Watching the way Kagura seemed to want to melt straight into Erza's arms, Shane lifted his teacup and took a tactical sip, wondering why the tea suddenly tasted so sour.
As expected, when the question of sleeping arrangements for the night came up, the girl immediately insisted on sharing a room with her beloved master. Erza, of course, just smiled warmly, ruffled her hair, and agreed without hesitation.
Fortunately, since Jellal rarely got the chance to leave the Tower of Paradise, he seemed genuinely interested in Magnolia's lively atmosphere. Wanting to look around more, he had already booked himself a room at an inn outside.
Otherwise, Shane really would have had a headache right about now.
After all, the only guest room in the house had already become the exclusive territory of a certain troublesome woman.
And with the woman in question sitting right there, it would have been a little awkward to suggest giving the room to someone else.
The group lingered in the living room for a while longer, hammering out the details of the plan to go after Oración Seis in three days.
Then Jellal pulled his hood back up, gave them all a small nod, and quietly disappeared into the night.
Kagura, meanwhile, impatiently dragged Erza out into the yard, insisting her master inspect how much her swordsmanship had improved lately.
Once the living room finally quieted down, Shane shifted slightly on the sofa and leaned a little closer to Ultear.
Lowering his voice, he asked the question he had deliberately held back earlier.
"So what's the current situation over at Grimoire Heart?"
Ultear tilted her head slightly, her black hair sliding over her shoulder.
"You're wondering whether Brian's sudden reappearance might be tied to that 'Balam Alliance' they've been building?"
"Exactly." Shane nodded, frowning faintly. "Brian just entered an alliance with the other two major dark guilds, and then right after that, he suddenly exposes himself and invites Jellal to meet him. The timing's way too suspicious."
Ultear's beautiful brows drew together as well. She thought about it for a moment before finally answering.
"The truth is… Grimoire Heart hasn't contacted me directly in a long time. No new orders, no specific instructions. The last information I got, I had to dig out myself through private channels."
"Is that because your public identity now is an honor student at a Magic Council academy, so they don't want to contact you too often and risk exposing you?" Shane guessed.
"If that were the reason, that would almost be reassuring."
Ultear let out a quiet sigh, a cold, self-mocking edge passing through her eyes.
"But the problem is, back when I was preparing for the time reversal, I did a lot of dangerous things."
"And because we were pressed for time, I didn't really go out of my way to hide my movements."
She lifted her eyes to him.
"With Hades's level of suspicion and sensitivity… I'm worried he may have already started doubting my loyalty."
"Wouldn't that actually be a good thing?"
Instead of looking concerned, Shane gave a short laugh.
"Your wish of bringing Ur back has already been fulfilled. If anything, this is the perfect chance to cut yourself loose."
"And besides, you haven't really done anything unforgivable all these years."
"Even if they try to retaliate by exposing the fact that you came from Grimoire Heart, we can just ask Master Makarov to vouch for you."
"…"
Hearing that, Ultear fell silent for a long time.
Only after several moments did she finally speak in a soft voice.
"Actually… these last few days, I have thought about it."
She turned her head and caught the surprise in Shane's eyes, a helpless smile appearing at the corner of her lips.
"That's why, when Grimoire Heart sent me an emergency communication through a lacrima a while ago… I let it ring out and didn't answer."
At that, she bit her lip with a trace of regret.
"If I'd known Brian was going to make a move now, I might've at least answered long enough to pull a little more information out of them while I still could."
"You… you were really thinking of leaving Grimoire Heart?"
Shane's voice rose before he could stop it.
He had tried to talk her into leaving so many times before, and she had never budged. But Erza had made one casual suggestion, and Ultear had actually made up her mind that fast?
Even if it was coincidence, the difference in treatment was honestly kind of crushing.
Still, despite the strange little sting that rose in him, Shane pushed it down as he looked at the girl beside him, whose face had finally lost some of that heavy shadow and recovered a little life.
"If you didn't get anything more, then forget it," he said, his voice gentler now. "You already gathered more than enough information over the years. There's no need to keep taking risks for a little more."
"From now on… stop staying in places that dark. Come out and spend a little time in the sun."
The sunlight slanting through the window happened to fall across his sharply defined profile, outlining him in a soft but steady warmth.
"…Mm."
Watching that slightly awkward but utterly sincere expression on his face, Ultear answered very softly.
She suddenly realized that even though the two of them were now standing on the edge of a disaster that could fall from the Paradises at any moment, her mood lately had actually been… surprisingly good.
She rose from the sofa and smoothed out her skirt.
"In these next three days, I'll try one last time to cast out bait and see whether I can draw out Grimoire Heart's movements."
"And not just that." She lifted one finger and tapped it lightly against her chin. "Gray just had his memory erased by Makarov yesterday. I still have to go talk to Mother and figure out what kind of 'reasonable explanation' we're going to feed him about her coming back to life."
"You really are busy, aren't you?" Shane said with obvious schadenfreude as he stood up to see her out.
The two of them walked one after the other into the yard.
Right then, Kagura—who had been practicing and sweating it out in the open space—stopped and instantly spotted them.
Like she had just caught hold of the most delicious piece of blackmail in the world, she raised her wooden sword and shouted, "Master, look! His relationship with that older sister really is that close!"
Erza, casually wiping the sweat off Kagura's forehead, smiled without realizing anything was strange at all.
"Yeah, Shane and Tia do have a very good relationship. But I'm very close with Tia too!"
"Ahhh, Master! That's not what I meant at all!"
Kagura completely froze.
Looking at Erza's utterly oblivious face—the face of someone who hadn't understood the subtext in the slightest and actually seemed very pleased about it—the girl stamped her foot in frustration.
This little brat really couldn't go a day without making his life harder.
By now, Shane had already sent Ultear off with a dark expression.
Turning around, he strode toward the black-haired menace who was increasingly starting to look like a little disaster incarnate.
With a surge of magic, a pitch-black katana with a cold gleam materialized in his hand.
Gripping it in one hand, blade angled toward the ground, Shane looked down at Kagura from above and said, "You probably don't know this, but the foundations of your beloved master's swordsmanship… were taught by me."
He crooked a finger at her in challenge.
"Come on. You were pretty bold just now, so let me inspect exactly how much progress you've made lately."
"I don't believe you! Stop making things up!"
There was no way Kagura was buying anything that absurd.
With a shout, she gripped her wooden sword with both hands and threw her entire body into a furious overhead strike like an enraged little lion.
Then—
thud.
With one heavy, utterly inevitable impact, Kagura flew through the air like a kite with its string cut, traced a neat arc, and buried herself straight into a drift of soft snow in the corner of the yard.
…
…
By the time evening fell, dinner was over.
Feeling thoroughly satisfied, Shane pushed open the door to his bedroom.
Thinking back to how he had just beaten Kagura into a pile of snow earlier that afternoon, how she had ended up with snow all over her hair and tears glittering in her eyes, he felt every last bit of irritation he'd been carrying finally dissolve.
"Haa… yeah, venting really does make a person feel better."
He dropped onto the bed in a starfish sprawl, showing not the slightest awareness that picking on children was supposed to be wrong.
Just then—
A faint resonance trembled through his mind.
The Golden Cup's full twenty-four-hour cooldown had finally ended again.
The cup, which had been dull up until now, once more began to gleam with vivid golden magical patterns.
"Alright."
Shane's smile faded. He closed his eyes and let his consciousness sink downward with practiced ease.
"Let's see which lofty god has decided to kill me tonight."
After being mercilessly rejected over and over, Shane no longer had especially high expectations.
His consciousness drifted once through that brilliant sea of Heroic Spirit stars.
This time, he didn't even choose carefully. He just pointed at a random cluster of light that looked relatively dim and whose aura didn't seem especially intense.
The instant his mind touched it, the strong familiar sensation of being pulled away hit him again, and reality began peeling back and receding.
But this time, there was no blazing light, and no deafening thunder.
Instead, everything fell all at once into a suffocating darkness.
A true darkness. The kind where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.
Inside that darkness, light itself seemed to be swallowed whole. Nothing could take shape.
Then a sense of overwhelming ill omen crept up through the stillness like a cold serpent, winding around Shane's heart and making even his soul shudder.
"What kind of place is this?"
A chill ran through him.
Of all the gods or heroic presences he had encountered so far, this was the first time the staging itself had felt this eerie.
Still, when he thought about it, the worst that could happen was the same as before—his consciousness would be crushed and kicked back into reality.
With that in mind, he steeled himself and tried to take a step forward.
But the instant the thought formed, Shane realized in terror that his "body" no longer seemed to have any sensation at all.
He couldn't tell whether he was falling through a bottomless abyss or standing on solid ground. He couldn't even distinguish up from down, left from right.
The darkness had erased every physical boundary.
Shane felt as though he had turned into nothing but a mass of pure consciousness, hanging weightless inside some infinitely vast yet unbearably narrow "stomach of void."
Swallowed. Watched. Slowly dissolved.
This kind of ultimate fear—something dredged up from the deepest instincts of living things—was far more terrifying than even Indra's destructive thunder.
"This is way too oppressive… At least let me see what kind of monster I picked this time."
He cursed inwardly.
But the more he tried to struggle, the heavier the pressure from the surrounding darkness became.
It was an absolute seal on the level of rules themselves. He couldn't move a finger or even shift his eyes.
Then, just as the thought crossed his mind that he had probably been noticed—
a gaze fell on him from deep inside the darkness.
This look had none of Indra's divine disdain, none of that lofty, godlike indifference. Nor did it contain the usual arrogance or killing intent he had come to expect from beings of that level.
What it carried was something far more unsettling.
A cold, clinical scrutiny.
And for some reason, even though he could see nothing—though vision itself had utterly ceased to function—Shane could still sense, buried deep inside that overwhelming gaze, a very faint trace of… surprise.
It was like the master of this endless darkness had spent an immeasurable span of time in total stillness, and was now seeing, for the first time, a lively little bug blunder into its world.
"It's… interested in me?"
The moment that thought struck him, Shane's heart jumped.
"Does that mean… this time I actually have a chance?!"
With that hope, he gathered every shred of his will and tried to push through the restraint, to at least open his mouth and state his wish.
But in the next instant, the gaze that had been fixed on him vanished without warning.
It disappeared as abruptly and as cleanly as it had appeared.
And the moment it withdrew, the suffocating darkness surrounding him also emptied away like a receding tide.
The crushing feeling of weightlessness hit him all at once.
"Hah—!"
Shane lurched upright in bed, his chest heaving as he dragged in breath after breath.
Cold sweat had soaked his back completely and clung to his skin.
"So that failed too…"
Letting himself fall back against the headboard, he ran a hand through his hair in frustration.
He had finally encountered a being that had seemed willing to pause and at least look at him, and before he could even say his wish out loud, he had been tossed back out.
"Whatever. That's enough for tonight."
With a sigh, Shane reached out to toss the once-again-exhausted Golden Cup back into the depths of his consciousness like he always did.
But—
the moment he opened his hand, he froze.
Outside the window, the moon was still bright and clear.
Its pale silver light spilled through the glass and illuminated every line of his palm.
It was empty.
The Golden Cup—which should have been in his hand, waiting for its magic to recover—was gone without a trace.
"What the hell?"
Shane sprang out of bed like he had been shocked.
He didn't even bother with shoes. He raced barefoot through the room, frantically checking under the bed, shaking out the blankets, tearing everything apart—but there was still no sign of the cup anywhere.
"Did I fail too many times these last few days? Did the Cup itself get overdrawn and burn out completely?"
The idea flashed into his mind, only to be rejected immediately.
"No way."
He stopped in the middle of the room and forced himself to calm down.
"Those earlier attempts already proved that entering the inner realm only consumes the surface magic the Cup accumulates over twenty-four hours."
"Whether I get thrown out or killed in there, it shouldn't consume the Cup itself. Unless…"
His mind started working at full speed, and his gaze drifted out the window.
Above the world, the full moon hung high like a silver dish, its cold light quietly watching over the sleeping city of Magnolia.
"Wait…"
Suddenly he noticed one detail that felt terribly wrong.
From the moment he had "made the wish" and been kicked back out, hardly any time had passed. Not even half an hour.
The previous times, when he woke up again, it had always been full daylight already.
"So…"
Shane swallowed hard.
"It actually worked?!"
"But I never even got the wish out of my mouth!"
He pressed a hand against his pounding temple, feeling the whole thing was absurd beyond belief.
And yet there was no other explanation that fit the situation.
He hadn't said it aloud.
But he had wanted it.
And then some unknown being had answered that desire, using the Golden Cup—the medium of miracles—as the price for the exchange.
"Could that thing hiding in the dark be some kind of divine authority that directly reads the soul's desires?"
"What kind of insane situation is this…"
"And who the hell was it? Which Heroic Spirit—or god—actually answered me?"
Standing by the window, Shane stared up at the pale moon, feeling utterly miserable.
"This damn Cup was supposed to be the ultimate reward for completing the trial. Don't tell me I still have to guess the responder's true name before the wish actually takes effect?"
"Tch. Why did it have to be this time of all times, with no face shown and the clues this vague…"
He sulked at the window for quite a while before finally sighing in resignation and dragging himself back to bed.
Ever since he started making wishes, he really hadn't had a proper night's sleep.
He yanked the blanket over his head in frustration and forced his eyes shut.
…
Outside the window, the night began to change as sleep gradually deepened.
He had no idea how much time passed, but little by little the thick darkness of night was torn open.
At the far eastern horizon, a strange light emerged—something between dead gray and ghastly white.
The light of dawn was not bright.
It was more like water seeping slowly upward from underground, cold and damp, soaking into the last traces of darkness in the room and thinning them out.
In that gray, dim light, Shane felt the temperature in the room drop sharply.
He frowned and forced open one narrow slit of an eye.
Through his blurred vision, he thought he saw—
a dark figure standing silently in the shadow beside his bed, in the part of the room where the darkness had not yet fully retreated.
The figure didn't move. It made no sound.
It simply stood there, quiet and still, looking down at him in that dead gray light.
For some reason—
even though he couldn't make out the other's features at all, couldn't even see the shape of their clothes clearly through the gloom—
his still half-dreaming mind reached one abrupt, certain conclusion:
The figure… was a woman.
~~~
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