Aim jerked upright with his hand reaching for something that was no longer there.
"Hah—hah—"
His fingers closed on empty air.
He opened his eyes.
White.
Above him. Beneath him. Everywhere he looked.
He could feel a surface under his palm, but there was nothing to distinguish it from the space beyond his knees. No walls. No ceiling. No shadow to tell him where the light came from.
"What…?"
He turned sharply.
Then the other way.
The hit, Isolde.
"Sol? Where are you..?"
His voice went nowhere. No echo came back.
He scrambled to his feet, head turning faster now, searching the blankness for a doorway, a familiar coat, anything at all.
Then he saw a woman.
She stood a short distance away in a white hooded robe, so pale against the light that he could have looked straight past her.
Silver hair fell over her shoulders. Beneath the hood, her eyes held a faint, almost colorless glow.
A thick wooden board enclosed both her wrists.
Iron bands held its two halves together. Short chains hung from either end, and her hands rested beyond the openings with the loose stillness of someone too tired to keep testing the lock.
She stood carefully upright beneath the weight.
"Who are you?"
Her gaze shifted to him. The movement seemed to cost her.
"Aim. Aim Reed..?"
She studied his face.
"…It seems you are not the one I summoned."
"O-oh."
He waited for her to explain what that meant.
She did not.
Aim's eyes dropped to the board.
"Then… why are you chained up like that?"
"I was imprisoned by your ruler."
He looked back at her.
"My…? So what does that have to do with me?"
"Make a contract with me."
The chains moved a little as she lifted her head.
"You want power, do you not?"
"Power?"
"Enough to protect the people you love."
Aim said nothing.
"Come and release me, and I shall grant you the right to enter into a contract with the Daughter of Life and Death."
His fingers curled slowly against his palm.
He could still see the sword coming down.
"Isolde is dying," the woman said. "You know that, don't you?"
His head snapped up.
"Wait—what?"
The edges of her robe were beginning to disappear into the white.
"My time is running out. I am at Sorrow's Nest, in the Northern of this dying land. If thee wish to make the contract with me."
"No—wait. What do you mean, dying? What's wrong with her!?"
The board grew faint. He could no longer see the ends of the chains.
Aim reached for her.
"Wait. WAIT—!"
"Wait!"
His hand shot forward.
His heel dragged across a surface he could feel but barely see. Pain pulled through his left arm, and he caught himself on his good hand before he could fall sideways.
The room came back.
A chair. The table. Beyond them, nothing but darkness and a few drifting motes of violet light. The familiar, impossible quiet of the mirror dimension.
He was on the floor.
"What the hell was that…?"
Aim pressed his hand to his forehead.
Crunch.
Someone bit into an apple.
"Want one?"
Aim turned his head slowly.
Const sat in a wooden chair behind him.
Both boots rested on the invisible ground beneath his chair. His coat fell loosely beside his legs, and the waistcoat beneath it was fastened neatly down the middle.
All the way down the middle.
He held a bitten apple near his mouth. His other hand hung over the side of the chair, offering Aim a second one.
Aim looked at the apple.
Then at the two legs.
Then at the perfectly ordinary distance between Const's shoulders and his waist.
"Y-you're not dead?"
"…Correct?"
"How the hell are you not dead?"
Const lowered the apple from his mouth.
"Would you prefer it if I were?"
"No! That's not—" Aim made a helpless movement across his own torso. "You were cut in HALF."
"Well, I'm not exactly an ordinary human."
"So having blood the color of a squid's means you get to survive that?"
"Something like that, I suppose."
Aim stared at him.
Const continued holding out the apple.
Eventually, Aim took it.
He let out a long breath and lowered his head.
"…Forget it. I'm glad you're alive."
For a little while, he simply sat there with the apple in his hand.
Then he remembered the white.
"I just had a strange dream."
"Mine was strange too."
Aim looked up.
"What kind?"
Const turned his apple, looking for a place to take the next bite.
"Before the nice part—the bit about my family—there was this white place. And then a voice, sort of white place…"
He made a small, vague gesture.
"Never mind. It wouldn't make much sense."
A white place?
"Try me."
"Then my master's voice came I probably just miss her lately so it pop up, say something and the white was gone." A faint smile touched Const's mouth. "Then the dream changed. It was nice after that."
His thumb moved over the apple's skin.
"My master was there. My mother, too."
He looked down.
"God, I miss them."
Aim watched him for a moment.
"Mine had a white place too," he said. "Only I stayed there longer. There was someone in it. A woman."
Const glanced at him.
"She said she was imprisoned somewhere in the Northern. And if I went to help her, she'd let me make a contract with… something. It had a strange name."
Crunch.
"Really? Strange. Probably a god, then."
"A god?"
"What else goes wandering into people's dreams?"
Const swallowed.
"I'm guessing. But do ordinary people you know do that?"
"…Fair point."
Aim looked across the room.
Isolde was still asleep.
He watched her long enough to see her chest rise. Then fall. Then rise again.
She looks all right.
His hand tightened around the apple.
Then why did that woman say she was dying?
He glanced back at Const.
He brought up his family. Maybe I can work around to know what this dude origin really is!
"If you miss your mother that much, why not visit her?"
Const's fingers stopped moving.
"The Northern District, right?" Aim continued. "We could go together."
Const looked away.
"…Ah."
Aim waited.
"Actually, I'm from Central. Born there and everything. The part about the north was a lie."
Aim blinked.
"As for my mother, she's… well…"
Const examined the opposite wall.
"She's rather important. High nobility, that sort of thing. Very busy. And I'm…"
His smile returned badly.
"I haven't been a very good son."
Aim's expression changed.
"I'm trying, though," Const added quickly. "That's more or less what the journey is for. There are a few things I want to put right. Don't ask."
He paused.
"Besides, she might not even know me yet."
Aim looked at him for a long time.
Bad son. Doesn't know him. A journey to put things right.
He tried fitting the pieces together.
What the hell kind of family problem sends you out here? Just go home and apologize. How could that possibly be worse than getting cut in half?
"You really were born in Central?" he asked at last.
"Absolutely."
Const answered a little too brightly.
Aim frowned, but let it pass.
"…So what are we waiting for in here?"
"There's something I want to confirm."
Const reached for the empty chair beside him and dragged it across the floor.
"Wait with me a little. Come on. Sit up here."
The Northern District.
Somewhere underground.
The room smelled of warm lamp oil and old timber.
Heavy beams crossed the low ceiling. A rectangular wooden table stood beneath them, its surface worn smooth around the edges. In the middle sat a small black box with a metal grille and a stamped maker's plate.
ORENTHEL LEAP.
Flaure sat facing it.
"Um… ████?"
Her gloved fingers pressed together in her lap.
"Could I go back to work now? People will begin to wonder where I am, and… at a time like this, I thought perhaps I could do something useful—"
"No."
The answer came from the box.
Flaure's fingers stopped moving.
"You never do anything properly. I'll handle the crisis. Just do as I tell you."
She lowered her head.
The question seemed to leave her body with the breath she let out. Her shoulders drew inward, and she sat very carefully in the space left to her.
"…Sorry."
The door creaked open.
Two men entered.
Valery came first, ducking slightly beneath the frame. Claude followed half a step behind him, the hem of his dark coat brushing the door.
"My apologies for keeping you waiting." Valery bowed. "Your Majesty. Lady Black."
Flaure looked up.
"Oh—Claude!"
For an instant, the worry left her face. Her eyes brightened before she remembered to sit still.
"Lady Flaure."
His answering smile came quickly, with a warmth absent from his voice when he addressed anyone else in the room.
"MY GORGEOUS MAJESTY!"
A third figure appeared behind them.
Evelyn came around Claude with both hands already reaching forward.
"Die."
The word came from the box.
The tone seemed like a death threat, not normal, type of threat that the sound alone make you feel like actual knife against throat.
Evelyn stopped with one foot still raised.
Her delighted smile vanished. The foot went down very quietly.
"…Oh."
She scratched the side of her head.
Valery cleared his throat. "Ahem"
"Lady Black does not appreciate people getting too close to Lady Flaure."
"Lady Black?" Evelyn whispered to Claude.
"The one who uses Lady Flaure's signature. Ordered us to eliminate the Council." His lips barely moved. "Apparently someone close to Her Majesty. I don't entirely know her myself."
"What are you whispering about?"
They straightened.
"It's only a name I use in correspondence."
"Nothing, ma'am," Claude said.
"Nothing!" Evelyn added.
Valery gestured toward the chairs.
Claude sat beside his brother. Across from them, Evelyn settled into the chair next to Flaure, leaving a little more space between them than she otherwise might have.
Flaure kept her hands in her lap.
The lanterns warmed the tabletop. No one reached toward the box.
"I told you to bring Second and Claude," Lady Black said. "Why have you brought Fourth?"
Valery inclined his head.
"My apologies. Second and Third have both betrayed. I brought Fourth in their place."
A faint hiss passed through the grille.
...
"Regarding the Eastern District. I have made my decision. We will stop supplying it with Salome Essence. That will allow us to sustain the more important districts—Northern and Central—for longer."
"What?"
Flaure's voice rose before she could stop it.
"We can't do that. So many people will—"
"Quiet."
"B-But!"
"QUIET, STOP BEING NUISANCE!"
She closed her mouth.
Evelyn looked at her
Why lady Flaure have to follow this Lady..? Evelyn thought and doubt Isn't she all powerful?
Flaure's gaze dropped to her lap again.
Evelyn looked from her to Claude.
Salome Essence?
He understood the question without her asking.
"I can't tell you," he murmured. "Even in the Vanguard, very few people know."
The voice from the box continued.
"If we cut the supply now, the defectors die with the district. We will lose some of our own, but none of the personnel remaining there are elite. They are expendable. In return, we can eliminate the enemy's leadership."
Evelyn's hand struck the table.
The nearest lantern rattled.
"What do you mean, expendable? You're going to leave everyone there to die?!"
She looked around the table.
Valery sat with his hands resting neatly before him, his gaze on the box.
Flaure had gone pale. Her lips parted, but no words followed.
Evelyn turned to Claude.
He looked away at once.
Her hand remained flat against the wood.
She had stood on a bridge with her mother behind her. There had been no one to hand the fight to. She had kept getting up because the people at her back could not.
Now she sat across from the strongest men she knew.
Neither would meet her eyes.
"…Then why don't youtwo go?"
Her fingers curled against the tabletop.
"You have all this power. Why don't you help them?"
Silence.
Then Lady Black answered.
"If those of us at here, the Orenthel most Elite personnel confront those gods and lose, the last nation of humanity may fall with us."
Evelyn stared at the grille.
"We remain hidden until we have a reliable way to kill them. That is the sensible course."
"…Cowards."
The word came out low.
Across the table, Claude went still.
Evelyn's face burned.
"YOU ARE A COWARD, ALL OF YOU!"
She pushed back her chair.
"I'LL TAKE THIS TO THE PRESS! I'LL TELL THEM EXACTLY OF WHAT YOU ALL ARE—!"
"Valery. Kill."
His chair was empty.
The boards beneath it burst upward. Along the edge nearest Evelyn, the tabletop buckled, wrenching iron nails from the frame. The lantern flame flattened against its glass.
Valery's fist was already coming down.