What exactly qualified as a major lapse in judgement?

Raimond couldn't say for certain. Oh, he had plenty of ideas—brilliant, if he did say so himself—but most people would no doubt vehemently disagree with his particular brand of reasoning. And he wasn't necessarily one to waste his charm or breath trying to convince them otherwise.

No, it was often simpler to let others abide by their narrower definitions, even if those definitions were, by his estimation, unfairly biased and skewed when applied to him.

Still, he imagined that his current circumstances—trailing alongside an especially aphonic member of the notoriously dangerous Hallowed Cabal, descending ever deeper into the bowels of Beld Thylelion—would strike most as having exceeded even the height of folly.

A more astute observer might think to ask why he had chosen to continue on this path in such company, fully aware of her affiliations. The simple answer, of course, was that he'd seen what this quiet, masked girl was capable of when fighting the constructs that haunted these halls, and he wasn't eager to provoke her any time soon.

The more complicated answer…well, he might prefer to keep that to himself, if only because he rather enjoyed maintaining his air of mystery. A man who planned ten steps ahead had to keep a secret or two, no?

Admittedly, he could understand why that would reinforce the perception his acquaintances—both near and far—had of him: that he was somewhat hard to handle.

Lucky he was, then, that his charm, boundless as it was, often worked as a lubricant that softened even the most stubborn of resistances. Most of the time, it required only a bit of patient persistence, worming its way through their tolerance and personal boundaries.

Case in point: the frequent glances he'd caught from his companion these past few hours. Proof, to him, that even she was starting to see his appeal. Tracking those glances had become an unexpectedly welcome distraction amid the monotonous march through narrow, stone corridors.

Not that Raimond minded monotonous marches. It suited him well enough. But when one discovered a hidden Kilnstone in Beld Thylelion, one expected more than to be funnelled through what felt like service shafts.

A touch of spectacle. A hint of grandeur. Really, he wasn't picky.

Though, to be fair, the divine presence swelling in the air was hardly unspectacular.

For a brief moment, a more serious expression flickered across his face as he 'studied' those unseen energies.

Then, much to his surprise, Nol'viz spoke.

"What sort of priest are you?" she asked in that whispering blend of voices that made it impossible to tell curiosity and indifference apart.

Raimond turned with a bright smile. "Why, the captivating kind. You couldn't tell?"

Her three lavender eyes considered him in silence.

He held her gaze, then softened his smile. "Have you met many priests before?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"When? If you don't mind me asking."

Her head tilted. "We have fought them."

"I see." Raimond clasped his hands behind his back and looked ahead. "Battlefields aren't ideal for meaningful conversations, however."

"We did not talk."

"No, I imagine not. Though regrettable, don't you think?"

"No."

He chuckled. "Then is there any reason in particular you've tolerated my company this long?"

"You are useful. Not yet a threat."

"Why, I can only take that as a compliment." He cast her a sidelong glance.

…No matter how endearing the notion, naively imagining she lingered solely for his character would have been foolish. Reality rarely spun such agreeable tales: two strangers exchanging pleasantries in ancient ruins, one seeing the error of her ways and—by miracle—joining forces for a happy ending.

His eyes shifted from the girl to the faint aura of brilliant, golden light that clung to her, visible only to his inner eye. It had been with her since their first meeting. It had taken a while to confirm what that was, and its origin.

Not for the first time, he genuinely wondered whether walking beside her was wise. Perhaps it would be better to end this charade here, before she reached the deeper vaults of Beld Thylelion and what waited there. Even if it could cost him his life.

He questioned why the path that was chosen for him was this in particular.

Nol'viz's eyes flicked up to meet his. She blinked, slowly and almost deliberately, as if waiting for his words.

Clearing his throat, Raimond looked forward. "I hear that beyond the empire, there are certain groups that don't follow conventional faiths. Some would say they have no priests, so among them, inexperience with the devout should perhaps be expected. But what is a priest, in the end? A believer? A conduit? A keeper of rites? So long as one holds faith in something greater, venerates or honours some power, and carries out rituals—simple as they can be—I would argue one might be considered a priest. Surely you've met many like that."

The Hallowed Cabal and the Tribe of Sin were, by all appearances and accounts, a form of organised faith. Though some would prefer to brand them cults.

"We are not interested in any of that," Nol'viz said.

Raimond raised a single brow. "Oh? Then what might you be interested in?"

What did a member of the Cabal seek, if not creed or cause?

Her answer was slow to come, but sharp when it did.

"Survival."

Raimond regarded her thoughtfully, nodding to himself. "Survival, hmm? A basic desire, but a reasonable one. Perhaps it's the most fundamental of all. I cannot fault you for that, though personally, I'm interested in more than mere existence. Tell me — have you ever tested the limits of what you truly want?"

"No."

"A terrible shame," he murmured with a faint smile.

And just like that, the conversation ended. That was no surprise. Raimond had learned when she might engage further, and when it was wiser to hold his tongue.

They continued down the hall, its darkness softened by the quiet glow of his invocation. Nol'viz always trailed half a step behind, yielding to his lead whenever they met a junction. When exactly the shift—her ceding the role of leader—had taken place was unclear. But somewhere along the way, she had simply started following his direction, as if recognising he wasn't entirely without sense.

It left him wondering if she was shrewder than her silence suggested, or if it was something closer to instinct.

The air wavered.

Raimond halted, narrowing his focus.

He had felt the divine presence of these halls since he'd first arrived. Observed it. But…it was the first time he felt something like this. Like a ripple through an otherwise still pond.

Somewhere, something seemed to be stirring.

At the back of his mind, a voice whispered—warm, gentle, like sunlight on skin—urging him onward with a pulse that quickened his breath.

A frown creased his brow.

He turned back.

And saw that his companion was gone.

"…I suppose I'll have to deal with that, won't I?"

A mass of golden-hued figures closed on Scarlett and her party.

They didn't move like people. Not really. Their actions felt torn from stitched memories — fragments of motion and violence pasted across time, spliced without the correct rhythm or context. One instant, they stood idle; the next, they were mid-strike, obeying some unseen script.

Even so, they could still be dangerous.

A nearby reflection of Fynn snapped from his meditative pose, claws raised, wind twisting as he lunged for Scarlett. At the same time, a stalking Gaven blurred from a crouch, twin daggers carving a line towards Rosa.

The real Fynn intercepted himself with a low snarl, cleaving the golden double in a single, fluid swipe. It burst into luminous threads with the uncanny chime of a bell. Scarlett flicked her wrist, and two torrents of water curved forward, shearing one dagger from the air with a shriek of force. An instant later, a ring of Aqua Mines detonated at the rogue's feet, concussive bursts tearing the reflection apart.

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She pressed a hand to her temple, jaw tight. A wall of fire surged around her companions, curling high and bright as she forced her mind to steady from the earlier strain.

She'd never before drawn so heavily on the Anomalous One's power in the Material Realm. The resistance had been alarming — not from whatever force usually suppressed that power, but from Fate itself, tangling from every angle, subtle and suffocating. She had torn through it only barely, carving space enough to wrench her party free.

Now, though, she had to return to more familiar magic.

Around her, the others were already in motion.

Arnaud swept his blade in a clean arc, trailing faint silver. Scarlett's fire-wall rippled as the pressure shifted, and beyond it a dozen chimes rang.

Kat slammed her claymore's tip into the stone, summoning a line of jagged stone walls that rose to support Scarlett's flames, reinforcing the perimeter. Then she lifted one arm overhead, eyes narrowing. With loud cracks, earthen pillars thrust up across the chamber, flaming sigils pulsing atop each. In unison, they vented bursts of fire in timed intervals.

Scarlett didn't recognise the spell. Surprisingly potent for Kat's level — but there was no time to study it. Reflections were already through parts of their defences.

Allyssa darted behind a stone barrier, flicking two vials from her bandolier. One burst in mid-air into a lavender haze that latched onto the armoured form of Lithén. Scarlett's focus moved to it, and with a thought, the haze flashed into blue fire. The second vial broke on the floor in a scatter of glowing motes that left firefly embers clinging to another reflection's limbs, dragging their movements like tar.

A Briana reflection leapt through fire, lunging at Shin with a flurry of precise sword strikes that edged in cold blue. Shin caught two on his shield, sparks skittering as he staggered a step. Scarlett raised paired barriers of water and flame to help deflect the rest, before Shin surged forward, his sword flashing silver just briefly as he knocked aside the other weapon and drove his shoulder into Briana's chest. The knight shattered, another chime echoing.

Over the growing chaos, Rosa's music wound through the air.

The tune was bright and confident, yet thrummed with a real pulse of urgency. Each crank of the bard's klert practically forced warmth through their limbs, quickening their steps, sharpening their focus, and filling them with strength.

Surrounded or not, they wouldn't be so easily overwhelmed. For all their numbers, the reflections proved poor at adapting. They followed no evolving tactics, simply playing out some preordained tableau with little in the way of conventional defence.

That made them manageable. At least for the time being. Scarlett suspected their strength varied wildly, though, likely mirroring the companions' 'levels'. None felt remotely close to the Scaive that had attacked them during the fight with the Cabal.

She conjured a towering column of fire at the chamber's centre, bent it mid-air, and shaped a slow-burning sphere that blazed like a sun. With practised precision she peeled open sections of her flame walls, carving sightlines across the chamber. Then she loosed her first broad assault.

From the fiery sun, dozens of arcing tendrils lashed outward, scorching the field in molten streaks. They engulfed everything in their path. A Regina, strikingly lifelike in her poise and expression, vanished mid-step beneath the blaze, imperial finery disintegrating into golden dust.

Then came the counters.

Pools of dark sand welled across the floor, converging like ink through fractured glass. The grains shimmered unnaturally, and with their advance came the clear sting of danger.

From the corner of her eye, Scarlett saw a Kireth Mal replica—a figure in billowing robes—raise both hands as a jagged burst of unstable magic detonated from his palms. More attacks followed. A dozen at once, from all directions. Fire, shadow, blades of spectral blue, ribbons of pressure that could shear stone.

Scarlett vanished just as a chained scythe tore through where she'd stood, her [Garments of Form] placing her a few steps back, already forming a layered sphere of fire and water around the party. A chaotic swirl of magic to buffer against the incoming strikes.

Most strikes broke and bled away against the barrier. But a few punched through, threatening her allies.

She clicked her tongue, readying more barriers.

The necrotic sand worried her most. Necromantic magic was unpredictable, especially in a place like this.

She spotted Arnaud, who'd moved to the perimeter of the space they controlled, sword sheathed. With one hand on the pommel, he lifted the blade a fraction, and as if the will of the sword was made manifest, every incoming attack near him stilled, then fractured into hundreds of hairline cracks that drained to nothing.

Scarlett seized the opening. Waves of flaming arrows split into forked trails, seeking targets. Where they struck, they erupted into tighter blooms that engulfed more and more reflections.

A hunched Ovethatake—thin and gangly—appeared near Allyssa with staff raised, only for Arnaud's blade to cleave him in half a heartbeat later.

Close by, a flicker of a Scaive—relatively untouched by bloodborne corruption and clad in rags—charged barehanded and was obliterated by one of Kat's spiralling fireballs. Across the field, Allyssa nailed a coalescing Nareth with a lacquered bolt that detonated in a shockwave on impact.

Further off, a Rosa appeared, looking older. Weariness was etched in her face, dressed in a dark half-cloak trimmed in silver thread and holding a pristine klert burning with runes. She played a single note, and several of Scarlett's flames stuttered.

Scarlett wasn't having it.

A ring of Aqua Mines formed and detonated in quick succession. The reflection didn't flinch. She simply vanished in silence, song and all, scattering into gold sparks.

The real Rosa, still playing, flinched ever so slightly. But she didn't miss a beat, doubling down on her charms.

Scarlett spared half a heartbeat to listen, brow tightening. Was Rosa trying to counter the illusions of herself?

Kat's shout cut through.

"Scarlett—!"

Scarlett spun.

She wasn't sure how she hadn't noticed.

Yamina stood beside Rosa.

The girl hadn't walked in. She hadn't materialised like the reflections. She was simply there — as if this exact moment, this exact spot, had been waiting for her.

Scarlett reached for the Anomalous One's power. Her vision warped. Light and colour drained away, replaced by that same dense, suffocating pressure saturating the entire chamber.

It was the third time she'd entered this state here. And this time, the details began to solidify.

The space near Rosa shimmered with tightly packed threads, somehow far more concentrated than the surrounding chamber. Scarlett realised the same was true of all areas where the reflections moved, but this spot…it was denser still.

Though she barely had time to parse it.

Her [Garments of Form] triggered, blinking her beside Rosa. Oddly, the bard hadn't noticed Yamina at all. Her focus was on Fynn, who leapt between reflections, wind spiralling, blood staining his arms.

Scarlett reached to pull Rosa away — only to realise that she couldn't.

Because Rosa wasn't there.

Neither was Yamina.

Scarlett froze, staring at the space where Rosa had been. The last trace of the bard's charm-song lingered for a breath, then faded.

A beat passed, pressed through her skull.

Then a cold fury lit inside her.

Flames erupted in every direction. Not precise. Not efficient. And certainly not tactical. A whip of water cracked sideways, beheading a golden Gaven and an approaching Nareth with the same stroke. A wall of fire rolled from the far side of the chamber.

"Scarlett—!" Kat's voice rang out again. Her hand gripped Scarlett's shoulder, then recoiled with a hiss as heat shimmered off the air.

Scarlett stilled, realisation settling.

She'd cranked her pyrokinesis to dangerous levels without even noticing. The air was barely breathable, stone blackening beneath her feet.

Those free to look cast troubled glances, but none could break from the fight. Arnaud was covering any slack, moving with near mechanical precision, his sword cutting through dozens of reflections — but more kept appearing like an endless tide.

"…Kat, I will require your assistance," Scarlett said, voice tight. "Ensure none reach me."

Kat studied her for just a second, then nodded sharply and turned back to her casting.

Scarlett closed her eyes.

This wasn't the time for anger. A member of her party—no, a friend—had vanished. Her magic wasn't going to do much about it. But she'd already seen that she possessed the power to fix this.

She focused.

Once more, she reached for the Anomalous One's power.

No — her power. She had taken it. Claimed it. It belonged to her now. And she'd darn well use it.

Pain lanced through her temple, immediate and much fiercer than before. She ignored it, drawing deeper from the impossible reservoir Thainnith's legacy had left behind for her. The more she pulled, the more it burned, until her head pounded in rhythm with the chamber's pulse. Even with eyes closed, she was starting to 'see' that strange pressure enclosing everything.

It grew clearer.

The more she looked, the more she was getting a notion of what it was doing.

This pressure—this force—was Fate. Or at least some manifestation of it. That much, she could be sure of. In her heightened sight it became an overwhelming mesh of invisible wires. Or, more accurately, threads. Threads that wrapped around every surface, every reflection, every breath.

As she pushed deeper, she sensed the space between them. The space between these threads. It was minuscule at first. Imperceptible. But a pattern emerged.

Was this how the world looked to the Anomalous One? Was this perhaps related to the sort of Fate-perceiving that those like Godwin and Anguish had limited versions of?

Each thread carried meaning. An intent. Nudges, currents, and coincidences. She couldn't decipher them in full—or even anything close to it—but some impressions filtered through. A gust of air veering slightly left. A flicker of extra power in a swing. An extra breath where none should be.

Tiny things. Individually meaningless.

But multiplied—layered across thousands, millions—they could guide someone. Tilt a path. Alter a choice. Nudge hands just enough to change the outcome.

Scarlett had suspected as much, but only now could she actually see it for herself.

As she examined her surroundings further, she turned her focus inward. Onto herself. And there, she saw the difference.

Where Fate's threads should have crossed her path, should have brushed her, tugged at her decisions, bent her steps — there was absence. The threads themselves were present, but the intent saturating the chamber was missing where it touched her. To her vision, it was like a quiet void wrapped close around her, thin tendrils outwards.

To put it plainly: any Fate that tried to act on her was simply not abolished.

If some thread had decreed that a dagger should tilt slightly to pierce her heart, the decree unravelled. If some woven movement might have urged the blade her way, it never took hold.

This might be the confirmation she needed. A working model of how Fate operated within this world, and how she resisted it. It left the question of who or what controlled it—controlled this vast, impossibly complex system of intents—but it was a step towards understanding.

She paused slightly as she noticed something else, and it caused a scowl to form on her brow.

She had spotted the exceptions. The exceptions to her resistance to Fate.

This chamber was so soaked in Fate. So drenched with it. To erase it all…it seemed even she couldn't erase it all. A handful of threads still touched her with intact intent. The rare few that survived her presence.

It annoyed her, but at this precise moment she wasn't going to complain. Because among those threads, she found it. A line of Fate, impossibly subtle, brushing her [Garments of Form]. It had touched her just enough. Slowed the teleportation enchantments by a fraction. Shifted her timing by a breath. And perhaps that was accompanied by a thousand other minuscule effects, each too small to notice. She wasn't sure. But together, they had been enough to decide the outcome. Enough that she'd missed Yamina and reached Rosa too late.

More importantly, there was still a tether connected to that Fate. Lingering.

When the entire party had been frozen earlier, it was as if Fate's flow had locked entirely. In comparison, it had been surprisingly easy for Scarlett. All she had to do was slam her power into it. This time, though, the working was more precise. It was like every thread that had once bound to Rosa had vanished along with the woman, so finding this single connection…

Scarlett's nose began to bleed.

She pulled on the thread.

The Anomalous power within her coiled — it didn't want to be used in this way. It wanted more violence. But she refused, fixing on the single thread of Fate that led to Rosa.

And then, without any fanfare, Rosa was simply there. Standing in front of her.

Scarlett kept her eyes closed a moment longer, watching the residual strands of Fate braid around the bard like moonlit smoke before settling. Curiously, she could see that a fair number of the threads touching Rosa were also 'empty'.

She opened her eyes to find Rosa staring wide-eyed at the chamber. Her posture was rigid, skin sheened with sweat, confusion stark on her face.

"I… I'm back?" she whispered, as if testing her own voice.

"Are you hurt?" Scarlett asked.

Rosa blinked. Slowly, her gaze met Scarlett's and held, unreadable.

Scarlett's brow tightened. "…Rosa?"

The bard exhaled, sharp and shallow, and then gave a small shake of the head. "No. Far from it. I thought I'd be stuck there forever."

"…Where? Where were you?"

Rosa hesitated, still watching Scarlett. Then her eyes moved to the scattered reflections — including those of herself. "…Scarlett, what exactly is this world?"

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