***
Time synchronization reset.
Trial iteration: 3.
***
"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.
As Ivy finished, the moment of choice pressed down. But instead of feeling for the crack to insert his will, Lucid focused on a different part of the memory's flow, the part that controlled Karmen's curiosity, his intellect.
"So," Lucid made Karmen say, his voice not grieving, but thoughtful. "The Empire of Materna. I've read the histories, of course. Ruled by Empress Crepuscula, who only seeks domination. Tell me, is this her personal design? Or is my family just... collateral in a larger strategy for Tyriana's land?"
Ivy blinked, thrown off by the clinical detachment, her cover was broken just like that, the script too offered no response to geopolitical inquiry. "The Empress's will is absolute," she said carefully, her fan pausing. "Tyriana is a strategic foothold. Your family's research was a threat. The outcome is the same. Personal or not, it is beyond your reach to stop."
"I see," Lucid-as-Karmen nodded slowly, as if processing data. He walked to the bookshelf, trailing a finger along the edges of the book covers. "And the mechanism of the curse? Is it keyed to our bloodline? Or to the land? If we were to all leave Tyriana, would it follow us, or would your 'investment' be wasted?"
'Lucid, what are you doing?' Alice whispered, utterly confused.
'Learning,' he thought back. 'And I'm testing something.'
Ivy's violet eyes narrowed. This was not despair, rage, or acceptance. This was... problem-solving. It was disconcerting. "Such speculation is pointless, Young Master. The facts are before you. Your choice is simple."
"Is it?" Lucid turned, and he let a strange, cold smile touch Karmen's lips. It was a smile Lucid had never worn, born of a terrible idea forming in the void between his own cynicism and Karmen's intelligence. "You present two choices: break myself trying to fight you, or break myself accepting your victory. But what if I offer you a third outcome? One that serves Materna's stated goal better than either of my broken states ever could."
Ivy went very still. Her fan lowered completely. "Explain."
'Lucid, no!' Alice's fear was a cold wave.
Karmen's own spirit within the memory seemed to recoil in shock.
Lucid leaned against the desk, the picture of a rational noble making a business proposition. "You want Tyriana. You want its people compliant, its resources flowing to Materna. A grieving, obsessed lord is a problem. A resentful, broken lord is a potential rallying point. But a lord who sees the inevitable... and joins it?"
He let the horrifying words hang in the air. Ivy's eyes were wide, her composure shattered.
"What if I surrender Tyriana to you?" Lucid continued, his voice calm, logical. "Not through conquest, but through treaty. I, as the acting lord after my parents'... passing, formally petition Materna for annexation. I become your vassal. I use my knowledge, my family's research, in your service. My people transition peacefully. Your army doesn't waste a single soldier. You get the land, you neutralize the research threat by controlling it, and you get a cooperative, useful administrator who knows the region. It's efficient. It's clean. And it leaves me... whole, and working for you."
The study was silent enough to hear the dust settle.
In his mind, Alice was screaming, a wordless cry of betrayal.
Karmen's presence was a storm of furious, betrayed shock.
Ivy stared at him. For the first time, true, unguarded emotion flashed across her face. Not triumph, but a kind of appalled awe. Then, a slow, genuine smile spread beneath her veil. "You," she breathed, "are a fascinating creature. That is... an outcome we had not modeled. A surrender so complete it becomes an alliance."
She took a step forward, her gaze intense. "You would do that? Betray your home, your people, your family's legacy, to save your own skin and gain a position?"
Lucid held her gaze, his own hidden behind Karmen's blue eyes. "I would ensure the survival of my people with the least bloodshed. And I would survive. You call it betrayal. I call it... pragmatic realignment."
Ivy laughed, a sound of genuine delight. "Oh, Karmen. You have surprised me. Very well. Draft your petition. We will... consider it."
She swept from the room, leaving behind the scent of her perfume and the crushing weight of Lucid's terrible, logical choice.
***
Time synchronization accelerating.
Conclusion path: Vassalage.
***
The world blurred. Lucid felt time lurch forward in great, sickening jumps.
He saw the petition signed with Karmen's hand.
He saw Ivy presenting it to a superior.
He saw the Imperial seals stamped onto Tyriana's charter.
He saw the first columns of Maternan soldiers marching in, not as invaders, but as "peacekeeping forces" under the new treaty.
Then, the changes began.
New laws were proclaimed. Since Tyriana was a town founded by majorty of demi-humans, they were banished and some imprisoned, anyone over the age of fifty was deemed "non-contributory" and was to report for "community reassignment." They were never seen again. Shops and trades not directly beneficial to the Imperial war machine were shuttered. A systematic "cleansing" of old bloodlines, of potential resistance, began. The previous town governor, the old heir, was publicly executed for the crime of "ideological weakness."
Tyriana was being dismantled and rebuilt in the image of Materna, a cold, efficient resource farm. And Karmen, Lord Vassal Karmen, was forced to watch from his mansion, now filled with Imperial clerks, signing the orders that dismantled his world.
He was not obsessed with a cure. He was drowning in complicity.
The curse on his family was lifted. Ivy deemed it unnecessary. His parents, broken and confused, lived in a gilded wing under guard. They were alive. He had saved them from the curse.
He had condemned them, and everyone else, to something worse.
***
Time synchronization
***
The final jump brought him to the town square. A platform was erected. His older brother, Lyle, the genius inventor, was on his knees. His crime was "hoarding intellectual property detrimental to Imperial security"—his private blueprints.
Karmen stood on the viewing platform next to Ivy. He wore fine Maternan-style clothes. He looked healthy. The cough was gone. The exhaustion was gone. He was whole.
And he was dead inside.
He watched as the axe fell. He did not flinch.
Afterward, in the silent, bloodstained square, Ivy turned to him. She reached up and gently touched his cheek. Her violet eyes were soft, almost sorrowful.
"You made my heart ache, Karmen," she whispered. "That was a beautiful, terrible spectacle. The ultimate courage of a coward. To sacrifice everything you were to save the shell of what you are. I will remember it."
She left him standing there, alone amidst the Imperial guards.
In the void of Karmen's mind, Lucid felt it all. The crushing guilt. The hollow victory. The survival that tasted of ash and blood.
he world began to dissolve around him. Every line and edge softened, then melted into the next, all of it fading away into a single, consuming darkness.
"What have I done?" Lucid's own thought was nothing more than a quiet, lost sound in his mind, right before he fell back into the void.
Karmen's spirit was not raging anymore. It was a vast, frozen sea of despair. 'You found a third path,' Karmen's voice echoed in their shared prison. 'A path I never could have conceived. Because I loved them too much to think of it.'
Alice was silent, a presence of profound, mournful disappointment.
Then, in the memory, Karmen did something. He looked up at the grey sky, and he smiled. It was a small, broken, forgiving smile. He brought his own hand up and slapped his own face, a sharp, painful crack. It was Lucid's old habit, a reflex from Earth, from a life of betrayal.
"Try again," Karmen whispered, his voice barely audible. "I believe in you, Lucid."
'Why?' Lucid screamed into the void. 'I just made it all worse! I'm a coward! I just find newer, more horrible ways to fail!'
'You are trying,' Karmen's voice came back, weary but firm. 'You are looking at the board from an angle I never did. You asked questions I was too grief-stricken to ask. You learned. Now... learn from this. Please. Try again.'
The world did not dissolve into blackness. It simply rewound. The blood vanished from the stones. The crowd disappeared. The axe un-fell. Lucid felt time pulling him back, not to the study, but earlier, to the moment just before the choice.
He had survived the trial's penalty. He had not repeated the original conclusion.
But he had not found the right answer. He had found a deeper circle of hell.
And now, he had to go back. With the memory of Lyle's falling axe, of Ivy's sorrowful touch, of Karmen's forgiving smile burned into his soul. He had to find a fourth path. A real one.
***
Time synchronization reset.
Trial iteration: 4.
***