***
Beginning time synchronization.
***
The world dissolved into the familiar, sickening black void. But this time, it was not silent.
A voice resounded within him, laughing. It was a raspy, painful sound, wet and broken, as if the person laughing was holding back tears.
"Not bad," the voice echoed in the emptiness. It was Karmen's voice, but stripped of all its noble polish, raw and frayed at the edges. "That choice... it wasn't bad. I don't... hold a personal grudge against you for it."
The voice hitched, the laughter dying into a choked silence. "But... try again."
The words were a whisper, filled with a bottomless, lonely regret.
Then the world turned upside down. The void snapped, and his vision opened to a familiar place.
The knock at the study door was soft, yet it seemed to echo in the heavy silence. Lucid, wearing Karmen's older, trained body, looked up from the desk.
He felt a jolt of pure, disorienting horror. He was back. Exactly back. The same heavy air, the same fading light through the window, the same impending knock.
This time, he did not will his mouth to move. But it moved anyway.
"Enter," Karmen's voice said, calm and tired.
The door opened. It was Ivy, her violet eyes cool above the dark veil, her presence a wave of serene poison.
"Young Master Karmen," she began, her script unchanged.
'No. No, no, no!' Lucid screamed inside the prison of Karmen's body. He was a passenger again, forced to watch the same scene replay. Alice's presence in his mind was a whirlwind of bewildered confusion.
'Lucid, what is happening? We changed it! We altered the conclusion!' Her voice was frantic.
Ivy delivered the news of the grandfather's death, the same words, the same clinical cruelty. She offered the same forked path, her voice a melodic trap.
Lucid was trapped, forced to listen as Karmen's voice asked the same questions, weighed down by the same grief. The moment of choice was rushing toward him again, but he was locked out. His earlier defiance, his cold dismissal of Ivy, was gone. Erased.
As Ivy finished speaking, the heavy tension filled the room again. The moment for Karmen's response hung in the air.
Then, something shifted. Lucid felt a minuscule crack in the control. A split second where he could influence the mouth, the face.
He didn't try for defiance. He broke the moment with something else entirely.
He made Karmen's lips twitch. Then, he forced a short, breathy laugh. It was utterly inappropriate, a discordant sound in the grief-stricken room.
Ivy's recited speech faltered. Her violet eyes widened a fraction in genuine surprise.
"Sorry," Lucid made Karmen say, the voice tinged with a weird, hysterical edge. "It's just... all this talk of curses and withering Fate Essence. It sounds like a bad tavern tale. 'And then the evil wizard cursed the noble line with a case of the spiritual drips!'"
He heard Alice, shocked, let out a faint, internal chuckle. Something in his own chest, maybe Karmen's own buried spirit, felt a flicker of grim contempt for the farce.
Ivy stared, her serene mask completely shattered. This was not in the script. This was not grief, rage, or calculated acceptance. This was absurdity.
Yet, the moment passed. The crushing weight of the trial reasserted itself. Lucid felt the control slipping back to the memory's flow. He had to choose. He had to say something to save Karmen. But save him from what? Why was he back here?
'You played by the rules,' Alice thought, her confusion mirroring his own. 'You changed the conclusion. Why must you do it again?'
The pressure was immense. The penalty for an unchanged conclusion was death. He had to say something.
'Be courageous, Lucid,' Alice urged, but her voice was uncertain.
'What is courage?' Lucid's own thought shot back, desperate and angry. 'If it just means choosing to die obsessed in a different way? What's the point?'
A memory flickered in Alice's shared consciousness. 'You are in a trial, Lucid. A trial.'
The word sparked a dark, dangerous thought.
Kill her.
The idea was sudden and violent. If Ivy was the agent, remove the agent. Cut the thread.
'No!' Alice's voice was sharp, fearful. 'The Empire will seek retribution! You will bring ruin upon this house!'
'What Empire?' Lucid thought, the logic of the trial overriding the logic of the memory. 'I'm in a trial. This is a test. A puzzle. The "Empire of Materna" is a set piece. A part of the story.'
A strange, devious excitement coiled in his chest. It was the thrill of a scout seeing a hidden path, a dangerous, stupid, possibly brilliant solution. He was not thinking as Karmen. He was thinking as Lucid, a player trapped in a game.
Alice felt the shift in his spirit. 'No, Lucid! That is not courage! That is cowardice! To choose violence is to choose the easy, bloody answer! It solves nothing!'
On the desk, Ivy had recovered. Her surprise had melted into a colder, more dangerous amusement. She let out a soft, sincere laugh, pulling a dark silk fan from her robes and flicking it open, hiding the lower part of her face. Her eyes, however, were hard as gemstones. "You have a strange humor, Young Master, for a man watching his house die."
Lucid felt the last of the memory's control snap. He was back in the driver's seat. Karmen's body was his to command.
He stood up. The movement was not the weary rise of a grieving heir. It was the fluid, powerful motion of a trained fighter settling into a stance. He looked at Ivy, and he smiled. It was not Karmen's smile. It was Lucid's smile. It was fierce, reckless, and utterly terrifying in this context.
"Well," Lucid said, his voice now completely his own, layered over Karmen's. "I guess I'll test this body out."
He took a step forward.
Ivy's fan stopped moving. Her eyes went wide with genuine alarm. This was not part of any plan.
"Stop, Lucid!" Alice screamed in his mind, pure panic in her voice. "You will die! If you die in the trial, you die in real life, no! This is not the way!"
But Lucid was already moving.
He never even saw her hand move.
Something invisible, sharp, and immensely powerful punched into his stomach. The force lifted him off his feet and threw him sideways. His head struck the corner of the heavy oak desk with a sickening crack before he crumpled to the floor. White hot pain exploded in his gut and skull. He couldn't breathe. He could only gasp, writhing on the expensive rug.
A shadow fell over him. Ivy stood above, looking down with a mixture of pity and contempt. Her fan was closed, tapping gently against her palm.
"You fool," she cooed, her voice sweet as poisoned honey. "Did you really think you could take on an Enlightened as a mere Awakened? Ahahaha."
She knelt beside him, her violet eyes boring into his. "Well, it doesn't matter. Your little outburst just proved you are too volatile to leave to your own devices. You will make a fine test subject. The Empire is always looking for resilient specimens to study the long term effects of Fate Essence corrosion."
Lucid tried to scramble away, his limbs flailing weakly. He was strong, in theory, from Karmen's rigorous training, but the technique, the knowledge of how to truly fight, was something only Karmen possessed. He was just a terrified soul in a powerful shell.
He dragged himself toward the door, one hand clutching his agonizing stomach.
"How brave of you," Ivy laughed behind him, a chilling, musical sound. "Running like a cornered rabbit."
He reached the door, fingers scrambling for the handle. He could feel her standing up, taking her time. His options were a horror show. Spend the rest of his life as a guinea pig for a cruel empire, or die. Die like a coward.
His free hand fumbled in the pocket of Karmen's coat. His fingers closed around something cool and sharp. The small, elegant silver letter opener he had used earlier.
"NO!" Alice's voice shrieked in his mind, a raw blast of terror. He felt a resistance in his arm, a sudden stiffness as she tried to stop him. But another force, maybe Karmen's own buried despair, maybe his own desperate will, overpowered hers.
He didn't aim for Ivy. That was hopeless.
With a choked, guttural sound that was part sob, part final defiance, he drove the sharp point up under his own chin.
There was a shocking pressure, a hot flood, and then a terrible, quiet gurgling as he choked on his own blood.
The last thing he saw was Ivy's face, her amused smile frozen, then slowly melting into a look of mild, professional interest as she watched the life fade from Karmen's blue eyes.
Then the world went dark.
***
Beginning time synchronization.
***
The world dissolved into the familiar, sickening black void. But this time, it was not silent.
A new voice resonated within him. It was not Alice's. It was a masculine voice, thick with a nasally, congested quality, as if its owner had been crying or was very sick.
"For someone who is a coward," the voice said, "you are surprisingly courageous."
Lucid floated in the nothingness, the phantom sensation of blood in his throat making him want to retch.
"Try again," the voice said, the words a confirmation, not a request.
"Try what?!" Lucid shot back into the void, his spirit shaking with fury and despair. "There is no other way around this! Either I accept her deal and go down a terrible path, or I let your parents die without playing into Materna's hands! There is no third option! I tried making a new one and she killed me!"
"There is," the voice insisted, gentle but stubborn. "I believe in you, Lucid. You can do it. This little voice of yours, Alice, she thinks so highly of you. Please. Show me the way. I think you can show me. Show us that courage is more than what it seems. That cowardice is more than what it is. That they can go hand in hand. So try again."
Before Lucid could scream his frustration, he heard a sound in the void.
A soft, deliberate snap of fingers.
The world went dark, and then it rushed back, not into the study, but into a blur of sensation and light. He was hurtling backwards through the memory, through time itself within the rift. The carriage ride reversed, the academy vanished, the purple fields streamed past in reverse.
***
Time synchronization reset.
Trial iteration: 3.
***
The world settled.
The knock at the study door was soft, yet it seemed to echo in the heavy silence. Lucid, wearing Karmen's older, trained body, looked up from the desk.
He didn't even wait for Karmen's voice to speak. He fought for control immediately, his will clashing with the memory's momentum. A sickening lurch, like forcing a stuck gear, and then he had it.
"Ivy right? come in!"
He looked at the door, his heart a frantic drum in Karmen's chest.
He was back. For the third time.