The pleasant, sun-drenched atmosphere of the tavern curdled in an instant. The warmth vanished, replaced by a sudden, deep chill. Lucid stared at the man in the black coat. His own voice, when it came, was low and hard, stripped of any pretense of customer service.
"What did you just say?"
The man did not answer with words. He just looked at Lucid. His dark eyes, which had seemed merely empty before, now held a focused, predatory stillness. The message in that stare was as clear as if he had shouted it. *Answer me correctly, or I will end you.* The silence that followed was thick and heavy, stretching out far longer than the few seconds it actually lasted. Time itself seemed to slow, dragging each heartbeat into an eternity.
Lucid forced his hands to relax. He had left the glass and the cleaning cloth on the counter. Now, slowly, he moved his hands to his sides, away from his body, ready to move.
'This guy is dangerous,' his mind screamed. 'I need an advantage. A weapon. Anything.' His thoughts raced, searching for an edge in the empty tavern. And then, instinctively, he reached inward, to the quiet space that had once been occupied. 'Alice?' he thought, a silent, desperate call into the void of his own mind.
Before any internal answer could come, the man in the black coat spoke again. His voice was a low, smooth murmur, but it filled the quiet room.
"So, you prefer not to answer?" he asked.
Lucid studied him now, really looked at him. Every detail confirmed the threat. The sharp, elegant cut of his clothes that spoke of money and a specific, cold taste. The sharp planes of his face, all angles and no softness. The eyes that watched without feeling. What was someone like this doing in a quiet tavern on the edge of a modest town? He was not here for the rum. He knew Rebecca's name. That fact alone sent a new, colder fear through Lucid. If this man knew the innkeeper, and was here asking these questions, did it mean something had already happened to Rebecca out in the market?
A hard resolve solidified in Lucid's chest. Fear was there, icy and sharp, but underneath it was a rising anger. This man had violated the small sanctuary Lucid had found.
"I will ask you a question then," Lucid said, his voice steadier than he felt.
The man's focus intensified. His entire being seemed to zero in on Lucid, a hunter locking onto prey.
Lucid met his gaze. "How much is your life worth, compared to Rebecca's?"
For a second, there was no reaction. Then the man's sharp eyes widened, just a fraction. A faint sound escaped him, a soft chuckle of genuine surprise. It grew into a low laugh, and then he threw his head back and laughed fully, a rich, unrestrained sound that was utterly wrong in the tense atmosphere. It was the laugh of someone who had just heard the best joke of their life.
"What is so funny?" Lucid asked, thrown off balance by the reaction.
The man seemed to calm himself, wiping a non-existent tear from the corner of his eye. His mirth faded as quickly as it had come, leaving his face once again a mask of cool indifference. He picked up the untouched glass of rum from the counter. He inspected the amber liquid for a moment, swirling it gently. Then, in one smooth motion, he tipped it back and drank it all. He slammed the empty glass down on the wooden counter with a sharp crack.
"Thank you for the drink," he said. As he used the back of his gloved hand to wipe his mouth, he made a small, almost invisible gesture with his other hand. It was a flick of the wrist, quick and casual.
But Lucid saw it. He tensed.
"Oh, you surely have noticed by now," the man said, his tone conversational, as if discussing the weather. "How disadvantaged you are."
"Lucid, watch out!"
The voice that rang in his head was painfully familiar. It was Alice. Her tone was not calm or gentle. It was a raw, urgent scream of warning.
The world exploded into violence.
Every window in the tavern shattered at once. Not with a loud crash, but with a simultaneous, high-pitched *crack* of breaking glass, as if struck by an invisible, speeding force. Shards rained down onto the tables and floor, glittering in the sudden flood of sunlight.
Lucid tried to move. He tried to throw himself behind the solid cover of the bar counter. His muscles coiled, but he was too slow. Something punched into the side of his neck with incredible force. It was not pain at first, just a massive, shocking impact that spun him halfway around. Then the agony bloomed, hot and searing. He choked, a wet, gurgling sound tearing from his throat. He could not breathe. He clawed at his neck and his fingers closed around the shaft of a black-feathered arrow buried deep.
He was drowning in his own blood. The world began to tunnel into darkness.
Then, a warm, familiar green light enveloped his throat. It was a sensation he knew, a soothing, knitting warmth that pushed against the agony. Alice was healing him, fighting to close the mortal wound. He felt the flesh struggle to mend around the foreign object.
With a cry of pain that was more of a ragged gasp, he ripped the arrow from his neck. Blood sprayed, but the green light intensified, staunching the flow.
He had no time to recover. A shadow fell over him. The man in the black coat was already there, moving with impossible, silent speed. Two strong, gloved hands shot out and clamped around Lucid's throat, cutting off the air the healing magic was trying to bring him. Lucid thrashed, his hands scrambling across the bottles and shelves behind the counter, searching for a knife, a bottle, anything to use as a weapon. But the space was too narrow, too confined. He was trapped.
The man looked down at him, his black eyes showing no more emotion than if he were watching a bug struggle. He was simply applying pressure, efficiently ending a problem.
Yet, looking up into that indifferent face, Lucid did not feel despair. A strange, fierce energy burned through the pain and panic. He felt his lips stretch. He was smiling. Then he was grinning. A choked, wheezing sound escaped his ruined throat. It was an attempt at a laugh.
The man above him blinked. The utter lack of fear, the sheer absurdity of laughter in this moment, finally cracked his icy composure. A small, genuine smile touched his own lips, a flicker of dark amusement.
"What are you laughing for?" he asked, his voice curious.
Lucid did not answer with words. He answered with action.
Summoning every ounce of strength left in his body, ignoring the screaming pain in his neck, he jerked his head forward and to the side. He sank his teeth into the side of the man's exposed throat, just above the collar of his fine coat.
He tasted fabric, then salt and copper. He bit down as hard as he could and tore his head back, spitting out a mouthful of cloth and flesh.
The man gasped, a sound of pure shock and pain. His grip on Lucid's throat faltered for a single, crucial second. He stumbled back a half-step, one hand flying to the bloody ruin at his neck.
It was the opening Lucid needed, but he was too broken, too slow. As he tried to surge forward, the man's other hand, clenched into a fist, lashed out. It connected with the side of Lucid's head with a dull, heavy thud.
The world did not go dark slowly. It vanished all at once, like a candle snuffed by the wind. The last thing he saw was the man holding his bleeding throat, a faint, eerie blue light beginning to glow between his fingers as if he were casting a spell to heal himself. The last thing he heard was a voice, tinged with that dark amusement.
"You truly are amusing..."
Then, nothing.
***
It was the sickening, familiar void again.
That empty, silent nowhere he seemed to return to every time he brushed too close to death. After the Rift, after battles, after betrayals. He was growing sick of the sight of it. The worst part was the consciousness. He was never fully out. He was always aware, floating in this formless, senseless dark.
'Great. Not this again,' he thought, the words dripping with bitter frustration.
It was almost comical, a terrible routine. Meet danger. Danger nearly kills him. Alice heals him just enough. He puts up a fight. He loses. He winds up here. He was stuck in a loop of almost-dying.
But this time, his thoughts circled back, not to the fight, but to her. Alice. She had been so quiet the last few days. He had called out to her a few times, thought about her, half-expected her to chime in with a comment or some piece of knowledge. But nothing had come. Just silence.
Had he hurt her that badly? He thought about it from her perspective. She had no physical form. She was entirely dependent on him, a passenger in his body with no will or way of her own. It was a kind of prison. He felt a pang of sympathy for her. She had saved his life, guided him, shared her power.
But then he remembered the feeling of his own arm moving without his command. The slick, terrible sensation of a knife being dragged across a man's throat by his own hand. The violation of it was what chilled him, more than the act itself. His body had become a puppet, and someone else was holding the strings. What if that guard in the Rift trial had been a real person, and not some conjured illusion? The thought made him feel sick.
'What if that guard was a real person and not some conjured up being?' he wondered, his thoughts drifting in the endless dark.
Then, he saw it. A faint glow in the distance. A soft, gentle orb of light, like a single star trying to shine through a suffocating black fog. Its light was dim, wavering, as if struggling to exist in this place. It felt close, and yet infinitely far.
Lucid willed himself toward it. There was no body to move, but his intent shifted his awareness. He felt ridiculous, like he was trying to swim in a pool of thick oil. Slowly, gradually, the light grew larger, or he drew closer to it.
He stopped before the softly pulsing orb. A deep, familiar sense of warmth and sadness washed over him. It was a feeling he knew.
A gentle voice then filled the void. It did not come from a direction. It simply was, sounding from everywhere and nowhere at once, woven into the fabric of the darkness itself.
"We meet again, my fated one."
The voice was filled with a sorrowful gentleness. Like it or not, Lucid felt a twist of old resentment in his chest. But alongside it, undeniable and surprising, was a sharp ache of loneliness. He had missed this.
"It is me, Lucid," he said, his own voice soundless in the void but heard nonetheless. "I wanted to talk."
"Talk?" the voice echoed, the light pulsing softly.
"Yes. Thank you," he began, the words feeling clumsy but necessary. "Thank you for healing me back there. Even if we are both maybe dead now. And thank you for everything else you have done. I... I admit I might have overreacted. But I felt wronged by the way you acted. Controlling me."
There was a pause. The light dimmed slightly. "I, too, am terribly sorry for what I did," Alice's voice came, softer now, thick with regret. "I am the one who carried you here. I have asked so much of you. I have done things with your hands that you did not want. You are strong, and you are brave, and you carry more weight than any one person should have to bear. I brought you here, and I expected so much from you. That was not the right thing to do. You were patient, but you have flaws, as all humans do. But what is so captivating about you is that they are almost minimal."
"Minimal?" Lucid's thought-voice rose, edged with sudden anger. "I lie. I cheat. I hurt people. I judge others. I take advantage of kindness, like Rebecca's. Perfect this, perfect that. I do not understand what is so perfect about this 'soul' you speak of so highly."
"You are Lucid," she repeated, the light pulsing as if with a heartbeat. "You may not be aware of it, but you are."
"Then tell me this," he challenged, the old pain rising up. "In my previous life, why was I betrayed? Do you have any idea what kind of life I lived before coming here? I fought an impossible trial where I was meant to die. I was supposed to help them, to lead them with me, but the weight was too much. I let go. I let them fall into the empty abyss. I survived. A cowardly figure like me failed the trial. That should have been it. But I was saved. By my friend. My leader. Renji. And you dare to tell me I'm compassionate, courageous, and intelligent? I am not! I am a good-for-nothing person who does not deserve sympathy."
His outburst echoed in the void. The light was silent for a long moment.
"But are you that person from before," her voice finally came, gentle and unwavering, "or are you the person you are now?"
His awareness, his very being, seemed to still. The angry words died. He did not want to admit it, but he felt a pressure behind his eyes, a sorrow he had locked away. He let himself feel it, a small, fragile moment of vulnerability in the endless dark.
"Courage and cowardice," Alice's voice continued softly. "What is the difference when choosing to fight today rather than. another day, my... Lucid?"
"Courage and cowardice do not matter," she said gently. "What matter is how many times you keep choosing to stand... Lucid. Be it today or tomorrow... in another world...."
He let out a soundless sigh that was part laugh, part sob. "Yeah," he thought. "I guess I would like to call it a tactical retreat." He gathered himself. "I... forgive you."
From the orb of light, he felt it. A soft, exhaled breath of profound relief, a release of tension so deep it resonated through the void. He allowed himself a small, fragile smile. In that moment, something shifted deep within him. It was not a loud or dramatic change. It was quiet, like a root finally breaking through hard soil, or a branch finding a new direction to grow. A bond, strained and tested, did not break. Instead, it grew stronger, branching out into something new, something forged in acknowledgment and hard-won understanding. The void felt a little less empty, as a familiar rectangular shape of a white shadow took form, revealing and parting way for black letters to be revealed.
***
Enlightened Title: The divine maiden
Name: Alice
Rank: Primordial
Fate essence: ∞
Trait: [ The chain of heart ]██████▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
Description: Lost in time and space... Error... Error... This message cannot be revealed further
***