Flugel appeared far from Ryuzu's home, deep within the boundless realm of shadows. The atmosphere was suffocating—darkness layered upon darkness, dense and oppressive, as though the very air was woven from silence and dread. Each breath was a struggle, heavy with unseen weight. The shadows themselves reacted to his presence; at first, they tensed, writhing as if startled by an intruder. But slowly, like subjects recognizing their sovereign, they rippled outward and bowed, a tide of darkness bending before the Great Sage. From the depths of that void, muffled echoes rose and fell—low, indistinct murmurs that seemed like the whispers of forgotten souls.
His gaze lowered to the crystal resting in his palm. The mana crystal in which Puck slumbered, sealed by Roswaal with meticulous cruelty. The binding was not a mere knot but a prison layered with countless locks, each interwoven with conscious malice. A trap designed to mock patience, to deny freedom indefinitely. Flugel's lips curled into a thin smile, equal parts bitter and amused, as he muttered to himself:
"Meh… I've always been good at stitching."
The shadows stirred at his words, flowing closer like loyal hounds eager to serve. The crystal lifted from his hand, suspended mid-air as strands of darkness wrapped around it. One by one, the seals began to unravel, invisible threads pulled loose with surgical care. Each release was accompanied by a sharp hiss, a sound that mingled with the low, ceaseless hum of the realm itself, until it was as though the darkness sang with every unraveling.
Flugel's eyes narrowed. His focus sharpened, and in his other hand another crystal coalesced from the shadows. This one carried a different weight, for within it rested the soul of Petelgeuse Romanée-Conti, the Witch Cult's Archbishop of Sloth. Unlike before—when madness had twisted his essence and shattered his being—this soul was whole. Not screaming, not fractured, but sleeping deeply, as though reborn in a fragile dream.
Petelgeuse was no ordinary spirit. He was an earth spirit, born from nature's essence, nurtured and evolved by the very breath of the world. That was the reason he had survived where others would have perished. Yet even this strength had not saved him from scars. The Authority of Sloth had gouged deep wounds into his being, leaving him trapped in unconsciousness, forever teetering at the edge of awareness, never able to awaken.
Flugel studied the crystal in silence, and in that silence, a flicker of something unfamiliar crossed his gaze—melancholy. "Both father and daughter… caught at the brink of collapse, struggling in silence. How strange… how cruel a fate."
He drew a long, slow breath, as if steadying his own spirit, before resuming his work. If Roswaal had woven cruel bindings into Puck's crystal, then Flugel would weave the opposite into Geuse's. This was not simple sorcery—it was a craftsman's labor. With one hand he unraveled, with the other he mended. To undo and to restore, to shatter and to rebuild—all at once, in perfect balance.
The shadows obeyed him as if they were extensions of his own thoughts. He never touched the crystals directly, but they responded to every flicker of intent. At times, they rose like vast waves, encasing the fragile souls in protective folds. At others, they thinned into delicate strands, embroidering fine sigils of protection across their surfaces. The silence of the realm deepened, broken only by the faint crack of seals unraveling and the soft hum of runes being stitched anew.
Time became meaningless. Hours slipped past, though the void made it impossible to tell. Yet fatigue left its mark upon Flugel. His brow furrowed, his breaths grew heavier, and his frame sagged under the burden of the task. Even so, his will did not falter. The Great Sage's resolve burned too fiercely to be extinguished by exhaustion. His hands—no, his shadows—moved tirelessly until, at last, both works were complete.
He raised the crystals, inspecting them with meticulous care. Puck's prison was undone; Geuse's soul was wrapped in a protective weave. Then, with slow deliberation, he seized Puck's crystal. From the realm itself, he tore a fragment of living shadow—a writhing, pulsating core of darkness—and forced it into the crystal's heart.
The reaction was instant. Light blazed forth in violent brilliance, bursting against the surrounding gloom. The crystal cracked with a sound like splitting ice, and then from within it, a small figure shot outward.
"Cough—cough! Gah—what is that?!" Puck gagged violently, pawing at his mouth with tiny paws. "Ugh! Disgusting mana! What in the world—?!" His ears twitched furiously, eyes wide with shock and indignation.
A voice echoed from every shadow, calm yet faintly amused. "You might be the first spirit ever to taste shadows."
Puck snapped his head toward the voice, his fur standing on end, sharp teeth bared. "Master?! Wait—where's Lia? What happened? Where the hell are we?!" His voice trembled with a mixture of anger and panic.
Flugel spread his arms wide, the shadows swirling around him like a throne of living night. His tone was grandiose, almost mocking, yet carried the weight of truth. "Welcome, little Puck, to the Shadow Realm. Consider yourself fortunate—the Great Sage has deigned to pluck you from that cursed prison."
Puck's tail bristled, and his eyes glowed with defiance. "I don't recall needing to be saved! I was only… taking a nap! Two hours at most!" He growled, but beneath his words was unease—a creeping realization that whatever realm he had awoken in was far from anything familiar.
The shadows pulsed with silent laughter, and Flugel's gaze lingered, patient and calculating. The game between them had only just begun.
Flugel didn't laugh, but a mocking smile tugged at his lips. He tilted his head slightly, as though amused by Puck's ignorance, then shook it slowly from side to side.
"Two hours? Poor little kitten… You've been asleep for nearly a week. Roswaal placed a powerful seal on the crystal where he put you to rest. A clever trick, I'll admit. I warned you more than once, remember? But youth… youth never listens. Tsk, tsk…"
Puck's eyes widened, a sharp breath escaping him. Silence descended like a suffocating fog. Even the shadows quivered and then froze, as if they too required a moment to digest this truth that shattered the stillness.
The little spirit's fur bristled, a growl rumbling low in his throat as he bared his fangs. His pupils narrowed into slits, and his eyes burned with a ferocity that sent vibrations through the gloom itself.
"Roswaal… what did he do to my daughter?!"
Flugel remained where he stood, crossing his arms leisurely, though beneath that calm exterior simmered a grave intensity. His gaze lingered on Puck with the patience of one who had seen centuries come and go.
"Let's start from the beginning…" His tone was steady, deliberate, and heavy with weight. Then he began to recount the story.
The entire Roswaal domain, including Arlam Village, had been struck by a coordinated and devastating assault. Emilia, robbed of her guardian's presence, faltered. In that void of protection, she was gravely injured. The Archbishops who spearheaded the chaos were eventually pushed back, but in that maelstrom of fire, blood, and fear, Roswaal appeared. He whisked Emilia away, carrying her to the Sanctuary as if she were no more than a fragile pawn. There, under the looming trees and quiet graves, she was forced to confront the trial again and again, each failure gnawing at her spirit until it was on the verge of collapse.
"You know what her first trial was," Flugel continued, his words slicing through the dim air. His eyes narrowed, focusing on the trembling figure of Puck. "The past… the memories you buried away from her. The ones you thought she would never need to face."
The tale pressed on. Emilia's mind had been battered, her soul bruised and bleeding. Yet, somehow—by willpower, or fate, or perhaps something more cruel—she had managed to break through the trial. Victory came, but the cost carved deep wounds into her essence. That long shadow had brought them all to this moment.
Puck's head lowered, his fur drooping, and when he spoke, his voice was frayed with trembling regret.
"I sealed her memories for her own sake. I pulled her from that frozen coffin, but the trauma crushed her. I had no choice but to lock away her past… and the dangerous magic tied to it."
For a long moment, Flugel gave no reply. The silence stretched until it felt like the very darkness was leaning in. Then his voice rolled forth from the shifting shadows, cold and sharp as the blade of an unseen knife.
"And now that seal… has broken, thanks to your mother's hand. Don't you think the time has come to release it yourself? Or will you cling to your fear until history repeats itself in ice and ruin?"
The shadows stirred like restless waves. Flugel advanced a step, eyes gleaming with ancient certainty.
"I suggest the first path. Strongly. If she turns that power against those I hold dear… you understand perfectly what the consequence will be."
Puck's small body trembled, his teeth grinding together until his voice erupted in a near-roar, ragged with desperation.
"But if I lift that seal, what's to stop her from unraveling again?! Do you not remember? She froze everything—everyone! The whole forest, every living thing! What are we supposed to do—resurrect the dead to console her pain?!"
Flugel's hand rose, and in it materialized a crystal pulsing faintly with light. It was the vessel that held Geuse. His lips curved into a knowing smile, carrying with it a shadow of mockery.
"You already know, don't you? Emilia's other father. Not of blood or body, but of spirit. An anchor outside of you. Strange, isn't it?"
Puck's eyes went wide, his face stricken with dread.
"W–wait… are you saying… there really was someone like that? Someone who stood so close to Lia, closer than I ever knew…" His words broke apart in a haze of disbelief, his mind torn between opening the seal and keeping it locked forever.
Flugel gave a careless shrug, as though the matter was beneath his concern. Yet his fingers tightened around the crystal, and the shadows swirled hungrily around it. The glow intensified, pulsing with an energy that mirrored Puck's own.
With a sardonic murmur, Flugel whispered:
"Anti-spirit energy… Fascinating. Oddly amusing, even. Perhaps I should experiment on Betty too—just to see how far this little trick can go."
Then, without warning, the darkness before him rippled, and a tall figure stepped into form. Long green hair framed his face, his posture poised and dignified. Unlike the grotesque distortions of the Sloth Archbishop, this man bore no deformities, no bulging eyes or twisted grin. He seemed utterly human—calm, composed, real. Slowly, his eyes fluttered open, and recognition dawned across his features. His arms folded over his chest as he spoke in disbelief.
"…I… wha—hold on Master Flugel?!"
Flugel exhaled, an old, weary sigh slipping through him. He lifted a hand and waved dismissively, his gesture carrying the weight of centuries of exasperation.
"Yes, yes… oh, hello Geuse. It has been ages, hasn't it? Yes, it's me—Flugel, the Great Sage. Still alive, still burdened, still here. Now, shall we skip the shock and awe, and move along? yay!."
The words first slipped into the air with a light, almost mocking tone, as if tossed idly without weight. Yet that mockery died as swiftly as it was born. The smile evaporated, the faint curve of his lips erased, and in his eyes burned a darkness—an abyssal gleam that consumed all softness. When he spoke again, his voice had become a dirge, low and dreadful, echoing like a chant from the void itself.
"You used the Sloth Factor I gave you only as a shield, a desperate tool for protection. You knew from the beginning it was never meant for you, that your soul was ill-suited to bear it… and still, you reached for it. The Authority claimed you, body and spirit, and for a hundred years you lingered in its grip—reviled, infamous, cursed as an Archbishop—until the day I killed you with my own hand."
Each word dropped like stone into water, rippling out in waves of unbearable truth. Geuse had long since grown accustomed to Flugel's unflinching words, his merciless honesty, but this final declaration struck deeper than all the rest. It slid past defenses like a knife through paper, embedding itself in the core of his soul. His chest tightened, his inner world collapsed into ruin. Memory surged forward, one blood-soaked scene after another, refusing to let him breathe.
He saw Regulus, Archbishop of Greed, smirking with that insufferable arrogance; Pandora's icy, doll-like stare piercing him like frost; the cursed day when Elior Forest burned beneath their invasion, when everything he swore to protect trembled on the edge of annihilation. Geuse and Fortuna had fought with all their strength, spent every drop of will, even offering their lives to shield what was precious. Yet fate remained unyielding. In despair's wake, only one option presented itself: the Sloth Factor, lying dormant, forbidden.
The moment he accepted it, calamity was born. The Factor did not lend strength—it consumed. It sank into his soul like a leech fastening to warm flesh, like a spider cocooning prey. The Authority gnawed and burrowed, siphoning his essence, corroding his will, unraveling the threads that bound him to sanity. Every invocation hollowed him further, carving pieces of his humanity away, until the mirror no longer reflected a man but something half-rotted. And yet, clinging to the tatters of himself, his mind whispered the same vow over and over: protect Emilia. Protect Fortuna, the woman he loved beyond reason. If the price demanded was his life, his soul, even his sanity—so be it.
But tragedy is cruel and absolute. At the very instant he believed he had mastered the curse, he realized too late his hands were soaked in Fortuna's blood. The scream that tore from her lips rang endlessly, a sound carved into his marrow. The heat of her life spread across his palms, staining them for eternity. The look in her eyes—shock, betrayal, a pain too great for words—would chase him through a hundred lifetimes of dreams. Darkness cracked his mind, and into that fracture stepped Pandora, her smile curved like the edge of victory itself.
"From this moment forth, you are the Archbishop of Sloth. Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti."
Laughter erupted from Geuse before he even knew it had begun. It was wrong, broken, a howl stripped of humanity. It twisted his mouth into an unnatural rictus, his face a mask of corruption. His chest felt hollow, devoured, emptied of all but despair. When he staggered from the forest that day, nothing of the man remained—only a shattered husk masquerading as life.
And now, centuries later, that husk knelt before Flugel. His nails dug into his scalp until they pierced flesh, raking his skin apart in strips. Blood streamed through his tangled hair, dripping down his cheeks in scarlet rivulets. His body shook as if wracked by invisible chains.
"H-how could I… no, no! I didn't kill her! I didn't kill Fortuna-sama! I swear—I didn't! Oh gods, forgive me! I couldn't protect anyone! I destroyed everything! For a hundred years… I was nothing but filth, a monster clothed in flesh! I—I hate this body, I hate it!"
His voice was a ragged cloth, shredded and uneven. Each syllable trembled, cracking under the weight of guilt. He tore at his own arms, ripping the skin until it came away beneath his nails. Blood fell in thick drops, splattering against the ground, and even the shadows drew back, as though recoiling from the toxic despair pouring from him. The air thickened, oppressive, reeking of guilt, decay, and the unbearable stench of remorse that had festered for a century.
Flugel moved without haste, lowering himself beside the man. He placed a steady hand on Geuse's convulsing shoulder, grounding him, anchoring him. His gaze lingered on the ruin of a soul before him, and what he saw was not the Archbishop feared by nations, but a child adrift in darkness, wandering for an eternity with no star to guide him. Pity stirred within Flugel's eyes, but it was tempered with the hard edge of truth—unyielding, sharp, inescapable.
"Steady yourself, Geuse. You and I both know your will was never entirely your own. Your mind was taken, bent, twisted until you no longer recognized it. All your life, you were gentle. Naïve, yes—but pure, uncorrupted. I can say that with certainty, because I saw it with my own eyes."
The words fell like a hand extended across an abyss. Geuse's self-destruction slowed, his bloody nails loosening their grip. His chest heaved with broken sobs, and hot tears spilled freely, cutting paths through the grime on his cheeks. When he spoke again, his voice was stripped of defiance, reduced to the weak murmur of a child too exhausted to resist the dark.
"Hhic… I couldn't… I couldn't save anyone… not a single soul…"
Flugel inhaled slowly, as though gathering the weight of centuries into his lungs. When he spoke again, his voice carried a gentleness rare as sunlight—but bound within it was the iron of resolve, a vow spoken not in comfort but in command. The silence of the shadows deepened, as if the world itself strained to hear.
"At the very least… you still have the chance to save one."
Geuse slowly lifted his head, as if the motion itself were a burden too heavy to carry. His neck trembled under the strain, and when his gaze finally met the dim world before him, his eyes looked as though they had been carved from raw sorrow. Bloodshot veins webbed across them, pools of despair threatening to swallow him whole. And yet, within that ruinous crimson, a glimmer pulsed—a fragile light, faint as the flame of a dying candle struggling to endure against an endless night. His lips quivered, pale and cracked, and when sound escaped him, it was so fragile it nearly dissolved into the silence.
"Who… who is it, Master?"
The question broke from him like glass shattering, weak and trembling, but filled with desperate longing. He wanted—needed—to know. To anchor himself to something beyond regret.
Flugel rose with deliberate calm, the movement steeped in quiet authority. His shoulders drew back, straightening until his figure seemed to stretch beyond the boundaries of the dim chamber. Shadows clung to him, yet even they recoiled, retreating from the weight of his presence as though his very being threatened to unmake their shape. His eyes gleamed from within that veil of darkness, sharp and unyielding, carrying a light that seemed not to belong to mortals at all.
"The girl Pandora desires… Emilia." His words unfurled slowly, like the tolling of a bell. "Right now, she suffers. Her mind is fractured, splintered under the Witch of Greed's trial and the seal bound by that feline's memory. She is broken, as you yourself have just felt in the depths of your despair. That half-elf carries upon her back the weight of her frozen kin, the blame for the stillness of her people, though none of it is truly hers to bear. Guilt has twisted her heart into chains. Do you see, Geuse? The parallels between you are countless. She is as you were, once. Tell me… what do you make of that?"
The words pressed into him like a tide, each syllable a reminder of wounds long thought closed. Geuse stood still, frozen, as though carved from the very stone beneath his feet. His breath quaked unevenly, lungs straining beneath the hammering rhythm of his heart. The sound filled his ears, deafening him to all else. Slowly—agonizingly slowly—he pushed against the weight crushing him and began to rise. His body trembled, knees weak as though the ground itself begged him to remain kneeling. But he did not falter. Fear carved lines into his face, but alongside that fear shimmered something long forgotten: the faint trace of hope. It was fragile, but it was real. Deep inside, where the Sloth Factor had burned and corroded, something flickered anew. A spark that dared, for the first time in a century, to resist the dark.
"Master… tell me everything. Please." His plea carried not just desperation, but the faintest echo of resolve, as if speaking the words might tether him to a path beyond ruin.
For a long while, Flugel did not respond. The silence that followed was vast, smothering, yet strangely sacred. It was so complete that even the restless whispers of the shadows seemed to hold still, as if the entire world leaned in to hear what would come next. The pause stretched until it seemed unbearable, and then—finally—Flugel's lips curved into a smile. But it was not the familiar grin Geuse had seen countless times before, sly and mocking, laced with riddles and cruelty. No. This smile was different. It held no malice, no trickery. It was gentle, sincere—an expression long buried, untouched by centuries of manipulation. It was almost human.
When he spoke, his words were deliberate, chosen with care. Each syllable fell with weight, steady and intentional, like stones laid across a rushing river, forming a bridge toward something new. Word by word, he began to unravel the story from its true beginning. Each phrase stitched possibility into Geuse's battered soul, weaving threads of light into fabric long consumed by shadow. It was not merely speech; it was an offering, a lifeline extended into the abyss.
And in that place where shadows had reigned, silence deepened further still. Even the darkness itself seemed to listen, to linger in reverence, as though it recognized the fragile, precious miracle taking root before its eyes. There, in the hush of a world that had known only despair, the first fragile birth of hope began to glow.