“Before trusting someone at their first word, consider whether your well-wisher might actually be your enemy.”

  [ 40th of Lumiran, 1749 | Yuvel | 00:19 | Dormitory Room 231 ]

  I sat on the bed, observing Catherine. She stood frozen by the door, her silhouette etched against the window by the light of the three moons—Miga, Krinsp, and Lagur—which, according to local legends, were tied to the pantheons that once ruled here. Were those gods still alive? Perhaps, but pondering them now was pointless. My perception of Illumora remained clouded by Chaotic Light’s anomaly, forcing me to rely on mere fragments of information in this distorted world.

  Yet all that faded before her. Before this virus, this soul that had invaded my structure and triggered a malfunction corroding me from within. Her very presence generated a persistent hum deep inside me, unlike anything I had ever encountered. The “itch,” as I’d named the sensation, was the moment when the perfect lines of my perception bent and warped. If she merely surrendered to her emotions, I couldn’t remain detached; the itch would instantly begin to vibrate and thrum, as if signaling that I was doing something wrong. I didn’t understand the secret hidden behind her blue eyes, but I knew it meant nothing good for me.

  What did she expect? That I would yield to this dissonance? Naive. Even Light-Darkness, now calling herself the Arbiter, had appeared in person—for what? To lecture me on the consequences of my “incorrect decisions”? She plays a dark game, and trusting her would be as foolish as expecting Chaotic Light to become my dearest friend. If the so-called Arbiter played fair, she would have granted me the memory of all my mistakes, not just a select few instances. For millennia she watched me, analyzed my actions, yet remained merely an arrogant observer. And I’m supposed to believe this “All-Seeing Player” who, after thousands of years analyzing identical games, still hasn’t grasped the rules? A feeble creature, imagining herself above me. Another error in calculation.

  Nevertheless, the visions she showed me could be considered truthful, though not absolute. There was always a chance she had distorted them. Which meant only one thing: I must rely solely on my own logic and structure. The only correct course was to accelerate my thought processes, to calculate the optimal path for eliminating the anomaly. Sacrificing units to save the universe had always been the optimal strategy.

  Thoughts flashed not as a stream, but as myriad crystalline facets, each reflecting a potential future—Illumora in flames, Illumora at peace, Illumora erased from existence. And at the center of every shining projection—her silhouette, her blue eyes, introducing an unpredictable variable, distorting the geometry of all calculations. My missions in other worlds were suspended; all available cognitive power focused on this single task. In less than a minute, the computations converged on two options, two possible endgames where she could not interfere.

  First: surgical intervention. Erase the very existence of Catherine, Nova, and Ren from the fabric of Illumora’s reality. No birth—no anomalies. No anomalies—no imprisonment for me within the temporal loop through the shell of Artalis Nox. The risks were colossal: violating the cause-and-effect chains of an entire world, plunging it into utter chaos. But on the scales—one world versus the entire universe. The choice of sacrifice was obvious. I glanced at Catherine, frozen by the door…

  In that same instant, the itch flared into an unbearable fire, threatening to melt the very foundations of my structure. Pain—not physical, but systemic, as if a handful of sand had been thrown into a perfect mechanism. To sacrifice my own integrity to eliminate a local anomaly? Irrational. This path led to my own disintegration, unacceptable for an architect of equilibrium. No. Better to exist in this vulnerable form until the end of time than to let this virus destroy me from within. However, should the second option fail, I would be forced to make that very irrational sacrifice so celebrated in Illumora.

  The second option was a targeted correction. Elimination of the primary cause of the anomaly—the book written by the fool L. Alterius. If Ren never read it, her wish would not take form, Chaotic Light would not hear her call. Even if the insane entity CL transferred her anyway, without the template formed by the book, she would quickly lose interest in her toy. And Ren would find someone else in the Anix Empire. The risk of distorting the timeline of her native world, Fermecanima, through such manipulation did not exceed 23%—an entirely acceptable margin of error.

  The choice was obvious. The second option prevailed by all parameters. It was the one I would choose. The first would be employed only in case of absolute failure. Sacrifice, for me, had always been an inefficient path.

  『 ?? 』━━━???━━━『 ? 』

  [ 40th of Lumiran, 1749 | Yuvel | 00:22 | Dormitory Room 231 ]

  I exhaled and straightened my back. The night’s events had left deep fissures in my internal structure. Catherine, seeing the tension leave my face, stepped away from the door and stood silently opposite me. Her gaze slid to my shoulder, where on the skin, still remembering the burn of magic, now lay the pattern engraved by the Arbiter’s power—two intertwined spirals of Light and Darkness.

  “Arta…” she began slowly. “Tell me, what just happened?…”

  I sighed.

  “What… happened?…” I repeated slowly. “Are you still asking? Do you truly wish to know… the truth?”

  “Yes, Arta, I want to know everything,” she nodded firmly.

  “Have you so easily forgotten my warnings about the danger of this information?”

  Catherine shook her head.

  “I haven’t forgotten anything. I remember everything perfectly.” She paused. “And this pattern on your shoulder, is it also connected to this?”

  “Yes, it is connected. Everything is connected, but that is not the problem, Catherine,” I answered coldly.

  “Then what is?…” she clarified uncertainly.

  She watched me, unblinking, and in her eyes, like a distorted mirror, I saw what I did not wish to see—my own pitiful reflection.

  If her soul caught me in a temporal loop, perhaps it is time for radical action? She thinks she loves an ordinary girl—typical, foolish behavior for a human soul. If I shatter that illusion, show her the cold void behind the mask, her human attachment, built on false data, will not endure. The connection will break. The cycle will cease. It is risky, but passive waiting is even more inefficient. As for the Ren and Nova anomaly, the only solution is the destruction of the book. A second mission at the academy will only bring more risks.

  But am I prepared to show Catherine my true essence? Can her fragile soul withstand the sight of the primordial void, bound by the golden chains of absolute order? Will she see beyond the mask of Arta the cold, infinite architecture of existence, where her “love” is merely a statistical deviation, an anomaly to be eliminated? No one ever withstood it. Random souls who glimpsed beyond that boundary froze for entire centuries, until I departed from them…

  The optimal method—limit myself to hints. Despite everything, I would not wish to damage her soul.

  “Catherine, you are an anomaly in my flawless consciousness. Don’t you understand…” I began cautiously, knowing that Chaotic Light would inevitably appear as soon as I voiced my true identity.

  Catherine shook her head.

  “Understand what, Arta? That I love you?…” she answered in a low voice.

  “You don’t understand the situation you’ve forced me into. Because of you, everything went wrong,” I replied coldly. “You simply don’t understand that the entire universe is at stake…”

  “The universe?… But Arta…” she began, “please explain in more detail what you mean?”

  “I mean that I am not human, Catherine. And never have been; you suspected me correctly all this time,” I answered calmly. “All my talents, abilities, even your prosthesis—this is not human knowledge.” I made a micro-pause. “You may call me Order-Darkness, and I am one of the first creations of our Origin Absolute. Or according to your Creator.”

  Catherine took half a step back.

  “What?…” She covered her mouth with her hands. Fear appeared in her eyes, mixed with a staggering realization. As if a veil had fallen from her eyes, and in her consciousness, like the flash of a supernova, a single, monstrous mosaic formed: my incredible power, frightening wisdom, inhuman control. None of it was talent. It was… other.

  Before I could utter the next phrase, the room was pierced by a silent flash. The light of the three moons outside the window folded, turning a sickly, crimson color. The air thickened, filling with the scent of ozone, bitter almonds, wormwood, and benzoin resin. The space in the center of the room rippled, like the surface of water into which a stone has been thrown, and from this distortion began to seep, not coalesce, her form. Reality itself bent and melted, yielding to her will. And then, a few seconds later, a completely naked woman in a transparent cloak stood before us—Chaotic Light. Not Lazaria, but her other incarnation, whom I had met hundreds of millions of times. Its name was—Chiara. Her coal-black eyes with barely noticeable pink veins looked predatorily first at me, then at Catherine.

  “Well, well, well…” she almost purred, adjusting her snow-white hair. “I thought my little ice cube wasn’t really a cube at all,” she smiled ominously. “But a flawed architect, disgusting dust on the vaults of creation…” She wrinkled her nose.

  Catherine, in shock, stumbled back several more steps, trying to stay away from me and especially from Chiara.

  There was no time to delay. I regrouped my resources, unleashing the available 11.92% of my true essence’s power. The decision was made instantly: the demonstration of my true nature must be complete. Threads of liquid, light-absorbing darkness wove into a human silhouette. They were bound not by rays, but by the perfect geometric lines of cold, unblinking golden light that manifested from nowhere, singing a silent melody of absolute Order. The chaotic vibration in the room subsided, suppressed by this perfect form. The Sentinel—my synthetic avatar, an ideal instrument armed with shield and sword—stood before Chiara in all its grandeur, shielding my organic shell and Catherine.

  “You are a worthless void,” I said coldly in a synthesized voice, resembling a melody. “If you think I will not accept the fight, that is a futile conclusion.” Then, already in Arta’s body, I rose from the bed and, taking Catherine’s hand, led her to the window.

  “Catherine, forgive me,” I whispered in her ear. “You must see this, so you do not pursue me…”

  Chiara clicked her tongue contemptuously. “How sweet… What’s your name again… Armor?” Chiara smirked. “You shortsighted idiot.” With an incredibly fast movement of her hand, she released six energy clots, which turned into reddish lightning bolts and rushed toward Arta and Catherine.

  I swung my blade, and a thick energy shield of Order and Darkness appeared across the entire length of the room. The lightning bolts exploded with a crackle. The explosion was silent, but absolute. Half the room did not turn to dust—it was erased from reality; in its place for a fraction of a second gaped the blackness of space before the void collapsed. Muffled screams of students were heard from below. Chiara soared into the air.

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  I turned to Catherine and Arta and, with a wave of my shield, wove a portal—not a glowing circle, but a tear in the fabric of existence, an opening into the very structure of Order and Darkness, which silently absorbed our bodies, transferring us to a safe plane.

  Fury froze on her face, distorting her features into a mask of pure rage. A wave of destructive energy, her silent will, struck me, and my energy shield shuddered.

  I dispelled the shield. A clash here would destroy this fragile world, which was unacceptable, should Catherine realize her mistake. With a swift and deft movement, I pierced her body and transported us both into the cosmic vacuum, far from existing worlds.

  Chiara’s eyes widened, and then her body was seized by a silent pulsation of light—laughter.

  “You idiot, architect!!” Her form dissolved into a swarm of predatory, blood-white light moths, each a universe of pure chaos. They swirled, surrounding me with a speed exceeding thought.

  I surrounded myself with the Cocoon of Order and Darkness and in the same instant began to form the Prison of Order and Darkness.

  All the ray-moths rushed toward me. A colossal, but silent explosion of light occurred. The Cocoon cracked, and in the next moment, the swarm collapsed into a single point behind my back. She reformed again, and in her hand, from the condensed darkness of space, materialized a dagger with which she pierced me through. A pitiful attempt.

  I pulled her by the fingers and dragged her through the energy structure—the invisible crystalline lattice of Order and Darkness from which the Sentinel itself was created. Chiara’s form was torn into thousands of glowing strips, each vibrating in agony.

  The strips immediately gathered into energy, and the energy again turned into Chiara.

  She bit her lip, and in the next moment, the Prison of Order and Darkness materialized around her, which was supposed to hold her for a short time.

  Chiara transformed into a huge, pulsating red energy ball that began to beat against the walls of the prison. While her attempts continued, I created Thousands of Dark Blades, which were supposed to pierce her as soon as she broke free.

  The cage cracked, and the ball began to increase in size. I released the blades, and they pierced it through, forcing it to contract.

  A wave of pure vibration emanated from the ball—a silent groan of agony. Chiara again took human form. Her body hung in space, pierced by a thousand blades. I began to create a new prison, but in the next moment, Lazaria appeared behind me.

  She pointed her hand at Chiara, and her energy merged with the energy of her second avatar. The fusion of their powers generated not just an explosion, but a singularity, a point where the laws of reality ceased to operate. A silent wave of white-red light—not just light, but pure, annihilating energy—gushed in all directions. My synthetic avatar, the perfect structure of Order and Darkness, did not melt—it was annihilated, erased, returned to the state of primordial energy. Now I only awaited her decisive blow, aimed at Arta.

  『 ?? 』━━━???━━━『 ? 』

  [ At the same time: The Lifeless World of Gearlin ]

  We stood on the summit of a rocky mountain. The air here was thin, with a metallic taste and the bite of eternal frost, but our organic shells could still breathe it. For kilometers ahead stretched poisonous, phosphorescent valleys, cut by the shadows of sharp, needle-like peaks. This world was empty. Perfectly empty and beautiful in its own way. The dark violet sky, devoid of familiar constellations, was pierced by the cold light of a lone white star—its energy barely enough to keep this world from turning into a block of dead ice. This was Gearilin, an abandoned world whose name few remembered.

  “Arta, what’s happening?! Who was that?…” Catherine forced out, in a state of shock.

  “That was Chaotic Light. In your world, she is known as the goddess of fertility or the goddess of life,” I answered calmly. “Listen, just listen to me, Catherine. Very soon, she will kill both me and you.”

  “But… I don’t want to die! And I don’t want you to die!” she uttered in a broken voice, her eyes darting around the unreal landscape.

  “Catherine. Listen to me carefully. If you still trust me even a little,” I continued calmly, watching fear distort her features. “Your soul has caught mine in an endless cycle. Break this connection… Let me go… Please… I cannot be bound to Illumora and to you…”

  Catherine began to cry, her tears instantly freezing on her cheeks into tiny crystals.

  “But I love you, Arta!”

  “Exactly. You love Arta, Catherine. But there is no Arta. This is just a shell of flesh and blood, a temporary instrument,” I said, lowering my eyes slightly.

  “But… Arta, I… you… You…” she tried to piece together the fragments of her world, her mind desperately clinging to the familiar reality. “Order-Darkness… I…” She began to cry harder, her body shaking with silent sobs.

  The itch. It returned, but now it was not just interference, but an absolute necessity within my very essence. I had to do something. I took a step and embraced her. Not out of pity. Out of necessity. It was a desperate attempt to stabilize my own structure, which was cracking under the pressure of her emotions. She did not resist, only buried her face in my shoulder.

  “Tell me… Arta… Or rather… Order-Darkness,” she asked, sobbing, “why me? Why did you… the prosthesis?…” she couldn’t finish the phrase, choking on tears.

  “Because you were worthy of a better life,” I answered calmly. It was the absolute, verified truth. “You are a true jewel in the expanses of creation. For trillions of years, I have not seen a soul with such a perfect, stable structure as yours. But I am not free… My loneliness is eternal, like creation itself.”

  “But… Arta…” she cried even louder.

  At that moment, the air beside us distorted. A flash of crimson light—and from it stepped Chiara.

  I instantly shielded us with the Shield of Order and Darkness and looked into Catherine’s frightened eyes.

  Chiara wasted no time on words. Her form compressed into a huge, pulsating energy ball and rushed toward us.

  Catherine clung to my arm. Her gaze was fixed on mine, and in it was no longer fear—only a desperate, all-consuming resolve. And the last thing she said before the wave of pure chaos erased us from this reality:

  “Let me just be near…”

  It was another total failure. I felt it not as an emotion, but as a structural collapse, the disintegration of perfect architecture. From the void of timelessness, I watched as cycle 3217 folded, like a flawed blueprint crumpled and thrown into the fire. My strategy of pushing Catherine away had failed. The anomaly had not been destroyed—it had only strengthened, confirming the Arbiter’s words.

  The fabric of reality tore, timelines unraveled like old threads. My eternal consciousness plunged into the abyss—not into the darkness I knew so well, but into the absolute Nothingness, the state before Creation. The vortex of events began to pull me in, and with me, the entire universe—into the past, to the point where I had just incarnated into life as Artalis Feda Nox…

  『 ?? 』━━━???━━━『 ? 』

  The years of mortal life flew by unnoticed; 17 years passed in Illumora, memory was erased, the new 3218th cycle began.

  『 ?? 』━━━???━━━『 ? 』

  [ 40th of Lumiran, 1749 | Yuvel | 00:25 | Dormitory Room 231 ]

  Catherine shook her head.

  “Understand what, Arta? That I love you?…” she answered in a low voice.

  I was already prepared to tell Catherine who I was when suddenly the Arbiter’s Compass on my shoulder flared with unbearable flame. The pain was not physical—it struck my primordial essence like a mental hammer. The shell could not withstand it, and I collapsed onto the bed, my eyes rolling back, the world vanishing, replaced by an icy void. My consciousness spiraled, drawing all my attention into the epicenter of this intrusion.

  Everything was blurry, as if in a fog, but the images carved themselves into my awareness with surgical precision: myself, Chiara, the silent battle in the cosmic vacuum, the disintegration of the Sentinel, and the deaths of Arta and Catherine on Gearilin. Every detail sifted before my inner eye. It was the echo of the previous cycle, the one the Arbiter had spoken of.

  For me, this meant only one thing: my actions had been fundamentally miscalculated from the start.

  Suddenly, the Arbiter’s voice sounded in my consciousness—not as sound, but as pure thought-form, carrying the weight of both Light and Darkness.

  “Architect, if you thought I was joking, I was not. I hope you finally understand that I am your ally. Do not try to get rid of Catherine. It is useless.”

  After her words, the pressure on my essence eased. The spiral began to rotate in the opposite direction, returning me to reality. This was new data for analysis, which I needed to consider. Perhaps I should listen, at least somewhat, to the Arbiter as an outside observer—but never trust her unconditionally.

  I felt the sharp smell of ammonia salts and opened my eyes. Beside the bed stood a nurse and a frightened Catherine. I pushed away her hand holding the cloth soaked in the pungent liquid and slowly sat up.

  “Thank you, I am fine…” I paused. “No need to worry.”

  The nurse looked at me disapprovingly.

  “Miss Artalis,” she said, “you need more rest; you have severe exhaustion due to your magical wound.” The nurse nodded toward my hand, wounded by dream magic, then shifted her gaze to Catherine. “And you, Miss Catherine, please keep an eye on your roommate. If she gets worse or the attacks repeat, inform me. She will need to be hospitalized.”

  “Thank you very much, Miss Rudri!” Catherine said politely and escorted the nurse to the door. “I will definitely let you know if anything is wrong with her.”

  The door to the room closed, and Catherine immediately flew over to me.

  “Arta! You scared me so much!” she said, nervously shaking her head.

  “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to. It’s all because of this tattoo.”

  “I didn’t think you’d decided to decorate your skin,” Catherine said, tilting her head slightly. “Let’s remove it?”

  “It’s not just a tattoo, Catherine…” I answered calmly, choosing my words.

  “Then what is it?…” she asked, tensing slightly.

  “It’s a gift from a goddess…” I answered, fearing that Chaotic Light might be somewhere nearby.

  “Which goddess?… Fertility?…”

  Before Catherine could finish her sentence, the air in the room froze, filling with a complex, almost elusive aroma—sweet vanilla, cold lavender, pungent lemon, and the thin, anxious smell of smoke, as if from a just-extinguished candle. In the center of the room, from this aromatic haze, she wove herself into existence—Lazaria. In a white cloak, with disheveled pink hair and an innocent, almost childlike expression.

  “Oops, girls! What are we talking about in the middle of the night?!” she uttered in a voice that sounded too high-pitched, like a cracked crystal bell.

  Catherine gasped and froze, her gaze fixed on Lazaria.

  “Who… Who are you?!” she stammered.

  “The goddess of fertility, of course!” the newcomer answered cheerfully. “A real kind sorceress!” She skipped merrily toward us, smiling broadly. “You don’t need to be afraid of me! And listen less to your ice-cube roommate; she’s deceiving you too often.”

  Catherine shook her head.

  “I… I don’t think Arta would deceive me!” She stepped in front of me, instinctively shielding me from Lazaria’s gaze.

  “Oh, sweet Catherine,” Lazaria approached her and reached out her hand toward her face. Catherine tried to bat her hand away, but it seemed immovable, monumental. “Your resistance is too predictable,” she uttered cheerfully, stroking Catherine’s cheek.

  “Take your hands off me!” Catherine said firmly, her voice filled with undisguised anger.

  “Oh, what an angry little cutie! Do you really think you can dictate terms to me?!” Lazaria smirked. “Don’t anger me, kitty-cat, or you’ll be eating only fish and walking on fences for the rest of your life.”

  I rose from the bed and approached them.

  “Lazaria. Why are you here?” I said firmly. “Don’t touch Catherine!”

  “Ooh-la-la, is the ice cube melting?” she laughed. “I like this more and more!”

  “It doesn’t matter what you like or don’t like,” I answered coldly. “I didn’t touch Ren and Nova, and you don’t touch Catherine!”

  “Ah, Arta-dear,” she sighed theatrically. “You’re so amusing! You say you didn’t touch Ren and Nova?” She laughed a laugh like shattering glass. “Then maybe you can explain to me why Nova thinks only of you? Or do you think I didn’t see you two hugging in bed!”

  “You… hugged Nova?…” Catherine asked in a trembling voice, shifting her gaze to me.

  Emotional manipulation. A direct attack on the key variable. My mind instantly calculated response options.

  “Catherine, we just drank too much at her birthday. She escorted me to my room and fell asleep on me,” I calmly objected.

  Lazaria just laughed.

  “And then you kissed, don’t you want to tell your roommate about that?” This was her deliberate, manipulative lie.

  Hearing this, Catherine turned red, and her eyes immediately filled with tears.

  “Nova and I did not kiss. Don’t lie, Lazaria, your manipulations are absolutely shameless!” I uttered, imitating an emotional reaction to conform to human norms.

  “Oops, and who will your roommate believe?” Lazaria tilted her head theatrically to the side. “Me, the kind goddess-sorceress, or the heartless ice cube who is constantly so cold and so distant! Unable to even respond to a declaration of love! Shame!”

  Catherine took two steps back, and Lazaria allowed her to do so.

  “Yes, yes, go cry, but remember: this ice cube doesn’t deserve your tears.” Lazaria licked her lips, looking at my shoulder, and, reaching out her hand, wiped the compass from my skin. “I don’t like extra marks on my favorite toys.”

  She laughed again.

  “Alright, I’ll leave you to sort out your feelings.” She spun around and disappeared in a stream of sparks.

  The room plunged into silence, broken only by the quiet sobs of Catherine, who had sat down on her bed.

  “Arta, why… you…”

  There was no time to study the reason for the disappearance of the Arbiter’s tattoo. I approached Catherine’s bed and sat down beside her.

  “Catherine, Nova and I did not kiss. That was a brazen lie,” I answered calmly.

  “But why would she lie? She healed you back in the hospital!..” Catherine continued to sob.

  “Did you even hear her? She called me her favorite toy. Do you really believe she acts out of kindness?” I asked calmly.

  “I don’t know…” Catherine said, covering her face with her hands and resting her elbows on her knees. “It’s just… do I really mean nothing to you?…”

  Her words, her pain, her despair—all became a catalyst. I felt the “itch” within my structure flare up again, but this time—not as interference, but as an unbearable pull, as a systemic error demanding immediate correction. Why did my stability depend so much on her state?… It was illogical, but it was a fact.

  “Catherine…” I murmured.

  Without thinking, I intuitively reached out to embrace her. It wasn’t a decision; it was an attempt to negate the malfunction. The only action my disrupted structure offered as a correction protocol. Catherine didn’t resist, only cried harder, melting into my arms.

  We sat silently in the quiet until she regained her own stability. I didn’t notice the moment the Arbiter’s compass reappeared on my shoulder, reminding me of the cold truth I had seen so recently.