf. Especially when you performed the task so efficiently yourself. I must commend you. You killed with such remarkable precision. Like what you did to those poor souls. The girl with the whip. The boy with the axe. The professors. So many names I could list."
Lucid's jaw clenched.
"I agree that the deaths of the silver badges are indeed tragic," she continued, voice dripping with false sympathy. "But they are, I am afraid, a minor grain of sand compared to the countless wicked noblemen and corrupt professors we have purged. Collateral damage, as they say. Regrettable, but necessary."
She looked up at him with a smile that was no longer sad. It was victorious.
"All thanks to you, brave one. You were my variable in all of this. When Fredrick spoke of you, when you were involved in that train incident, I took great interest. I reviewed your files personally. Time and time again, you emerged alive where others perished."
She leaned forward, eyes gleaming.
"The third tier arsenal of Tyriana. The ones in the Blue Forest. My, my. Such remarkable survival instincts. Or perhaps something more. You are quite the fascinating specimen."
Lucid spoke, voice rising. "But you had no idea if the corruption would have killed you!"
She spoke calmly, as though discussing the weather. "You are quite correct. I did not know for certain. It was a calculated risk I was willing to take. I hoped dear Fredrick would come to save me, naturally. But I waited for you instead."
She smiled wider.
"You were my variable, you see. The unpredictable element that would eliminate the students, the professors, the Unfaithful, the organization itself. And my, how splendidly you performed. Beyond even my most optimistic projections."
"Tsk."
Lucid took a step back, fists clenched.
"I will not save you then. You wicked—"
His insults died in his throat as her expression shifted completely. The gentle princess vanished. What remained was something else.
"Oh, brave one," she said, voice still perfectly formal, perfectly polite. "You do not have a choice in this matter. I do apologize for the inconvenience, truly."
She twisted her head at an unnatural angle, bones cracking audibly.
"You really do not. If you fail to free me, you will face that paladin outside. Lyssandra does not show mercy to those who threaten the crown. She will cut you down without hesitation. Most efficiently, I assure you."
She smiled, and it was no longer human.
"I am doing you a tremendous favor, brave one. Release me, and we may all return home. Well, those of us who remain. Such a pity about the others, is it not?"
Her voice dropped lower, more formal, more cold.
"It is checkmate, I am afraid. I planned every move before you ever stepped foot into this kingdom. From the moment you arrived, you were dancing on strings I had already laid."
She looked at him with something like pity.
"Did you truly believe you had any agency in this? How very quaint. How very... mortal of you."
Lucid gritted his teeth. 'She got me.'
He crouched down, defeated.
A brilliant golden thread manifested in his hand. The princess took both of her hands and placed them over his, guiding the thread to her chest. It went through. She smiled a wicked smile.
"Thank you, brave one. You have been most useful."
Lucid could only look down in defeat.
Everything exploded into golden particles as matter rearranged itself.
He was floating in his spectral form, in what seemed to be a vast cosmic place. He had no form, no body and he still looked with weary, defeated eyes at a huge swirling circle, like a rift. He could see many perhaps millions of threads golden thin threads, some shining bright, others thin and weak. Probably at the edge of dying. These threads were the threads bound to each being from mother fate. He looked up twords the vast vacuum, each thread seem to dissappear into nothing. They extended infinitely until they seemingly merged into a single thick thread. Lucid looked bewildered for a brief moment, he didn't remember this, he didn't remember anything like this when he reinforced Ayame's thread,when she was critically wounded.
Suddenly a voice resounded inside his mind, almost like a distant recollection from a long gone past.
*Just a little something, in case you find yourself tangled in her threads*
"Tangled..." he looked down.
Bright thin threads wrapped around his torso, his arms, legs and none came out of him specially.
These had to have been the threads of Fate he had influenced during his time inside that rift, the black badges he had killed and the lives he had saved. Influenced the fate of others.
He looked around.
A single purple thread ran out of it, pulsing with corruption.
He tried to untangle himself, though it partially worked.
He knew what to do. This was domain control.
He looked at the golden thread in his hand, he kept replaying those moments, when he was with that fortune teller for some reason.
Could she have been involved with this?
He took the golden thread and fused it with the purple one, channeling every ounce of his being into it. Pouring Alice's unlimited fate essence into the connection. His hands started to break away, skin cracking like porcelain.
Then another figure appeared. A green light supported his hands. Its head manifested and looked at him with kind, gentle eyes.
It was Alice's spectral form.
"Won't you sacrifice me? Lucid," she asked her eyes searching his, as they floated in the vacuum.
Lucid closed his eye.
"I never planned on..."
"You did a great job, Lucid."
Lucid tried to look away, but her gentle hand grasped his chin. She floated closer, upside down, her green hair drifting around her face like seaweed in water.
He focused on the task at hand, imbuing the purple thread with the golden thread.
"You did what you could do," she whispered.
The spectral figure inched closer and kissed his forehead as she floated upside down. Lucid tried to focus on the task, but her presence was warm. Real.
Everything went dark.
Lucid closed his eyes.
He had succeeded.
But he had also failed.
And somewhere, in the back of his mind, Alice's voice whispered.
"You did what you could do."
It was not enough.
But it was something.