“Fuck! Lillian!” Alira hissed. If it were any other nobles with her who weren't Calix or Raine, they would care more about her crude language.

  Calix didn’t blink or react in any way at all to her curse.

  “What’s wrong?” Raine asked.

  “No. No. Nothing at all.” Alira shook her head frantically. She shouldn’t act like something was wrong. She was their narrator. She can’t have them thinking that. “Just... Give me a moment...”

  Ok. Calm down. Think.

  What can I do to make sure Lillian is alright?

  Alchemy. Magic. Artifact. Xia. Role.

  Right, her aspect. Narrate. Could she use it on Lillian? If a Scene was a chapter in a book, and if this was a Scene, they had been talking about Lillian, so she should technically be a cast member in it. Right? Normally, in a novel wiki, the characters would have their first appearance chapter noted down, even if they were only mentioned.

  No other way to know but to try it out.

  Alira inhaled, telling her nerves to calm down. She interlocked her fingers to stop her hands from shaking.

  It’s all just a baseless speculation. Lillian is fine.

  The girl might already be back at the inn, dozing off.

  Alira used Narrate on Lillian.

  [ So much blood. Lillian is losing way too much blood... ]

  Alira stopped reading at the first sentence. She squeezed her shut to shun away from the words, but they appeared inside her mind, insisting themselves onto her to pour directly into her consciousness.

  [ Her vision is becoming too hazy, but at least her mind has become foggy in a way that numbs her pain. She clutches onto her arm, or at least where it had been. She feels incomplete, off balance, with less weight on her right side. She hopes that at least the three are in a better position. That way, someone would still come for her body and send it home. ]

  “No. No. No, no. I shouldn’t have let her come,” Alira choked out, eyes unfocused. “No. Leave. I have to leave. I have to get to her.”

  As much as she wanted to do nothing more than drop down to her knees to beat herself up, Alira forced herself to sober up. Narrate took place in the present. Lillain was still alive, capable of thoughts still.

  “You...” Raine started, staring at her intensely. “You saw something?”

  “Yes. Listen to me, Raine.” Alira grabbed Raine by his shoulders. “I have two ways of seeing things—through visions in my head and by reading about events and people. I just read on Lillain... The cultist got to her.”

  “What?”

  “Listen,” Alira gritted. She needed to talk, not to Raine but to them. She exhaled, trying to keep her words stable. “She is not doing well; the cultists have done numbers on her, but she is still alive. I will go for her—”

  “I won’t let you,” Calix interrupted. “It’s dangerous.”

  “No. Listen. The cultists. They are planning to let her die out. I saw them stepping away, leaving her behind. They’re going to come to us now. You two deal with them. I will go to Lillain.”

  Raine frowned. “But how? We can’t leave until this spell is run dry.”

  “You can’t, but I can,” Alira said. “I placed down a Position Exchange cast outside the tunnel. I am leaving.” She met Raine’s eyes.

  Raine exhaled sharply. “Go.”

  “Calix, brother Calix,” Alira called, gesturing for him to come to her. Calix approached, even bending down to her level upon seeing Alira wanting to whisper to him.

  “Honestly, I’m not quite sure why you’re here... It’s quite unlike the ‘you’ I have seen,” Alira began. Since he’d most likely heard from Raine about her prophetic ability, Alira could no longer keep it a secret from the duchy.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Calix’s face remained the same, not a muscle moving to react to her words. He just stared down at her with the same blank look, waiting for her to continue.

  “Find something worth acting on?” Alira asked.

  Calix wore the same expression on his face. That was what Alira would have thought if she weren’t up close to him, scrutinizing every crease and line on his face. The subtle flutter of his eyelids betrayed him.

  Alira recalled what his last words were when Raine asked why he’d never act by his own will during the final interrogation, a moment before taking his half-brother’s life. ‘It’s not worth it’ was what he said.

  If she assumed the duke didn’t plan or instruct for her and Calix to meet, there was a chance that he was doing it of his own will.

  “I’m guessing it has something to do with me.” Alira continued. Her words came out way too firm for a guess.

  “So?” Calix said.

  “Protect him,” Alira pleaded. “If you promise me that, I promise you more of what you wanted.”

  Alira gave her words despite not being entirely sure what Calix even wanted.

  Calix narrowed his eyes into a slit. His languid energy and calming scent made her more conscious of herself than even the duke could. It felt like she was standing before a mirror that could reflect anything off its surface.

  “Alright,” Calix replied before Alira lost her nerve.

  She snapped once he agreed. “Good. I’m leaving.”

  Alira closed her eyes, sensing the cast she’d placed outside the tunnel entrance. Position Exchange. She had tried it out a couple of times since it was a fairly convenient cast. Alira reached for the precast somewhere outside, forming a connection with the straw doll, and triggered it.

  The next moment, the air around her was no longer heavy, fresh wind sweeping her now-dry cloak behind. Opening her eyes, Alira found herself outside, standing under the shadow of the tunnel’s structure, right on top of the bloody alchemist circle she’d drawn.

  Immediately, Alira knew exactly why people preferred teleportation arrays implemented by magic over their alchemic equivalent. She felt as if each of her internal organs had shifted slightly to the side to be in all the wrong places. If this was the aftermath of a position transferred over a relatively shorter distance, she could only imagine how severe its effect was in trips across the continents that teleportation arrays couldn’t cover.

  It left her hands shaking. Though some of the shakiness could be from her nerves.

  “Everything’s alright. They don’t have a reason to finish her off...”

  Alira spoke to herself through it.

  “Most likely, they wanted to make an example for the failed attempt in Vesper Reign or for sneaking in. That didn’t require them to kill her.”

  Alira kept up with the talking, partly to calm herself down, mainly to invoke her Role Ability. She looked back and forth between the tunnel and the path to the town. They had been stuck down there for what felt like less than half an hour. If Lillian made her way out at the same speed they’d crept in, she really could already be back at the inn.

  Just when she was about to leave, Raine’s words about mana having memories came to her mind. If that were the case, then detective work should be easy.

  “Hey,” Alira called. It was radio silent on Xia’s side. She couldn’t even hear his subtle breath ringing in her brain, meaning he’d cut off the link at some point. It was still active on her side, so he should be able to hear her.

  “Hey! Hello! Xia. Are you there—!”

  A roaring, pained wail slammed into her from the inside. Alira instinctively reached to cover where her ears should’ve been when she was still fully human. The cat ears on top of her head also flattened, fur rising, in response.

  { A little busy here, sweetie. }

  Xia’s voice smoothed over the sounds of chaos, curses, and cries. That, along with the familiar smell of burning flesh, attacked her senses to overstimulation. Her stomach turned. A loud fracture was followed by a crash as if something, the roof maybe, had fallen from above.

  Alira tried her best not to imagine what Xia was up to during what should be bright daytime on his side of the world. She collected herself just enough to be able to squeeze out a few words.

  “Lillian. Can you tell if she left?”

  { Hmm~ }

  Xia’s hum came at the same time as a whisk of an object, cutting through the air. And fuck, she hated how uncaring he was. Couldn’t he sense how dire things were for her? She knew he could, as she waited for him to reply. A clang of metal against hard ground and some cracking noises came first. Then one of the screams of agony promptly went quiet.

  { Nope. She hadn’t left the sewer. Well, if she had gotten out, it wouldn’t have been this way. }

  Fuck.

  Alira barely noticed Xia slamming the Bridge again, with her world being as loud and chaotic as it was. Her heart drummed against her ribs as she ran into the tunnel.

  Without Raine’s light or the company she had before, the tunnel appeared darker, extending endlessly in a creeping shadow that dashed along with her. Even with eyes that could see better in the dark than a normal person, Alira could see no more than a few steps before her. Had it been anywhere else, she could have relied on her nose to sniff out Lillian’s distinct jasmine and citrus perfume.

  All she could smell was the sewer’s stench and her own stress. Alira’s footsteps ceased, echoing throughout the sewer tunnel. She caught the scent of something else.

  Copper.

  The stream of filth carried down an object that didn’t quite belong to it. Two flimsy hair ties that had lost their shades of light purple. It could have been the shadows, but they seemed to be stained with deep red. The water itself, however, was a shade brighter, brown mixing with crimson that was slowly being washed away.

  That night, Alira was the only one who returned to the inn. She was the only one still when it was time to check out. The carriage back to the Academy, booked by three students, with seats for four, brought back a single student.