Unlike the past failed loop, this time Tristessa wasn't alone in the audience amidst the battlefield corrupted by the evil that tainted everything in its path; negotiating and defending herself against a woman who had deduced everything about her with ease thanks to her Hidden Shadow.

Now, not only did she not suspect the possibility that Tristessa was a Stranger, but her companions were prepared and ready to argue alongside her to defeat Aurelia in a duel of words.

"What did you say, Malak Drakan?"

It was Severus who had stepped into the middle of the conflict, taking the words right out of Auron and Astoria's mouths, who were expressing their satisfaction at his necessary intervention.

The elf forced Aurelia to shift her focus, leaving Vektra alone, and fixed her violet eyes brimming with fury at him.

"It's better to silence those who want to save the lives of a poor family unjustly burdened by the sins of their daughter, isn't it?" he asked, disgusted. "I hope you sleep better at night, knowing you prefer arresting innocents to going out to fight the Coven!"

Vektra had no reason to protect Severus from Aurelia's wrath, so she did nothing to stop her from going to him. What she did do was take Tristessa's arm when she tried to get up and go to Severus, closely followed by the inquisitive and discerning gaze of the passive, red-eyed lord.

"S-Sev…!" she exclaimed, fear creeping in her soul as she watched the woman with black and blue hair bend down beside him and meet his defiant expression.

It made Tristessa mentally replace that handsome, masculine face with a jumble of pulverized skull bones, crushed eyes, crimson hair dampened with blood, and jagged pieces of semi-liquid brain. It brought her to the brink of vomiting and made her the victim of a desolate low blood pressure that threatened to rob her of her consciousness.

"Dare to raise your voice to me one more time, elf, and you'll regret it… If you're so eager to talk, then confess what Irandell won't!" she screamed right in his face. "Or did she not tell you everything she knows?!"

Severus wasn't intimidated for a second. Not when there was a deeper dread inside him, and Aurelia Eramisaptor was far from equate it.

"Of course the girl is keeping secrets. We're keeping some from her too. We're not friends: we're partners who've just met," he replied icily. The Severus Tristessa remembered was a far cry from him, and what he said—even though it was true—hurt her deep within. "But I believe everything she says about the Coven and the Mercer-Archeos. I believe in that so much that I'm prepared to face even you to save those I love. Do you know why?"

"No, I don't know... Enlighten me, Severus Malak Drakan," she hissed, cold venom infused in his name. "Tell me why."

The shadow of ruin that fell upon the elf was devastating. And this was just a memory. Tristessa hadn't even been in the elf's workshop of the current timeline, yet she imagined the terror that had invaded that place and left a stain hard to erase. Into Severus's burning soul, fading to embers fearful of total dissolution.

"…because someone else gave me the same warning as Tristessa's when I first met her," he replied, darkness permeating his voice, acting as a medium of osmosis that allowed only the sense of impending doom to pass through. A fear that could become real if they didn't act immediately. "Moebius appeared in my workshop, on the day of the Evil Dream."

"What in the Abyss are you saying…?"

Aurelia's eyes were wide, dumbstruck before what Severus had revealed. A grim truth that, ironically, she refused to believe it.

Unlike her, Janos had suddenly leaned forward, almost dropping his cane, regaining the interest in the audience that the quarrel had caused him to lose.

"You're not lying… The Lord of Forbidden Knowledge? A Great Evil, in my city?"

"Not physically, but an apparition. A shadow lurking in the dark," the blood elf explained, so disturbed that the memory made him ignore the fact that Aurelia was still there, beside him, listening, albeit in shock. "He told me the Mercer-Archeos were going to die. That it was an [inescapable future]. Why? I don't know… Maybe because Tristessa ruined their plans and she was coming to recruit the Mercer-Archeos' only friend? Is that why he appeared before me? To scare me to death and make me despair so much that I'd lose all hope? I don't know… But if that was Moebius' intention…"

The aftereffects of that event remained, parasitizing the elf's spirit with profound horror. Clouding and stripping away the fiery and bloodthirsty will of his ancestors.

"Damn it, just thinking about it makes me… Fuck… Fuck! You see that Moebius wants my friend dead, right?! Sending the fucking Coven against them and all! Something is going with the damn Lord of Forbidden Knowledge, but that doesn't matter now… What matters, is that we need to save my friends, and we need your help!"

Placing a hand firmly on the surprised governor's right shoulder, Severus pleaded for the Mercer-Archeos. A lament that echoed through every corner of the hall, shrouded in the shadows of night mingled with the ethereal lighting from the power crystals.

"Neither Tristessa nor I are lying, are we, Lady Eramisaptor?"

"I can't know if you two believe your own lies to the point where you see them as truth… But no, I see no deception in you, nor in her," Aurelia replied, blinking thrice at the endless stream of thoughts that flooded her mind, stemming from the real possibility that the Lord of Forbidden Knowledge could spread his influence so easily. There had always been rumors, but never concrete evidence. Not then, not now. But the fear always lingered. "Still, if you think I'll help you or that girl save that fucking family that spawned a monster…"

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"If you don't want to save my friends, at least think of it from the perspective that you can give those damned witches what they deserve!" he yelled. "It's a unique opportunity!"

"On that we agree, young elf."

Jonas regained his voice after Severus's revelation. From the way he moved his fingers at a distance from the pages of his notebook, there was a hidden enthusiasm beneath that neutral and amicably bland look he offered them.

"The Coven carries out the designs of that Great Evil; they even worship him more than the Dark Lady. Whenever Moebius tempted fallen women, ordered the massacre of an entire village, or kidnapped children, there was never any way to predict it," he explained. "We could never anticipate his moves… Always one step behind, gathering the dismembered and charred corpses of the innocent. And no clue about where to look for the missing children."

It was inevitable that his words would bring back the dark memory of the Massacre of the Endless Night, the worst attack carried out by the Coven in the entire history of Entrana and End-World.

The evil that ruined hundreds of families, wounds that remain unhealed to this day; the clearest example of that perpetual sorrow, for Tristessa, was Madame Nerval, standing with her head bowed beside the Monument for the Vanishers, weeping for her grandson, whom the witches had kidnapped.

"Remember the carnage, young lady. The Vanishers' trail fading within the Sea of Trees…"

The old woman's lament echoed within Tristessa's frozen mental palace, where Lenore still hadn't appeared and the invading presence waited patiently for her. To do something…

"This is the first time we've learned of a concrete goal of the Coven," Jonas continued, keeping Tristessa from becoming overly distracted by misfortunes and her own set of mysteries. "We know what they want and how far they'll go to get it. That's an advantage we've never had before. It gives us the possibility of counterattacking and sending one of the Priestesses of the Black Eye into the void."

"Speak for yourself, old man. I won't be a part of this… You want to protect and help that little bitch?" she pointed at Tristessa, who lowered her head slightly, intimidated. "Go ahead, pray that it doesn't explode in your face."

"As you wish. You are wise by trusting your instincts but remember that even the strongest tree falls before the force of the coming storm. At some point it must bend and follow the direction of the wind, or such opposition will be of help only by breaking it more easily."

As Aurelia roughly pulled Severus' hand away and stood up, her superior slipped his small notebook into his pocket, having noted everything he needed to know. For the time being.

"It would be naive of me to believe the words of someone like you, Tristessa Irandell, even if Aurelia herself finds nothing false in what you say. You appeared out of nowhere, without memories, giving us a chance to strike a blow against the Shadow Realm forces that have been stalking us from Merzul…" he said, the wide grin he offered her filling the girl with that unsettling feeling that all this time she and her companions had been eating out of the palm of this man's hand. His words were dangerously gentle, like the hiss of a snake patiently slithering toward its prey, waiting for the opportune moment to sink its fangs, dripping deadly venom. "That such a benefactor exists is very difficult for people like us to believe, people who have distrusted our own shadow for five hundred years…"

Without further ado, Jonas Youngblood rose from his seat, and everyone present, including the fearful aracross on the other side of the hall, followed him with their eyes. Stares with anticipation, uncertainty, fear. They all watched him walk straight toward Tristessa and do nothing about it; their spirits and wills as tiny as bacteria before the colossal presence he emanated.

And who better than Tristessa herself to feel so intimidated when Jonas stopped before her?

His powerful, luminous soul flowing with [Grace] was like a star at the core of a galaxy; essence of light colliding with her Discord and pushing it aside like a solitary cloud against hurricane-force winds.

And his right hand, perhaps capable of killing in less than a second, offered to her.

"But it is a risk worth taking. I will help you, and bear the consequences of my decision." The sinister aura of deadly light that surrounded Jonas gave way to peace and understanding. Serenity in his red eyes invited Tristessa to timidly shake his hand. "There will be time for us to talk in more detail later, so I can convince you to…loosen your tongue a little more. About who you really are, about your Divinity, and about what you're planning to do after we deal with Daiana Mercer-Archeos."

"…yeah. There will be time for all that," replied the gray-eyed girl, finding strength in the face of the imposing presence before her. She knew that the secrets and lies couldn't remain in that limbo much longer. Sooner or later, she would have to give explanations to both Jonas and Aurelia, but that problem belonged to a future that had yet to be written. It was up to them to create it. "I appreciate your help, Lord Youngblood. And for giving the Mercer-Archeos a chance."

"It may seem that my primary interest is seeing the hammer of justice fall on the Coven, but as I said before: we cannot afford to kill each other when the real enemies are out there, knocking at our doors."

Jonas then shook hands with Astoria, Auron, and Severus, forming another alliance of mutual interest, although the person Tristessa had originally tried to convince hadn't accepted: the She-Dragoon watched in hateful silence, frowning, pretty much against the Advisor's decision.

"Aurelia…"

In the end, convincing her to help had been impossible. It was sad to think that there was no future where they could solidify mutual cooperation for the common good, but luckily, Stormcrow had held the key to progress in that loop up her sleeve.

The assassin who obeyed the Shield of Ill-Omen also waited with the passive professionalism expected of her. With her hands behind her back, her eyes shrouded in darkness -perhaps focused on her lover, who had no doubt that hours later she would receive a visit from her and planned to give her a sleepless night of well-deserved hugs and cuddling.

For that audience was thanks to her. Especially because Vektra erased any suspicion that Tristessa was a Stranger, since the Wraiths were a clandestine force serving the Empire, tasked with the ancient duty of finding and eliminating Strangers within Imperial territory.

And a Wraith subjected to the will of a Stranger was an absurd idea, after five hundred years of indiscriminate slaughter against possible visitors from other worlds.

"And to think that in the previous loop, Aurelia discovered I was a Stranger thanks to Sylas Roy Khan… Now, she didn't consider that possibility thanks to another Wraith. A fatal mistake," Tristessa thought, feeling Aurelia's gaze pierce the back of her neck, but for the wrong reasons. "Now I see that, if it weren't for Vektra, it would have been impossible to get here."

Perhaps Tristessa and her companions would have reached that room using another method. Perhaps they would have managed to talk to Aurelia or Jonas, trying to convince them of the real danger that was approaching and begging for the Mercer-Archeos's salvation.

But what Tristessa had no doubt about was that without Vektra, the outcome of those possible scenarios was imprisonment, or worse, Death.

"You will hear from me very soon. Go, in peace and have a good rest. Gather your strength to face what is coming and stay together. Brothers and sisters must be united…" Jonas told them solemnly, before inviting them to go to the double doors. And from there, to the safety of the inn. "…because if we fight among ourselves, outsiders will devour us."

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