He stepped forward and poked the dry particles with his bare big toe. The white dust didn't stick to his skin, just scattered across the wet basalt, entirely unaffected by the pouring rain around them.
'He didn't run away,' Alice remarked in his mind, her tone suddenly alert. 'That was a recall incantation. Someone in the High Church pulled his thread from across the void.'
'You could have mentioned that before I took my eyes off him,' Lucid thought back, irritation coloring his mental voice.
'I told you I was ignoring you for three days,' she replied coldly.
Arthur stared at the empty cedar crates scattered around the square, his hand dropping instinctively to the hilt of his sword. Ayame limped over from the drainage ditch, her horn fully retracted now, pale eyes scanning the surrounding rooftops with methodical precision.
"Where?" Ayame asked bluntly, her voice carrying zero patience for pleasantries.
Lucid looked at the brass staff lying discarded in the gutter. The weapon was already beginning to tarnish, polished wood turning grey and brittle under the coastal wind's assault.
"This is just great," he muttered, dragging a hand across his face.
Arthur stood beside him, Ayame surveying the area with clinical focus. Not much damage appeared to have occurred, at least from a cursory glance.
Celeste came running toward them, her footsteps echoing off wet stone.
"Hold on young one! There are many..."
Lucid felt something click uncomfortably in his mind at the sight of her.
'If the domain is no longer,' he thought, 'then how is she still herself? Not corrupted, not fundamentally altered?'
He turned his attention toward the tear in reality behind her, hidden behind the gathering crowd across the town lying towards the upper districts. It wasn't quite a rift, more like a domain gateway of sorts, invisible to ordinary eyes and non-Illuminated individuals, but perceivable to anyone holding at least Latent status.
'Everyone present must have been normal mundane humans,' he considered.
'The domain's effect still lingers,' Alice offered. 'Perhaps the magistrate had an alter ego amplified by that influence. Perhaps this was her true self even before your arrival here.'
'But the domain,' Lucid pressed.
The woman he'd seen wearing the coat, the one Pilt had called Mira, sparked genuine curiosity in his mind. If the almighty Monolith was truly gone now, how did trade continue functioning at all? How did the town persist without whatever mechanism had governed its economic structure previously?
And the girl with the cap, Aurelia he recalled.
He scanned his surroundings, searching for any lingering ghost that might have haunted him throughout his stay in Port Vexis.
Nothing.
Until he spotted movement behind a nearby corridor.
He immediately started running.
Ayame reached toward his retreating form, fingers grasping empty air. Arthur remained occupied speaking with the magistrate, missing Lucid's sudden departure entirely.
Lucid moved fast, cutting through alleyways and past market stalls until he reached the specific alley he'd glimpsed.
A person stood there.
Clad in silk dress with something resembling ethereal wings visible behind her shoulders, a cap pulled low over her face. A shirt with fabric wrapped around one shoulder, dark leather accents completing her attire.
Lucid furrowed his brow, confusion evident.
"What," he started.
She looked at him with incandescent golden eyes, almost ethereal in their glow, carrying something sorrowful within their depths.
Until they turned wrathful.
He didn't step back. He braced himself instead, standing tall and firm despite the sudden hostility radiating from her.
"You killed him," she said.
Lucid didn't reply. He knew exactly what he had done.
She understood the transgression equally well, though whether it truly qualified as transgression remained debatable in his own mind. Beyond his inherent desire to prove the princess wrong through his actions, Lucid had made this choice for others.
Others that included Mercyros himself, ultimately.
Mercyros had become a pain he could see clearly in his own eyes, the fatigue of prolonged leadership finally curdling into apathy. But even acknowledging that, it had still felt selfish, this decision he made. He had no inherent right to dictate what release he could grant or deny to another being's suffering.
She spoke again.
A rat scurried past somewhere deeper in the alley, knocking over a metal bin with a hollow clang that echoed off brick walls.
Lucid remembered.
He remembered being thrown into this exact alley by two large men after failing to convince people to sign soul contracts written in invisible ink under broad daylight, the exploitation hidden in plain sight.
He'd told himself it would happen again eventually.
It never did.
Because human nature wasn't inherently evil at its core. The systems guiding people simply funneled everything toward evil outcomes regardless of individual intention or capacity for good.
They stood there watching each other in tense silence.
Suddenly she lowered her gaze.
"Know that every single moment you breathe, eat, drink, and defecate," she said, gathering herself despite tears streaming freely down her cheeks now, "is because of him."
"Is because he allowed it."
"Is because he allowed Alisia."
Her eyes lit up beneath the tears, something shifting behind them.
"Impossible," she muttered. "I can't read your thread of fate. Why?"
She collapsed to her knees in bitter despair against dirty, disgusting brick.
Alice spoke within his mind. "Do what you do best, my chosen. Sway her heart the way you do with every opposite gender you encounter."
"Hey!" he remarked silently, genuinely offended by the characterization.
He reached forward with his hand, hesitant. He debated whether he should apologize.
"Apologize for what?" he said aloud, tone deliberately blunt. "Your fiancé, boss, whatever he was to you, he choked human fundamental rights. There were noblemen literally eating each other, fattening themselves within that domain while ordinary people starved."
She stopped sobbing abruptly.
"That caused members of an extremist cult to infiltrate and conspire within the population," he continued, pressing forward. "I really don't understand that domain of his. If anything, it just worsened everything it touched."
"If you so desperately wanted to live, then he should have stopped sulking for even one single second."
Lucid stepped forward and spread his arms wide.
"Look at this," he said, pointing toward the narrow opening of the hallway where people walked freely below.
Nobles. Commoners. Helping each other. Bustling market stalls reopening despite everything that had happened.
"Do you see this?" he demanded. "I did that."
Alice remarked in a sly tone within his mind. "Don't get too proud of yourself, my chosen. I had to hand-hold you through most of it."
He ignored the comment, though it irritated him slightly beneath the surface.
"Bordering on the absurd," he continued, addressing the woman directly. "Do you think you're the only one who lost something in all of this?"
He loosened his stance slightly.
"Eight people were found dead in the river," he said. "Something Mercyros could have prevented entirely by simply not establishing his domain in the first place."
She looked up at him. "But human casualty is normal within any system."
He cut her off immediately, his voice sharpening.
"Among those eight, four were children."
"Do you seriously think that's normal? Do you honestly believe any of this couldn't have been avoided?"
He released a weary breath, exhaustion bleeding through his words.
"Yes," he said. "It could have."
"By that dull, arrogant deity. By Mercyros himself."
"But that's not all," he continued. "One of my associates, another one now, is forever trapped in a void, running as conduit in Mercyros's place."
"So congratulations, more humans sacrificed in the name of fidelity to some outdated system."
She looked up at him, entirely frustrated now, something dangerous flickering behind her golden eyes.
Lucid recognized that particular look. The look someone wore right before violence erupted.
"What," he started, watching her carefully.
He stepped closer.
She stepped back, her hand moving toward what appeared to be a weapon concealed beneath her clothing.
"Mercyros looked for you, you know," Lucid said, voice steady despite the tension building between them. "Reincarnated into mortal flesh. Yeah, bullshit."
"You chose this, didn't you?"
She clutched at her throat, seemingly caught somewhere between frustration and genuine grief.
"I... I," she stammered, tears and anguish visible in her strained expression.
He saw right through her hesitation.
"How do you know?" she demanded suddenly.
Lucid felt around his pockets and pulled out a grimoire-like book, its leather cover worn from handling.
"This thing here is omniscient," he said. "I've been reading it as bedtime story material, and well, let's just say I know quite a lot about your eight-hundred-year-old divine vacuum situation."
She stepped back further, alarm crossing her features.
"No mortal should know this," she said.
Lucid drew a slight smile, flipping through pages with theatrical flair, adopting the pose of someone about to display a grand revelation.
"Section three, page eight. Oh—"
He stopped abruptly.
"What is this garbage!"
Alice laughed inside his mind. "You couldn't even open it to the correct page, my chosen. You truly are something else entirely."
He cut her off before she could throw further mockery his direction.
His eyes suddenly landed on something relevant across the page.
"Section three, the Divine Barrier. The devoted archangel who seeks to live up to the Monolith of Trade's expectation shall willingly, sinfully wear the vestige of mortal flesh without vide's consent."
Lucid's voice suddenly dropped to suspicion. "Thought that could be interpreted as referring to Alisia."
"Lucid, put that away," Alice sighed within his mind. "I told you I do not like it."
"Great, you can make predictions apparently."
"No! I half-assed my way through knowing it. I mean, a ring worth more than a diamond, sold to me for mere gold currency. That should have been the first warning sign."
"Yeah, pretty suspicious," Lucid agreed.