Ivan stood across from Zerin on the library's lowest floor, the carpeted aisle between them a dividing line—a battlefield neither had yet dared to cross.
Instinctively, Ecludia found herself retreating, her weakness distancing her away from the both of them.
The archive, though it wrapped them in vast silence, left the ground unsteady beneath her feet…
An unsteadiness she soon realized was her own.
She couldn't understand how Ivan could look so calm. His hands rested loosely at his sides, that faint smirk still lingering on his face.
After all of that?
Even after what Zerin had revealed.
Even after what she'd seen him do.
She swallowed a hard truth.
She was gullible.
Something needed to change. His gaze fixed on Zerin, as though Ecludia were nothing more than the dusty shelves surrounding them. "You don't seem surprised, Zerin." He couldn't suppress the expression creeping across his face. "I thought you'd be more concerned about having what you truly are… exposed."
Theatrical.
The word descended from somewhere above and lodged itself in her mind.
It was like he was performing. The cadence, the deliberate pauses, the way he held himself—to listen to him was to play the game.
But she was already part of the game, wasn't she? She'd played the role she needed to… And that realization coiled into a knot in her stomach.
Zerin didn't move. Where fear should have been, there was only stillness. The necklace resting cold against him permitted nothing but the living moment.
Though his body was exhausted, his Aspect held him upright with strength from borrowed blood. It made him stand straighter than he had any right to. Made his voice come out steady when it should have come out weak.
"The Spell says a lot of things." His tone was assertive, yet unimpressed. "Is this what it looks like when you listen to it long enough?"
Something shifted in Ivan's eyes. Not anger—anger was for lesser things. This was interest, as much as all that darkness could allow itself to show.
"We can agree on that." Ivan savored their shared contempt. "Such a pathetic inconvenience, isn't it? The Spell." He spoke as though it tasted of something poisonous.
"I didn't come to complain about it." Zerin's voice carried an edge now.
Ivan lifted his hands halfway in mock surrender. "Only a few things I need from you. I mean no harm to you or—" he paused, and a small, private chuckle escaped him, "—your harvest."
That was it.
Harvest.
The way he said it sparked instant recognition in Zerin.
But in Ecludia, it landed differently.
As though she was something to be gathered, processed, and finally consumed—like wheat in a field. It cut through sharper than she could have braced for.
Because beneath that word, she felt the ghost of her sister's hand in hers, fingers interlaced…
She shuddered.
"You—" She stepped forward, her voice demanding presence, but Ivan didn't turn. Didn't even twitch in her direction.
"Is this what you called them as well?" Her voice cracked. "You snake! What is wrong with you? Why would you do something like that to innocent people? Why would you work with Nightmare Creatures?"
What great questions…" Ivan's voice trailed off before snapping back to focus. "I wish he'd ask questions as good as these…"
"Mutual gain," he said, immediate and smooth. "Much like how the captives huddled together like mice to bear the cold—that is mutual gain. And oh my…" A smile widened across his features. "I got something incredibly valuable for someone in my… circumstance."
Zerin's brow furrowed. Confusion cracked through the exhaustion on his face covered in filth from blood and muck. He'd faced monsters. He'd bled and killed. But this was something different—this was a person speaking of atrocities like transactions.
"And that is?"
"They gave me the ability to enact my will." Ivan's voice brightened with genuine excitement—the fervor of a scholar describing his greatest discovery was almost disgusting.
Ecludia's voice rose. "So you put your will above countless others? How is that the better option?"
A genuine annoyance began to overtake Ivan's features—not the theatrical display from before, but something real. "Because there is always an ultimate will, or space for one. Always something that maintains order, or something that can. This is a very simple concept." He spoke slowly, as though explaining the sunset to a child.
"You will always be subjugated to the world—or worse, ignored—if you don't subdue the world yourself. These are the ways of the Gods."
Ecludia's eyes narrowed to slits.
"The Gods are cowards. You want to be just like them?"
Ivan chuckled, almost patronizingly, the sound echoing through the frozen archive. "Oh, really?" He paused. "And what would you know? You have no clue what you're talking about… How infantile…"
The entire time, he spoke to her without shifting his gaze from Zerin, as though he'd learned from the last time—when Zerin's blackened blade had opened his throat.
"The Gods had different plans." He dismissed her words with a causal gesture, as though brushing dust from a shelf. "The better question is why he hasn't."
He drew a deep breath before continuing.
"The Beast God could subdue the world. But instead, we sit here and collect strays." Ivan titled his head. "Tell me, Beast, are you considering her as a consort? Have we not learned the damage of birthing new Divinity?"
Consort.
Ecludia heard everything else, but distantly. If something had shifted inside her the moment Ivan dismissed her, then now it burned.
She was a stray to be collected.
Her left hand was no longer a fist.
Somewhere between Ivan's monologue and his casual cruelty, the panic stopped. It had gone quiet.
From her Soul Sea, she called her Memory forward. It answered, materializing, cold metal embracing her arm from fingertip to elbow. The silver casing gleamed faintly in the residual light. Five flaws tipped each finger, designed for one purpose and one purpose only:
To rend flesh.
While Ivan was still speaking, still performing for an audience of one, still refusing to acknowledge she existed, she turned the weight of absolute grace into a weapon.
The claws bit deep.
Pain. White-hot and sudden, tearing through his side before the sound of it even registered—the wet rip of flesh parting like parchment. He froze mid-expression.
Slowly—so slowly it could have been ceremonial—he turned his head. His eyes found her. And in them wasn't fury, nor pain, but curiosity.
As though she had finally done something worth his attention.
"Looks like someone grew a spine…"
Pulling her hand from his side, the Memory was revealed in full. Black blood bathed the silver from the claws to the forearm.
The design was sleek and savage, now proven in purpose.
It was a weapon that didn't suit her.
His hands flew to his ribs, pressing hard against the wound she'd carved into him.
A futile gesture.
The wound refused to close. It was ceaseless, unending—by the touch of a healer, he was gravely wounded.
"Contradiction…" he managed to curdle out before a cough rattled through him.
He turned back toward Zerin, mouth opening to speak.
"Do you see—"
[Sanguine Surge] Burned through his veins as he closed the distance, his blackened blade already winding up, already aimed for the neck once more. The crimson glow in his eyes flared bright.
Déjà vu.
Ivan's eyes widened.
Zerin put his full weight into the swing—every ounce of borrowed strength, every drop of stolen blood, every hour of exhaustion his Aspect had kept at bay.
There was no pivot humanly possible.
He'd cut off his head this time. He'd sever it clean and wait for the Spell's congratulation before he'd even think about leaving the corpse, no matter what state it was in.
For a single satisfying second, Zerin felt the edge of his blade bite—before something peculiar happened.
Something inhuman.
Ivan's form transfigured.
Darkness enveloped him, not from the shadows of the library but from within—spilling from his eyes like liquid onyx. His body pulled away, the entirely of him sweeping backward like a curtain drawn across a stage.
Zerin tracked the motion as the curtain of darkness swept the vast space, rising, then landing atop the highest bookshelf on their floor.
There, the darkness pooled. It took shape from the bottom up—feet solidifying on the shelf's edge—until Ivan stood whole again. The darkness drew back into his eyes, reversing its spill, exposing the form of a man beneath.
Silence.
Only the sound of black ichor dripping onto the bookshelf beneath him—a steady rhythm. It stained the spines of the books it touched. Rotted the wood as it crept down.
He couldn't be human.
"Three surprise attacks?" Ivan exhaled a laugh through clenched teeth. "So this is the integrity you cling to."
He looked down from his vantage point, staring down at both Zerin and Ecludia who stood beside each other.
"Ah…" A quiet hum escaped him. "But that's right."
His eyes settled on Zerin—not with malice, but with a knowing look.
"Integrity only survives through the power that permits it to."