The violet glow pulsing from the statue's cracks was steady now—faint, but rhythmic. Like a second heartbeat echoing beneath the canopy of the silent forest.
Wolf stood several paces away from Lamentia, boots rooted in damp earth, his hand resting casually against the hilt of his saber. Yet, despite his composed stance, his thoughts spun sharply, weaving new threads from every word she gave him.
He tilted his head just slightly, enough to let his bangs fall a little over his eyes, then asked in his calm, rough-edged tone,
"…How did you end up like this?"
The question hung in the air for a brief moment, cool and deliberate. Lamentia's silver eyes shifted to him slowly, like moonlight sliding across still water.
She let out a soft, airy sound—half chuckle, half exhale.
"Mmm," she hummed, tilting her head with an almost feline grace, "you're not the type who wastes time, are you?"
Her expression shifted—a faint shadow of something bitter flickered through her face, a tightness that didn't fit with her usual smugness. She brushed it away with a single breath, then began, her tone deepening into something slower, heavier, like reciting something she had etched into her soul long ago.
"I was sealed away by Lysander."
Wolf's brow twitched faintly, the familiar name scraping across his thoughts like a rough stone.
Lamentia noticed his stillness almost immediately.
A soft gasp escaped her—subtle, delicate, almost playful.
"Oh… you don't know, right?" she said, voice laced with quiet amusement. Her hand moved within the confines of the cracked stone—an almost imperceptible motion that made the violet lines flare faintly brighter.
"Well, he is…"
And then she began talking—smoothly, without looking at Wolf at all, as if she were talking more to memory than to a living person in front of her.
"He is renowned for… his alchemist skills and knowledge," she said, her voice stretching over each word like someone carefully brushing the dust off a sacred text.
"Though many names have been ascribed to him, the most famous are The Zenith Philosopher and The Unbinder of the Heavens."
Wolf's fingers unconsciously flexed against the hilt of his saber.
The titles were grand—too grand.
"Alchemists speak of him only as The Grand Alchemist or The Benefactor of the Age."
She let out a soft, fond laugh that didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Ah… you wonder why, aren't you?"
Her tone became airier, lighter, almost teasing.
"That's because he was the one who discovered Ether. The Pioneer. The first to lay bare the threads of the invisible. He has since remained our guiding light, ceaselessly pursuing his research, forging countless fundamental truths, methodologies, and theories."
Her voice swelled with a faint, eerie pride—like a disciple speaking of her god but it wasn't exactly like that.
Wolf tilted his chin slightly down, narrowing his gaze.
Ether…yes
The word lodged itself in his mind like a sharp splinter.
Lamentia's tone faltered briefly. Not entirely—but just enough for Wolf to catch it.
"…That was until," she said slowly, "he went insane—or so they say."
A dry silence stretched for a heartbeat.
"He lost himself," she continued, the smooth elegance in her voice replaced by a flatter, duller tone. "That's what everyone has been saying. And eventually… they all believed it that way. Without the truth."
The faint wind brushed against Wolf's cloak, stirring the edges lightly.
He caught the shift in her expression—a very slight downturn in her lips, her eyes losing a hint of their sharpness.
"If you're going to ask what the truth is," she said, her voice turning almost sing-song again, "well… I don't know that either."
She let out a short giggle—not cruel, but hollow.
"I wasn't a contemporary of his," she added, lowering her gaze briefly.
Then her tone lifted again, brightening as though tugged up by a thread.
"But then who was his contemporary, you may ask?"
She smiled wide now, flashing sharp delight.
"Obvious one—the first saint. Valen. Hahaha…"
The laughter echoed faintly through the clearing, twining with the flickering violet light around her.
Wolf didn't move. His breath was quiet, deep, and even—but his eyes never left her face.
Lamentia's shoulders relaxed inside the statue, her voice slipping into a blunter rhythm, her earlier theatrics dimming.
"After that," she said softly, "Lysander began his endless, reckless pursuit. Whether for power or knowledge, no one can say. A tragic fall from grace, they called it."
Her tone had lost its playful edge now. It sounded like someone retelling an old story they'd heard too many times, one whose ending always tasted bitter.
"His pursuit continued for a very… long period of time." Her silver eyes drifted somewhere far beyond Wolf—somewhere deep in memory, or myth.
Then, with the barest curl of her lips, she spoke again, her voice almost a whisper:
"Ah. One of his most famous—and worst—acts…" She paused, the violet cracks brightening with a faint, unnerving pulse.
"…is called The Divine Scorn."
The last words seemed to hang in the air, too heavy, too loaded to simply pass like any other.
Wolf felt a subtle weight settle on his chest—from the way those words carried something real.
He narrowed his eyes slightly, breathing out through his nose.
Divine Scorn...
That doesn't sound like the kind of story that ends quietly.
The violet cracks threading through the statue began to shimmer brighter with each word leaving Lamentia's lips—like her memory itself was feeding the glow.
A faint pulse rippled outward from the stone, brushing against Wolf's skin like a cold current in a black river. His jaw tightened just slightly as he listened.
Lamentia tilted her head, a grin creeping slowly onto her face—not one of amusement, but something stranger. A grin soaked in distant memory and the faintest trace of madness.
"…The whole world," she began softly, her voice stretching like silk over a knife's edge, "was his laboratory."
Her silver eyes fixed on nothing in particular. Her tone deepened, gaining weight as though the air itself leaned in to hear.
"And everyone… everything," she continued, almost whispering, "was his guinea pig."
The forest around them was unnaturally still—no wind, only the faint rustle of leaves from far beyond.
Wolf's fingers slowly flexed against the hilt of his saber.
"In that act," Lamentia said, "he was trying to reach heaven…"
She spoke the word heaven with a sliver of mockery.
"…by extracting life force and Ether from all living creatures—everything that breathed, everything that pulsed—and concentrating it all at himself."
Her voice gained a sharp rhythm now, like a knife carving through old parchment.
"Then," she said, "he sent out all the Ether into a single beam that split the sky open. They said that at that moment… they heard the sound of trumpets and drums—thousands, tens of thousands—thundering through the heavens. A light so bright it scorched the horizon poured down from the sky, as if something was descending. A god. Or something wearing that word."
Her expression was unreadable. Her lips parted slightly as though savoring the memory, though Wolf knew she hadn't seen it herself—she was recounting something burned into the world's collective history.
"They said that moment lasted for hours," she whispered, "before it ended. Then Lysander sent Ether across the world, carrying what would be his last words."
She looked down now, her lashes lowering like thin shadows. Then she spoke in a perfect imitation of a human voice carried on the wind—cold, calm, and scathing:
"I am tired of people believing in what does not exist.I am tired of it.Now you see—God did not exist.Open your eyes, people.Open your eyes, and chase what exists."
"And in the end no god was there... nothing was descending"
Her voice fell silent.
Wolf exhaled softly through his nose.
That speech… It sounded too real.
Too cold.
"No one ever saw him after that," Lamentia continued, her voice softening but sharpening at the edges. "He disappeared from history. Some say he died… from taking too much life force into himself. They called him The Great Corrupter. And that was the end of his story."
Wolf's gaze darkened as he let her words turn in his mind.
With this much detail...
There's no way this is still our world that just changed. What the hell is really happening here?
Lamentia seemed almost amused by his silence.
She's willing to share information, Wolf thought.
Although These kinds of things is common knowledge for people here… All the more reason to get everything I can from her.
He straightened slightly, letting his voice cut through the still air.
"So how did Lysander even seal you here?"
Lamentia's eyes lit up with an almost childlike delight. She tilted her head and let out a soft, lilting giggle.
"Hehehe… I knew you'd ask that question." Her smile widened, a crescent of silver glimmer.
"Well, you see… I was chasing some enemies. They fled to this mountain. I followed, of course. And without realizing it… I stumbled upon him right here."
Her eyes shifted—sharper now.
"He looked injured. My enemies were trying to talk to him—perhaps beg, perhaps offer something—but he just… straight up killed them all."
Her tone had changed. There was no laughter in it now. Only cold.
"By absorbing all their life force."
Wolf's fingers twitched faintly.
"They turned into dried, wrinkled corpses in a split second."
Lamentia closed her eyes slowly, as though the image itself was still vivid.
The forest around them seemed to dim slightly as her voice dropped into something closer to a narration than conversation.
The air grew colder. A sharp wind rolled down from the mountainside like a knife.
A group of armored figures stumbled through the undergrowth—faces pale, breath ragged. Blood smeared the bark of trees they brushed against. And then there he was.
Lysander.
He stood in the clearing with the stillness of something not entirely human.
Tall. Thin. His spine bent ever so slightly, creating the silhouette of a scholar who had spent centuries hunched over tomes—and yet, there was an unshakable presence about him.
His monocle glinted faintly—a contraption of layered lenses stacked like a clockmaker's creation, rotating and adjusting with soft clicks over his left eye. His right eye, amber, was wide open—unnervingly so—while the left, gray and magnified behind the glass, didn't blink at all.
The edges of his face bore small, precise stitches; uneven sutures crawled up his temple and neck like neat scars—like something sewn back together by an uncaring surgeon. His black hair fell in messy, tangled strands that swayed with the wind.
His long coat, dark gray and frayed, caught the faint light. His cloak shimmered faintly red when the leaves shifted above him. The shirt beneath was unevenly sewn—one half delicate, almost aristocratic; the other plated with rough, bolted metal sheets.
Lamentia's enemies froze at the sight of him. One of them shouted something she couldn't hear.
He didn't speak.
He didn't even look at them properly.
Then, without gesture or chant, the air itself collapsed inward.
A rush of Ether—thick, choking, invisible—swept through the clearing, and in less than a second, the men around him withered like dry leaves in fire.
Their skin sagged. Their hair turned to ash. Their bodies cracked apart like old leather.
Lamentia stepped through the trees just as he turned his head toward her.
He walked up to her slowly, not with the gait of a monster, but like a gentleman crossing a ballroom.
Then he extended a pale, slender hand toward her, voice soft, eerily polite.
"Nice to meet you, miss," he said, his mouth moving with precise enunciation. "My name is—"
Before he could finish, Lamentia lunged!
Her weapon—a long urumi—snapped into the air like liquid steel. It was no ordinary whip-blade. Twenty-three ribbon-thin edges unraveled in an arc, whistling like serpents in flight, their movement so fast it made the air scream.
The blow struck him like a storm. His body was flung backward across the clearing, but he didn't bleed.
No.
Not even a scratch.
He stood, brushing the dirt off his coat calmly, as if she had merely nudged him.
Her eyes narrowed.
His didn't blink.
Not even once.
His mouth was still moving—mumbling to himself, lips twisting soundlessly.
She couldn't hear a word.
She didn't care to.
She raised the urumi again.
Lysander tilted his head—like someone examining an insect with fascination.
The broken forest began to darken.
And the real fight started from there.
The instant Lysander lifted into the night air, his thin silhouette folding into the moonlight like a wraith, the world seemed to recoil. The silence shattered with a series of guttural, wet ruptures—pop, pop, pop—and something began clawing its way out of the dark fissures in the ground.
One after another, the homunculi emerged.
Their forms were grotesquely uneven, like something sculpted in haste by hands that understood anatomy only as a concept. Some were faceless lumps with a single lidless eye jittering in the center of their skulls.
Others bore skeletal frames wrapped in sinew stretched too tight, limbs like elongated wires. A few had arms that split into claw-tipped branches, while others moved on uneven, many-jointed legs that clicked like snapping bone. Their flesh shone faintly, slick with alchemical fluid; every movement was accompanied by the muted slosh of something still half-born.
Lamentia tilted her head, her purple hair falling over one shoulder like a silken veil.
Her lips parted into a quiet, delighted chuckle—soft, but carrying the weight of someone who had slaughtered before.
She shifted her footing with the grace of a dancer. The urumi in her grasp unfurled with a sharp snap, each of its twenty-three blades whistling through the air like a pack of starved wolves.
The sound alone—high, cutting, whirring—made the creatures hesitate.
"Oh, how boring," she whispered, voice light, almost lyrical.
"How many of you must I cut before the night grows bored of your screams?"
Her toes dug into the damp soil, and she spun.The urumi surged outward in a blazing arc of silver.
The blades didn't strike like a sword—they coiled, twisted, curled around their targets.
One creature raised a shieldlike arm in panic; the urumi curved around it effortlessly, slashing through the thin joint behind the limb, severing it clean.
The blade didn't stop—it whipped back and tore across its neck in the same breath.
Warm ichor fountained upward in a grotesque spiral.
Lamentia inhaled deeply through her nose, rhythm matching the rotation of her hips. With every pivot, her weapon carved the air into a shimmering cocoon. A figure-eight dance. A sphere of death.
One homunculus lunged forward—a tall one, its jaw split in two, dripping translucent sap.
It moved with frightening speed, multiple legs scuttling like an arachnid's.
Lamentia bent low, spine arching fluidly, and redirected the urumi in a low sweep. The blade caught its front legs, tore them apart like wet parchment, and continued upward to cleave across its throat. The sound of metal biting flesh echoed like a tearing sail.
Another creature—a winged mockery of a human, with fractured ribs sprouting into thin, blade-like appendages—hovered above her, gathering volatile ether in its sternum.
It launched a spiraling burst of emerald fire. Lamentia's left heel dug into the ground; she twisted, bringing the urumi in a rapid, circling sweep.
The blades intercepted the ether projectile midair, scattering the green flames into harmless sparks that fell around her like perverse starlight.
She was a storm.
A relentless, rotating storm of steel.
The homunculi charged in desperate clusters, some emitting shrill cries, others eerily silent. Lamentia's figure flickered between them, each movement controlled—breath, hips, wrists—never once losing the thread of her rhythm. Her weapon coiled through necks, around torsos, through raised arms and desperate defenses, cutting not once but dozens of times in a heartbeat.
Their flesh could not withstand the urumi. The air filled with that distinctive whirring—a dreadful symphony that wormed its way into the bones of anything still living.
Blood sprayed in long ribbons, painting the rocks, the roots, the hanging vines of the cavern's ceiling.
"Pathetic," she murmured, as a final creature—small, shivering, with no mouth, only a hole where its face should be—tried to crawl away. Her weapon lashed backward without her even looking.
The blade wrapped around its head and twisted.
A wet crack followed.
Then… silence.The bodies lay scattered in every direction.
Their pale blood soaked into the earth, steam rising where it mingled with the cold air.
Lamentia stood in the center of the massacre, chest rising and falling with a slow, deliberate rhythm. The urumi dripped crimson, its blades swaying faintly like ribbons in a breeze.
But that stillness——it was wrong.
The ground beneath the corpses pulsed faintly. First a shimmer. Then a sound like bones being ground together. The mangled flesh of the homunculi began to sink inward, liquefying into a black-amber sludge. The air filled with a low hum—no, a chant, mechanical and layered, as if a thousand voices whispered in reverse.
Lysander, floating above with his coat drifting around him like a dark halo, tilted his head slowly. His monocled eye glinted with sharp, cold delight. His thin mouth moved soundlessly at first, then—
"Devour."
The corpses convulsed violently. Flesh melted into thin strands of ether, translucent and shivering like filaments of glass.
One by one, they spiraled upward—not to him—but toward her. Toward Lamentia.
She jerked backward, eyes widening as the first strand coiled around her wrist, burning cold like liquid metal. More followed. They twined around her limbs, her torso, her throat.
Ether plates began to form—a hard, stone-like material with cracks glowing faintly from within. They layered over her skin like armor, piece by piece, sealing her body as if the air itself turned to shackles.
"What… is this?" Her voice trembled—with restrained fury. She pulled against the bindings.
The urumi flailed and hissed in the dirt like a dying serpent, unable to reach her hands anymore.
Lysander extended a single, trembling finger. His amber eye was bright, almost fevered.
"… fits perfectly."
The ether plates closed over her chest last.
The heart.
A small cracked opening remained—just enough for her to see.