Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

⚠️ Disclaimer:
I have no rights to this story - this is obviously fanfiction.
I wrote this to satisfy my craving because Alise Lovell is my favorite character in DanMachi and I was sad she was dead well before the story began. I'm sorry for any spoilers I'm assuming like me you've read the whole thing.

Chapter 1 – Dinner at the Hostess
Bell Cranel staggered down West Main Street, his stomach growling louder than his footsteps. The Dungeon hadn’t been kind today. Goblins were one thing, but when the kobolds joined in, he’d barely escaped with his skin intact. His dagger felt heavier at his hip, coated in grime, and his pride felt lighter than ever.

“Another failed day…” he muttered.

“Failed?” A soft voice chimed, playful and curious.

Bell jumped, nearly tripping over his boots. A girl with silver hair stood before him, basket in hand, smiling as if she’d been waiting for him all along. Her uniform marked her as a waitress, and her eyes sparkled with mischief.

“You look like you fought the Dungeon and lost.”

“I—I survived,” Bell said, rubbing the back of his neck, face burning. “That’s something, right?”

The girl laughed, a gentle sound that eased his nerves. “I’m Syr. And you must be the new adventurer everyone’s whispering about. The one who keeps running away.”

Bell’s cheeks flamed hotter. 
“T-that’s—well—”

Syr tilted her head, then placed a folded piece of parchment in his hand. “Come by the Hostess of Fertility tonight. Dinner’s on me. You look like you could use something warm in your stomach.”

Before Bell could protest, she skipped off down the street, basket swinging, leaving him staring at the parchment like it was a Dungeon treasure.

The tavern was alive when he pushed the door open that evening. A wave of warmth, laughter, and roasted meat hit him all at once. The clink of mugs and the shout of adventurers filled the air, a cacophony far different from the echoing silence of the Dungeon.

“Welcome to the Hostess of Fertility!” Syr called from behind the counter, waving him over.

Bell shuffled inside, nerves tight, trying not to trip under the weight of so many eyes. He slid into a corner table, clutching the menu like a lifeline. Syr bustled over with a grin.

“Sit tight, rabbit. I’ll bring you something good.”

“Rabbit?” Bell blinked, confused.

But Syr only winked and darted back to the kitchen.

That was when he felt it — the weight of someone’s gaze. Heavy. Piercing. He glanced up.

Two women sat in the far corner.
The first, an elf with pale hair and eyes like sharpened glass, sat perfectly still, her presence cold enough to silence the air around her. Bell had seen her once before, moving through the city like a shadow. Ryu, the quiet waitress.

But it was the second that stole the breath from his chest.

A woman with crimson hair, vibrant even in the tavern’s dim light, tied back loosely with a ribbon. Her golden eyes smoldered like fire, but her smile was crooked, weary, as though it carried the weight of unspoken sins.

She leaned back in her chair, mug in hand, and her lips curved.

“Syr didn’t tell us she was inviting strays.”

Bell froze. He knew that face — not from Orario, not from the streets, but from stories. Whispered legends of a Familia that had stood for justice, only to be slaughtered in tragedy.

Alise Lovell. Captain of the Astraea Familia. Dead. Or so everyone believed.

The tavern seemed to roar on around him, but Bell heard nothing. His hand tightened on the menu. This isn’t possible. She can’t be alive.

Alise raised her mug in a mock toast, eyes fixed on him.

“So this is the boy who keeps running from goblins. Cute.”

Bell stammered, heat rising in his throat.

Ryu’s voice cut in, quiet but sharp as a blade.

“Alise. Don’t.”

For the first time, Bell realized the two weren’t just sitting together — they were anchored to each other, two shadows bound by the same past.

Syr appeared then, setting down a steaming plate before Bell. “Eat, Bell,” she said warmly, but her eyes flicked between him and the crimson-haired woman, something guarded hiding in her smile.

Bell’s stomach growled again, betraying him. He picked up his fork, hands shaking.

The laughter of the tavern returned. Plates clattered. Ale spilled.

But for Bell, the world had shifted. Two legends of Astraea sat alive before him — not martyrs, not ghosts, but outlaws. Hidden in plain sight.

And now… he was part of their secret.

Chapter Text

⚠️ Disclaimer:
I have no rights to this story - this is obviously fanfiction.
I wrote this to satisfy my craving because Alise Lovell is my favorite character in DanMachi and I was sad she was dead well before the story began. I'm sorry for any spoilers I'm assuming like me you've read the whole thing.

DanMachi AU: Crimson Ghosts of Astraea

Chapter Two - Flames That Reflect

Scene One - The Falna's Secrets

Bell knelt on the bed, shirt off, his pale back turned to Hestia. The goddess hummed softly to herself as she dipped her finger in her own divine blood and traced the glowing script of the Falna across his skin.

Usually, this part felt routine. Bell would come back battered, embarrassed, but stubbornly alive. Hestia would scold him, update the numbers, and reassure him that growth takes time. But tonight was different.

Her humming faltered.

"...What the?"

Bell stiffened. "L-Lady Hestia? Did something happen?"

The writing across his back had changed. It wasn't just his Strength, Agility, and Endurance climbing faster than expected - though that alone made her blink twice. No, the Falna pulsed with an odd, secondary glow, new lines forming like veins branching from his soul.

Hestia leaned closer, squinting. "Bell... there's something I've never seen before. Not even on the others back when I was in Tenkai."

She traced the letters with her fingertip, whispering aloud.

> "Unregistered Phenomenon: Hero's Reflection. Latent mimicry of admired ideals and techniques. Temporary resonance observed."

Her lips parted in shock. "Mimicry? What does that even mean...?"

Bell's heart pounded. The word echoed in his head: reflection. He thought of the hidden alcove in the Dungeon, the rapier gleaming in firelight, the way Alise's blade moved like lightning. He remembered stumbling through her corrections, mimicking her stance, her swing, her heat.

Hestia's eyes flicked lower. Another faint script shimmered faintly, almost shyly.

> "Sub-effect: Echo of the Flame. Falna records unfamiliar sword-style resonance. Trace fire attribute detected."

Her hand trembled. "Bell... did you fight with someone?"

His throat tightened. "I..." He couldn't tell her about the hidden passage. About Alise Lovell, alive, her fire pressing him forward. "...I sparred. Kind of. In the Dungeon."

Hestia's eyes narrowed, suspicion flashing, but then her expression softened into worry. "This isn't normal. Realis Frieza was already special, but this-Bell, it's like you're carrying someone else's will inside you."

Bell's fists clenched against the blanket. "Maybe... that's not bad."

"What do you mean?"

"I want to be a hero, Lady Hestia. If I can carry their strength, their ideals... if I can reflect them even for a moment... maybe that means I'm closer to it."

Hestia studied his back silently. The glow faded, leaving her staring at the boy kneeling before her, trembling but smiling faintly.

"You idiot," she whispered. Then she reached out and hugged him from behind, her arms warm around his shoulders. "Don't break yourself trying to carry the world. You're still my Bell. Don't forget that."

Bell closed his eyes, swallowing hard. "...Yes."

But deep down, he felt it: the flame wasn't just his anymore.

Scene Two - Alise & Ryu

The Hostess of Fertility had emptied, its laughter and clatter fading into the night. Only the hum of the lanterns remained, soft against the wooden walls.

Ryu sat by the window, a book open in her hands, the moonlight painting her profile in silver. She looked calm, as always, but Alise knew better. That calm was a mask. One she'd worn since the Juggernaut.

Alise stepped inside, stretching her shoulders, cloak trailing ash and dust. She slid into the chair across from Ryu with a sigh.

"Still awake?"

Ryu turned a page. "You were gone long."

Alise smirked, lazy. "What, worried?

Ryu's gaze lifted, flat but piercing. "...Where?"

Alise leaned back, letting her smile tilt. "Walk. Needed air."

Ryu's POV:

She closed her book, fingers pressing the spine tight. Alise's eyes glowed faintly in the lamplight - that restless, dangerous spark she hadn't seen in years. She knew this woman too well. When Alise lied, her grin came easy, her shoulders loose. She lied now.

"Air," Ryu repeated, tasting the word. She let silence stretch between them. If she pressed, Alise would dodge. If she demanded, Alise would push back harder.

Better to let the silence linger. Better to wait.

Alise's POV:

Ryu's eyes lingered too long. Damn elf. She always saw through her. But Alise wasn't ready. Not yet. Not to tell her about the rabbit with stubborn eyes who reminded her too much of Astraea's dreams. Not to admit that watching him made her heart ache in ways she thought buried.

So she raised her mug, drained it, and hummed like nothing was wrong.

"You'll wrinkle that pretty forehead if you keep brooding, Ryu," she teased.

Ryu exhaled softly, turning back to her book. But her hands trembled ever so slightly.

Two women. One secret. And a gap widening between them with every unspoken word.

Scene Three - Reflections in the Dungeon

Bell's POV:

The Dungeon felt different tonight. His dagger was steady in his hand, his breath even as he faced the swarm of goblins rushing him. He shifted his weight like she'd shown him - knees bent, guard angled, blade snapping forward in a thrust instead of a wild swing.

The goblin fell, its chest pierced clean.

Bell blinked. That wasn't mine. That was hers.

His pulse raced. Alise's rapier, her stance, her heat - it burned through him. And then, just as quickly, it was gone.

"Hero's Reflection..." he whispered. Hestia's words returned to him. Mimicry. Ideals.

He tightened his grip. "Then I'll keep going."

Alise's POV:

From the shadows, Alise followed. Carefully. Too carefully. She didn't dare let her eyes linger on him for more than a heartbeat. The boy's senses were sharp - too sharp. He could feel her gaze like a blade at his back.

But she saw enough.

Every thrust. Every dodge. Every ragged breath.

He was clumsy still, bleeding, reckless. But there it was - her stance. Her fire, flickering awkwardly in his dagger.

Alise's chest tightened painfully. "You're learning too fast, rabbit."

She pressed her back to the wall, closing her eyes. She'd trained him once. Just once. And already his body remembered. Already her flame had echoed inside him.

Bell's POV:

The sensation prickled again - eyes. Watching. He spun, dagger raised, but the corridor was empty. Only the sound of dripping water.

He swallowed. "Not a monster... someone."

But he didn't press. Instead, he moved forward, deeper into the dark. Because whether or not someone watched, he had to keep growing.

Alise's POV:

He almost caught her. Almost.

Alise let her breath out slowly, hidden in shadow. Her hands trembled on her rapier hilt. Not from fear. From something far more dangerous.

Hope.

She closed her eyes, whispering to herself. "Don't make me regret this, Bell Cranel."

The Dungeon swallowed her words, leaving only the steady rhythm of the boy's footsteps echoing forward.

Chapter Text

⚠️ Disclaimer:
I have no rights to this story - this is obviously fanfiction.

I wrote this to satisfy my craving because Alise Lovell is my favorite character in DanMachi and I was sad she was dead well before the story began. I'm sorry for any spoilers I'm assuming like me you've read the whole thing.

DanMachi AU: Crimson Ghosts of Astraea

Chapter Three – The Deep Fire

Scene One – Bell Descends Too Far
Bell’s boots scuffed stone as he pushed deeper than usual.

The 5th Floor faded behind him, its familiar corridors narrowing into darker halls. The oppressive weight of the Dungeon thickened around him, pressing into his lungs like a storm waiting to break.

Just one more floor, he told himself. If I stop here, I’ll never change. Heroes don’t wait for tomorrow.

He clutched his dagger tighter. Hestia’s words still echoed in his ears from the night before: You’re carrying someone else’s will inside you. And Alise’s sharper voice from that hidden alcove: Heroes don’t sit.

So he didn’t.

The 6th Floor greeted him with a chorus of snarls. Kobolds and goblins gathered as if the Dungeon itself knew he had overstepped.

Bell’s heart hammered but he steadied his breath, remembering her lessons: knees low, weight forward, blade angled.

He lunged — his dagger thrust straight, clean. A goblin shrieked as the point pierced its chest.

Bell gasped. That wasn’t mine. That was hers.

Then they swarmed.
Claws raked his arm. A club smashed his shoulder. He stumbled, grit biting into his palms. Pain shot through him, but he forced himself upright. “Not yet…”

His legs moved without thinking, sliding into her stance. His strikes echoed her rhythm, each swing almost rapier-like. Brief sparks flickered at the dagger’s edge, like embers caught in the wind.

But for every clean cut, three more monsters pressed in. He could hear his own heartbeat, frantic and heavy.

Am I still too weak?

He staggered back into a corner. Goblins shrieked, kobolds bared teeth, and Bell’s chest burned with the certainty of death.

And then —
Heroes don’t quit.

The words roared in his skull, not his own but Alise’s, fierce and unyielding. The glow surged again, fire lacing his arm. His dagger blazed with a fleeting arc of flame, cleaving through the kobold’s throat.

The monsters recoiled, snarling at the sudden blaze.

Bell gasped for air, blood streaming down his side. He was alive, barely. But the fight wasn’t over.

Scene Two – Alise Intervenes

Alise’s POV:

She cursed under her breath.
She’d trailed him the whole way, careful not to let her gaze linger, slipping from shadow to shadow. But when he stepped onto the 6th Floor, her stomach turned cold.

Idiot rabbit.

Her hand hovered on her rapier’s hilt as she watched him fight.

His swings were sharper now, his stance corrected — her stance.

Every flick of his wrist reminded her of Astraea’s lessons, of her own drills. And for a heartbeat, pride swelled in her chest.

Then the blood came.
Claws tore his flesh, clubs smashed bone. He faltered under the swarm, and for a heartbeat she saw not Bell but her Familia again — comrades staggering against impossible odds, firelight fading.

“No,” she hissed, and broke her own rule.

Her rapier flashed, flames igniting along the blade as she dashed into the fray.

One goblin’s skull burst under her thrust. A kobold shrieked as her sword arced through its chest, fire blooming from the wound. She moved like a storm of fire and steel, each strike precise, each step confident.

Bell blinked up at her through blood and sweat.

“You—”
“Shut up and move!” Alise barked, slamming her boot into a goblin’s ribs.
Together, they cut the pack down. Bell’s arms shook, his blade slick, but he followed her rhythm as if tethered to her flame. For every monster she struck, he mirrored her, his body echoing her movements.

When the last beast fell smoldering, silence crashed heavy in the corridor.
Alise turned, chest heaving, golden eyes burning at him. “What the hell were you thinking, rabbit?”

Bell swallowed, trembling. “I… I had to try. If I don’t keep pushing—”

“You’ll die,” she snapped.

He met her glare, voice raw but firm. “Then I’ll die fighting. Heroes don’t quit.”

Alise froze. Her own words. Reflected back at her.

Scene Three – The Hidden Passage
They retreated to the alcove, the same moss-lined chamber where they had first spoken.

Bell sat slumped against the wall, clutching his bandaged arm. Alise leaned against her sword, watching him with a storm in her chest.

Bell broke the silence first. “Why do you fight, Alise?”

Her jaw tightened. She wanted to laugh, to deflect, to call him a fool. But his eyes — bloodshot, trembling, yet burning — demanded an answer.

“I chased justice,” she said at last, voice low. “When I was younger, I thought it was simple. Good and evil. Light and dark. But I learned the truth. Justice… isn’t one thing.

Everyone believes their own version of it. Some gods mocked me for it. Some adventurers spat at me. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.”

Bell listened, silent.

Alise’s gaze dropped to the floor. “And in the end, it didn’t matter. The Juggernaut came. My Familia died. My justice died with them.”

Bell’s breath hitched. He wanted to speak, but the weight of her words pinned him.

Then he clenched his fists. “Then let me carry it."

Alise’s head snapped up.

“What?”

Bell’s voice shook, but his eyes didn’t waver. “You said justice isn’t one thing.

Maybe it’s not. But your fire… it lit something in me. If I can carry even a piece of that flame, if I can fight for it, then maybe your Familia didn’t die for nothing.”

Silence. The drip of water echoed through the chamber.

Alise’s chest ached. Damn rabbit. Damn his stubborn eyes. She wanted to tell him he was a fool, that he didn’t understand, that justice was nothing but ash. But the words stuck in her throat.

Instead, she whispered, almost against her will: “You’re insane.”
Bell smiled faintly. “You told me that already.”

Alise laughed once, sharp and broken. Then she sank onto the bench across from him, staring at the boy who dared to carry what she had lost.

“Fine,” she said at last, voice rough. “But don’t you dare die on me, rabbit. If you do, I’ll drag you back from the grave myself just to kill you again.”
Bell’s grin widened despite the blood on his lips. “Deal.”

Chapter Text

⚠️ Disclaimer:

I have no rights to this story - this is obviously fanfiction.

I wrote this to satisfy my craving because Alise Lovell is my favorite character in DanMachi and I was sad she was dead well before the story began. I'm sorry for any spoilers I'm assuming like me you've read the whole thing.

🌸 DanMachi AU: Crimson Ghosts of Astraea

Chapter Four – Silverback’s Roar

Morning in Orario (Alise & Ryu)

Festival days made Orario feel like it was trying on a costume two sizes too loud.

The streets were a braid of color and noise—vendor banners cracking in the breeze, paper charms fluttering from stall roofs, whistles trilling to shepherd crowds around cages and arenas. Ganesha Familia guards in horned helms moved like buoys in a bright tide, shouting orders that were swallowed and belched back as laughter.

Alise hated Monsterphilia for reasons that made her grin anyway. The show of it, the bravado, the way the city pretended the Dungeon had agreed to be domesticated for a day—ridiculous. But the energy lit every wire in her. Music hopped from corner to corner; children wore wooden masks and chased each other between adults’ legs; skewers sizzled and bled good smells into the morning.

“Too many people,” Ryu said. She walked with the easy poise that turned bodies aside without touch, eyes skating over every alley mouth, ladder, rooftop—paths traced out of habit.

“Too many rules,” Alise countered, tipping her head toward a ring where a tamed mole beast performed the trick of not being wild while everyone pretended it was skill.

Ryu’s gaze snagged on a pen of goblins forced to cower under iron. “Too much cruelty.”

Alise didn’t argue. The word sat between them with teeth. “Come on,” she said quietly, nudging Ryu’s shoulder with her own. “If we’re going to be grumpy about it, we might as well do it somewhere that sells fried dumplings.”

They ate at the edge of a square where a brass band was losing a duel with a flock of birds determined to rehearse a different song. Syr wove through the crowd with a basket on her hip and a smile that looked like it had been polished for one purpose: making people feel chosen. She waved when she saw them, light catching in her eyes.

“Working?” Alise called.

“Always,” Syr chimed, and was swept away to charm a different knot of patrons.

Alise followed her with her gaze a second too long. Ryu watched the same line and knew the stare meant something else already—Alise counting where exits would open if the crowd snapped; Alise checking the corners for trouble as if trouble were a shy animal that needed coaxing.

“You could have stayed home,” Ryu said.

“And miss the world pretending it isn’t afraid?” Alise smiled. “Never.”

Syr, a Wallet, and a Rabbit (Ryu POV with Bell cameo)

Ryu felt him before she saw him—no mysticism in that, only pattern. Bell had a way of pushing through a crowd that wasn’t so much confidence as determination not to be an obstacle. He appeared at the far end of the lane with a bundle of errands in his hands and a face set to try.

Syr intercepted him like she had been there first and he had finally arrived. A handful of seconds later they were laughing about something, and then Syr touched the pocket at her apron and made an apologetic face big enough to be read from a rooftop.

“Forgot her wallet,” Alise guessed, following Ryu’s line of sight with unhidden amusement.

Ryu’s mouth thinned. “Convenient.”

“He’ll go,” Alise said, with the fond resignation of someone listing the weather. “He was born to do favors.”

He did. Syr led; Bell half-jogged after, nodding to everything, eyes wide at the size of the festival up close. Ryu watched them pass, and the air shifted a fraction as a pattern clicked—the sort which, if ignored, becomes history.

“Should we—” Alise began.

“No,” Ryu said, though she took a step in the same direction. “Not yet.”

They did not follow. They shadowed the idea of following, the way old swords shadow their owners even after being shelved: always present, quietly heavy.

A while later, Ryu cut Bell off near a vendor selling candied fruit. She had not meant to intercept him—intention was a fragile thing on streets that moved like this—but there he was, and there she was, and Syr had darted ahead to speak to a Ganesha handler.

Ryu’s voice carried almost nowhere. “Cranel.”

He turned so quickly he almost spilled the paper cone he carried. “R-Ryu! I—um—hello.”

His eyes tried to be in three places at once: on her, on Syr, on the swirling crowd. Ryu put him in one place by simply occupying it.

“You should be careful,” she said.

He blinked. “I… am trying.”

“There is a tone of day when accidents choose where to happen.” Ryu’s gaze skimmed the cages, the bright ring, Syr’s slight figure, the handlers, the places where the city’s plan would be weakest. “This is such a tone.”

Bell looked where she looked, which pleased her. “Is something going to—?”

“Something always does,” Ryu said, and it wasn’t unkind. She stepped aside as Syr returned, all apologies that meant please without ever saying it. Ryu felt Alise at her shoulder and did not turn.

“Thank you,” Bell said, to both of them and neither. He hurried after Syr.

Alise hummed. “You scared him.”

“I informed him.” Ryu let herself glance sidelong. “You would have flirted with fate and called it advice.”

Alise’s smile flashed. “That’s why I bring you to festivals.”

---

The Crack in the Plan (Alise & Ryu)

Midday leaned toward afternoon; shadows lengthened; whistles collected in odd corners and made echoes chase each other. A handler took a call, raised a hand, shouted a command that split into useless pieces as it hit three different directions at once.

The wrong latch was touched in the wrong order.

Ryu did not think the word now so much as to recognize it happening. The chain shrieked; the Silverback’s cage blew outward like a breath from a god who had chosen to roar as a hobby.

People didn’t scream immediately. There is always a single clean second when a crowd believes it has misheard reality. Then reality makes the same sound again, louder.

The plaza detonated.

Ryu moved without needing to be told. Alise moved as if she had been waiting all morning to be allowed. Ganesha guards crashed toward the center; bodies sluiced around them; stalls fell, splitting their wares into improbable colors on cobblestone.

The Silverback laughed in the voice of stone breaking. Its fists found stalls, posts, the edges of cages; the air rang with iron’s grievance.

Ryu cut downward into living problems: lesser beasts shaken loose in the panic. She slid forward, scything economy—one perfect step, one perfect stroke, bodies solved from threat into relief. The sword in her hand was not justice; it was a tool; her face wore its usual calm like a decision already paid for.

Alise ignited.

Her rapier took fire as if it had been waiting at the base of the blade for a signal. She dove into the wash of panic and burned a path through it, not grandstanding, not invisible either. Fire curled from her cuts and sealed the edges of fear closed behind her.

“Left,” Ryu said, not loudly.

“Right,” Alise answered, already there.

They became a hinge the crowd turned on, a quiet fulcrum that let families find alleys, let guards regroup, let a street return to being a street instead of a mouth.

And then Alise saw him.

The Boy in the Square (Alise)

Like a candle that refused to be snuffed by a hurricane.

Bell stood not far from the wrecked ring, small against the architecture of disaster. He was breathing too fast and not fast enough. Syr’s hand grabbed his sleeve—and then she let go in that way that tells a person they are free to do something foolish and that the permission is a blessing.

He swallowed and squared himself.

Alise felt her feet forget everything: fire, duty, prudence, years of learning how to be a ghost. The world narrowed until it was the length of a dagger and the distance between a boy’s decision and the place it would have to be made.

“Don’t,” Ryu’s voice said near her, gentle and firm.

“I won’t,” Alise answered, and meant I will watch.

The Silverback thundered past, clearing space simply by existing. Somewhere behind it a chain snagged and shrieked, trying to complain its way into being useful again. The beast’s gaze found the white hair, the stupidly brave set of shoulders.

Bell lifted his dagger.

It should have been a farce. The difference in scale was obscene. But the line of him—knees, hips, shoulder—clicked into something Alise recognized with a gasp that felt like burning cold.

That’s mine, some unguarded part of her marveled, not with ownership but with the shock of seeing a reflection out where it could be harmed by weather.

The Silverback charged.

Bell did not flee.

He dodged on the beat Alise would have chosen for him—late enough to teach the body fear, early enough to live. Its fist plowed a furrow in the earth where he had been; the shock made his bones ring anyway; he came up in a parry that was not a parry at all and used the mistake like a stepping-stone.

Ryu murmured, “Impossible.”

“Look,” Alise breathed. “He’s choosing the right mistakes.”

Syr threw a clay pot that exploded into fragrant smoke in the Silverback’s face—a Ganesha guard’s trick someone had forgotten to prohibit her from borrowing. The beast reeled; the plaza shifted; Bell darted in and carved a line along a forearm thick as a beam.

It noticed him thoroughly after that.

“Intervene?” Ryu asked. She didn’t move. Alise realized with a start that Ryu’s sword-tip hovered—ready, not shaking.

“Not yet,” Alise said, hating and loving the words.

Bell’s footwork began to fray at the edges; fear chewed at his timing. He forced it back with a noise that might have been a laugh or a sob. The Silverback’s sweeping backhand took him full in the ribs and flung him like a thrown thought. He hit a stall; wood died convincingly.

Alise took one step. Ryu’s hand found her wrist.

“Wait,” Ryu said.

A breath later, a different cut of silence slid into the square, crisp as frost.

Ais Wallenstein arrived the way winter arrives: by making everything else admit what season it is.

---

5 — The Sword Princess, the Rabbit, and the Line Between (Ryu & Alise)

Ais didn’t so much move as not waste space. Her blade drew a clean geometry through the Silverback’s next decision. It roared, tried to argue; she declined debate and rephrased the question with steel.

Bell got up because Bell was always going to. He staggered once and then stood where he oughtn’t, interposing himself between Syr and the wild. The look he gave Ais held humiliation’s sting and admiration’s bright ache and something new even Alise had not yet taught him: acceptance that needing help today did not name tomorrow.

Ryu studied that look the way an alchemist studies a flame: color, heat, what it does to metals. “He will survive,” she said, and sounded like she was arguing with herself.

“Not if we smother him with care,” Alise replied, not looking away. “And not if we abandon him to pride.”

“Between those,” Ryu said, “is a line too thin to walk.”

Alise smiled sideways. “We’ve walked thinner.”

Ais feinted, the Silverback bit air; she rewrote its balance with a heel and took its throat neatly on the out-breath. The body shuddered and then remembered how to be heavy. The plaza found a way to be a plaza again—slowly, disbelievingly, as if waking from a bad joke.

Bell didn’t cheer. He bent to catch his breath, then checked Syr with hands that wanted to make sure and succeeded. Syr, for her part, kept her eyes as wide and innocent as a fox who would absolutely steal a second hen.

“A moment longer,” Ryu said, when Alise tensed to go. “Let him speak to her.”

Her meant Ais. It always had.

They listened from the edge as Ais told Bell something he would hear as a door opening: come train. He nodded like he was accepting a sentence and a gift together.

Alise’s heart did the worst thing. I hoped for more.

Heat Left in Metal (Closing Beat: They Stay)

They did not leave. They stayed through the last screams, through the sweep of guards reclaiming order, through the slow presentation of calm that cities perform after panic as if it were theater and the audience had paid for a happy ending.

Ryu wiped her blade clean with a strip of stall canvas that had already given up being anything else. She watched Bell from under lashes that hid nothing from Alise.

“You were right,” she admitted quietly.

Alise’s grin came tired, relieved. “About which part?”

“That he is not reckless only,” Ryu said. “He is resolute. The difference is the space someone could step into and call training.”

“You just volunteered,” Alise teased, soft as rain.

Ryu huffed. It might have been a laugh undercover. “You lit the fire. I will keep it from eating at the house.”

Alise looked at her friend and saw the woman who had walked beside her through worse than festivals, who had buried a Familia and kept breathing. Gratitude rose, uncomplicated and large. “Together, then.”

“Together,” Ryu agreed.

They watched Bell a little longer—how he held himself smaller in Ais’s presence without dimming; how Syr hovered and preened and fussed; how Ganesha guards tried to pretend paperwork could knit a world back up.

When they finally turned away, it wasn’t retreat. It was reconnaissance in reverse—leaving the scene with everything they needed to plan what came next.

On the way back through streets already re-inventing joy, Alise said, “You asked me to wait. Thank you.”

Ryu’s eyes flicked to her, thoughtful. “You would have stolen the fight from him out of love.”

“And you would have kept him too safe out of love,” Alise said.

Ryu inclined her head. “Then we will take turns preventing each other from making our favorite mistakes.”

Alise laughed, and the sound put color back into the banners for a heartbeat. “Deal.”

They walked on, two ghosts who had decided to haunt the living properly.

Behind them, a boy with a bandaged ribcage said yes to training that would bruise his soul into a stronger shape. Ahead of them, an alcove waited with blue light and moss and room enough for three versions of justice to sit down and learn each other’s names.

And above all of it, Orario went on doing what cities do—forgetting too fast, remembering at odd hours, and making space for the next story to start in the exact place the last one nearly ended.

Chapter Text

⚠️ Disclaimer:
I have no rights to this story - this is obviously fanfiction.
I wrote this to satisfy my craving because Alise Lovell is my favorite character in DanMachi and I was sad she was dead well before the story began. I'm sorry for any spoilers I'm assuming like me you've read the whole thing.

🌸 DanMachi AU: Crimson Ghosts of Astraea

Chapter Five – The Burden of Trust

Rumors in Warm Lamplight (Ryu & Alise)

The Hostess of Fertility swelled with voices until the rafters seemed to ring with them. Mugs clinked; stew steamed; chairs scraped; every other table traded the same story, polishing it brighter with each retelling.

“—swear on Ganesha’s horn, the kid stood there and faced the Silverback—”

“—white-haired rookie, eyes like a crazed rabbit—”

“—not crazed. Focused. Like he wanted the world to see him.”

Ryu Lion turned a page and did not look up. The book was a sanctuary she didn’t read so much as inhabit; words blurred into a quiet wall against the noise. Yet nothing muffled the names that kept slipping between the clatter and laughter.

Bell Cranel.

Her jaw set. Pride and dread complicated the breath in her chest until it came carefully measured. Reckless, she thought. Already being noticed. That is how the world starts to chew you.

Across from her, Alise cupped a mug between her palms and pretended to drink. The steam haloed her crimson hair, and the corner of her mouth couldn’t quite suppress its upward tug.

“Do you hear this?” Alise murmured, not to be heard, which meant Ryu heard perfectly. “They’re calling him brave.”

Ryu turned another page. “They’ll call him foolish next.”

“And then they’ll call him hero.” Alise’s smile sharpened as if at a private joke. “If he doesn’t die.”

Ryu finally looked up. Moonlight pushed in at the window, painting Alise in pale silver and ember orange, like a hearth with the grate thrown open. “That is precisely the problem.”

Alise tapped the rim of her mug, listening to the tavern as if to a distant drum. “You’re not wrong,” she said softly. “But you’re not right enough for me to stop hoping.”

Ryu closed the book. The noise haunted their corners—Silverback, Ais Wallenstein glimpsed on a rooftop, white-haired boy who didn’t run. Ryu’s voice went even quieter, the way rivers slip under winter ice. “Hope is a door you don’t always get to close.”

“Mm.” Alise sat back, fire banked but alive in her eyes. “And what a waste to keep it locked.”

They let the noise roll past them, two fixed points in a current. In the space between their glances lay a map only they knew: alleys to avoid, names to never say aloud, nights when sleep would not come because ghosts had found a new face to wear.

Tonight, the ghost wore Bell’s eyes.

The Supporter (Bell, with Alise at a Distance)

Bell disliked haggling but he hated empty pockets more. Liliruca Arde stood on tiptoe to meet his gaze, which was not much of a stretch; she was small, wrapped in too-large cloth and clever eyes.

“A fair split,” Lili chirped, counting on fingers. “I carry, I sort, I sell. You fight, you get us home alive. Forty-sixty, in your favor, of course.”

Bell scratched his cheek. “Are you sure? I… I don’t want to take advantage.”

Lili’s smile didn’t touch the guarded set of her shoulders. “Adventurers always take advantage. Might as well do it fairly, right?”

Bell flinched as if stung, then nodded too quickly. “Right. S-sorry. I mean—yes. Thank you.”

From an alley mouth, Alise watched with her weight against brick and her eyes half-lidded, as if disinterest could talk her instincts to sleep. She’d cataloged supporters in a hundred glances: the hopeful, the desperate, the shrewd. This one moved like a cat past puddles—light steps, mind on exits.

“Little fox,” Alise murmured. “Not a lamb.”

Ryu would have told him no. Alise did not move. She thought of the flame in Bell’s eyes and the ash in her own history and let the boy make a mistake he could survive.

If he’s going to carry anything of ours, she thought, let him carry the right weight: choice, consequence, and the stubbornness to try again afterward.

Lili bowed with practiced humility. “We’ll make a good team, Mr. Bell.”

He smiled as if the world had just opened another door.

Alise’s fingers tightened on the edge of her cloak. “Don’t lock it behind him,” she whispered to no one and walked away.

Edgework (Alise & Bell — the Alcove)

They met again where moss made the stone smell green and the old blue crystal hummed like a patient heart. Alise set a small tin on the ground; inside, cloth-wrapped rice. Bell’s gratitude was so earnest it made her want to laugh and bite back tears for a world that had not wrung that out of him yet.

“Eat after,” she said, drawing her rapier.

They worked until the little alcove throbbed with scuffed bootmarks and bellies of breath. Alise corrected his hips with a light tap, flicked his guard wider with her blade’s flat, made him step until stepping was thoughtless and balance felt like a note held just right.

“Again,” she said, over and over. “Again.”

When he flagged, she spoke, because words were also steel.

“You think justice is a destination,” Alise told him, circling. “It is not. It’s a road. It forks. It doubles back. Sometimes it walks you to a cliff.”

Bell’s chest heaved. “And you jumped?”

Alise’s mouth twisted. “I fell.”

He lunged; she sidestepped and caught his wrist, turning his momentum into the wall. The tap rang like a bell. She let him go and stepped back, guilt ghosting her face half a heartbeat before she smothered it.

“You don’t strike like a martyr,” Bell said, breathless. “You strike like someone who still wants to win.”

Alise stared at him. Then she laughed, surprised into it. “Careful, rabbit. If you keep saying good things like that I might adopt you.”

He flushed to the ears, then lifted his dagger. “Again?”

They worked until the echoes of her style became something that lived under his skin: a line of fire down a clean thrust; the economy of not wasting steps; the quiet intoxication of precision. When they finally collapsed onto opposite benches, sweat cooling, the rice tasted like a feast.

Bell chewed, swallowed, and dared a question that had been pacing his skull for days. “If justice is a road… where are you walking now?”

Alise rolled a grain between finger and thumb, watching it shine. “With a friend,” she said at last. “Even when she thinks I’m not.”

Bell paused. “She’ll be angry if she learns you’re training me.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll tell her anyway.”

Alise leaned her head back against the stone and shut her eyes. “Someday.”

He looked at the low ceiling with its hairline cracks and felt, absurdly, like the cracks were constellations. He wanted to trace them into meaning. He wanted to be the kind of person someone like Alise would not regret believing in.

“I’ll carry it,” he said suddenly. “Not just hero dreams. The part of justice you lost. I’ll carry that too.”

Alise opened one eye. “Heavy pack for a Level One.”

Bell lifted the tin like a toast. “I have good teachers.”

She didn’t answer. But the light behind her lashes softened.

Night Study (Ryu Alone)

Ryu cleaned the same glass three times before realizing it was spotless. The tavern had emptied to murmurs; Syr hummed something gentle that made the rafters seem lower, the light seem warm enough to sleep in.

Ryu set the glass down. Her hands were steady. Inside, the steadiness did not reach.

She remembered silver night after silver night, feet bleeding in her boots because the streets would not let her stop. She remembered the first time she chose to strike before speaking. Justice, she had told herself, and then she had found how thin a word becomes when stretched over certain acts.

On a night like this, long ago, Alise had leaned on a windowsill and said: We will be wrong, sometimes, Ryu. That is not the end of us. The end of us would be pretending that being wrong made us righteous.

Ryu closed her eyes. She saw Bell’s stance against the Silverback. Saw the place where it cleaned itself—Alise’s fingerprints on a boy too new to be carrying anyone’s style. Saw, too, the way he had stood in fear and had not fled.

“Reckless,” she told the quiet room.

It did not argue.

She added, softer, “But perhaps… he will learn to be reckless and correct.”

The admission felt like a door eased open. Air moved through.

She wondered, not for the first time, how many doors Alise had already opened for the boy without saying a word.

---

The Trap Springs (Bell, then Lili)

On the 7th Floor the air felt colder as if the Dungeon exhaled down your throat. Bell led, Lili half a pace behind, her pack yawning with the useful silence of empty space waiting to be filled.

“Left here,” Lili said, bright as a lantern. “Fewer kobolds this way.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Bell smiled over his shoulder. “You’re really good at this.”

Lili’s face didn’t change. Her fingers, inside the sleeve, flexed around a small, ugly thought that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with a god who smelled like spilled wine and a familia that taught small hands to close.

They fought efficiently—Bell’s steps cleaner, his parries making shy sense. In a lull, he crouched on a drop of stone to secure a pouch. Lili watched the way his body folded—unguarded for a heartbeat, as trusting as a door left open to breeze.

“Mr. Bell?” she said lightly.

He turned, already smiling at the sound of his name.

Her hands moved like a prayer someone else taught her. The straps slid. A pouch fell and split like a seed; a glitter of coin bit the light. Bell made the wrong motion—instinct before thought—reaching to save what spilled.

The knife left his belt as if it had never belonged there.

Lili stepped back. The world narrowed to the space between her and the exit. The knife felt too hot through cloth. It felt like treason and bread. Like a bad god’s laugh and the possibility of tomorrow not being as sharp.

“I’m sorry,” she said, not to him.

Then she ran.

“Lili?” Bell’s voice cracked. He spun to follow and the Dungeon obeyed its old habit: it birthed a problem exactly when pursuit seemed possible. War Shadows unpeeled from the stone like living ink. Orcs clustered as if summoned by the sound of breaking trust.

Bell lifted a hand to a belt that was suddenly light. His fingers closed on air. He stared stupidly, then corrected himself, because Alise had made correction into breath.

No knife. Then hands. Then feet.

He moved.
It was ugly and brave and insufficient. Shadow claws found skin; the world tilted; a club glanced off the edge of his skull hard enough to rip light out of the edges of his vision. He went to a knee and the air became something thick to be swallowed rather than something that offered itself.

Get up. A voice in his head did not sound like his own. Or maybe it did, after being put through someone else’s fire.

He rose into a parry that should have been a thrust; took the hit anyway; drove an elbow into a goblin’s throat and made himself believe that counted. The floor under him seemed eager to become a bed.

A small shape screamed far down the corridor.

“Lili,” he said, and the simple act of giving the sound weight pulled him forward.

He ran toward the scream that had cost him everything he owned. He ran because the road of the person he wanted to be had this bend in it. He ran because Hestia would cry and Alise would call him an idiot and both of those were kinds of love, and the world was already cruel enough without him learning the wrong lesson from it.

He found her cornered—Killer Ants closing like shutters, a kobold readying a club that would end her smallness into stillness.

He leapt without a weapon and learned how much of a weapon a body can be if it refuses to choose gentleness. He smashed shoulder and skull into fur and bone; he hauled Lili behind him and planted in the stance that was not his.

The monsters hissed.

Bell raised empty hands. “Come on,” he muttered. “I’m still here.”
His body found the posture Alise had taught and his soul found the place Hestia tended. Something inside him aligned like gears finally catching teeth—Hero’s Reflection not as borrowed style but as a chosen angle of heart. He was not Alise. He was the boy who had learned from her how to stand without spectacle.
He met it.
And then the air changed—cleaned—sang.
A silver line cut the dark.
Killer Ants unmade as if a chalk line had wicked water through them and the drawing had decided to let the page show again. The kobold collapsed in two neat pieces that did not bleed long enough to be rude. Bell blinked at the sudden vacancy where death had been busy.

Ais Wallenstein stood in the space she had created, hair like frost, eyes like a wind that smelled of height.

For a heartbeat, Bell saw himself reflected there—small, blood-slick, still-standing. Humiliation flared—a child found trying on a parent’s coat. Humiliation’s twin rose with it: want, fierce and clean.

“I—thank you,” he said, voice scraping.

Ais regarded him calmly, then turned and finished the small work left to do because even sword princesses respect the dignity of completion. When she faced him again, he was still between Lili and the air, which was either brave or ridiculous and probably both.

“You should leave this floor,” Ais said.
Bell nodded as if someone had finally said the precise thing the day had been trying to shape out of him.
Behind him, Lili made a small sound that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with something inside her cracking. Bell shifted a little so the sound could be private.
In the shadows, Alise let out a breath she had not remembered trapping inside a long time ago.
Witness (Alise, then Ryu)
Alise had seen clean swordwork before. She had lived in a house where justice was a blade you sharpened carefully and used rarely. Ais Wallenstein’s cuts reminded her of winter light through glass: no heat, no apology, perfect clarity.
But it was Bell that held her. The way he had stepped into the wrong choice—the generous one—without bargaining with himself about whether it would hurt. The way his empty hands had been enough to choose with.
“Rabbit,” she breathed, and the word was all awe, no scorn. “You fool.”
She should have been calculating risks. Faces had seen her along the monster pens earlier; fire was a signature; even a blacklisted ghost leaves footprints when the road is wet. Instead, for the space of the fight, she had simply watched and believed.
Ryu joined her without sound, as she had a thousand times in alleys where plans needed silence to form. They stood shoulder to shoulder at the mouth of the corridor, two women who had once had a Familia and now had each other and an argument they had not yet agreed to have.
Ryu took in the scene with a single sweep. The small supporter’s shaking shoulders.
The Sword Princess speaking a few words that somehow unspooled seasons of possibility. The boy who bled and stood straighter because someone he admired had seen him.

“You see it,” Alise said.

Ryu’s profile did not shift, but something behind it did, like a leaf turning over to show its paler side. “I see a path I know too well.”

Alise smiled sideways, not unkind. “No. You see the cliff. I see the rope bridge.”

“Bridges burn,” Ryu said.

“Then I’ll walk behind him with a bucket,” Alise returned. “And you’ll walk ahead with a knife to cut the worst boards.”

Ryu’s eyelids lowered. She considered the shape of that plan and the shape of the ache under it. “You make it sound simple.”

“It won’t be.” Alise’s hand flexed where it rested on the hilt. “But I am so very tired of the kind of hard that only takes. I want the kind that builds.”

They watched Ais speak to Bell again—something quick, a tilt of her head, an invitation that tasted like iron and snow. Bell nodded, and in the nod Alise saw a door open and a boy step through onto a road that would be unforgiving and correct.

Ryu said, very soft, “This will break him.”

Alise’s answer surprised even herself with its steadiness. “No,” she said. “This will forge him.”

Ryu breathed out, a sound so close to a laugh that Alise nearly turned to check. “You’ve always preferred hammers to warnings.”

“Warnings didn’t save us,” Alise said. “Hammers might save him.”

“And if he fractures?”

“Then we’ll solder,” Alise said simply. “It’s what we do.”

They fell quiet. The Sword Princess led Bell and the small supporter toward the stairs, toward daylight that had never felt stranger on skin than after a narrow survival. The corridor held their absence like cooled glass holds the memory of heat.

Ryu spoke again without looking. “You trained him.”

It wasn’t a question. Alise felt a dozen possible lies rise and fall without getting in line to be spoken.

“Yes,” she said.

Ryu nodded once. “Then train him properly.”

Alise blinked. “That was easier than expected.”

“It will not be later,” Ryu said, and now there was the ghost of a smile. “Consider this an advance on the argument we will have.”

Alise’s laugh came out clean. “I’ll bring better tea to that one.”

They stepped out of the dark together, not following the boy, not leading him, but choosing a parallel street of their own where watching was a kind of work and believing was a kind of weapon no blacklist could confiscate.
Weight Carried Forward (Bell)

Bell didn’t remember the plaza’s noise on the way up; he remembered the sound of Ais’s voice like a door sliding aside; he remembered Lili’s hands shaking around the knife she returned because guilt has a gravity not even gods rewrite. He remembered Hestia’s face when she saw the blood, how love pulls anger’s teeth and leaves only worry.

Back in his small room, he sat on the bed with the knife across his knees. The metal held a moon in its skin. He touched the hilt and felt the room become larger than it was, as if it included a blue alcove and a table in a tavern corner and every place a person had said don’t quit and meant I am with you if you don’t.

He thought of Alise’s stance, Ais’s cuts, Ryu’s studying quiet. He thought of the little supporter whose eyes had been too old and how the right choice hurts and still counts.

He whispered, to the air, to the three women, to a goddess downstairs trying to be angry enough to protect him from a city, “I will train.”

The words clicked into the future like a gear catching.

Somewhere below, two blacklisted ghosts crossed a street in step. Somewhere above, a sword princess sharpened a lesson. Somewhere inside, a road unrolled: not straight, not smooth, but wide enough for a boy with a stubborn back to walk carrying more than just himself.

Bell set the knife gently on the bed and began untying the day from his body, one knot at a time, already imagining the weight of a wooden practice sword in his hands, already hearing Alise say again and Ais say no wasted motion and Ryu say nothing at all and still be saying watch this angle, it is where the world will try to kill you.

He smiled into the dim. Sleep came heavy and deserved.

Morning would be hammers.
End of Chapter Five

Chapter Text

Chapter Six – The Weight of Growth

1 — Sword Princess’ Drill (Bell POV)

The sky had only just bruised with dawn when Bell collapsed into the dust again. His lungs scraped like they’d been lined with sand. His dagger trembled in his grip.

“Again.”

Ais Wallenstein’s voice didn’t rise or fall. It carried the same tone as the air at altitude: thin, unchanging, merciless. She waited with her blade held low, watching him get up.

Bell wiped sweat and blood from his cheek, gasping. Alise said it too… again.

He rose. Charged. His blade darted forward—too wide. Ais parried with a motion so small he almost didn’t see it. Then her wooden sword cracked his ribs. The world tumbled; Bell spat dirt.

“Your steps waste distance,” she said. “Cut it shorter. Balance. Again.”

Bell staggered upright. His chest screamed, but his heart pumped fire. Shorter… balance… He stepped tighter, thrust again, corrected his weight—still parried, still struck down.

And again. And again. Until the sun had cleared the horizon and Orario’s rooftops glinted like edges of spears.

2 — The Sword Princess Thinks (Ais POV)

She watched him break and rebuild across hours.

Most adventurers whined, slowed, begged rest. This boy did none of that. He fell, he bled, he tried again. Each failure brightened his eyes rather than dimmed them. It reminded her of something buried deep—a golden-haired fool she had once followed, who smiled into monsters’ maws and called it courage.

Bell Cranel was not him. But there was a piece of that dream in him.

She saw the awkward echoes of someone else’s style in his stance—longer thrusts, flame in the footwork, stances too martial for a rookie. Someone had touched him already.

Ais wondered who.

“Again,” she said, and Bell obeyed, because that was the only road forward.

3 — Fire and Frost (Alise & Ryu POV)

While Bell suffered under winter steel, the Hostess of Fertility thrummed with noon.

Alise sparred with Ryu in the storage courtyard, rapier flame hissing against Ryu’s calm blade. Fire against frost. Impulse against discipline. They had fought together so long that even their sparring was conversation.

“Your steps are too heavy,” Ryu murmured, sliding Alise’s thrust aside.

“Bell’s are heavier,” Alise shot back, pressing harder. Sparks flicked. “But he’s fixing them.”

“You’ve been watching again.”

Alise grinned, teeth flashing. “And you haven’t?”

They locked blades. For a heartbeat, their eyes met: Alise’s wild pride, Ryu’s restrained fear.

Ryu exhaled, pushed back, disarmed her with one clean motion. “He grows too fast. Fast growth breaks.”

Alise retrieved her weapon, twirling it. “Or it burns bright enough to light the way.”

They reset. Their spar continued.

4 — Warning in Quiet (Ryu & Bell POV)

Evening fell. Bell stumbled back from training, arms leaden. On the way to the Hostess, he nearly collided with Ryu at a quiet crossroad.

“Lion-san!” he gasped, startled.

Her gaze slid over him, registering exhaustion, cuts, pride still standing behind his eyes. “You train with the Sword Princess.”

Bell flushed. “Y-yes. She… she’s incredible. I can’t keep up, but I—”

“Leveling is not a race,” Ryu interrupted softly. “It is a weight. Most spend years before they earn it. You burn through weeks.”

Bell swallowed. “I don’t want to stop. If I stop… I’ll never catch up. Heroes don’t wait.”

Ryu’s eyes cooled, studying him like a blade on the grindstone. “Every level up will draw eyes. Gods, monsters, enemies. The faster you climb, the sooner they’ll choose you.”

Bell’s fist clenched. “Then I’ll just climb higher.”

Ryu’s lips parted—ready to rebuke—but she saw it again, that fire. And against her will, she nodded once, then vanished into the alley mist.

Bell stood trembling, but more resolved than ever.

5 — Echoes in Firelight (Alise POV)

That night, Alise sat with Ryu on the inn’s upper floor, their mugs cooling.

“He told you?” Alise guessed, smirking.

Ryu’s silence was answer enough.

Alise leaned back, watching stars scratch the black. “You see the cliff. I see the bridge.”

“And bridges burn,” Ryu murmured.

“Then we’ll rebuild them. As many times as it takes.” Alise’s eyes glowed faint with stubborn pride. “Watching him train with her… it doesn’t make me jealous. It makes me glad. Because he’s carrying both of us now.”

Ryu lowered her gaze, unable to answer.

6 — Rumor of a Roar (Shared POVs)

Two days later, Bell ventured into the Dungeon alone. His movements were sharper now, his blade quicker, his balance steadier—fragments of both Alise and Ais in his stance.

On the 9th Floor, a sound shook the walls.

A roar, deep enough to rattle marrow.

The air grew colder. The monsters grew still. Bell froze, dagger half-raised. His instincts screamed that something vast had marked him.

Far above, in Orario’s taverns, rumors crawled from mouth to mouth:

“Did you hear? A Minotaur broke loose from Loki Familia’s cull. It’s roaming the upper floors.”

Ryu’s hand tightened on her mug.

Alise’s eyes narrowed like a flame bent by wind. “Then the rabbit’s trial is coming.”

Ryu’s voice was low, tight. “He isn’t ready.”

Alise whispered, half prayer, half challenge: “Then he’ll have to be.”

End of Chapter Six

Chapter Text

🌸 DanMachi AU: Crimson Ghosts of Astraea

Chapter Seven – Threads Tighten

1 — Winter and Fire (Ais POV → Bell POV)

Dawn came thin as silk and just as cold. The training yard at the city’s edge held the night longer than the streets did, as if stone enjoyed being hard a little too much. Ais Wallenstein stood where shadows hadn’t left yet and watched Bell Cranel run toward her as if the distance between them were something he could defeat.

“Again,” she said, because morning had to be named to begin.

He launched in—tighter steps, weight disciplined, guard flatter to the line. She parried and felt the difference through wood: less waste, more decision. He had learned, overnight somehow, the economy of not apologizing with his body for wanting to win.

Ais’s eyes narrowed, not displeased. There were echoes in him, faint but real—the ghost of a rapier’s insistence, the suggestion of fire in how he committed to a thrust. Someone had carved corrections into him before she did.

“Breathe sooner,” she said, and the next exchange was cleaner just because he obeyed without argument. That obedience always moved her. She did not let it show.

They worked until the sun burned mist away and the city’s roofs lit as if edges had learned a new language. When she broke for water, Bell bent double, hands braced to knees, grinning despite the spit of blood at the corner of his mouth.

“I can feel it,” he panted. “Everything you said—it’s… starting to make sense.”

“Not yet,” Ais said, and the smallest tilt of her head meant good in a language he was learning to hear.

He nodded, the grin softer now, and lifted the wooden blade again. The boy wore humiliation like a past tense, not a habit. He was building something with it. She recognized that kind of work. It made winter want to be less cruel.

The next drill, she feinted twice in a pattern Loki Familia’s rookies always failed to read. Bell didn’t bite on the second feint. He held center, met her real cut, and—still lost, yes—but lost closer.

Ais blinked once. “Again.”

Bell went gladly back into the furnace.

2 — The Supporter in the Doorway (Lili POV → Bell POV)

Liliruca Arde had perfected the art of looking like she belonged in any doorway. The trick was to be too small to notice and too still to startle. She watched Bell stagger out from the training yard, sweat-slick and radiant with soreness, and told herself she would turn away this time. Let the apology keep tomorrow company.

She didn’t turn. She stepped forward instead, clutching at the strap of the pack that had once been the only thing tethering her to the world, and now felt like an accusation she wore because one knife had felt far too heavy.

“Mr. Bell.”

He spun, almost dropping the rag he’d been using on his face. For a second the hurt flashed there, the old bruise of betrayal, but it didn’t stay. He found a smile that was not fake and not forced, only careful.

“Lili. H—hi.”

“I…” She hated how the words wanted to knot. “I returned the knife. I know that is… less than nothing. But I want—if you would allow—let me support you again.”

The request hung stupidly in the heat. People looked at coins like that and dreamed of turning them into food. She wished she could turn this into a different thing to offer.

Bell scuffed his boot. Ais’s drills had made him less shy and more honest; both were dangerous together. “You don’t owe me anything,” he said, and then, because the truth could be cruel, he added gently, “You didn’t owe me anything when you ran. But I want to believe you can be better. I want to prove I can be better, too.”

Lili’s eyes burnt in their corners. Her voice shrank to survive. “You are very stupid,” she whispered. “And very kind.”

“I’m trying to be strong,” he said simply. “Kind should be part of that.”

She laughed, which was not what tears expected to be asked to do. “Then let me help. Properly.”

He nodded. “Okay. Properly.”

She stared at his hands, at the way he held them like they were meant to carry. She would learn to be a different weight. She would. The promise sounded feasible when she said it to the ground.

3 — A Quiet Street with Two Shadows (Alise & Ryu POV)

Ryu Lion leaned in the Hostess’ back doorway where summer smelled like vegetables and soap. She watched Bell and Lili make a pact out in the street with only their eyes, and she watched Alise watch them with a smile that thought it was hiding.

“He forgives like it costs him nothing,” Ryu said.

“It costs him exactly what it should,” Alise replied, not looking away. “A bruise. The skin grows over. The next time, it holds better.”

“Forgiveness as training,” Ryu murmured dryly.

Alise’s grin flashed. “You’ve been schooling me in discipline for years. Let me teach you faith.”

Ryu’s gaze followed Bell’s gait—the way training had changed even how he walked. She did not speak what she saw: that something in the boy’s step now matched Alise’s stride when fights asked for more than speed; that two ghosts had already started haunting the same body.

Alise finally looked at Ryu. “You think he’s gathering people around him without trying.”

Ryu didn’t deny it. “That is more dangerous than any monster. Monsters kill one body at a time. Charisma kills a house of people when it breaks.”

“And when it holds?” Alise asked very softly.

Ryu had no answer she trusted, so she sharpened the truth instead. “Then those people become a target. So does he.”

Alise accepted the knife and turned it. “Then we become his scabbard.”

Ryu almost smiled. “You do love your metaphors.”

“I do love this ridiculous boy,” Alise said, and the words came like an exhale she hadn’t meant to give away. “And I am not in the mood to apologize for it.”

Ryu’s silence wasn’t consent, but it wasn’t refusal either. The line between them had become a road. They walked it without bumping shoulders.

4 — Winter Measures Fire (Ais POV → Bell POV)

Training bled into afternoon, and Ais changed the rhythm. She stopped using the wood sword and let steel speak for her. Not to cut—only to make the air tell a truer story. The song of real metal makes a student’s instincts grow ears.

Bell’s eyes tracked the blade as if sight could be muscle. His parries adjusted half a beat nearer to right. He still missed, but he missed less proudly and more precisely, which pleased her.

“Your stance is not yours,” she said, not accusing. “Who?”

Bell blinked. He thought of a blue-lit alcove and a rapier that had cut the dark out of his fear and made it sit politely at the edge of the room. He thought of a woman who had told him heroes did not sit and then made sure he stood correctly when he tried.

“Someone who… believes in justice,” he answered carefully.

Ais absorbed that with the same stillness she brought to rain. She had met justice before—the kind that worked, the kind that lied. She nodded once, nothing more. “Keep the parts that fit you. Throw away the parts that steal your balance.”

His mouth twitched. “That sounds like life advice.”

Ais held his gaze half a heartbeat longer than she meant to. “It is sword advice,” she said, and lifted her blade. “Again.”

He went at her with a cut that had less apology in it and more meaning. She rewarded meaning with correction, and the day went on.

5 — The Roar Moves (Bell POV → Alise POV)

On the 10th Floor, sound behaves like it remembers caves were meant to be lungs. Bell learned that the afternoon he tried to run only two corridors alone just to prove he could and the Dungeon answered with silence that had personality.

Then the roar came again.

He knew it now. The first time he had thought thunder had gotten lost. This time the roar had a face in it, and the face was horned and patient.

His skin tried to climb backward off his bones. He breathed deliberately the way Ais had told him to. He set his stance without moving the rest of his body. He listened. The sound was not near. Not yet. It was a hand on the far end of a rope, giving a single experimental tug.

He backed away. It felt like failing and felt correct anyway. Do not die stupidly, Alise had said once, sharpening a whetstone with humor. He chose to do as he was told.

Elsewhere—two levels above where stone took the color of late afternoon—Alise paused mid-step and went still as if a string inside her had been plucked. The rumor had become geography.

She closed her eyes and saw, as if from the outside, a boy moving through the map who wore pieces of her. The pride was ridiculous and huge; the fear was old and disciplined.

“Ryu,” she said into the empty stairwell. “It’s hunting.”

“Then so are we,” Ryu said from the shadow she had already been in.

They didn’t follow the sound so much as follow what it changed. The Dungeon tells different truths when a great beast walks through it. Smaller monsters flatten their lives; the air changes pressure; even crystals seem to lean away. Alise and Ryu read the signs with the ease of women who had lived in worse texts.

They found no Minotaur. For now.

6 — The City Hears (Ryu & Alise POV → Bell POV)

By evening, the story had tired of being secret. Loki Familia’s runners did exactly what runners always do when asked to carry bad news softly: they carried it loudly to more places faster.

“The escaped Minotaur was sighted—upper floors!”

“Someone saw it near the eighth!”

“Stay out of the Dungeon if you like your ribs where they are!”

The Hostess swelled with the kind of fear that looks like gossip. Ryu listened without blinking. Alise listened with her jaw set.

Syr drifted near them on the current of tables and said with her particular brightness, “Scary, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Ryu said.

“No,” Alise said at the same time, and then they both caught themselves and smiled in a way that made Syr’s eyes sparkle with oh? she did not voice.

When Bell stepped through the door later, Orario’s wind had not yet let the roar out of his hair. Hestia grabbed him by the shoulders and shook as much scolding as relief down into him. He stood and nodded and apologized and promised things promises cannot control.

After Hestia loosened her grip, Ryu crossed the room like a piece of quiet that had decided to move. “Cranel.”

He straightened, halfway between boy and blade. “Lion-san.”

“Do not run deeper,” she said. “Not while it stalks upward.”

He opened his mouth to protest that training meant risk, that heroism meant forward, that if he ran now he might run forever. He didn’t say any of it. He met her eyes and said only, “I’ll be smart.”

“Try harder than that,” Ryu said, and for the first time she allowed something like warmth to soften the words. “And bring your supporter when you go.”

He glanced at Lili, who was hovering near the hearth pretending to take inventory of her own hands. “I will,” he said, and meant it.

Alise leaned one shoulder to the wall where she could see all three of them—goddess, boy, supporter—making a triangle out of new vows. She lifted her mug as if toasting a secret only she knew. That’s it, she told the room silently. Build a little house around him. We’ll handle the monsters that prefer doors

7 — A Knife’s Lesson (Bell POV → Lili POV)

The next morning, Bell trained with Ais until the yard smelled like iron and refusal. Then he took Lili a few floors down to work only what Ais would allow him to work: footwork, balance under pressure, the cold arithmetic of retreat.

He let Lili call the turns. He let her decide how long to pause between engagements. He let her speak when she needed to spit fear out in words. Kindness as part of strength. He had said it to her; he had to make it true when the air tasted like old blood.

They stumbled into a chamber where War Shadows were painting themselves out of walls. Bell didn’t freeze this time. He saw the angles Ais had drawn in his bones; he felt the line Alise had carved in his wrist; he remembered Ryu’s warning and did not mistake courage for stupidity.

“Back,” he told Lili calmly, and he did not take his eyes off the place the next shadow would be. He didn’t chase. He let them come because he had been taught to make the world smaller first and win the smallness.

Steel found ink. The War Shadow unspooled. He stepped, step-step, exactly like winter had instructed, then finished exactly like fire had encouraged—clean thrust, no flourish, no apology.

Lili watched him with a mouth open around a word that was not quite wow. She understood inventory. She recognized when a thing became more valuable between one minute and the next. The boy had.

After, she steadied her hands by tying and untying a strap on her pack. “There is a rumor,” she said, casual as a map with the wrong scale. “About a Minotaur. If you see it—”

“Run,” Bell said, and smiled, and it was the kind of smile that had begun to know how to hold fear and not spill any. “Or at least… don’t run toward it alone.”

“Good,” Lili said. “I cannot carry you and the loot.”

He laughed, surprised out of the tension, which had been her secret goal all along.
8 — Two Spars and One Question (Ais POV → Alise & Ryu POV)

Ais upped the tempo the following dawn. She began to switch grips mid-exchange, forcing Bell to read not the blade but the intent behind it. He fumbled gloriously, which was better than being clever badly. Then he caught one of the grip-changes on sight, mirrored it, and used the gained inch to survive a cut that would have sat him down.

Ais’s brows rose a hair. “This move just now. How can you move like that?” she asked after they reset.
“Training alone shouldn't be enough to achieve this.” She thought

Bell, to his credit, did not lie. “Someone who wants me alive trusted me with a few moves.”
Ais nodded. There was an answer there in two directions. She accepted both.
“Then listen to her. And to me. And do not fall in love with either lesson.
“That was purely a reflex just now, you will need to be in tune with everything that happens in battle if you can do that, then you will learn to fight with your reflexes.”

He blinked. She didn’t clarify. The sword did.

That evening, in the Hostess courtyard, Alise and Ryu worked the same drill without naming it. Ryu’s blade slid from orthodox to reverse; Alise bit at the angle as if hunger had a technique; the clash rang once, twice, and then they both grinned because the music was good.

“You were always best at this,” Alise said, breath warm, words fond.

“You were always best at ignoring the parts you didn’t like,” Ryu said, and the fondness doubled itself.

They lowered blades at the same time. Their breathing matched. Their eyes went to the same place in the distance—the place where a boy was learning what both of them had paid so much to understand.

“Do we tell him,” Alise asked, “about how leveling up is not just numbers—but the Dungeon changing how it looks at you?”

“We already did,” Ryu said. “He heard it. He will hear it again when the Minotaur speaks it in a language he cannot ignore.”

Alise’s throat worked. “And if that language kills him?”

“Then we were wrong,” Ryu said simply, “and we will have to live after being wrong again.”

They stood there with that honesty and did not flinch.

9 — Whispers with Horns (Shared POVs; Teasing the Minotaur)

Nights in Orario are not quiet; they only claim to be for the sake of the moon. Bells clanged far off—temple rites or someone very enthusiastic about time. Loki Familia cut through South Main like a flock of armored birds, laughing too loudly because that is how some people survive dread.

“Third sighting.”
“Upper corridors.”
“Whoever bumps it first should pray to whichever goddess likes them today.”

In a high-window booth, Alise and Ryu sat at edges of shadow where room met night. Syr set tea down like it was a charm against bad luck.

“Careful,” she chimed. “Sharp talk cuts throats.”

Alise sipped. “We carry scars already.”

Syr tilted her head as if listening to some music no one else could hear, then drifted away, humming it back to herself.

“I will not keep you from him,” Ryu said without preface. “When the moment arrives.”

“I will not take the fight from him,” Alise answered at once. “Unless he loses it, at which point I will be very rude to fate.”

Ryu’s gaze slid to the door just as Bell stepped through it like someone learning to be taller in small increments. He waved to Hestia, grinned at Lili, and only then noticed them and went sheepish around the edges.

Alise lifted her cup in greeting. “Rabbit.”

“Alise-san. Ryu-san.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Um. I’ve been… running a lot.”

“Good,” Ryu said.

“Good,” Alise said.

He blinked at the unity, then laughed. “I’ll keep doing that, then.”

“Do,” Ryu said.

“Do,” Alise said, and their eyes met over the rim of the cup with that shared flicker that meant we will fight about this later in the elegant way of people who know each other too well.

Bell excused himself to help Hestia carry bowls. Lili scolded him for carrying too many at once and took one sternly. The tavern held the shape of a family rehearsing being one.

Far below, a Minotaur’s breath fogged the air of a corridor built for smaller things. It touched a wall with a hand that had not yet found the head it wanted. It sniffed. It waited. The Dungeon let the sound of that breath travel just far enough to tickle nightmares.

On the surface, Alise felt the hair on her arms lift. Ryu felt her hand close around the hilt of a blade she was not holding. Bell felt a rope he had not agreed to tug back.

No one rose. Not yet. Threads had to tighten until any pull would do.

10 — Last Light (Ais POV; Closing Beat)

Ais walked the city’s ridge at dusk, where roofs turned to waves and the wind remembered mountains. She thought of Bell’s stance and the unnamed teacher who had already taught him to be brave in a straight line. She thought of the way he listened. She thought of a horned silhouette she had once seen far below and had never stopped translating.

Loki would say don’t break him before he breaks himself. Riveria would say temper, then draw. Gareth would say feed him more.

Ais said, to the wind, “Again,” and the wind carried the instruction down into streets where a boy would hear it in a dream and get up before dawn because that is how you bargain with fear.

She paused at the lip of the Babel shadow and looked toward the Dungeon. Somewhere below, a Minotaur marked a path with patient malice. Somewhere above, two women marked a boy with patient hope.

Ais let the balance of those facts settle in her chest. For now, it weighed even.

“Tomorrow,” she said to no one, and turned home.

The city exhaled. The night let go of one more minute. Threads drew another notch tight.

The road to the Minotaur waited, already listening for footfalls.

End of Chapter Seven

Chapter Text

🌸 DanMachi AU: Crimson Ghosts of Astraea

Chapter 8 – Argonaut

1 — The Air Before a Storm (Bell POV)

It started like any careful day.

Laces double-checked, scabbard tugged snug, the small rituals before the stone’s first breath. Bell Cranel pulled his cloak tight and glanced at the supporter at his side. Liliruca Arde cinched her pack, chin set in that brisk little angle that tried to turn fear into professionalism.

“Stick to the route,” Lili said, businesslike to hide the tremor. “Broken arch, hug the right wall to the blue vein, cut left. We are not heroes today, Mr. Bell.”

He smiled despite himself. “Okay.”

He meant it. He meant smart. Ais’ drills had scraped apology out of his stance; Alise’s sparring had taught his feet the difference between move and waste. Ryu’s warning—fast growth breaks—sat cool in his bones. Today would be tidy. Today would be incremental.

They slid through the first chamber with no fanfare. Kobolds tested and yielded. War Shadows watched and decided to dislike the lighting. Lili’s hands worked loot with the speed of someone who had turned survival into arithmetic for too long. Bell kept his blade quiet between rooms, carrying his posture like an oath. He could feel the women in the way he moved—winter’s discipline layered over fire’s insistence, guarded by the hush of a single elf who could turn a sentence into a safety rail.

“Good,” Lili murmured as they passed a collapsed section with teeth of stone. “We’re ahead of schedule.”

“Let’s stay that way.”

He said it lightly, but heard the distance under the words—the space between intention and what the Dungeon prefers. Down here, time had moods. Down here, the day would agree with you right up until it didn’t.

The corridor after the blue crystal vein was wrong. Not obviously, not rudely—just the kind of wrong that makes skin wish it were thicker. Stillness sat in it with its back too straight.

“Lili,” Bell said softly.

“I feel it.” She pointed. “This is where we turn.”

They did. The turn felt like stepping into a room that had been taking careful breaths for hours.

The first roar came from farther below, but sound in stone discards distance. It surfaced under Bell’s feet and at the back of his skull at once. It pressed his ribs smaller and sanded his thoughts down until only one survived.

Run.

Lili’s fingers bit his sleeve. “Back. Back.”

Bell took one step. The second roar arrived nearer—hungry punctuation. The Dungeon chose its joke and the timing: War Shadows sluiced out of walls—three first, then two more, then a sixth that crawled like a spill no one would claim. They didn’t charge. They appeared, which was worse.

Bell moved because he’d been taught to obey reality. The stance set itself: shoulder squared, weight live, blade forward without apology.

“Back,” he told Lili, tone level. “We move back.”

Cut. Breathe. Step. He made the room smaller and won the smallness until the shadows rewrote the sentence: one high, one low. His block saved his face. Claws found his thigh. Pain rang tidy as a bill.

“Mr. Bell!” Lili squeaked, voice cracking like cheap pottery.

“I’m okay.” He wasn’t. He chose to behave as if. Pivot, short thrust, no flourish. The shadow unspooled with that awful peeling sigh.

The next roar erased the chamber and introduced an intention.

The Minotaur entered the corridor and made it into something else.

It wasn’t story-book huge; it was important. The room adjusted itself to explain it. Horns shrugged stone. Muzzle wet, eyes patient—it looked like a catastrophe that had studied for the role.

Lili made a sound Bell had never heard her make, an outraged little animal refusal to die here. He turned, grabbed her shoulders, shoved her hard into the side passage.

“Go!”

She stumbled, caught herself, spun back. “No!”

“Lili—go!” His voice tore. “Find help. Ganesha. Loki Familia. Anyone. I’ll—” He didn’t finish; there wasn’t a true sentence that started there.

The Minotaur’s hoof hammered once. The floor remembered new reasons to crack.

Lili’s eyes went wide and wet. She clutched his wrists until he’d wear the bruises later. “You better be alive when I get back.”

He smiled like someone steadying a ladder. “I’ll try.”

He pushed her again—harder—toward escape. She ran because there is a kind of running that is obedience to love, and she was capable of it even if no one had taught her the word.

The Minotaur laughed. It sounded like a door ripped off and swung like a club.

Bell turned to face it alone.

2 — Running as Prayer (Lili POV)

She didn’t count. Numbers would tell on her. She ran with smoke bomb in one fist and a hope she’d never named in the other.

“Help! Minotaur! Upper corridor—white-haired rookie—alone!”

Ganesha guards pivoted, horns bobbing like buoys in a bad tide, but a calmer, colder current cut through panic.

“Where.”
Riveria Ljos Alf didn’t waste a syllable.

Lili pointed with everything she was. Steel answered her: Ais already moving, Bete a gray streak of contempt, Gareth a wall in motion. Finn’s orders sliced confusion into clarity; formation snapped into place like a door latching.

“Lead,” Riveria said.

Lili ran. Loki Familia followed. No goddess among them—only the weight of a first-rate Familia taking the Dungeon seriously.

3 — Ghosts on the Ledge (Alise & Ryu POV)

They had already been in the stone when the first roar bent the corridors.

Alise eased into shadow where the tunnel widened, shoulder cold against rock, and let her eyes drink what she had sworn not to interrupt. The Minotaur wasn’t merely large; it was a presence that convinced rooms to rearrange. Its laugh made the passage a throat. Its hooves spoke finality.

Bell stood small and mad—and correct.

Her heart kicked. Not posture, she wanted to tell the air, as if it were a student she could bully. Stance. Knees soft, hip set, blade forward without apology; no timid wrist curl, no waste. Gods, he’d kept it—the stubborn line she’d hammered into him in blue light had survived fear and pain and common sense. She watched his heel bite the stone on the third step the way she’d taught—anchoring the cut, spending intention instead of panic.

Then the Minotaur swung, and teacherly pride became nausea.

“Not yet,” Ryu breathed—a stillness leaned into shape. The sound felt like a hand on Alise’s neck, keeping her from lunging.

“I know,” Alise whispered, fingers crushing her hilt until tremor became rhythm. I know I know I know.

Bell slipped under the blow by a rude inch. He came up in the line she’d diagrammed across days: short thrust, no flourish. Steel found tendon; inevitability flinched. Pride crackled like a fuse.

The next hit folded him. Iron tasted in Alise’s mouth and she realized it was her own blood.

He rose. Up, rabbit, the part of her that had refused to die told him, and he obeyed a memory like a command.

“Watching him is worse than taking his place,” she muttered. It almost sounded like a laugh.

“It’s better,” Ryu said quietly, and the word carried all the scars of learning to let people earn victories the expensive way.

Alise said nothing. The Minotaur began to learn him—left feint, right arc, step-in crush. Bell answered three, four times—wrong and right in cunning ratios—bleeding, correcting, refusing rookie flail that comforts no one.

No wasted motion, she thought hard enough to wish thought had weight. Make it smaller. Win the small room first.

Competence pressed in from the far end—the silent thunder of a first-rate Familia moving as one. Riveria’s precise gravity; Gareth’s carved steadiness; Bete’s laugh that wanted to be cruelty; Ais, a winter line reminding stone of its bones.

“Hold,” Finn’s palm lifted; the order was a glass tap. Alise’s jaw unclenched. Good. Not because they’d stay forever, but because someone else understood the price of stealing a boy’s moment.

A short blade skipped down the dust and kissed Bell’s boot—Tiona’s throw, bright and necessary. He scooped it without looking back, and Alise’s throat filled with the most dangerous feeling she owned: delight.

Choose it, Bell. Not mine. Not hers. Yours.

He did.

He felt her gaze at last—his uncanny, aching sense for eyes—didn’t turn to search. He let the knowledge run his spine straight. His Falna stirred. Hero’s Reflection. Echo of the Flame. Not her inhabiting him; not theft. Answer. He found the fearless line she had carved into his muscles and set his weight the way she would—except the tone was unmistakably him. The rabbit had learned to anchor like a captain.

Then the spark leapt.

It wasn’t torches; it wasn’t the beast’s heat. It was him. Light climbed his arm like a rumor catching fire.

Alise forgot to breathe. “Yes,” she said, no louder than a prayer. “Yes!”

“Firebolt!” he cried, and the magic obeyed as if it had been waiting to hear itself named by a believer. The blast crashed behind; recoil slung him forward, faster than fear, into the space no monster expects a mortal to claim.

Two blades, one decision. The borrowed short sword snapped a wrist; the Hestia Knife rode the line under the ribs Riveria’s eye had already measured. His feet were Ais’ honesty; his commit was Alise’s insolence; the strike belonged to a boy who had practiced losing until he could choose a win without lying about its cost.

“Go,” she mouthed, teeth bared like a blessing.

He pushed through.

The Minotaur’s body argued with the new absence where beating had chosen to stop. The argument failed. The beast toppled. A horn spun to a halt at Bell’s boot like punctuation.

Bell trembled, bleeding and present, and Alise realized she was smiling in a way she hadn’t since her Familia breathed in one place. Ryu’s breath let out—a rare one-syllable commendation only truths that survive inspection earn.

“He did it,” Alise said, wrecked with awe.

“He chose correctly,” Ryu answered, and the approval was all edges smoothed by respect. “When it mattered.”

Alise allowed herself to look wholly: the stance still true inside the shake; the eyes wet and bright and unbroken; her own fire—no, not hers anymore—burning there, refracted cleaner for having passed through him.

He could be it, she thought, the steadiness shocking. The next generation’s hero—not because he won, but because he kept choosing until the win arrived.

4 — Everyone Watching (Multi-POV)

Ais reached him with a winter’s mercy. She didn’t smile; the corner of her mouth considered. “You’ve grown.”

Bell swallowed, then found the humble bravery to meet her eyes. “Thank you.”

“Train tomorrow,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Earlier.”

A breathless laugh scuffed his lip. “Yes.”

Riveria’s barrier dissolved as she stepped in, hands aglow. “Hold still.” Magic cooled the bleeding, knit edges, kept the floor from acquiring more red. Her gaze was exact—and faintly approving.

Gareth’s grunt translated: Well struck.
Bete swaggered, sneer cocked. “So you learned to stand. Want a bone for the trick?”

“Bete,” Riveria warned, and the werewolf’s grin gave up a tooth of pleasure.

Tiona jabbed at the horn with a grin like sunshine. “Keep it, Rookie.”

From the rear, Finn’s voice carried the neatness of a commander who knows stories are a currency. “Let him.”

Bell blinked as Lili bumped the horn up into his hands like an offering, hiccuping through anger and relief. “You—idiot. Don’t ever make me run that far again. Or tell me first, so I can hire a taller god to yell at you.”

He laughed, trembled. “Okay.”

Up in shadow, Alise’s hand eased off her hilt by degrees. The urge to run in and say you did it dulled to a finer vow: to make every future again mean I believe in you.

Ryu’s profile softened a fraction. “Soon,” she said—not to Bell, but to the question Alise hadn’t dared voice.

“Soon,” Alise agreed, eyes locked on the boy who’d stolen a piece of her grief and returned it as hope. “He earned the truth.”

For now, they stayed ghosts. But their fire didn’t feel spectral; it felt like tinder taking—in him, in them, in the narrow space between an old story and the one a stubborn rabbit had just carved with a knife and a first firebolt.

5 — After (Bell POV → Ais POV → Alise & Ryu POV; Closing)

The climb to daylight felt different after spending your accounts so close to zero. Bell didn’t remember every stair. He remembered Riveria’s magic scolding his torn edges shut; Gareth’s steadying hand when the steps tilted; Bete’s mutter that somehow meant try not to die stupidly again; Tiona’s wink; Finn’s measured glance that tucked him into a ledger titled Not Hopeless.

Outside, air that had never been underground touched his face like a promise. Hestia’s hands replaced it—shaking him, scolding and crying in one small goddess performance. Bell stood and nodded and apologized and made promises promises cannot enforce.

When she finally let go, Ais was there: present without ceremony.

“You lived,” she observed.

He huffed a laugh. “Yes.”

“Tomorrow,” she repeated.

“Earlier,” he answered, and this time she nodded as if the word had passed a test.

She looked at him as at a blade someone had brought from a market stall to see if it would take an edge. “Keep the parts that are yours,” she said. “Do not copy so much you trip on someone else’s feet.”

He blinked—guilty, grateful. “I—”

“You have good teachers,” Ais said simply, sparing him from lying, and folded back into her Familia with the ease of someone rooms were built around.

Bell turned his palm, letting the horn’s weight settle until his hand stopped shaking. Lili nudged his ribs with her head and hissed, “Don’t make me run like that again,” and smiled with her eyes. The city buzzed with the rumor that had just turned into architecture: the white-haired rookie who felled a Minotaur.

Up in a stairwell that secreted the city’s exhaustion, Alise and Ryu paused. Laundry lines crossed above them; some pot steamed a herb smell out a window.

“You wanted him to win,” Ryu said, not accusing.

“I wanted him to be,” Alise said. “Winning happens. Becoming is a choice you make while you’re losing.”

“He chose it.”

“He did.”

“You will have to stop hiding,” Ryu warned gently.

“Soon,” Alise said again, and this time it sounded more like a promise, less like an excuse.

“And when you do, the city will remember it has opinions.”

Alise’s smile came crooked and honest. “Let it. If he is going to carry our flame, the least I can do is stop pretending I’m smoke.”

Ryu’s hand brushed hers on the rail—contact quick and fierce and gone before even the windows could witness it. “We will stand where the wind can find us. Both of us. Together.”

“Together,” Alise echoed, then looked out over roofs toward the tower and the stone beneath it. In the thin place between sleep and ambition, she could already hear it: a voice that said again in two accents—winter and fire—and the answer of feet on stairs before dawn.

They left the stair for the street, two ghosts who had decided ankles were overrated and the living deserved better shadows.

Behind them, the Dungeon closed its wound with new stone. Ahead, a road widened enough for three. The city breathed as if it hadn’t spent the afternoon trying to kill anyone.

Bell Cranel, horn under his arm and tomorrow sharpening itself in his chest, whispered into the dark on his way home, “Again.”

Orario listened.

Chapter Text

🌸 DanMachi AU: Crimson Ghosts of Astraea

Chapter Nine — Ribbon, Rooftops, and the Word “Again”

1 — Falna & Fire (Hestia → Bell)

The back room smelled like candle wax and soap—holy things made from ordinary work.

Hestia pressed her warm palm between Bell’s shoulder blades, and the Falna stirred like a city seen from altitude: silver lines tapering, branching, brightening. As the script finished curling itself, a second color braided through—thin, precise, undeniably red—like a silk thread mischievously sewn into divine calligraphy.

Hestia squinted. “Okay, growth comet, calm down—eh?” Her fingertip hovered over the crimson filament. “Who put a second flame in my child’s paperwork?”

Bell turned pink. “I—uh—learned some stance… from someone who says ‘again’ a lot.”

Hestia’s faux-scowl cracked into a soft crease. “A dramatic swordswoman, hm?” Then, quieter, proud: “You’ve been carrying more than just yourself.”

The Falna finished writing, the letters cooling to a dignified shine.

> Level: 2
Abilities: STR H → G / END H → H / DEX H → G / AGI H → F / MAG H → G
Luck I
Magic: Firebolt — chantless, low-cost projectile
Skills:
• Realis Freese — rapid growth tied to resolve/longing
• Argonaut (nascent) — charge resolve to empower one action
• Echo of the Flame → Crimson Echo (Rank II) — UPGRADED
• Crimson Oath: After speaking a vow to protect, stance steadies; thrust speed briefly rises.
• Edge Synthesis (I): For one clean exchange, blend winter centerline with rapier commit without tripping footwork.
• Witness’s Boon: When watched by a Named Witness (Hestia, Alise, Ryu, Ais, Lili) — or when he believes one is near — fatigue ebbs slower for a short time.

Hestia tapped the crimson line with her nail, pretending to scold what she was secretly grateful for. “Fine. Keep your fancy ribbon woven into my holy bookkeeping.” She leaned around to pinch his cheeks. “But you thank your teacher—and you thank me by not dying.”

Bell twisted to hug her, eyes bright. “I’ll bring you dumplings tomorrow.”

“You’ll bring me you tomorrow,” Hestia sniffed, and squished him hard enough that the room had to make space.

2 — Horns on the Bar, Stars in the Noise (The Hostess)

The Hostess of Fertility became a bell that wouldn’t stop ringing.

Mugs clinked. Laughter ricocheted through rafters. Mama Mia thumped down platters as if daring anyone to finish them. Syr appeared and reappeared with trays that never emptied, smile sharpened for maximum cheerfulness. Ryu poured without fuss and, when Bell set the Minotaur horn on the bar, gave him a nod so small and rare it felt like being knighted by snow.

“Speech!” someone howled.

Liliruca climbed a chair, red-eared and fierce. “He’s stupid, brave, and now I have to work harder!” The cheer that answered shook dust from beams. She hopped down, scowling and smiling at the same time, then slid the horn back into Bell’s hands with a look that meant don’t you dare drop it.

Loki Familia drifted past the open door on some errand that required swagger. Tiona flapped both arms like a happy gull. Riveria’s glance was precise and approving. Bete snorted something that managed to be a compliment on accident. Ais, quiet as frost, stopped close enough for words.

“You’ve grown,” she said.

Bell met her eyes, bowed with them rather than his spine. “Thank you.”

“Tomorrow,” Ais added, as if agreeing on the weather. “Earlier.”

He couldn’t help it; he grinned. “Yes.”

In the next lull, a folded napkin slid across the bar and bumped Bell’s hand. He palmed it like a thief who’d been hired to steal. Inside: a rooftop sketched in three quick strokes, an arrow, and a single word in neat, sharp hand.

Up.

When he looked toward the corner, Syr wore an innocence so exaggerated it counted as comedy. Ryu was… pointedly not looking at him in the way that said she was aware of everything.

Bell eased into the churn of bodies and out the side door, heart running ahead of him up the stairs.

3 — The Trap, Gently Sprung (Rooftop → Alise)

Moonlight made Orario look like a pocketful of coins spilled across a black table. Babel threw a long, straight shadow over chimneys. The wind prowled like a cat exploring.

A rapier leaned against the parapet. Alise sat on the ledge, boots hooked, hair pulled by the breeze as if the night had been waiting for her.

“Rabbit,” she said, and the word was a smile.

Bell stopped, suddenly very aware of how fast he’d come. The horn under his arm felt huge and ridiculous. “I—sorry. I left the party.”

“Congratulations,” Alise said, patting the ledge beside her. “Level 2 is a number. What do you want it to mean?”

He sat carefully, as if the stone judged form. “Stronger,” he blurted, then grimaced. “That’s a direction, not a meaning.”

“Try again,” she teased, refusing to let him drown in apology.

He looked over a city stitched with bright windows and dark alleys. “Stronger so I can stand in front without breaking. So people behind me can run away and not alone.”

Her mouth twitched—pride trying to hide. “Better.”

From her sleeve came a length of silk—thin, deep crimson. He passed her the Hestia Knife like the motion was private. She tied the ribbon at the base of the guard, knot firm, ends short enough not to snag.

“If you fray it,” she decreed, mock-severe, “you owe me dumplings.”

He laughed. “Very fair.”

“Look.” She tipped the blade so the ribbon drank the moon. “When you hesitate—and you will—this is your reminder to commit. No wasted courage.”

Something warm unspooled in his chest—Crimson Oath answering the vow he hadn’t spoken yet. Even seated, his posture found center. Breath eased.

“Say it,” she murmured. “The meaning.”

Bell swallowed. “I’ll be law for the small,” he said, voice steadying. “And a door for the lost.”

The air seemed to agree.

They let quiet take them. The roof held their weight like it had been saving a space. Bell felt the oddness of being seen without being tested—and realized that was the test: could he sit with the truth he’d chosen?

“Close your eyes,” Alise said.

He did. The city became edges and air. She stepped close; her knuckles tapped the knife’s flat—a tiny bell.

“Open.”

She stood centered, fencing stance ninety percent discipline, ten percent mischief. She waggled the rapier in a silly little jiggle until he snorted.

“Lesson one,” she intoned gravely. “Never trust an opponent who can also make you laugh.”

“That’s cruel,” he protested, taking position.

“It’s generous. I’m giving you proof.” The tip flicked his forearm—quick, playful. “Also: we celebrate by moving. Level 2 isn’t a cake; it’s a choice you remake tomorrow.”

They played—not a hard spar, a call-and-response. She exaggerated a feint, and he read the real cut. She lunged half-speed; he slid into Ais’ centerline, then, on a bright impulse, dipped into Alise’s own commit and felt Edge Synthesis click—two lessons resolving into one motion that was his.

Alise’s grin sparked like flint. “There it is. You finally stopped copying and started composing.”

Heat climbed his neck—pleasure not humiliation. “It… felt right.”

“It was right.” She lowered the blade, stepped close, and—without touching—hovered her palm above his sternum. “Breathe.”

They inhaled together. Release. Again. The wind matched them, obedient.

She opened her mouth to make a joke to keep it safe… and didn’t. The realization arrived not like lightning but like a door she’d leaned against finally opening.

Oh, thought Alise Lovell. I have started falling in love with this ridiculous, brave, Level 2 boy.

Not for the knife or the horn or the noise downstairs—for the way he took correction as care, spoke meaning like a pledge he owed no one, laughed at fear and made it earn its keep.

She hid the thought for one stunned heartbeat. Then another asked why.

“Bell,” she said softly, tasting his name. “I am very proud of you.”

He made a small, startled sound—the kind people make when something they wanted looks back and says yes. “Alise-san—”

“Don’t ruin it,” she warned, grinning to ease the pressure. “Take the compliment and—promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“Not ‘anything.’ Something real. If I say ‘break’—you stop. Even if it costs the win.”

He didn’t hesitate. “I promise.”

“Good.” Her voice went airy again, rescuing him from drowning in seriousness. “Because if you don’t, Ryu will materialize from nowhere, and I would like to keep tonight bruise-free.”

“As if she isn’t listening right now,” he muttered.

From the stairwell came the suspiciously timed clink of porcelain. They both choked on laughter.

Alise produced a small tin like a magician and flashed—dumplings. “We are absolutely not stealing,” she said solemnly. “We are celebrating in advance of you buying me more.”

He took one, careful not to touch her fingers. She nudged his hand anyway. “It’s legal if you do it confidently.”

Steam curled like lazy punctuation. The city hummed below.

“Will you… keep teaching me?” he asked, small voice in huge sky.

She could have played coy. She didn’t want to. “Yes,” Alise said. “When I can. Where I can. As long as you keep bringing me better answers.”

He stared at the ribbon like it was already part of the knife. “I won’t fray it.”

“You’ll try not to,” she corrected—life breaks absolutes. “If it frays, it means you fought. We tie it again.”

He was quiet. “Who tied yours when it frayed?”

Alise considered the trap she’d laid and found herself inside it, smiling. “Ryu,” she said. “And me. Eventually.” She met his eyes. “You’ll have both.”

Another clink from below: a teapot set discreetly on the step.

“Our chaperone is merciful,” Alise called.

“Your chaperone is listening,” Ryu replied, voice dry and fond, then departed on purpose.

They sipped in companionable silence. The ribbon breathed with the breeze.

Alise set her cup down and, before the stairs, caught Bell’s wrist. Very lightly, she bent and pressed her mouth to the crimson ribbon—nothing more—a captain’s blessing disguised as theft of courage.

“Bring it back shining,” she said.

“I will,” he answered, voice bright enough to make gods lean closer.

4 —Tomorrow (Alise → Bell)

When Bell stepped back into the stairwell’s shadow, he felt something slip into his belt pouch—a whisper of motion only one person in Orario could make polite.

He fished out a sliver of folded paper: a ribbon thread, an arrow, the simplest map in red ink.

Up. Dawn.
Bring the Hestia Knife, the horn—and enough stubbornness to offend the wind.
If you’re late, you owe me dumplings. If you’re early, stretch.
Say yes out loud right now.
—A.

Bell, alone on the landing, whispered to the dark, “Yes.”

The city seemed to hear him. Somewhere below, last songs at the Hostess swelled; somewhere above, the moon was very busy minding its own business. Ryu’s steps faded, satisfied. Alise, at the parapet, let her hand cover her mouth for one private heartbeat and admitted to the sky what she already knew:

I am falling for him.

Nothing broke. Something built.

Tomorrow would be dawn, a roof, breath in unison, and a training “date” that would discover what Level 2 meant when the wind pushed back. Tonight, they let quiet have them. Tonight, the ribbon held.

Bell tucked the note against his heart and went down to bring Hestia one more hug and Lili one more promise. Upstairs, Alise watched the line of his shoulders vanish into lamplight and smiled—sharp, soft, certain.

Again, the night whispered.

Again, they both answered.

Chapter Text

🌸 DanMachi AU: Crimson Ghosts of Astraea

Chapter Ten — Dawn Gauntlet

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1 — Before the Sun Picks a Side (Bell POV)

He arrived early enough to watch Orario try to remember which way light comes from.

The rooftop tiles still held the night’s cool. Babel’s shadow lay long and strict across chimneys; the city below made the soft sounds of bakers and birds and people who prefer beginnings. Bell stood at the parapet with the Minotaur horn under one arm and the Hestia Knife snug against his hip—crimson ribbon tucked neatly, knot tight as a promise.

“Good,” said the morning.

“Good,” answered a voice behind him.

Alise was already there, of course—leaning against the small roof hatch with the kind of easy upright that made walls feel outclassed. The breeze had been tugging at her hair like a friend. She crossed to him, brisk and warm all at once.

“You’re early,” she said. “You owe me nothing.”

He tried not to grin too hard and mostly failed. “I stretched.”

“Then you read,” she teased, and took his wrist to check his pulse with the lightest touch. “We celebrate by moving.”

She tightened the crimson ribbon at the knife’s guard. The knot sat square and smug. “If this frays,” she added, mock-severe, “dumplings.”

“Understood,” Bell said gravely.

A sliver of tin appeared from behind her back like a magic trick. She snapped it open—one slim candle and a box of matches inside. “Candle run,” Alise declared. “No snuffing it, no matter what the wind thinks. We jog the tiles. If it dies, you sing at the Hostess tonight.”

“That’s… a harsh penalty.”

“I’ve heard you hum,” she said sweetly. “A mercy, really.”

He cupped the match; flame bloomed and found the wick. The candle made a small, stubborn light. They jogged—feet whispering over shingles, breath finding the same measure. Twice the wind tried mischief. Once Alise pursed her lips behind him and blew a sly draft across his shoulder just to see his balance wobble.

He adjusted, weight soft, arms steady. The flame quivered and then decided to live.

“Good,” she said when they finished. “You can keep fire without strangling it.”

He set the candle at the parapet and they stood close—not touching—sharing the same strip of wind. Alise raised her palm an inch from his sternum.

“Breathe,” she murmured.

They inhaled together—deep but not greedy—held for a slow count, released longer. He felt his pulse slide down the scale until it played nice with the morning. The city settled into its place beneath them.

“Now,” she said, and gestured to the ribbon, “say it.”

He knew what she meant. He’d said it on this roof last night and believed it, but saying a thing again in new light sharpens it.

“I’ll be law for the small,” Bell said, steadier. “And a door for the lost.”

Crimson Echo stirred—quiet, immediate, like a small flame warming a room. His posture found center by itself; his hands stopped trying to explain themselves.

Alise’s mouth tilted in approval. “Luck is a rumor. Intent is law.” She flicked the tin shut. “And law has legs. Come on.”

They slipped down through the hatch, across a waking hallway that smelled like wood and soap, and into the stair that led to back alleys and a latch only she seemed to know. The city opened a seam for them; they stepped through and into the day’s first blue.

---

2 — The Alcove, Blue as Breath Held (Alise POV)

It pleased Alise that the alcove still belonged to quiet.

Blue light pooled against stone the way memory pools against the edges of a person. The air here always carried a faint scent of moss and metal and the stubbornness of water. She had brought him the long way—across roofs, through a courtyard the morning hadn’t claimed yet, down the safer stairs—because romance wears practical shoes when it cares enough to last.

Bell stood waiting, outwardly calm, that boyish brightness half-tamed and half-refusing to be.

“Ground rules,” Alise said, tone light but leaving no edges undefined. “Say them back.”

He nodded once, quick.

“If I say break—”

“I stop,” he answered. “Even if it costs the win.”

“If I say again—”

“I stand,” he said, mouth quirking, “even if I hate you for it.”

“Good. Speak one vow to trigger your ribbon. Then we begin.”

He inhaled, let his eyes rest on the stone and the small world it made, and gave the same sentence he’d chosen on the roof—smoothed, now, like a coin carried warm in a pocket. The red thread in his Falna gave a small, sure tug.

Alise hid the ridiculous stirring in her chest by shifting into stance. “Trial one,” she announced. “Centerline or fall.”

He set his feet. She switched grips mid-beat—an efficient little cheat of angle that Ais would’ve applauded—and drove him gently off the line. He compensated with too much eagerness and his guard washed wide just enough for her blade to kiss the space he’d left.

“Three laps,” she said cheerfully. “Nose-breath only.”

He shot her a look that walked the line between protest and admiration, then ran—nose-breath, controlled pace—came back pink-cheeked and properly annoyed with his own enthusiasm.

“Again,” Alise said.

He held center this time, hips honest, elbows not trying to do shoulders’ work. She pushed; he gave an inch and no more. The blue light made the tiny bead of sweat at his temple look like a jewel.

“Better,” she admitted. “Trial two: Edge Synthesis. One exchange to blend winter’s centerline and my commit into yours. Tap my shoulder—one clean touch—and you earn a question worth a real answer.”

He brightened at that, which made discipline necessary.

“No flailing. No apology. Compose,” she said, and struck.

He tried to be clever too soon and tripped over his own impatience. “Reset,” Alise said. “Stand in discomfort. Don’t fix it with noise.”

He breathed, anchored, let his weight settle in the quiet between them. When she moved again he didn’t try to be her or Ais. He let her cut tell him what the floor wanted from his feet and discovered—briefly, beautifully—that he knew how to put two lessons into one sentence.

Steel whispered past her shoulder, a clean tick that acknowledged accuracy.

Alise’s grin flashed, delighted. “There you are. You stopped copying and started composing.”

His exhale had a laugh hiding in it. “It… felt like I understood my own hands.”

“Keep them,” she said. “Trial three: Crimson Oath. Say it again.”

He did. This time he added three thrusts—short, shorter, stillness—on her count. The vow tightened his stance without hardening it; the thrusts sharpened without trying to be dramatic. On the final stillness she flicked his wrist with the flat.

“What—?”

“That last one was a feint,” she explained. “And you bit because applause bribes you. Again.”

He did not bite the second time.

“Trial four: Mercy/Restraint. I’m going to blushingly grant you an opening that wins a point and loses a fight.”

“That sounds like cheating,” he ventured.

“It’s called education.” She gave him a pretty mistake. His eyes sparked; the better part of him disobeyed his eagerness; he maintained position instead of lunging. She tapped her guard twice in acknowledgment.

“No wasted courage,” Alise said softly.

“Right,” he said, and the word meant thank you.

“Trial five: Witness’s Boon. Sixty heartbeats believing you are being watched,” she said, backing away until the blue swallowed her. “You’ll hold form while fatigue asks for sloppy. If you glance for me, I vanish. Feel, don’t see.”

She stepped into the alcove’s dark. The boy settled his weight and began his private war with tiredness. Alise watched from shadow, pride wicked and clean. He held better than yesterday and worse than tomorrow. Midway, a faint shift in air told her Ryu had arrived on the ledge above the alcove, silent as a kind decision.

“Brakes ready,” Ryu murmured so quietly the stone had to pass the message along.

“Burn steady,” Alise murmured back.

On the last ten beats, Bell tilted his head as if listening to a music only he could hear. He didn’t look for them. He let belief do the work of eyes. Witness’s Boon answered like a friendly tide.

Time for every story’s favorite trial.

“Trial six,” Alise said, stepping forward. “Touch the shoulder.”

He set his feet. She moved. He almost flinched at the confidence in her speed and did not. Ais would have been pleased with his economy; Alise allowed herself to be scandalously pleased with his nerve.

She cut from an odd angle to pull his hips out of justice. He let them lie; he chose to use the loss rather than fight the floor back. A small Firebolt twitched at his heel—not a spell, merely the memory of forward; Argonaut hummed a note too low for most ears. For one clean heartbeat, all the practice made a promise: you can be your own style and still keep what we gave you.

His blade touched her shoulder—decisive, polite.

She laughed once, shocked by how happy she was to feel the soft bump through leather. “Ask.”

He went very still. The blue made his eyes look like secrets that thought they were safe. “What do you fight for now?” he asked. “Not then. Not before. Now.”

Of all the questions, that one. It landed in her chest like a key slid into an old lock.

Alise didn’t look away. “For the living, rabbit,” she said simply. “For the small. For the woman who stood beside me when the world broke and kept me upright.” She let the corners of her mouth lift. “And for you—to become yourself without burning up.”

His breath hitch-laughed. “That’s… a lot.”

“I have large hands,” she said lightly, then wiggled said hands as if to prove it, which made him grin outright.

The grin did not make her knees silly. She would deny any allegations under oath.

“Again?” he asked, because invitations deserve to be reciprocal.

“Again,” she agreed, but tipped her head toward the exit. “Rooftop. Tea. Then we run it once more from first principles.”

A sound like a single ceramic click drifted down the stair. Their chaperone had excellent timing.

---

3 — The Good Kind of Quiet (Bell POV)

He hadn’t known quiet could be so full.

They sat on the parapet with tin cups warming their palms, the city beginning to clatter properly below. The candle from earlier—rescued, absurd—burned between them on the stone, steady as a trained breath. He could feel where her knuckles had rapped the knife’s flat. He could feel, still, the clean memory of his blade meeting her shoulder with exactly enough, exactly once.

“I didn’t fall for you because you fell monsters,” Alise said, as if picking up a conversation he hadn’t realized they’d started. Her voice was matter-of-fact, which made it hit harder. “I fell because you take correction like a gift and you insist on meaning. Don’t make me regret liking those things.”

He almost dropped the cup. “huh?!??!? I—won’t.”

“Good,” she said, unconcerned with his fluster. “Then I can be cruel in the appropriate ways.”

“Cruel?”

“Kindness that softens training is cruelty in a costume,” she said, rolling her wrist in a little circle as if the thought lived in her bones. “I will be careful and I will be merciless. Ryu will keep you from killing yourself with new toys. Between us, you will stop mistaking Level 2 for strength. You will turn it into direction.”

He thought of Hestia’s fingertip tapping a red filament in divine script. He thought of Ais’ voice saying earlier. He thought of Lili’s vow to support “properly.” He thought of Ryu’s nod like snow. He thought of the horn’s weight. He looked at the ribbon, and the ribbon looked back.

“I’ll bring dumplings,” he said.

“You will,” she agreed.

They finished their tea. They let the heat soak their fingers. The sun finally remembered it had a job.

Bell set his cup down. “Again?” he asked.

“Again,” Alise said, and stole—no, borrowed—the smallest brush of his sleeve as she stood. It felt like permission disguised as accident.

---

4 — Run It Again (Shared POV)

They returned to blue. They ran it from first principles. Centerline held for longer. The baited opening failed to bait. Crimson Oath steadied without hardening. Witness’s Boon found him without his eyes looking for it.

When fatigue came courting, Alise said “break,” and he stopped, hating her for a second and loving the discipline always the next. When the breath returned, she said “again,” and he stood, discovering how standing when you don’t want to learn anything else teaches more than any lesson written down.

They finished with a last pass—slow, honest, not in love with flourish. At the close, she tapped the underside of his blade with the flat of her rapier and made a small, pleased sound that did interesting things to his ribs.

“You move like you believe your own vow,” she said. “Keep that.”

“I will,” he answered, and found he was not lying.

She turned to go, then stopped. Her eyes went to the ribbon. Something thoughtful shifted behind the mischief. She stepped in, very small distance, and pressed her mouth to the crimson silk again—captain’s blessing, quiet and precise.

“Bring it back shining,” she said.

“I will,” he murmured.

He watched her go as far as the hatch and then out of sight. He stayed on the parapet long enough to finish the candle—he didn’t want it to feel abandoned. Ryu passed him on the stairs with a teapot and one eyebrow. He bowed to the teapot. Ryu’s mouth did something nearly illegal with fondness before she hid it and kept going.

Bell tucked the horn under his arm and the note from last night against his heart and took the morning down into the city.

Hestia would fuss cheerfully. Lili would inventory and pretend not to smile. Ais would arrive tomorrow, earlier. Somewhere out in the stone, a place big enough for harder fights was making room. Somewhere very near, a roof was keeping a space warm for two people who had decided that romance knows how to count reps.

---

5 — Dumplings, and the Day (Alise POV; Closing Beat)

Alise bought dumplings before he had a chance simply because she could.

She left the paper parcel on the roof’s ledge with a scrawl—down payment on tomorrow—and let the city swallow her into its errands. She felt taller, and not because of victory; because a truth admitted in private had not broken anything. It had given her a new lever to move a life that deserved it.

Ryu fell into step beside her three turns later without ceremony. “He kept the candle alive.”

“He did,” Alise replied.

“You’re going to be merciless.”

“Careful and merciless,” Alise corrected.

Ryu accepted the edit. “He asked a good question.”

“He does that,” Alise said, and if her voice got warmer, the morning could keep the secret. “He’ll ask better ones.”

Ryu glanced at her, a sideways smile hidden in a straight mouth. “Then we should prepare better answers.”

They turned into light. Somewhere above them, a ribbon breathed in the breeze. Somewhere below, a rabbit with a horn under his arm rehearsed a vow by tucking it between his ribs and his laugh.

“Again,” Alise said under her breath.

“Again,” Ryu answered, because the word belonged to all three of them now.

The day, finally chosen by the sun, began.

---

End of Chapter Ten

Chapter Text

🌸 DanMachi AU: Crimson Ghosts of Astraea

Interlude — Iron, Fire

(Alise POV)

Morning still tasted like the tea Ryu had pressed into my hand on the roof. Bell had left early—note over his heart, ribbon tidy—headed to do something I couldn’t: choose iron for himself. Good. Heroes should pick their own keepers.

“Your rabbit will be shopping,” Ryu said, drying cups that didn’t need it. “Armor. Maybe a smith.”

“Let him,” I said. Then Syr slid a rumor across the counter like a card up her sleeve: backstreet stall pushing Crozzo steel.

Cold slid under an old door in my chest. I tied my hair. “I’ll sweep.”

“Before lunch,” Ryu warned.

“Alive,” I promised, and took the alleys that prefer me.

The stall stank of machine oil and lies. A long cloth-wrapped shape promised no refunds. The seller had a scar that had learned to smile.

“Captain,” he purred.

“Wrong city,” I said, wronger. “Unwrap.”

He obliged. Magic sword. Sealed core. A Crozzo crest cut into the spine—not antique, not new. My knuckles hummed; I kept still.

“Old stock,” he said. “From a warehouse that keeps gifting us history.”

“Where’d you steal the stamp?”

“No theft.” He oiled the word. I set down a stack of coin heavy enough to make profit reconsider truth.

“South quay,” he caved. “Red chalk on the door. Tell them you brought a friend.”

“I did,” I said, and left.

The quay wears yesterday. Salt, rope, gulls with opinions. The warehouse had red chalk, two guards who thought leaning was a job, and a lock that had never met Ryu. It met me instead.

Inside, greed had tidied the dark. Racks. Crates. Ledger. Faked Crozzo stamps good enough to fool excitement. Three real. Breath held in the corners.

“You’ll want to put those back,” I told the dark.

Four men, one woman, and a boy too young to have knuckles like that unpeeled from shadow. The woman stood like she’d learned to win ugly and live with it. Fair. I’ve done both.

“You alone?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Unfortunately for you.”

“The stamp’s real,” a new voice claimed, and the stall’s scar oozed through a side door, pocketing my coin as if it could pray for him. “And the core—”

“—explodes if you poke it wrong,” I finished. He grinned. I smiled back and moved first.

Economy is a weapon Ais would applaud. I took the first wrist neat, the second knee rude. The boy went for a knife and found my boot on it; I caught his gaze, gave him the look I save for children hired by worse people: drop it and get a different life. He did. Good.

The woman lasted. Mean, pragmatic, honest about wanting my blood. We traded two unpleasant truths—her elbow; my shoulder—before I took her balance and offered her the floor without malice.

“Ledger,” I said, hand out.

She spat near my boot, then threw the book. “We run it,” she said, breathing hard. “We don’t make it.”

“Who does?”

“People richer than both of us.”

Believable. I cracked the three true cores with precise twists that sounded like mercy learning a new verb. The boy flinched at each snap. Good. He would remember that sound when profit came courting again.

The scar clapped slowly. “You’ll like the failsafe.”

He kicked a crate. A rune flared. Idiot.

Heat bloomed under the racks. A low, ugly hum began—the sound of magic trying to become a public hazard.

I swore, sprinted. A line of barrels slumped by the wall—brine for curing. I heaved the first, smashed it; saltwater raced, foam kissing the rune’s circle. It sputtered, dimmed, flared again, angry this time. The woman cursed and rolled to slam her palm on a second glyph. The hum doubled.

“Out,” I snapped to the boy, and shoved him toward the door so hard his future stumbled with him.

I went the other way—through greed’s tidy map, over a table, into a tangle of crates where someone had stashed a Bellows-masher assembly (gods save me from clever criminals). I yanked the vent rod, jammed it under the rack so the core heat would vent sideways into brine instead of upward into fire. The room exhaled steam and salt and the smell of not dying.

The door filled with a plug of person. Eyepatch; burned-sugar grin; soot-scented competence.

“Neat,” she said, stepping over a fallen thug, one sword over her shoulder like a broom she loved. “You melted their fire with soup.”

“Tsubaki Collbrande,” I said, because some reputations deserve the courtesy of being named.

“Mm.” Her one eye tracked the room like it owed her an apology. “We got a whisper. Expected a crater. Got… this.” She gestured at sparking runes hiccuping into a sulk.

“Do you want the ledger or shall I read it to you like a bedtime story?”

“Give,” she said, and our hands didn’t touch when I passed it.

Her apprentices flowed in behind her—red-tabarded, amused, efficient. They moved to the racks as if guided by the goddess of metal herself (they were). Tsubaki pried a fake crest up with her thumbnail, snorted. “Stamp’s wrong. Core’s wronger.”

“Three real,” I said. “Tracked.” I toed the broken hearts.

“Ha!” She liked people who ruined the right things. “You alone?”

“Unfortunately for them,” I repeated, and we both grinned like people who prefer honest work.

The stall’s scar tried to slink out. An apprentice with forearms like optimistic trees hooked him by the collar and parked him on a crate. The woman I’d dropped got to her feet, glared at me with respect edged in resentment, and chose the smart silence.

Tsubaki flicked the ledger open. “Left page lies; right page wants to be useful,” I offered.

“You talk like a smith grading scrap,” she said.

“I keep edges,” I said. “On good days.”

Something in her eye said I know what you’re not saying. She jerked her chin toward the door. “You should go before the city starts asking names.”

I went. She let me.

Outside, the quay wore relief like steam. The boy I’d shoved out earlier hovered by the door, torn between running and thanking me. I spared him both by not looking and moved.

On the lane, a Hephaestus storefront argued with itself. Two apprentices sold safety with too much polish. A black-haired smith with quiet eyes refused to be proud on command. He had the look of iron that forgives: Welf Crozzo, if rumor files its paperwork correctly. The name brushed my scar and didn’t sting as much as I expected. Good.

I didn’t linger. This was a Bell day. Bell days don’t need my commentary.

Back at the Hostess, Ryu inventoried bottles with the focus of someone pretending not to listen for a white-haired laugh.

“South quay,” I said, sliding the ledger under the counter. “Three real. Many faked. One eye at Hephaestus handled it.”

“Alive,” Ryu observed, passing me a plate of dumplings.

“Soup beat fire,” I said around one. “Novel tactic.”

We rented quiet until noon. Syr ran interference on customers who wanted gossip as garnish. Mama Mia made the kitchen sign of warding at the mention of “Crozzo,” then made stew. The city tried not to notice it was kinder than it used to be in corners like ours.

Bell came in midafternoon—new breastplate sitting on him like he’d asked it politely to cooperate, Lili fussing and proud. Behind him, the black-haired smith drifted in the wake of their brightness, hands in pockets, expression carefully uninterested in praise. A good keeper of edges.

Bell saw me and almost bowed while juggling bundles. I made a face that meant don’t you dare. He straightened, grinning. The ribbon winked at me from his knife’s guard like a co-conspirator.

“Tomorrow,” I told it quietly. “Earlier.”

It breathed like it had been waiting to be reminded.

That night, after the inn remembered how to be quiet, I went to the roof with a paper parcel and wrote down payment on tomorrow on the wrapping. I left the dumplings where dawn likes to sit.

If the wind could carry promises, I would have asked it to: Teach him what keeps. I’ll teach him what burns. Between us, he’ll learn what lasts.

The city turned in its sleep. Somewhere below, a forge breathed. Somewhere above, the moon considered the problem of rabbits and fire and women who keep ledgers of both.

“Again,” I told the day that hadn’t started.

“Again,” it agreed, trying not to sound proud.

Chapter Text

🌸 DanMachi AU: Crimson Ghosts of Astraea

Chapter Eleven — Pass Parade

1 — “Run!” (Bell POV → Lili POV → Welf POV)

The corridor detonated into legs and teeth.

One heartbeat it was stone and breath and the quiet arithmetic of a routine descent—Bell in front, Lili counting steps, Welf testing the fit of a new breastplate like he’d negotiated with it—the next heartbeat the tunnel coughed adventurers, sprinting hard, faces white with the look of people trying to outrun a choice they regretted.

“Pass parade!” someone sobbed over their shoulder. “Keep moving!”

There is a sound monsters make when they are redirected into people who did not consent to be a solution. Bell heard it like weather: the pressure in the air before a storm hits the shore. Lizardmen, War Shadows, needle-teeth rattling—every kind of “later” arriving at once.

“Mr. Bell—” Lili’s voice went high, then ground itself down. She had a map in both hands and a dagger in her teeth.

“Back!” Welf snapped, already pivoting to turn a straight corridor into a funnel. His new sword slid free with the easy honesty of iron that had no agenda.

The wave hit. Bell’s stance hit back—Ais’ centerline holding his shoulders, Alise’s commit riding his wrist. Two fell, three came; Firebolt cracked and made the world smell like cordite and decisions.

“Left cut!” Lili barked the geometry. “Then right—second vein—door!”

They surged. The monsters surged faster.

Behind them, against all godly advice, someone apologized as they ran past. Bell caught the glance—dark hair, shrine-cut, eyes that hated what they were doing even as duty drove their legs. Ouka? Mikoto? Names slid off adrenaline. The apology didn’t help but it mattered.

“Sorry—” the girl cried, and vanished with her group around the bend. “We’ll pay it back!”

“Pay it forward by not dying!” Welf yelled at the air, then to Lili, “Hole?”

“Three corridors ahead—if we make it!”

They didn’t. The Dungeon did.

The floor flexed. Stone gave its opinion of stress fractures. Bell’s foot found a gap that hadn’t been there; gravity filed an urgent request.

“Lili!” He lunged back—grabbed her pack strap—Welf grabbed him—and the world lost interest in horizontal narratives.

They fell.

The fall wasn’t clean. Protrusions argued with ribs; scrapings negotiated with knuckles. Lili’s scream clipped itself off to conserve useful air. Welf cursed in a craftsman dialect. Bell’s body made a chalk outline of itself on every surface until, abruptly, sky replaced ceiling.

They smashed through into a blue so bright Bell thought he’d become color. He landed in a tumble that remembered a lesson from the rooftop—tuck, roll, breathe—and came up incoherent but intact.

Lili flopped beside him, alive and outraged. Welf hit like iron does at the end of a long day and groaned something that meant still here. Bell blinked water out of his eyes.

A river. Trees. The wide, false calm of a place that didn’t feel like any other floor.

Lili’s fingers dug his wrist. “Mr. Bell. Floor Eighteen.”

Safe zone. Rivira somewhere ahead. Safety that would hold until it decided not to.

Welf pushed up to a sit, eyes staring at the rent they’d fallen through. “Those idiots—” His jaw worked. “Pass parade on seventeen? They were—” He swallowed the sentence before it turned into an oath he couldn’t afford.

Bell’s breath steadied. He looked back at the hole and forward into green. “We’re alive.”

“Barely,” Lili said, snapping a strap back onto a buckle as if stitching reality. “Inventory?”

“Steel’s good.” Welf flexed his fingers, checked his blade’s edge with affection. “Armor held.”

“Support pack intact. Rations—short.” Lili’s voice got brisker—which always meant she was closer to collapsing. “We head for Rivira. Then we… then we figure out the bill.”

Bell nodded. “Move.”

They moved.

2 — “My Child is in There” (Hestia POV → Hermes POV)

Hestia ran as if prayer had legs.

Her sandals were bad at stairs but her fury was good at ignoring that. She shoved through the Guild’s front desk speeches with the authority of a small goddess who had remembered that love outranks bureaucracy, and hit the street with tears that had skipped ahead to make a ruckus.

“Hermes!” she shouted before the plaza had decided which way interest flowed.

“—my cue,” said the god who had invented showing up right when the scene needed an exit. Hermes dropped off a balcony rope like the world was a stage and he had notes. Asfi landed beside him with the unamused grace of a person who enables miracles but does not clap for them.

“Hestia-sama,” Asfi said, bowing briskly and squinting past the goddess to the scale of the problem. “Explain.”

“Pass parade,” Hestia panted. “The middle floors. Bell, Lili, and” She swallowed. “They fell. I’m going now.”

“You are many things,” Asfi said kindly, “but ‘expedition-proof’ is not one of them.”

Hermes flicked his hat brim in apology that tried to be charming and settled at sincere. “We’ll fetch them. We’re light and fast. Asfi, assemble the forward team.”

Hestia grabbed his sleeve with both hands. “Bring my child back.”

Hermes’ smile softened. “I like good stories, Hestia. I know where he fits in one. I won’t let his end be a bad line break.” He leaned, lowered his voice. “We’ll want extra wind. I know where to borrow a gale.”

“Ryu?” Hestia guessed, hope hitching.

“Mm,” Hermes hummed, already walking. “And if the wind comes with fire…” His eyes tipped toward the Hostess. “All the better.”

---

3 — “I Can Help” (Ryu POV → Alise POV → Hermes POV)

Ryu had only just finished refilling the vinegar cruet when the door solved Hermes for her by opening and letting him be himself.

“Lion,” Hermes greeted with too much flourish for the hour. “Asfi says ‘pass parade’ and I say ‘search and rescue’ and Hestia says ‘now.’”

Ryu’s eyes slid to the goddess hovering on his heel like a prayer that refused to wait. Hestia looked wrecked in a way Ryu respected.

“Please,” Hestia said, wasting no words. “He fell.”

Ryu set the cruet down and didn’t bother removing her apron before she reached for the cloak that meant a different job. “I can help.”

Hermes’ gaze went past her shoulder to a shadow that had decided to be a person. Alise stepped out of the cool to meet the heat.

“Me too,” she said.

Ryu’s breath hitched—almost invisible, visible to a woman who kept her in one piece. The room curled a little around the name that hadn’t been spoken, the history that had learned to walk on the backstreets instead of the main.

Hermes’ lashes dropped and rose, a polite man’s version of an eyebrow. “Well now,” he said lightly. “A breeze and a spark. Fate is either drunk or working overtime.”

Hestia blinked between the three of them. “You—?”

“She is competent,” Ryu said, simple truth as a shield. “And fast.”

Hestia’s hands reached for Alise on instinct and then faltered over not having a name to hold. Alise spared her the discomfort by meeting her halfway with a bow that fit no guild registry.

“I’m… invested,” Alise said carefully. “And good at getting lost people out of bad places.”

Hermes clapped once. “Then we are a party.”

“On two conditions,” Ryu said before he finished enjoying the sentence. “We move as fast as Asfi commands. And we do not expose what does not want exposure.”

Hermes swept his hat wide. “Scout’s honor.” He glanced at Hestia. “You can shout at me later about terms. For now: trust.”

Hestia’s eyes were wet and enormous. “Bring him back,” she said to both women and, surprising herself, did not qualify her plea.

Alise felt something ease in her chest—the difficult, tender confirmation of a role she had not dared claim out loud. “We will,” she said, and to Ryu, “We run.”

“We run,” Ryu agreed.

Asfi thrust packs into arms that knew how to wear them, rattled off hand signs that would keep noise out of corridors, and got three nods that made her approve of the world.

They went.

---

4 — Tracks, Teeth, and the Shape of a Fall (Alise & Ryu POV)

The upper floors threw their usual tantrum at speed. Hermes’ Familia moved like letters in a sentence Asfi knew how to write; Ryu slid through their commas as if she had been punctuating all her life. Alise ran point without needing to ask permission, eyes skimming scuff marks and the alibi of stone.

“Pass parade came through here,” she said, kneeling. Gouges. Foot skids. A heel print that had learned to regret. “Angled left at the fork. Drove the wave into rookies ahead.”

“Takemikazuchi colors,” Ryu observed, touching a thread snagged on a tooth of rock. “Mikoto. Chigusa.” The names tasted of discipline and bad luck. “They’ll be paying penance for months.”

Asfi tapped the map. “Seventeen’s throat to the boss antechamber is the standard parade lane. If your party was swept—”

“Look,” Alise said, too sharp, then softer, “please.”

At the antechamber, the floor had a bruise. Not a failure—an insult. Rock spidered into cracks all leaning one way. Something had forced too much through a throat not designed for it. You could see it if you read stone like a stubborn student.

“They fell through,” Alise said, palms on the fracture. “The weight broke the seam. Drop to eighteen.”

Hermes whistled soundlessly. “Which is a blessing if they weren’t turned to paste on the way.”

“The rabbit bounces,” Alise said, straightening. She kept her voice level. She kept the rest to herself. “We can reach them faster through the eastern exit and down the safe ladder. Safer than swan-diving.”

“Agreed,” Asfi said, already sketching a new line.

They cut down the side-spine stair, the air changing temperature like a mood. A knot of ants boiled out of a seam—bad timing, worse decision. Ryu went through them, her blade a quiet line that didn’t brag about what it could do. Alise cut two that aimed for Asfi’s back and barely slowed.

“Cranel,” Hermes called over the beat of their feet, “if you make me sprint this much, I expect you to live spectacularly.”

“Less talking,” Asfi said, but her mouth tugged just enough to suggest relief in the rhythm.

At the last turn before the safezone ladder, a smear of red made Alise’s heart take inventory. She knelt, touched it, rubbed it between finger and thumb.

“Not arterial,” she said to Ryu. “Surface. Fast bleed, fast stop. He moved after.”

“Rabbit,” Ryu confirmed.

They descended into Eighteen’s artificial day.

---

5 — Rivira (Bell POV → Welf POV → Lili POV)

Rivira sat on the lake like a secret someone had tried and failed to keep. Makeshift walls had learned to look permanent; markets argued about prices with dignity; adventurers moved as if they were allowed to pretend nothing tried to kill them outside the line of sight.

Bell felt like he’d fallen into a painting.

Lili didn’t. She saw the gaps in the palisade and the kinship prices bled out of kindness. She steered them toward a shade awning anyway and did the math in her head—coin left, food needed, blood that would dry before it became anyone else’s business.

Welf stared at his own hands. “I could have… if I…” He didn’t finish the sentence. It turned into a shape he’d been making for years: a magic sword he refused to touch, a lineage he refused to be ruled by.

Bell, whose luck had begun to look like discipline when you squinted, reached over and squeezed Welf’s shoulder. “You’re here.”

Welf huffed. “So’s my pride. Annoying, both of us.”

Lili shoved a skewer into each of their hands because protein outranks existential crisis. “Eat. Then we find a map. Then we find a ladder.”

Bell took a bite, winced at the spice, smiled despite the pain. “We’ll be okay.”

“Mm,” Lili said, which meant only if you listen when I tell you to duck.

The market shifted. A tremor went through Rivira like rumor. Heads turned toward the forest fringe where stone grows.

“What is—” Bell started, and then felt it, the way a corridor holds its breath before a shout.

A roar rolled in. Not near. Not yet. Large enough to make safety check its lease.

Welf’s jaw went iron. “That’s not our problem unless it becomes our problem.” He thumped the hilt at his hip. “We leave before the floor decides to redraw the map.”

“Agreed,” Lili said, already moving.

Bell looked back once. The trees didn’t look back. He followed.

---

6 — Search and Rescue (Ryu POV → Alise POV)

They hit Rivira’s perimeter right when the shout went through the market: floor boss rumor swirling, people deciding whether to run toward spectacle or away from consequence.

Asfi signaled—pairs, spread. Hermes smiled at a vendor and stole no one’s purse. Ryu and Alise moved along the shadow of the palisade where eyes forgot to look.

“Tracks,” Alise said, pointing—light boot prints that hurried without panicking; a shorter stride that corrected for weight; a heavier step that tried to look casual and lied poorly. “They came through here five minutes ago.”

Ryu’s gaze flicked to the trees. “If the boss is stirring, we have less time than we think.”

“I hate schedules,” Alise said, and then they were moving again.

They found them on the path to the safe ladder: Bell gesturing with a skewer in one hand and concern wearing a grin on his face because he wasn’t rude enough to keep worry to himself; Lili mid-lecture; Welf pretending not to be grateful for both.

“Cranel,” Hermes said lightly, stepping into their attention like a coin appearing from nowhere, “terrible place for a picnic.”

“Hestia-sama—?” Bell nearly tripped over the relief.

“Shouting at me at the moment,” Hermes said. “Which is how gods show love in public. Asfi?”

“Everyone vertical? Good.” Asfi made inventory of injuries with her eyes. “Shallow cuts, one bruised ego.” She looked at Welf when she said it. Welf gave her a look back that admitted nothing and everything.

Ryu stayed one pace behind Hermes out of habit, out of policy, out of history. Alise stayed one pace behind Ryu out of choice.

Bell’s eyes flicked past Hermes, searching instinctively for a gaze he had begun to feel before he could name it. He didn’t find her and didn’t try to look harder. He just smiled at the air and stood a little taller.

“Ryu-san,” he said quietly, bowing.

Ryu inclined her head the smallest degree.

“Let’s move,” Asfi said crisply. “Before Rivira learns fresh gossip and we inherit it.”

They started toward the ladder, a bubble of motion within a market trying to decide whether to hold or scatter. The second roar settled the argument. It came from the direction of the boss chamber with the offended insistence of a calendar reminder.

“Ah,” Hermes said, brightening in a way that made Asfi pinch the bridge of her nose. “Goliath hates letting a day pass without small talk.”

Alise’s palm found the railing of the nearest hand-built bridge and gripped it until the wood decided not to creak. She had watched Bell kill a Minotaur with help and will and a first firebolt. She had not planned to watch him stand inside a floor boss’s shadow this week.

Ryu’s shoulder touched hers briefly—accidentally on purpose. “Brakes,” she said, which now meant I’m here for the stop you can’t love him enough to make.

“Burn,” Alise answered, which meant I’ll push him to the line and not one inch over if I can help it.

Hermes looked over his shoulder with eyes that knew too much to be entirely irresponsible. “Shall we collect a goddess and then be irresponsible together with preparation?”

“Translation,” Asfi said. “We get Hestia, then escort your children to the ladder with enough muscle that the floor reconsiders its plans.”

Welf lifted his chin at Bell. “We do this smart. No detours.”

Bell nodded. “Smart.”

He did not look for Alise. He did not need to. The ribbon at his knife breathed in the wind like a small, stubborn flame.

They reached the ladder. The market heaved again, half running toward spectacle, half toward memory. Alise started down second, behind Asfi, before she caught herself and stepped back into shadow.

“Go,” Ryu murmured.

“Soon,” Alise said softly, a promise to a future scene she couldn’t yet afford to ruin.

Hermes turned as if he had heard a confession and tipped his hat toward empty air. “My thanks to our anonymous benefactors,” he said to no one and exactly the right someone.

Bell paused on the first ladder rung and looked back at the trees. He breathed in. He breathed out. He whispered a single word to himself that had become code for what he does next.

“Again.”

Goliath roared from far enough away to count as a warning and near enough to be rude. The party started down. Rivira held its breath. The floor below waited to make a story out of their choices.

Alise exhaled, slow. Hestia’s voice came up the corridor like a prayer that refused to be quiet.

“Good,” Alise told the day. “We’re all here.”

Chapter Text

🌸 DanMachi AU: Crimson Ghosts of Astraea

Chapter Thirteen

Cedar Fence, Bad Idea (Bell POV → crowd POV)

Rivira at twilight glowed like a festival that forgot its curfew. Steam drifted from the big public spring, bamboo fence dividing women and men, laughter bobbing like lanterns. Bell was supposed to be fetching towels.

"Field study," Hermes whispered, appearing at Bell's elbow with a grin and a seashell on a string. "Observe and report-purely ichthyological."

"Fish?" Bell said, skeptical.

"Mer-fish." Hermes winked. "Hold the scope. One peek, strictly-"

A shove. A yelp. The bamboo flexed.

On the other side, Hestia's voice: "Bell?!"

"-cultural misunderstanding!" Hermes cried.

The water-scope swung; Bell flailed; his foot skidded on wet wood; his center of gravity filed for relocation. He toppled over the fence with a splash that erased three conversations and a god's alibi.

He surfaced sputtering into a constellation of mortified stares-Riveria's cool mercury eyes; Tione's predatory grin; Tiona's delighted, "Hey, Bunny!"; Lili's "I WILL END YOU;" Hestia's scandalized gasp-

-and Ais.

Bell's world tunneled to gold eyes and moonsilver hair. Ais blinked once, unreadable, water beading on her lashes like punctuation.

"Bell," she said.

He made a noise usually reserved for mice confronted by owls, covered his eyes with both hands, and ran-blind, flailing, exploding back over the fence with a scramble that left a Bell-shaped hole in dignity.

"Get back here, Hermes-sama!" Hestia shrieked.

"Scientific inquiry!" Hermes argued and was immediately buried under towels, ladles, and feminine outrage. Asfi dragged him by the ear. Tione hogtied him with a sash. Riveria lifted a hand; the water around Hermes turned glacial.

Bell was already gone, sprinting down the riverside, face cherry-red, heart trying to throw itself into the river to escape.

Lantern Spring, Lines and Fire (Bell POV → Alise POV)

He didn't stop. He couldn't. Feet slapped wet stone; steam kissed; moss tried to take custody of his ankles. He ran until Rivira's noise thinned to the hush of trees and the soft breathe of a smaller spring tucked behind vines-lanterns strung low like captured stars.

Voices. Two of them. Quiet. Familiar.

Bell froze on the path, one foot raised off a puddle, every instinct screaming turn around. He didn't, because Hermes's momentum and his own shame had rolled him here like a dice. He looked down. The world offered him the oldest temptation: curiosity shaped like a gap between leaves.

He didn't choose. He stumbled, catching himself on a vine; a lantern swayed, spilling light.

Alise turned her head.

Steam made a veil over her shoulders; waterline shimmered; the crimson ribbon on the knife hilt resting on a rock winked like a warning light. Beside her, Ryu lounged with impossible composure, damp hair braided over one shoulder, gaze drifting from Bell's shadow to Alise's face as if to ask, yours or mine?

Bell's stomach fell through three floors. "I-" Words failed to report for duty.

Ryu didn't rise. "Cranel," she said, calm.

Bell squeezed his eyes shut. "I'm sorry." It came out raw.

Silence. Then Alise's voice-light in tone, not in heat. "Stay exactly where you are."

He went statue. Steam curled around his ankles like a waiting cat.

"Eyes down," she added. "You get one chance to fix something that shouldn't have happened."

He stared at his own boots as if they were scripture. He could hear the water move as Alise shifted-slow-decisive. Cloth rustled: a towel lifted; not a scramble, not shame-choice.

"Ryu," Alise said; water spilled from a forearm, soft percussion. "Would you like to do the sermon, or shall I?"

"I'll count the breaths," Ryu replied, unbothered. "You do the law."

Bell's throat worked. "I didn't- Hermes-on the first bath, but this-I ran-and then I-"

"Stop," Alise said, close now. Bare feet on stone, sure as testimony. "We are going to call this what it is: wrong. You are not a villain in this story-but you are the idiot in this scene."

"Yes," he breathed.

"Good." A pause, and he felt her presence at the edge of the path-towel across shoulders, wet hair dripping along her spine, heat radiating like a hearth. "Now you will listen to me think before I decide how angry to be."

Alise POV - the monologue

Anger rises like a tide if you let it. If you dam it, it festers. So: let it come to the lip and look at it.

My body is not a rumor. My body is not a prize. It is a place I live, a weapon I keep, a history with a thousand entries I did not write and a few I did. You are a boy learning how to be a man without trampling your own vows. You broke a boundary and you did not keep going. You froze, you looked down, you apologized first, you didn't make a joke. That is not nothing.

But I told you the rules. Up. Dawn. Ask. Back away. Do not trust Hermes near bamboo or botany. And you ran so fast you outran your rules and landed in mine.

She inhaled, exhaled. The anger crested, blue and hot, then flattened into a calmer sea.

"Here is the price," she said aloud, steady. "One: you owe Ryu and me an apology separately-not because we are two women, but because we are two people."

"Yes."

"Two: you will not try to be clever about this later. No banter. No deflection. If someone asks why your face is red, you say, 'I made a mistake and I learned.'"

"Yes."

"Three: you arrive earlier for drills. No peeking at the clock, no peeking at anything. You hold stance until your legs tremble and then one breath more. That breath will be your reminder of tonight."

"Yes."

"Four: you remember I am not fragile." She let the towel slip a fraction louder over her shoulder just to make sure he knew who controlled the scene. "But the trust we're building is. You cracked it. You will help me tie it again."

His voice broke. "I will."

"Five," Ryu added from the pool, tone even as moonlight. "You will not tell Hermes any of this. He is currently being punished. He can remain ignorant for his health."

Bell nodded so fast the lanterns shook. "Yes."

"Look at me," Alise said.

He raised his head. All the way? No. He lifted his eyes just enough-to her face, nowhere else-where he found no softness he hadn't earned, and no cruelty he didn't deserve. Steam braided around her like stage-light; the towel hid or revealed as she chose. She looked breathtaking in the exact way a cliff looks breathtaking when you are standing far enough away.

"I am furious," she said, and the word was an ember. "Because I trusted you to know your feet. And because a part of me"-she made herself say it, because honesty is leverage-"liked being wanted in the eyes of a boy who tries so hard to be good. That is not your burden to carry. It is mine to name and manage. Do you understand?"

His "yes" was small and clean.

Her anger loosened-reluctantly, correctly. "Good. Turn around. Walk back to the lantern. Leave it swinging. If you hear a splash, it's me returning to the water. If you hear a blade, you tripped over Ryu's patience."

He turned. He walked. The lantern bobbed once, twice.

Water sighed as Alise stepped down into the pool again; towel floated off, reclaimed, choice intact. Ryu's gaze met hers across the silvered surface.

"Too harsh?" Alise asked, low.

"Appropriately sharp," Ryu said. A corner of her mouth lifted. "You are better at speeches. I'm better at consequences."

"I gave him both." Alise let herself laugh-quiet, shaky, alive. "And I am stealing dumplings out of principle."

"Of course," Ryu said, and the steam held their shared relief like a secret.

Ryu's eyes glinted. With the lazy precision of a cat batting yarn, she hooked the tip of a bamboo ladle under the corner of Alise's towel and lifted. Exposing her perfect body.

"Traitor," Alise hissed-more scandalized than angry-as she snatched it back on instinct. The motion sent a sheet of water hissing over the stones like a drawn curtain.

Out on the path, Bell made a strangled sound, slapped both palms over his eyes, and dropped to his knees so fast the lantern bobbed like a buoy in a squall.

"I'm not looking! I'm not-I swear-I'm kneeling-!"

"Good," Alise called, laughter edging her voice at last. "Stay there. Count to one hundred."

"In primes," Ryu added, entirely serious.

Bell fumbled. "One-uh-two, three, five, seven, eleven-"

"Acceptable," Ryu ruled.

Alise flicked a thin arc of water that landed neatly on the toes of his boots. "And keep your head down. The lantern is very judgmental tonight."

"Yes, Alise-san!" He bent lower, mortification practically steaming off him.

Ryu, satisfied, lofted the towel and let it plop back over Alise's head like a crown. "For modesty," she said, deadpan.

"For comedy," Alise corrected, tugging it into place with a sniff she didn't mean. Then, softer, to the path: "Up to thirty-one, rabbit. Then flee."

"Thirteen, seventeen, nineteen-" Bell accelerated like a man sprinting through arithmetic. "-twenty-nine, thirty-one!"

A small current nudged Alise's towel toward the lip. Without rising, Ryu hooked the trailing corner with the cedar ladle, flicked her wrist, and sent the towel sailing in a lazy arc. It landed perfectly at the path's edge-right in front of Bell.

He made another strangled noise and stayed kneeling, both hands over his eyes.

Ryu's voice was silk over steel. "Interesting. He obeys 'knees' faster than most orders."

"Ryu," Alise warned, amused despite herself.

"I am returning lost property," Ryu said serenely.

"Rabbit," Alise called, patient and in control, "eyes down. Slide the towel onto the flat rock and retreat three steps."

Bell, still kneeling, inched the towel forward with the very tips of his fingers like it might explode, set it where she'd said, and scooted back exactly three steps.

"Good," Alise said. "Accuracy under stress. Your drills tomorrow just doubled."

"Understood," he squeaked.

"And the dumplings," Ryu added.

Bell wilted. "...Tripled?"

Alise and Ryu shared a look over the steam; Alise's mouth curved. "Tripled," she confirmed.

"Thank you," he breathed to the path, and fled, keeping his gaze locked on gravel and muttering apologies to every lantern he passed.

Ryu sank back against the rock, satisfied. "Elegantly done. Confession achieved."

Alise rolled her eyes and reached for the towel. "You are insufferable."

"Effective," Ryu corrected, and the spring kept their laughter like a sealed letter.

C) Names in Quiet (Ryu POV → Bell POV)

Morning on the surface tasted like bread and the end of adrenaline. After Hestia finished mothering him into a scarf he didn't need, after Hermes finished being publicly useful and privately punished, after Alise had nodded once that meant we are intact, Ryu said, "Walk with me."

Orario had corners that refused to be loud. Ryu led Bell through one of them: a walled garden near the city's old quarter, ivy and stone, a single tree that remembered spring more faithfully than people did. Against the wall, seven wooden slats had been set upright-hand-planed, hand-carved, hand-tended. A goddess's symbol burned faint at the top: Astraea.

Bell stopped. He didn't speak. He recognized a grave when he felt it.

Ryu knelt and set her palm against the nearest board. The names were not famous; they were proper. She read them silently, then aloud, once, for the day to remember.

"Alise Lovell," she said last, voice steady as a blade's spine. "Captain."

Bell's chest tightened. He glanced, involuntarily, at Ryu's profile-stoic, gentle, implacable-and then at the path where Alise might someday stand in this very place and let another version of this moment happen. He bowed his head.

"I didn't... know where," he said softly.

"You do now." Ryu's hand stayed on the wood. "I used to come here to remember why anger felt easier than breathing. Lately I come to practice breathing without anger."

Bell swallowed. "I'm sorry for-last night. And for everything you lost."

Ryu looked at him, and something warmer than forgiveness moved through her expression. "Your apology for last night is accepted. Your apology for my past is not required." A beat. "But your effort for tomorrow is."

"Yes," he said. "Again."

Ryu's mouth softened. "Again."

They stood side by side, not touching, sharing the same square of quiet. The wind fingering the ivy sounded like pages turning. Bell read the names in his head and promised himself he'd learn the stories without making them about him.

Footsteps. Alise did not enter. She stood at the gate, hand on the iron, and watched-choosing to give them a moment that was theirs. Ryu inclined her head the tiniest degree. Alise returned it. The agreement was old as language: we keep him together.

Bell looked back and saw her. He didn't wave. He didn't run to fill the space. He just smiled-small, contrite, grateful-and Alise's answering smile said, good.

"Tea?" Ryu asked.

"Tea," Bell said.

They left the garden as they had found it: quieter than before, and somehow stronger. Behind them, the slats held names that were not quite as heavy when carried by three.

Chapter Text

Chapter Fourteen — Edge of the Safe Zone

Alise didn’t step into Rivira.

She took the crooked goat path up the bluff instead, where the roots held the cliff like fingers and the wind smelled less like trade and more like stone. From here, the safe zone looked like a toy town set on a lake: stalls patched from mismatched planks; lanterns strung like excuses; the palisade pretending it could keep the Dungeon out.

“Hestia will feed them twice,” she murmured, half-smiling. “Hermes will steal credit once.” The smile stayed. It always stayed. It had learned to be a kind of bracer that didn’t creak.

Below, Bell’s white head tilted as he took it all in, Lili’s hands drawing the map in the air, Welf holding himself like a sword he hadn’t decided how to swing yet. Ryu peeled off at the gate, scanned, and—without looking up—touched two fingers to her temple. Alise returned the salute with the back of her knuckles against her jaw and stepped farther into the pines’ shadow.

She set her weapons on a clean shelf of rock: rapier parallel to the ledge, the ribboned knife on the right where her hand fell without thinking. She tucked her hair under a scarf that made her look like one of Rivira’s shadows and sat, knees up, arms looped, the way she had sat a hundred nights after a hundred fights when sleep had been a luxury for people with fewer ghosts.

Names came unbidden, as they always did when she made herself still.

Kaguya first. Always Kaguya.

Straighten your back, Captain. If you slouch, justice tips out your pockets.

Lyra next, laughing because silence made her itch.

If the world’s going to break us, at least make it sing on the way down.

Neze with his bracelets and his careful eyes. Neige with her wicked, private jokes. Celty, already halfway to a story before the moment happened. Rane, quiet until she wasn’t and then you listened.

And Ryu, of course, except Ryu was below, alive and stern and kind, and the part of Alise that still hadn’t learned how to be grateful without flinching sent a quick prayer toward the lake and left it there.

She toyed with the crimson ribbon at the knife’s guard, untied and retied it—once, twice—until the knot sat square. That ribbon had become the line between before and after. In the after, she smiled so other people didn’t have to.

The wind shifted. Rivira’s noise floated up—haggling, cursing, the clatter of someone dropping a crate. A vendor hawked skewers with a voice like a crow. The safe zone felt like the surface world had made a copy of itself and put it in a cave to prove a point. The point had always slipped off her tongue.

She let her eyes half-close, and the cave ceiling—false-blue, false-sky—turned into another ceiling entirely: glass-black and starless, a corridor where air had become a blade.

The Juggernaut’s sound was not a roar. It was missing sound—a subtraction that made the world wobble. When she remembered, she remembered wind without air, the hallway shivering, Astraea’s prayer like a thread between teeth.

They had been six. The seventh had been late—Ryu on another mission, spared by errand and not by fate. Lyra had flicked blood off the flat with a joke she never finished. Kaguya had squared her shoulders against impossible math.

Captain, Kaguya had said, voice very calm, if one light must run, which is it?

None, Alise had said, and the world had laughed at her.

The Juggernaut had cut angles out of space. It moved like a bad idea that had learned to sprint. Their formation had held for three breaths, then two, then the corridor had made new rules. Alise had seen the line where everything would end and—because the job had taught her which losses you can live with and which you cannot—she had stepped into the wrong answer and shoved it sideways.

The thing in the dark had turned its un-face toward her. For a breath—and she would never be sure if she had imagined it—the black around its edges had trembled like a cloak not its own.

There had been another sigil in the glass, just for an eye’s blink: not Astraea’s scales; a crooked star nested in a circle, etched on a shard as if scrawled in a hurry. She had not told Ryu that part. She had not told anyone. The memory pressed her ribs from the inside.

She exhaled. The ribbon under her thumb steadied her. The day put itself back on.

“You are not a ghost,” she told herself aloud, looking at her own hands. “You just practice like one.”

Down in Rivira, Bell laughed at something Lili said, then caught himself as if laughter might be taxed. Welf’s mouth twitched in sympathy he thought he hid well. Hestia scolded and petted in the same sentence. Hermes pretended to be too tired to be punished further.

A distant ripple went through the false sky. It wasn’t wind. It was the floor taking a breath.

Alise stood. She slid the scarf back; her hair fell over her shoulders like it remembered she was frivolous before it remembered she was useful.

She didn’t go down. She walked the ridge path east, where a spine of rock gave her a clean view of the boss chamber’s mouth: a bruise in the cliffside where stone leaned outward as if trying to hold something in. She perched on a boulder that had learned patience and angled herself so she could watch without becoming a story.

Ryu would find her here if she needed to. Hestia would be the brake Bell deserved. Hermes would keep gawkers from turning into casualties. Asfi moved like punctuation near the palisade, already setting lines that would hold.

A small shape separated from Rivira and climbed the ladder to the overlook rock: Bell, with Lili and Welf just behind. Asfi stopped them with a hand; positioned them herself—cover here, retreat there—then jogged back to the line. Ryu took a place two paces ahead of Hestia and did not move again.

Alise’s smile thinned and sharpened. Witness, she reminded herself. Burn if you must; brake if you can. But witness first.

The first sound the Goliath made was impatience. Stone sloughed; dust coughed; the boss shouldered out of the wall like a mountain that had changed its mind about standing still.

Alise stayed on the ridge. She had the whole mouth of the chamber in a single frame: the lake to the left, the broken shelf to the right, the scatter of boulders in the center that made bad cover look tempting. Hermes and Asfi were already on Rivira’s edge, shooing gawkers back. Hestia clutched Bell’s sleeve. Ryu moved once—two paces—to where a brake belongs, then held.

No Loki Familia here. They had already gone back to the surface. What was left were merchants, a few middling parties, and one white-haired boy whose vow kept finding larger rooms.

“Don’t,” Hestia breathed.

Bell looked at the boss, then at Lili, then at Welf. He didn’t pull free; he set Hestia’s hand gently aside and let her see his face—afraid, sure, but aligned.

“We do this smart,” he said. “No heroics.”

“Lines and lures,” Lili said, already moving.

“I’ll make it look the wrong way,” Welf answered, chain and grapnel sliding from his pack.

Goliath heaved into the open with a roar that threw grit up the cliff. It swung a forearm down at the nearest cluster of cover. Welf’s chain sang; the hook bit into a ridge of its gaunt wrist; the yank didn’t stop the blow, but it pulled it off-center. Rock exploded where people had been moments earlier because Lili’s voice had already moved them.

“Right! Double back! Low step—now!”

Bell ran. Not straight. Never straight. He used the rubble line like a musician uses rests—stops that make the notes land harder. Crimson Echo steadied his stance; Witness’s Boon held his shoulders when the crowd’s fear wanted to shake them loose. He slid under the boss’s arm and touched its hide with the flat, not to harm, but to learn—feel the timing of the joints.

“Left knee!” Lili snapped. “When it plants!”

Welf hurled his second hook into a seam behind the heel and hauled with a craftsman’s stubbornness. The Goliath lurched; the knee set.

“Now, Bell!”

He didn’t stab this time. He stopped. Plant. Breathe. Decide. He set his feet on broken stone, lifted his hand, and began to charge.

White motes gathered around his fingers, then around his forearm, then around the name he was trying to deserve. Argonaut. The air itself seemed to lean closer.

The Goliath sensed the stillness and screamed—its Howl rolling the cavern like a physical thing. Asfi was already moving: a hand-cross drawn, a flash-burst hissing through the air to bloom against the boss’s eye ridge—light and sting, a thief’s clean trick. Ryu’s chant came low and even, wind curling invisible around Bell’s boots and up his calves—Luminous Wind—steadying his balance, giving the charge a place to sit while the world tried to shove him over.

“Hold,” Alise whispered to the rock under her palms, as if it could carry it to him. “Hold.”

Hestia’s voice broke and held. “Bell!”

He didn’t look. He let the motes build until they stopped gathering—the signal that the charge would not get stronger, only heavier.

“Again,” he breathed.

The Goliath dragged breath for a second Howl—jaw opening, throat cords flaring.

Bell stepped into the shout and fired.

The Argonaut-charged Firebolt leapt—no flourish, no pretty arc, a straight white lance that ripped the sound out of the air on its way through. It smashed the Howl apart, bored through teeth and tongue, and erased most of the monster’s face in a blossom of steam and burnt stone. The boss reeled, blind and broken. Bell staggered back three steps as the charge tore out of him; Ryu’s wind caught his heel and set him down instead of letting him fall.

“Finish!” Lili’s voice, bright and merciless.

Welf’s grapnel hauled the wrist; the giant’s chest opened by reflex; Bell surged one last time and carved a clean line across the throat—no drama, just precision.

The Goliath tipped forward, hands trying to catch up with its own weight. Bell was already out of the lane he’d made. The body hit the floor with a canyon’s sigh. A shudder rolled the ridge under Alise and ran out into the lake as a polite ripple.

Silence—one long held breath—and then Rivira erupted. People who’d ducked under stalls popped up cheering. Hermes whooped as if he’d choreographed it, and Asfi smacked his arm without taking her eyes off the field. Hestia ran, and Bell let her hit him like relief in a small, determined package.

Alise realized she’d been smiling through her teeth and let herself—just for a breath—smile without the bite. On the path below, Ryu hadn’t moved during the last exchange; now her sword hand eased open and her shoulders dropped a finger’s breadth. She looked up toward the ridge as if she could feel where Alise’s witness had been and tilted her chin the smallest degree. Alise returned it.

Bell stood there, panting, one hand still on the ribbon at his knife, as if surprised the world allowed the thing to be done.

Welf slung an arm around his neck and immediately pretended he hadn’t. “You owe me a new hook.”

“I’ll make it,” Bell said, dazed and grinning.

“You’ll buy it,” Welf corrected, but his laugh gave the lie.

Lili wiped her face with the back of her wrist and didn’t cry. “You followed the lines. Good.”

“Good,” Alise echoed under her breath, and the word meant three different things.

She stayed on the ridge until the drop items were tallied and the safe zone remembered how to be loud. Only then did she descend, ribbon steady in her palm, smile back in its work clothes.

Hestia tsked and scolded and fed. Hermes preened and got ignored. Ryu drifted close enough for Bell to feel the gravity of her approval and far enough to keep his head from swelling. When Bell finally looked up over the hubbub, he found Alise at the edge of it all—exactly where she always was.

He didn’t wave. He touched the ribbon and bowed once, small and honest. She lifted two fingers from the cup of tea Ryu had somehow obtained, and the motion said: Well done. Earlier tomorrow.

The false sky brightened a shade, as if the cave itself had agreed.

“Again,” Alise whispered, and let the word settle warm behind her ribs.

Chapter Text

Chapter Fifteen — After the Roar

They reached the surface at noon and the city noticed. Word runs faster than boots: Goliath down; white-haired boy; safe zone saved. By the time Hestia dragged Bell through the West Market, shopkeepers were deciding whether to sell him discounts or stories, and some managed both.

Alise did not walk beside them.

She walked above them, where eaves make roads and laundry becomes a curtain. A grey scarf hid the bright of her hair; a river of tile carried her along. From up here Bell looked smaller and happier and very, very reachable by anyone with a grudge and a budget.

“Breathe,” she told herself, skimming along a gutter lip. “Witness, burn, brake—in that order.”

Below, the Hostess of Fertility erupted when Hestia pushed through the door. Mia smacked a tray down like a gavel; Anya spun Bell twice; Syr set a bowl of stew in front of him the way a priest sets a candle; Ryu’s mouth didn’t change but her eyes did. Welf accepted three slaps on the back and one hug he pretended to detest. Lili took the corner seat with her back to the wall and counted free appetizers like a general counting arrows.

Alise perched on the sign beam outside, a shade among shadows, and watched their joy make the room bigger. She allowed herself a single breath of it. Then she went to work.

1 — Following the Follows

The first tail appeared before Bell finished his stew. A boy in Apollo Familia blue who thought he was invisible because he was bored. Alise drifted off the sign and melted into the alley. When he rounded the corner to “casually” check the back door, she intercepted him with a smile that could sell you your own shoes.

“Lost?” she asked.

He blinked up at a stranger with street-dust on her boots and attention that weighed as much as a hand on the back of his neck. “Uh. No? I’m waiting for—”

She leaned in as if to whisper a rumor and tipped him by his belt into the cabbage crate beside the tavern door. Lid down. A flick of twine. A knot. She left him discovering the many metaphors of humility.

Three streets over, a second tail—this one a woman with the Hyakinthos kind of posture, which is to say back straight enough to be a flag. Alise crossed an alley, idled beside a stall, handed the vendor two valis and said, “Pitch me the freshest,” loud enough to call attention. The vendor, pleased to be part of a melodrama, launched into a speech about fish. The tail grimaced—crowds, ugh—chose the side lane, and found Ryu there, by accident, with a wooden pail blocking the way and a look that sent people back to their mothers. The tail chose another profession on the spot.

“Two,” Alise murmured, as they passed without speaking. Ryu’s knuckles brushed her wrist in answer. Together. Then they separated again—two lines flanking the same page.

By dusk, it was clear the god had noticed.

Apollo does not walk; he arrives. He had a small procession, a too-bright smile, and the kind of laugh that left grease. He didn’t bother to look for Bell; he simply made a stage and waited for the boy to become part of it.

“Orario’s newest hero!” he called from a fountain plinth in the Artisan’s Plaza. “A shining youth in need of proper patronage!”

Alise stood on the low roof of a knife-maker’s shop across the square and watched the crowd open for him the way seas open for ships they hope will sink.

Bell and Hestia came into the plaza at entirely the wrong time and entirely the right way: together. Hestia held his hand in that stubborn way that says the world can queue. Hermes hovered at the edge, pretending to be surprised by events he had clearly wagered on. Asfi looked like a woman who had already written three exit plans and could not believe none would be used.

“Lady Hestia!” Apollo’s voice rang like a bell with a hangover. “I extend my invitation—a banquet in three nights, in honor of brave Bell Cranel. Come! Eat! Join a Familia with resources enough to—”

“No,” Hestia said.

He laughed as if she were cute. “Oh, little hearth—your child needs a larger fire.”

Alise’s shoulder muscles itched. Say please and you may keep your teeth, she thought, purely as exercise.

Hyakinthos slid from the god’s side like a drawn blade. “Cranel, duel me now,” he said, smooth. “We’ll test your bravery and end rumors.”

Bell opened his mouth—then shut it. Hestia squeezed his fingers. Lili glared hot enough to boil ale. Welf’s hand touched Bell’s elbow, anchoring.

Ryu took one step out of the crowd, not toward them, just visible. It was enough. Hyakinthos’s eyes ticked over her and then away, discounted, which was how certain men arranged to be surprised later.

Bell bowed. “I refuse,” he said. The words shook at the edges but stood. “We don’t duel in plazas.”

Apollo lifted his hands as if conducting. The crowd made a sound like curiosity and rumor kissing. “Refusal! How quaint. Then—banquet. Three nights.” His smile sharpened. “You will come.”

Hestia’s chin lifted. “We’ll see.”

“We will,” Apollo agreed with an oily sweetness, and the procession peeled away, dropping handbills that smelled like perfume and threat.

Alise let her breath go slowly. Banquet means maps, exits, line of sight. Staff lists. Rooflines. Work she could do asleep.

She crouched and scratched a quick note on the back of a Hostess order chit she’d palmed at lunch, folded it small, and slid down the awning into the alley. By the time Bell’s little group had cut itself out of the crowd’s hungry edges, a paper triangle was tied to the handle of his knife with a thread so fine only ownership would feel it.

Stay in places with witnesses. Decline all alleys. Do not accept paper from anyone wearing blue. Rooftop at ninth bell. —A

Bell’s fingers found the triangle. He didn’t look up. He didn’t need to.

2 — Urban Drills

Ninth bell put the city in lamplight. Alise waited on a bakery roof that still radiated heat; below, the street smelled of sugar and sawdust. Bell climbed the drain like a boy who’d learned to be careful without losing speed. He arrived winded and grinning, then sobered—because up here, laughter echoes.

“Congratulations,” Alise said. “You killed a boss and declined a god. You may have a dumpling later.”

He brightened. “Really?”

“If you live through the week.”

He sobered correctly. “What do we do?”

Alise looked over the lanes. “We teach you to be seen without being caught. City fights are different. No charge-ups unless someone buys you two heartbeats. No dead ends unless they were your idea. If you have to run, you run toward noise, not away. Clear?”

“Clear.”

She showed him three routes from the Hostess to the station square, each with a safe doorway—a seamstress who owed Ryu a kindness; a cobbler who minded his own business; a shrine stoop where even brutes remembered their manners. She showed him two bad corners and made him name why: blind angles, echo traps, places a net becomes a story the city tells about you.

“Rule of three turns,” she said. “If you take three turns and your tail is still there, you stop losing them and start making them trip.”

“How?”

“Like this,” she said, and sprang.

He learned to hop balcony to balcony without shaking laundry; to slide down a signpost without breaking the letter O hanging there; to use a crowd like a river—shoulders angled, eyes soft, hands light. Twice she let him try a dumb shortcut and then made him stand and list the five ways it had nearly bought his goddess a funeral. He listed six.

They ended on a roof near the Guild, close enough that the light from the big windows made a pale square on the tiles. Bell’s breath fogged. Alise’s hair stuck to her neck. The city’s heartbeat thumped in their calves.

“You wanted to be the kind of hero who runs in,” she said. “Tonight you became the kind who chooses when to run. I prefer that kind.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, bashful. “I have good teachers.”

“I know,” she said, and let the warmth of it show for a beat. Then: “Banquet. I’ll attend.”

He blinked. “But—you’re—”

“Blacklisted,” she finished. “Yes. I’ll be staff. Syr can write a reference; Mia will pretend not to know me; Hermes already thinks I pour wine for a living.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I want to” came out too fast. She corrected, kinder. “It’s the safest way to watch the exits. Ryu will walk Hestia and leave before the doors close; I’ll stay inside. Asfi will be there; we speak a common language: safety.”

Bell nodded slowly, then grinned like someone who had just learned a secret handshake. “We’ll make them regret inviting us.”

“No,” Alise said softly. “We’ll make them regret underestimating us.”

She handed him a paper packet. He opened it to find three dumplings. He looked up, mischievous.

“Don’t get greedy,” she warned. “Tomorrow I’m raising stance to fifteen minutes.”

He groaned and ate anyway.

3 — The Long Walk Home

He went down first. She waited until he vanished into the lane’s honesty, then crossed three roofs, dropped to a sill, and slipped into a street where Apollo blue pooled under lamps.

A pair of his children laughed too loudly as they passed, buzzed on god’s attention. They didn’t see the woman leaning in a doorway, hands in pockets, watching them the way a storm watches a picnic. When they turned the corner, Alise followed the laugh and took it—one quick flick to a tendon, one soft thud into nettles, one warning whispered into a very warm ear:

“Harass him again, and I’ll teach you how to be forgotten.”

She left them tangled in their choices and walked on.

Near the Guild steps, Ryu waited where the light bled onto stone. She lifted a cup. “Tea.”

Alise took it. “Tails cut?”

“Enough to make a point.”

“Good. Banquet’s in three nights.”

Ryu’s mouth thinned. “We’ll need safe exits.”

“I’ll be inside. Someone has to keep Hermes from improving the music.”

Ryu’s eyes softened. “Don’t carry it alone.”

“I won’t.” Alise bumped her shoulder. “We did good.”

Ryu considered. “He did good,” she corrected, and the pride cost her nothing.

“That, too,” Alise said, and let the night sit between them like a satisfied cat.

Across the boulevard, Bell walked with Hestia, Lili and Welf—closer together than a crowd could break. A boy with a new weight in his chest. A goddess already rehearsing refusals. A supporter writing angles in her head. A smith plotting iron. Four lights in a row, bright enough to annoy moths.

From the darkness between lampposts, Apollo watched them go and smiled with all his teeth.

From the darkness above, Alise watched Apollo and did not smile at all.

“Again,” she said under her breath—not a promise to fight, not yet, but a promise to be ready when a fight made sense. The ribbon at her knife felt warm and steady against her palm.

Tomorrow would be stance at dawn, fifteen minutes, no wobble.

The day after would be routes and drills, paper maps and soft shoes.

After that, banquet.

And if Apollo insisted on making the city into a stage, Alise intended to be the person who chose where the exits were.

Chapter Text

Chapter Sixteen — Steel in the Dark (blood & breath cut)

---

I) Rooftop Lesson — Alise vs. Ryu

Night laid the city flat and cool. On the Hostess roof the tiles were warm from the day, slick in places where dew had started to gather. Ryu tied back her hair. Alise rolled her shoulders until something clicked and stopped complaining.

“No kid gloves,” Alise said.

Ryu’s blade answered first—one clean note.

They met in the middle and the world narrowed to weight, angle, breath.

Alise drove a fast opening—shoulder over hip, steel straight, no feint to warn good habits. Ryu’s parry was small and mean, a flick that stole the line and offered back nothing. Alise flowed left, felt the slick under her boot, corrected—too late. Ryu rapped her knuckles with the bell of the hilt; pain sparked up Alise’s forearm and made her grin.

“Hands down,” Ryu said, already stepping.

Alise went low and outside on the next beat, blade across, free hand live. Ryu’s riposte cut air where Alise’s cheek had been; Alise felt the kiss of steel anyway—a shallow graze that drew a warm thread down to the corner of her mouth. She tasted iron and laughed at her own greed.

“Good,” she said. “Make me honest.”

Ryu obliged. She pressed with the patience of weather, each thrust not fast but inevitable. Alise gave ground by choice, then stole it back with a short, savage cut aimed at the wrist—checked at the last breath to avoid bones. Steel shrieked. Ryu turned the edge, let the shock ring out through her arms, and answered with a heel to Alise’s thigh that would bruise perfectly by morning.

Pain focused the line. Alise’s ribboned knife flashed from her off hand in a diagonal feint; Ryu didn’t look, didn’t need to. Her rapier batted the knife’s wrist aside; Alise let it go—by design—let the ribbon snare Ryu’s guard for half a heartbeat, and drove in with her main blade.

Ryu twisted her forearm—just enough—so Alise’s thrust scraped along steel and bit skin instead of seam. A red line opened on Ryu’s outer forearm, beaded, ran. Ryu hissed once, light and involuntary, then stepped in hard. Their guards crashed. Their shoulders hit. Alise bumped the chimney with her hip and swore.

“No saving wind,” she panted.

“Then don’t fall,” Ryu said, and gave her nothing to fall with.

They accelerated. Tiles clicked under boots. The air filled with breath and the thin slap of sweat off wrists. Alise felt the bruise in her thigh bloom—heat pulsing with each step. She rode it; pain kept her honest, turned flourish into economy. Two quick binds; Ryu’s blade slid along hers like rain down slate; Alise cut down—that short, joint-breaking stroke she’d put in Bell’s spine for emergencies—and Ryu took it on the flat, the impact traveling up both their bones. Fingers tingled. Neither retreated.

“Again,” Alise said, bright.

“Again,” Ryu agreed, and changed tempo.

She snapped a thrust where patience had been, a needle-quick line for the throat. Alise barely caught it, steel kissing steel so close her own blade sang in protest. The thrust turned to a cut; Alise rolled with it and let the edge take flesh at her ribs rather than deeper—hot sting, wet warmth, shirt sticking immediately. She countered with a pommel check into Ryu’s shoulder; Ryu grunted, breath hitching.

They broke and circled, sweat dripping from brows, blades hanging for one shared breath.

“Enough blood?” Ryu asked, dry.

Alise licked the copper from her lip and smiled too wide. “He needs to hear us not quit.”

They went again, last exchange, both choosing control over cruelty. Alise took Ryu’s wrist, not the tendons. Ryu took Alise’s shoulder, not the socket. Hilt to hilt, forearms humming, they bound weapons and stared a heartbeat too long, two women who’d learned the cost of winning the wrong way.

“Yield?” Alise teased.

“Draw,” Ryu said, and the word fit.

They stepped back together. Steel dropped by their thighs. The roof remembered being a roof.

On the shadowed roofline across the alley, a white-haired boy let out the breath he had strangled quiet for the last minute. The smell of metal and sweat and tile dust would live somewhere soft behind his ribs.

Alise pressed two fingers to the graze on her cheek; they came away red. Ryu tugged up her sleeve and poured a minor potion over the shallow cut on her forearm; it fizzed, bit, closed. She hissed, then offered the bottle without words. Alise pulled her shirt hem back to check the slice along her ribs—long and shallow, already leaking down to the waistband—then splashed potion. White sting. Her eyes watered. Her grin did not break.

“Dumplings say you almost had my wrist,” Ryu said, rewrapping her ribbon.

“Dumplings say you definitely had my thigh,” Alise countered, prodding the bruise and making a face.

“Call it even,” Ryu said.

“We never do,” Alise replied, and they both smiled the kind that only shows to the other.

“Eat,” Ryu said. “Then work.”

“Work,” Alise echoed. “Inside the lion’s house.”

They sheathed steel and left a few dark drops drying on the tiles—the kind that mean truth, not tragedy.

II) Banquet Corridor — Alise vs. the Spear (with consequences)

Apollo’s villa glared. Gold leaf. Polished floors. Too many mirrors to turn your back on. Music varnished the air; perfume fought the wine.

Alise wore a server’s black and white. Hair hidden. Ribboned knife tucked where a towel could hide a sin. She slid through the service door with a tray of flutes balanced high.

The corridor breathed different: staff air, tile underfoot, lamp oil, the hush that lives behind parties. A linen cart leaned askew, one wheel squeaking. Garden doors at the far end bled cool air.

A man unpeeled from the wall—Apollo blue at his cuff, a captain’s build, spear in hand because power likes props.

“Wrong hallway, waitress,” he said, setting the spear across the passage like a bar. “Message for the hearth goddess.”

“Leave it,” Alise said, not slowing.

He smirked. “I prefer—delivery.”

The blade flashed. She brought the tray down like a shield and the steel bit wood, shoved her wrists back—shock up bone, wrists burning. She jolted to the side and felt tile slick under her sole; corrected; still too slow—the spearhead grazed her thigh on the pass. Hot line. Skin opened. Blood ran down her calf and ticked on the floor.

She let the pain sharpen her and crowded his line; the tray rim crunched into his wrist, smashing tendons against jamb. He yanked free and snapped a heel at her ankle—caught. Her foot went; she turned the fall into a roll, a ribbon already in her hand, and looped his boot in passing. Yank. He dropped to a knee; the spear butt clapped the tile, jarring him.

He was trained and he was mean; both showed. He let the spear go, came in close, and drove a knife for her ribs where shirts cling wet. She had to eat an ugly choice: twist so the blade scraped her upper arm instead of the wound—cloth tore, blood sprayed a thin arc over white tile. She answered with a short headbutt, forehead into nose—crack, stars for him; her own skull ringing.

He grabbed for her hair; there was none to take. She slid under the next clumsy grab and slammed an elbow into his solar plexus. The breath left him in a low grunt; she rode the contact, stepped on his knee to pin, and drew the ribboned knife so close to his neck she could see his pulse wake.

“Banquet rule,” she breathed, sweat dripping off her jaw onto his collar. “Exits. Are. Mine.”

He froze—smart enough to feel the tip find the soft just under the ear.

Bootsteps. The corridor took a second person as if it had always expected her. Asfi stopped five paces away, eyes collecting the scene—a bright smear of blood on tile; the linen cart rolled askew; the spear half under it; Alise’s thigh running; the man’s nose leaking wide and wet.

“Assistance?” Asfi asked, perfectly level.

“Kick the spear under,” Alise said without looking up. “Please.”

A toe-push. Metal hush.

“Thank you,” Alise said.

She unwound the ribbon from the man’s boot and yanked it free with a line-bite he would remember in his Achilles for a week. With her other hand she fished a miniature potion from her apron, jammed it into her own mouth with her teeth, and bit the cork. She spat it and splashed the fizzing stuff down her thigh—salt-white sting that made her see the edges of the lamps. The bleeding slowed, then sealed into an angry pink line.

“For the nose,” Asfi said, producing a folded square of white like a stage magician. She offered it to the man; when he didn’t take it fast enough, she tucked it under his broken bridge efficiently. “You will drip on the rug.”

He made a wounded-animal sound. Alise eased the knife back a thumb’s width—and then returned it when he twitched wrong.

“Listen,” she said, sweat running into her collar, hairline damp, forearm sticky with her own blood. “You walk back into that hall. You tell your god his invitation was received. You do not touch the hearth, the boy, or the girl with the ledger. If you try again—” she let the ribbon snap once, quiet thunder, “—I will tie your spear in a knot and your pride after it.”

His pride twitched. His survival instinct won.

Asfi tucked a tiny vial into Alise’s palm without ceremony. “For the arm. You’re painting.”

Alise poured it over the slice along her tricep. It burned colder than the thigh and smelled of mint and iron. The cut pulled together, left a clean scarlet seam. She wiped her blade with the back of her apron, then wiped the tile once—habit, not hope.

Asfi nudged the linen cart back into place. The squeaky wheel quieted—she’d fixed it in the same motion. “I saw nothing,” she said mildly.

“You saw everything important,” Alise answered.

They parted—Asfi toward the west door, Alise through the service latch with the tray back on her shoulder and a wet line soaking into her stocking.

In the main hall, light spilled over glass and ego. Apollo raised a flute and smiled too many teeth. Hestia’s hand tightened once on Bell’s sleeve; his fingers steadied hers back. Lili watched the balcony sightlines and counted guards. Welf’s jaw flexed as he sketched a chandelier failure in his head.

Alise took her place at a pillar where she could see the dais, the garden doors, the stairs. Across the sea of perfume and lies, Ryu stood in shadow, a patient stone. Their eyes met; two tiny nods. Together.

Music swelled. A servant who was not a servant bled quietly into a black apron and smiled for strangers.

And somewhere under a linen cart, a spear waited to be found by the wrong hands too late to matter.

Chapter Text

Chapter Seventeen —  Traps

Morning made Orario honest for about ten minutes. Bread smell. Stall shutters yawning. A cat with one ear deciding which god to insult first. Then the city remembered it likes theater, and the flyers came out like locusts.
APOLLO BANQUET — A STAR IS BORN!
A HERO DESERVES A REAL STAGE!
BELL CRANEL, COME INTO THE LIGHT.
Alise watched the first sheet go up from a roof beam over West Market. The boy in blue who pasted it had the bored posture of someone paid to be invisible. She let him be. The paper would advertise the thing it secretly was: a probe. The real move would come with a trumpet and a smile that leaked.
Below, Hestia tugged Bell through the street the way a lighthouse drags ships: stubbornly, against current. Lili walked three steps behind, eyes ticking over alley mouths. Welf took the outside, meaning well and showing it. Ryu peeled off to a parallel roof-line and did not look up when Alise drifted to match pace; the back of her ribboned wrist brushed her jaw—two fingers. Together.
Alise returned the sign with her knuckles at her own jaw, a small, shared hello. Then she went to work.

Street Work
The first tail near the Hostess was a boy. He wore blues and a grin. He thought shadows made him thinner; they made him obvious. Alise slid off a tiles edge, cut through a laundry run, and met him as he rounded a corner to “check” the back door.
“Wrong kitchen,” she said, smile turned down like a hint.
He went for her shoulder on instinct. She let his hand arrive, rolled his momentum into the cabbage crate by the stairs, and closed the lid before he finished swearing. A single knot. A soft pat. “Hydration,” she advised the crate, and stepped away.
Two streets over, a woman with a captain’s back leaned against a pillar watching the Hostess sign. Hyakinthos posture: too proud to crouch. Alise crossed an alley, bought a paper cone of roasted beans she didn’t want, and listened while the vendor explained weather like a sermon. The woman in blue hated sermons. She cut down the side lane to escape—and found Ryu there by coincidence, a bucket in hand and a look that sent blades back into sheaths. The woman pivoted, reconsidered her career, and settled on “later.”
By the third tail, Alise had mapped a neat square of exits in her head and marked two bad corners with a twist of her scarf: don’t go there. She let a thread from her crimson ribbon dangle from a bent gutter nail—Bell would notice; most would not. Witness is a language if you keep your verbs small.
Back at the Hostess, Mia banged a tray like a gavel and declared brunch a siege. Syr smiled the kind of smile that makes older men promise to be better. Ryu deployed tea like tactics. Hestia fed Bell as if he were a candle that needed more wick.
They would have had the day in their hands if gods didn’t love noon.

The Square
Trumpets make liars of mornings.
The Artisan’s Plaza filled itself in three minutes: guild clerks in sensible shoes, smiths who’d come to frown at inferior metal, children who collected famous glances like marbles. Apollo did not walk into the square; he arrived, already standing on a fountain plinth as if he’d been born on it. The smile he wore had teeth like a chandelier.
“Orario,” he sang, spreading arms wide. “Our new hero honors us all!”
Hestia stiffened. Bell, who would have preferred a smaller square and a later hour, squared his shoulders out of fairness. Lili slid to his shadow. Welf’s jaw worked like a hinge that needed oil. Hermes lounged within throwing distance pretending to be surprised by events he’d helped schedule. Asfi hovered at the line where crowd becomes eddy, eyes reading people like plans.
Alise took a knife-maker’s roof across the plaza, where the signboard’s chain sang in the light wind and tile made an honest floor. From here she could see the fountain lip, Hestia’s chin, the way Hyakinthos stood just off Apollo’s right shoulder the way a spear stands by a banner.
“Lady Hestia,” Apollo called, voice ringing like coins. “Let me elevate your child. My familia is a stage. Your boy deserves an audience.”
“No,” Hestia said.
It would have been enough if gods liked enough. Apollo laughed the way people do when they mistake no for negotiation. He gestured; boys in blue unrolled silks; a clerk in Guild brown, flustered, produced a scroll because paper makes cruelty polite.
“Then an alternative!” Apollo’s tone brightened. “War Game. Lawful. Beautiful. Decisive. Let Orario watch a story resolve itself.”
The murmur that went through the crowd wasn’t shock. It was appetite.
Hestia breathed once. Twice. Her fingers tightened on Bell’s sleeve; Bell’s hand turned under hers to steady. Ryu moved two steps through the crowd and stopped where being seen meant being accounted for. Hermes tipped an unseen hat toward the Guild clerk, who managed to look both apologetic and trapped by paragraph four, subclause five of the thing he’d signed.
Hyakinthos stepped down from the plinth and let the square feel the spear he hadn’t drawn. “Test your courage now, Cranel,” he invited, smooth as a floor.
Bell opened his mouth. Alise, on the roof, glared at him with all the love of a teacher and all the inflexibility of a winter street. He closed it. He bowed instead.
“We don’t duel in plazas,” he said. His words shook at the edges and stood anyway. “If it’s a War Game, we’ll meet you there.”
A few people booed, because some folks like blood on their bread. More murmured approval, because even in Orario sense sells.
Apollo clapped. “Splendid! Three days.” His smile sharpened. “Castle capture. Winner takes all.”
“All” has a way of making gods generous.
The square breathed; the crowd’s noise changed shape. Hestia lifted her chin to a height that made weather. “Bring it on you creep,” she said. “We’ll name our seconds with the Guild.”
The clerk relaxed like a knot admitting it could be undone. Hermes made a note on a card no one would ever see. Asfi’s eyes touched the alleys, the roofs, the gates, and then—just for a hairbreadth—the place where Alise was not standing because Alise did not stand places where people could add her to lists. Asfi’s mouth moved the distance between I know and you’re safe.
Apollo finished his performance with handbills, laughter, and a promise that his house would throw the prettiest war Orario had ever seen. The crowd liked the promise more than it liked the war.
When the trumpets died and the square remembered it had bread to buy, Alise slid down the signpost into the alley, careful not to clip the painted O on the butcher’s swinging placard as she passed. Precision keeps jokes from becoming repairs.
She reached Bell at the edge of the plaza as Hestia and Ryu formed a wall that walked. Hermes drifted near, whistling nothing in tune.
“Congratulations,” Hermes murmured, just loud enough for those who mattered. “You’re famous again.”
“Not helpful,” Hestia said without heat, and kept walking.
Alise crossed three roofs, ducked into a second-story balcony that belonged to no one with time for questions, and tied a paper triangle the size of a thumbnail to the ribbon at Bell’s knife. He felt it at once. He always did.
Rules posted at Guild at fourth bell. Don’t go alone. No alleys. Rooftop at ninth. — A
Bell did not look up. He did not have to.

Maps & Signals
By fourth bell, the Guild doors were dressed in law. War Game—castle capture—Apollo to host; three days; seconds to register by sundown. Judges appointed; interventions penalized; spectators encouraged to enjoy responsibly. Alise read the sheet from a window two floors up, mirrored letters reversed against glass, and kept reading the people instead: who stopped, who smirked, who went to fetch friends.
She spent the next hours making the city smaller.
Three routes from the Hostess to the Guild that a crowd could hide. Two to the West Gate if people forgot how to behave. One back-door seam where Ryu could disappear with Hestia in seven steps if she had to. She chalked a mark the size of a fingernail behind a drainpipe: safe door. She palmed a twist of wire to a cobbler who minded his own business and everyone else’s safety. She paid a seamstress with tea leaves to open her stoop if Bell ever came by running.
At sundown, she walked a narrow green behind a shrine and found Asfi there, adjusting the strap of a bag like a mechanic tuning a song.
“Bad choice of host,” Alise said by way of greeting.
“Best possible stage,” Asfi replied, because she knew what can be done with architecture and ethics. “He’ll over-design it. You’ll undercut it.”
“We’ll try.”
Asfi considered. “You have Ryu. You have a good boy. You have a supporter who has learned to stop apologizing. You have a smith who looks at siegeworks like puzzles.”
“And you,” Alise said.
“Accidentally,” Asfi said, and neither of them smiled.
They exchanged three names for doors and one for a man in blue who was smarter than his uniform. They parted like professionals who’d never met.
The Night’s Class
Ninth bell. Bakery roof. Heat still in the tiles, sugar in the air. Bell climbed up the drainpipe like a boy who’d learned fear the right way: as a thing to work around, not obey. He found Alise where she’d chosen to be—half in light, half not.
“You saw?” he asked.
“Everyone saw,” she said. “Which is why you’re going to spend the next two days learning how to be seen without being caught.”
He brightened. He sobered. He hid both quickly and well.
They drilled.
He learned to hop balcony to balcony without shaking laundry; to slide down a signpost without breaking the letter O hanging there; to use a crowd like a river—shoulders angled, eyes soft, hands light. Twice she let him take a dumb shortcut and then made him stand and list the five ways it had nearly bought his goddess a funeral. He listed six.
“Rule of three turns,” Alise said, breath even despite the slick underfoot. “If you take three turns and your tail remains, you stop losing them and start making them trip.”
“How?”
“Like this.”
She cut left into a narrow run, ducked under a beam, vaulted a low wall, and made him do it with a mouth full of numbers. He missed a count, clipped the wall with a knee, and hissed through his teeth. She made him recite the mistake out loud and then bought him a sesame bun from the bakery window because learning runs better on sugar.
“Tomorrow,” she said around a bite, “we thread through a market at pace.”
“Won’t we get… noticed?” he asked, chewing.
“We’ll let ourselves be seen,” Alise corrected. “Then we teach the seeing to be useless.”
He nodded as if that were a real sentence. It was.
They ended at a roofline with a view of the Guild windows and a sliver of the city beyond. Hestia’s silhouette moved behind glass; Ryu’s line shadowed hers. Lili’s small, sharp hand cut the air in a way that meant maps were becoming lines. Welf stood arms folded, brow furrowed like a door stubborn about opening.
“War Game,” Bell said, the words both heavy and bright.
“Stages are traps with better lighting,” Alise said. “You’ll walk on it anyway.”
He looked at her. “Will you—?”
“I’ll do what I’m allowed,” she said, honest as a ledger. “You’ll do what needs to be done.”
He hesitated, then said what he actually meant. “I don’t want to embarrass you.”
“Child,” she said, and let warmth be unhidden for once, “I would have to be very vain to be embarrassed by someone who keeps getting up. I am many things. I am not that.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, bashful. “Thank you.”
She touched two fingers to her jaw. He copied her without thinking. A small language grows like that.
“Again at dawn,” she said. “Fifteen-minute stance. Then doors. Then stairs. Then lunch you’ll pretend to enjoy because Hestia cooked it.”
He laughed, real and small. The kind that lives under armor.
They went down separate ways. The bakery roof cooled. The city practiced being kind and failed only half the time.
Paper & Teeth
By the time Alise passed the Guild again, the notice had grown teeth. Names were inked: Hestia on one side, Apollo on the other. Seconds listed: Hermes pretending to be neutral as air; a Guild adjudicator who collected rules like stamps. Castle capture. Three days. No interference. Spoils: everything Apollo pretended was a gift.
On a lamp across the street, a scrap of blue silk fluttered like a dare. Alise plucked it down and pocketed it. She doubted Apollo would miss the fabric. She did not doubt he would miss whatever she removed next.
She walked the long way back to the Hostess—three turns, then three more, the way you do when you want to teach a city your name without giving it your address. At the corner by the cobbler, she paused. The man had taken the wire she’d given him and hung a tiny bell under his awning that only rang if the door closed wrong. He tipped two fingers off his brow as she passed. Together, in another dialect.
Inside the Hostess, the air smelled of onion and intent. Mia plotted soup like a siege. Syr polished a glass until it confessed. Ryu sat at a corner table with documents and steam. Hestia ran her finger down a column like a tiny sword. Bell folded a map, unfolded it, folded it more responsibly. Lili stole a dumpling from no one and defended the theft by being right about three other things. Welf stared at a sketched hinge as if it had insulted his mother.
Alise stepped onto the lintel and let the door swing. No fanfare. No trumpet. Just a hand on the room’s shoulder.
“Routes,” she said to Ryu, who nodded.
“Locks,” she said to Welf, who grunted already on it.
“Paper,” she said to Lili, who slid a stack without looking up.
“Food,” she said to Hestia, who said eat first, die later.
Hermes appeared on a stool he hadn’t been on a moment earlier. “You’ll break my heart if you plan this thoroughly,” he warned cheerfully.
“Then cover your eyes,” Ryu said.
Asfi stuck her head in long enough to say, “He’s lying; he loves competence,” and vanished again.
They ate. They spoke. They pretended they were not tired and then stopped pretending. When the room broke itself into errands, Alise gathered her bundle of chalk and string, tightened the ribbon around her wrist, and fixed the map of the Apollo compound in her head until it felt like a memory.
On her way out, she paused at the threshold where the light makes promises to the dark without meaning to. Bell caught her eye. He didn’t wave. He touched the ribbon at his knife and inclined his head, small and right.
“Again,” she said, not loud and not to him, and the room took the word the way a kiln takes heat—quietly, thoroughly.
Outside, somewhere far too clean and loud, Apollo practiced speeches about patronage. Inside, Alise made exits out of air and string.
Three days. A stage. A trap. A boy who would walk into it on purpose.
Bell left to train with Aiz Wallenstein and Tiona while Alise followed his familia around.

Chapter Text

Chapter Eighteen — The Cup on the Roof

The city smelled like wet stone and boiled sugar. War Game flyers clung to posts like bright mold; gossip ran in gutters. By noon the rumor found Alise on a roof: Liliruca had gone back to Soma Familia.

Alise didn’t go to the door. She went to the shingles.

Soma’s hall had a high window built for heat to escape and sound to rise. Alise lay flat along the ridge and let the words climb to her.

Inside, glass clinked. Zanis’s voice moved like grease on a plate. Then a small voice cut across it—thin, steady, cutting because it trembled and wouldn’t stop.

“Please, Master Soma… please I wanna help the people fighting down there. Please stop the bloodshed. Please! Stop the fight.”
A breath, a swallow that sounded like someone choosing to stand.
The room shifted—a chair turned, a boot dragged. Zanis began to hiss a lecture with the confidence of a man who loves rules that only bruise other people.
“Hush, Zanis,” Soma said.
The quiet that fell was not kindness. It was attention. And in that quiet, Lili found something she had repaired and guarded for a very long time.
“I know, deep down inside, this is the moment I was born for,” she said, each word more certain than the last. “This is my path. Every single mistake I’ve ever made in my life has led me to this day. This time I have to be the one who helps my friends.”

Alise’s breath left like a sob that had been waiting three years for permission. Rooftops make good churches; she let herself pray with her face, listening to the voice that came from the top floor balcony, door open to the world fighting outside.
Because there it was—the line that had always built her spine when everything else burned: Use me when it matters. Lili had said it in a smaller voice than Alise ever had, and somehow it rang louder.

Below, more glass. A soft answer from Soma that didn’t travel; Zanis’s teeth grinding far too clearly. Then different footsteps—the kind of sound relief makes when it remembers how to walk.

Alise rolled onto a hip, wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand, and got to her feet and vaulted to the balcony when everyone had left.
She found Soma. Alone in the dark. Introductions were in order. She asked him for the best possible wine she wanted to give to a very special person.
“Best,” Alise said.
“The best,” Soma agreed, and he named a price so expensive she nearly choked.
She paid it. She did not haggle. Zanis appeared in the back doorway like a stain thinking lofty thoughts. His eyes slid off Alise the way water slides off oil. Good. Let him keep sliding.
She climbed.
Two stories up, in a wall where ivy pretended to be proud, a shallow niche waited. She wrapped the bottle in a sun-warm scarf, tied it with the tail of her crimson ribbon, and wedged it into the pocket of stone so a thief would need to be a saint and a monkey to find it.
“Not for courage,” she told the glass. “For after. When I have a truth to bring.”
She pressed her forehead to the cool brick just long enough to borrow its steadiness. Then she moved.
War Game prep does not pause because you cried pretty. The rest of the day she spent doing the things that make heroes look lucky.

She marked two more safe doors (seamstress stoop, cobbler awning). She walked the length of West Market with her hands in her pockets and her eyes on angles. She laid a tiny chalk slash under a drainpipe: if you must run here, duck left, not right. She told three vendors what not to do if blue uniforms “accidentally” overturned a cart.
At mid-afternoon she found Ryu where a shadow lived between two bright streets.
“Lili?” Ryu asked, not wasting words.
“Her voice found work,” Alise said.
Ryu’s eyes warmed the way tea warms your hands first. “Good. Routes?”
Alise handed over a folded map broken into arrows and notes only someone who already knew her would read fluently. Ryu scanned, nodded twice, and tapped one corner.
“Here, the guard changes,” she said. “Two-minute hole.”
“I’ll push Bell through it,” Alise said, already rewriting the path in her head.
“You’ll invite him through it,” Ryu corrected, a teacher’s severity for a student she loved. “He will walk.”
Alise accepted the scold like medicine and let it do its work. “He will,” she agreed. “And—after—”
Ryu lifted a brow.
“After,” Alise said carefully, “if he climbs the way we think he will, I may need to… ask for help. The kind that writes itself on your back.”
Ryu didn’t blink. “Astraea listens when the work is honest.”
“Then I’ll bring her something sweet and honest,” Alise said, and did not explain the bottle tied up in ribbon three streets away.
Ryu’s mouth curved with a handspan. “Then go teach our boy not to get lost in his own city.”
Dusk found them on a bakery roof again, sugar in the air and heat in the tile. Bell climbed the drain without shaking the gutter because he had learned not to perform for ladders.
“New rule,” Alise said as he swung onto the roof. “Crowds are rivers. You don’t fight them; you read them. Elbows are oars. Eyes are quiet.”
He smiled, a little wild at the edges from a long day. “Yes, Captain.”
She gave him a flat look. He swallowed the joke. “Yes, Alise.”
“That’s better.”
They ran the market route at pace, shoulders turned, gaze soft, feet light. Twice she let him choose a bad turn; twice she made him stop and list five ways it had almost killed Hestia. He listed six and a half, because he overcounted out of contrition.
By the time the ninth bell deepened the alleys, sweat had written its own maps on his collar. They stood at the roof edge above the Guild and watched clerks close shutters on rules.
“Lili went to Soma,” Bell said, because news travels along nerves.
“I heard,” Alise said.
“She—” he tried, and failed to find a word big enough that wasn’t brave or good or ours.
“She told the truth out loud,” Alise supplied. “Sometimes that’s the fight.”
He looked at his hands. “Do you think we can win?”
“Probably,” she said, and when he blinked, she added, “Because we will cheat correctly.”
He laughed because he needed to.
“Tomorrow,” she said, “fifteen-minute stance, then stairs, then you’ll pretend to enjoy Hestia’s lunch.”
“I will enjoy Hestia’s lunch,” he protested automatically.
“You will enjoy Hestia’s lunch loudly,” she amended, and his smile did the thing it does when home sits behind his teeth.
They parted as the city pulled its evening over its head. Alise cut down three alleys, then three more, for the pleasure of walking the shape of a habit she trusted. She paused once—beneath the niche where a bottle waited—in the simple satisfaction of having set something aside for a better moment.
Not tonight. After.
Late, when the tavern sank into the quiet work of rest, Alise and Ryu spread the Apollo compound sketch between them like a game board. They placed beans for sentries, buttons for doors. They argued politely about a stairwell and impolitely about a courtyard. Hestia hovered, contradicted them both, fed them both, blessed them both by pretending it was nothing.
“Castle capture,” Hestia muttered, reading the notice one more time. “Gaudy. Fine. We’ll take his curtains.”
“We’ll take his hinges,” Welf said from the doorway, holding a drawing he had redrawn four times. “And his pride.”
“We’ll take the right path,” Lili said, and rested a fingertip on a line only she had seen earlier. “Here. This turns on a habit.”
Alise and Ryu exchanged a look that tasted like relief disguised as professionalism.
“Good,” Alise said. “Mark it.”
They did. They tidied. They slept badly and woke early anyway.
At graylight, Alise stood alone on a roof where birds test the air. The city yawned. A cat cursed a god. She touched the ribbon at her wrist and thought of Lili’s small, cutting voice, of Bell’s breath steadying, of the bottle wrapped in a warm scarf in a wall that remembered summer.
“Use me when it matters,” she said into the morning, because some vows want to be said more than once.
Then she went to teach a hero how not to get caught and to make exits out of places that didn’t know they had any.
After would come when it came. For now there was bread, chalk, drills, and a stage she intended to rig until it forgot how to trap.
“Again,” she told the day, and the day—busy, nosy, loud—obliged.

Chapter Text

Chapter Nineteen - Lessons Before War

The notice stayed glued to the Guild door all day-inked law that made a stage out of tomorrow. Alise read it once at dawn and decided that was enough. If they wanted victory, they needed less paper and more breath.

So the day became a stack of lessons.

Morning - Weight and Wind

The practice yard behind Babel kept its own weather: cool shade, scuffed stone, the thick silence of people who'd rather work than watch. Aiz Wallenstein arrived without announcement and stood in the lane like a question mark that could kill you.

"Thank you for coming," Alise said-simple, meant.

Aiz dipped her head. "Hestia asked." Then, to Bell, with that flat gentleness that turns boys into edges: "Feet."

He set them.

Aiz stepped in and the world shrank to weight, angle, breath. She showed him the first sin-leaning-with a touch to his sternum that sent him a half-step back. "Center," she said. The word lived in her calves.

Bell corrected. Aiz circled. She touched his shoulder-"quiet." Tapped his forearm-"no extra." Drew a line down the blade with one fingertip and left it humming: "cut what you can reach."

They worked the simplest cut until it was smaller than ego. Aiz bled waste from the edges, trimming Bell down to economy: hips under, knees loose, wrists clean. When he chased, she stepped out of the way and let him feel the shame of empty air. When he steadied, she nodded once and offered a new inch.

Alise watched from the fence post, thumbs hooked in belt, counting his mistakes and liking that the numbers fell. Ryu stood beside her like a spare wind and said nothing until Bell's blade sang off Aiz's guard with the wrong resonance.

"Again," Ryu murmured. Aiz did not disagree.

Minutes became muscle. Bell's shirt darkened along the spine; grit found his teeth; the bright toying spark behind his eyes burned to something steadier. Aiz's face did not change, but her blade did-she let the lines become narrower, the answers meaner. Once she drove a thrust into his guard like a nail and he met it without flinching, wrists hot, breath ugly. She eased off a finger's breadth. Reward enough.

Break was water and quiet. Aiz glanced at his stance while he drank.

"Don't make war pretty," she said.

Bell swallowed. "Yes."

Alise hid a smile. "He's very trainable."

Aiz's mouth almost thought about being a curve. "He is stubborn. It helps."

"Sometimes he listens," Ryu added, which, coming from Ryu, was a parade.

Bell pretended not to hear praise. It stuck anyway.

Midday - The Line That Arrives

They moved to the chalk ring-two strides across, drawn so tight it might as well be a well mouth. Aiz stepped in and laid her blade across Bell's like a ruler.

"Don't chase the opening," she said. "Arrive there."

She changed his timing with three notes: long, long, short. He missed the short twice and struck Aiz's guard where it had been. On the third try he did not miss; the cut was a stamp, ugly as truth, and it landed. It didn't hurt Aiz. It impressed her exactly one eyelash.

Alise let herself breathe, once. The boy was learning the part of courage that doesn't look brave: stopping.

"Again," Aiz said. They did until his wrists trembled and his shoulders forgot poetry.

Ryu broke the rhythm by stepping into the ring and tapping Bell's calf with the scabbard. "Stop buying ground with your heels," she said. "Pay with hips."

Bell adjusted. The next pass looked like patience wearing boots. Aiz answered with a little more of the thing that makes people call her Sword Princess-not speed; inevitability. Bell took it on the flat and bled it out through his elbows like someone who'd learned to let pain leave.

"Good," Aiz said. It was the sort of good you keep.

They reset.

"Kill-switch step," she said. "Half in, all out. No flourish."

She showed it once-a ghost of motion that ended with the point exactly where throats reconsider their schedules. Bell nodded like a man learning a new alphabet and got the first letter wrong, as all men do. On the fifth attempt, he found it. Alise felt the small click in her own chest that happens when another person's progress unlocks one of your doors.

"Once more," Aiz said. He did it twice, cheek bright with heat, eyes clear as a promise.

Afternoon - The Part You Don't Perform

"Weapons away," Ryu said, and they obeyed. "Breath."

They ran stairs-the narrow, hateful kind that castles use to sort fools from survivors. Up two steps, pause; up three, change cadence; plant on the landing like a decision, not a relief. At the turnpost Bell clipped wood with his shoulder once. He didn't again. Sweat wrote parentheses under his eyes. Alise paced below, naming the count when his brain wanted to blur it. He mimed a thank-you when he had breath to spare.

They threaded market crowd at pace-no plan spoken aloud. Lili ran point, elbows respectful, eyes soft, carving a seam that three people could pass through without leaving fingerprints on anyone. Bell trailed at a half-length, learning how not to bang into grief or pride. Twice Alise let him choose a bad turn, then stopped him at once and made him list five ways it would have killed Hestia. He listed six.

"Learn this," she said. "When you do the right thing quietly, your enemies call it luck."

He smiled sideways. "You taught me to make luck behave."

"Ryu taught you to deserve it," Alise answered. "Aiz is teaching you to spend it."

By the time the sun worried itself toward evening, Bell had lost the first day's frantic shine. In its place sat a shape-not finished, but true enough to hold.

Dusk - The Thin Edge of Awe

They returned to the yard for one last ring. Aiz set the pace with metronome cruelty: three slow cuts, a bind, then the short. Bell met her with everything he'd tidied. Hips over heels. Shoulders quiet. Eyes not asking for anything except the truth of the line.

It was not even-it wasn't meant to be. But he wasn't being carried anymore. He was keeping.

Aiz altered an angle mid-phrase, a trick she rarely lets anyone see. Bell missed by a thumb and refused to overreach for it. Alise's mouth did that infantryman's almost-smile that comes when a kid chooses survival over spectacle.

"Again," Aiz said. He answered with the kill-switch step that had cost him skin earlier. The point placed itself at the place where stories often end. He stopped it there without shaking.

Aiz's eyes warmed a fraction of a degree. "Enough."

He blinked-because Bell never believes he's done until he falls over. "Enough?"

"For today," she said. "Tomorrow, you keep it."

He bowed, not the hero's bow-small, workmanlike, grateful. Aiz returned it precisely.

Ryu handed him water and the kind of approval that lives in the tilt of a wrist. Alise threw him a dry shirt with a flick that made him catch it funnier than he meant to.

"You listened," she said.

"I had good teachers," he said, and then ruined it by grinning like a stray who'd been fed on purpose.

"Don't get sentimental," Ryu warned mildly.

"I won't," he lied convincingly.

Night - The Part They Don't See

Paper crowded the Hostess table as night shouldered in; law sat on top and soup under it. Hestia traced a paragraph with her finger the way some people say grace. Hermes lounged at the corner like a safety hazard wearing a smile. Welf rubbed a burr off a grapnel tooth because he believed in iron the way priests believe in bells. Lili drew lines on blank paper and talked about habits rather than doors.

The plan lived there, folded between breaths and eyes and things not said. Alise left it folded.

She took Bell out the back stair and into the alley shadow where Orario keeps its spare quiet. No speech. She set him in a stance for fifteen minutes and took three tiny steps around him at random times to make his eyes want to follow. He didn't. At twelve his jaw went stubborn; at fourteen his left ankle whispered treason; at fifteen he shook once and then stilled.

"Tomorrow twenty," she said.

"Of course," he said, as if bones weren't bones.

She let him go and stayed, alone with the cool tick of a downspout and a cat deciding not to notice her. Her hands smelled like leather and chalk. Her shoulder ached-a leftover from the rooftop bout with Ryu-and her ribs remembered the corridor at Apollo's. She cataloged aches the way quartermasters count arrows and found them... fine. Useful, even. Feeling is proof you have not become a ghost.

Ryu joined her when the alley had finished inhaling. "He's ready enough," Ryu said.

"Ready is a verb," Alise answered. "He's doing it."

Ryu considered, then allowed the smallest, most treacherous smile. "He is."

They stood, two shadows that had learned to be kind to lamplight. From somewhere on the second floor, Hestia's laugh lifted-tired, fierce, unbothered by gods. Lili said something that sounded like a victory argued in advance. Welf swore softly at a drawing. Hermes found the limits of Mia's patience and backed away before Mia helped him find them faster.

Aiz passed the alley mouth without breaking stride, a quiet constellation going about her night. She did not look in. She did not need to. They watched her the way you watch a weather vane tell you the wind is honest.

"Thank you," Alise said to the air, to the day, to the work.

The city did not answer with trumpets. It answered with footfalls, cooling stone, and the soft clink of glass from the Guild door as a clerk locked away a notice the size of a war.

"Again," Alise said-habit, oath, prayer-and the night agreed.

📜 Hestia Familia - Status Update (Pre-War Game, Level 2)

(Evening before the War Game)

The room was quiet except for the scratch of quill and Bell's uneven breathing. Hestia sat cross-legged on the bed behind him, divine glow tracing along her fingertips as the Falna lit like molten gold across his back. The symbols crawled and rearranged themselves faster than her handwriting could follow.

"Whoa - you've been busy, haven't you, Bell?" she muttered, eyes wide. "I only turned around for one week and you've gone and doubled half your stats!"

A faint shimmer rolled down his spine; the numbers burned themselves into the parchment.

The tiny room filled with the warm scent of ink and divine light. Hestia's hand trembled slightly as she traced the runes along Bell's back; every symbol burned brighter than the last.

"Bell" she whispered, voice equal parts awe and disbelief, "you're not supposed to grow this fast...!"

Name: Bell Cranel

Level: 2

Excelia Progress: Newly Advanced

Strength: SS 1091 ↑

Endurance: SS 1019 ↑

Dexterity: SS 1098 ↑

Agility: SSS 1337 ↑

Magic: SS 1001 ↑

💙 Bell's growth defies all logic again... his agility rank hit SSS?!

💙 Crimson Echo stabilizes his fights - Alise really changed his technique.

💙 He's not just chasing Aiz anymore... he's protecting everyone in his orbit.

💙 Hermes can eat his hat if he doubts him again!

She stamped her blue-flame seal, the divine script sealing shut.

Bell turned, smiling sheepishly.

"Is... it good?"

Hestia grinned - that mix of divine pride and motherly mischief.

"Good? You're a walking miracle, Bell. Now go remind Apollo what happens when a god picks the wrong hero to bet against."

Skills

Realis Freese - Growth is accelerated by emotional and inspirational bonds. Power multiplies under the flame of admiration.

Argonaut - Temporarily charges a single attack through will; power scales with resolve.

Crimson Echo - Synchronizes fighting rhythm with an ally's heart; steadies stance under observation. (granted through training with Alise Lovell)

Magic

Firebolt - Instant-cast lightning fire. Intensity rises with continuous use and control.

Hestia blinked at the parchment; the corner curled from residual heat.

"You've earned this. Tomorrow's the War Game. Show them what a one-room Familia can do."

She stamped her seal, the blue flame of divinity hissing once and fading into ink.

"Now," she said, folding the parchment and tapping it against his shoulder, "go rest before I chain you to the mattress myself. You'll need those legs."

Bell laughed, half-nervous, half-ready. The gold on his back dimmed, but the warmth stayed.

From the hall, Ryu's calm voice: "Your stance drills are at dawn. Do not oversleep."

And from the roof above, Alise's low murmur to the night:

"Ready is a verb. Be doing it, Rabbit.

Chapter Text

Alright let's do a little special. 20 beats for the 20th chapter. I really hope you like it.
Because I like it 😍

Chapter 20 — The City That Watched a Rabbit Run

1) The Hostess of Fertility (Syr & Alise)

The tavern dimmed itself the way a stage hushes before the curtain. Syr set a bowl of roasted nuts on the counter and polished a glass that was already clean. Above the bar, a scrying orb—Guild issue, Hermes-tuned—bloomed blue and threw the Apollo compound into the room like a second window.

“Popcorn?” Syr murmured.

“Tea,” Alise said, which was nearly the same thing if you were trying to look unbothered. Her cup went untouched. On the orb, banners rippled along East Heights and judges in formal sashes took their posts. Hestia’s tiny figure stood in the dais shadow, chin pointed like a little sword.

Syr leaned her elbows to the bar, chin in her hands. “He looks smaller on glass,” she said, soft.

“Heroes do,” Alise answered. “Until they move.”

Ryu slid a tray of fresh cups to a table and did not sit. Mia folded her thick arms and did not smile. The regulars went quiet in that halfway-to-prayer way Orario uses for expensive trouble.

On the orb, the Guild’s arbiter raised a wand. Somewhere out of frame, Hermes laughed like a coin flipping. The wand cut down.

The War Game began.

2) Twilight Manor (Loki Familia)

The projection stone floated in a pool of green light. Half of Loki Familia stood around it on the Twilight Manor’s upper terrace, armor half-buckled because they hated admitting they liked a show.

Tiona bounced on the balls of her feet, palms smacking palms. “There he goes! He’s gonna run right at the gate, right?”

Tione didn’t look away from the image. “If he does,” she said, “Loki owes me new knives.”

Lefiya had her hands clasped so tight her knuckles looked like guilt. “He’s… Level Two and yet I feel like I'm losing the race somehow,” she reminded no one. “Apollo’s fortress is built for teams I wonder how they're gonna win.”

“Shush, shush,” Loki sang, sprawled across a chaise with a wine she did not intend to finish. “Let the bunny do bunny things.”

Ais stood slightly apart, eyes narrowed the way a sword narrows when it decides to be drawn. “He’s lighter,” she said, almost to herself.

“Meaning?” Riveria asked, appearing without announcing herself, her own attention cutting as clean as a scalpel.

“Before, he chased me,” Ais said. “Now he… arrives.” She did not look at Loki when she said it, and Loki did not ruin the moment by grinning too widely.

On the projection, Bell stepped into view in Apollo’s courtyard—white hair, black coat, the Hestia Knife catching sun like a promise. He didn’t rush the gate. He moved the way water moves: offering the hard places nowhere to stand.

“Mm,” Loki said, pleased. “Someone taught him not to perform for doors.”

3) Hestia’s Line (field-side)

The Guild dais had a little platform for gods to pretend to be calm. Hestia used all of it. Hermes stood two steps away with a commentator’s smile he’d borrowed from a street barker and polished with audacity.

“And we’re live to all authorized viewing orbs,” he said, as if the city didn’t already know. “Hestia Familia versus Apollo Familia—castle capture rules, judges in place, fatalities discouraged, hearts encouraged—oh, don’t look at me like that, Arbitrator.”

Hestia didn’t bother glaring. She gripped the railing and looked at her child. Asfi took station at the garden door, composed as a line on vellum.

On the scry: Welf slipped into a shadow and anchored a line. Mikoto touched stone with two fingers like a priestess greeting a god and began to climb. Chigusa ran low and fast, rope snugged, breath counting. Lili in Apollo blue carried a bread basket toward a postern no one was supposed to notice.

“Little Lili,” Hermes murmured, “with a very official loaf.”

“Shh,” Hestia said, not unkindly. Her prayer was small and relentless: let them move, let them keep, let them come home.

4) The City (vignettes)

—At Babel’s steps, a ring of apprentices clustered around a merchant-grade projection crystal. A dwarf muttered bets into his beard; a child chanted “Firebolt! Firebolt!” as if the spell could hear.

—In Hephaestus’s foundry, a foreman paused mid-swing, hammer resting on anvil, red beard haloed by sparks. He watched the little white figure and nodded once, satisfied with iron he didn’t make.

—At Soma’s counter, the careful clerk forgot to count back change. Zanis glowered and poured himself something expensive; the vat dwarf at the end lifted a cup to the orb as if to say, go on then.

—Takemikazuchi and Miach shared a viewing slate at a street stall selling dumplings. “Breath,” one god murmured. “Balance,” the other replied, and the vendor decided to give them both extra scallions for luck.

—On a quiet balcony wreathed in ivy, a goddess Astraea folded her hands and let the crystal hover in the center of her palms. Her light, hidden these years, thinned to the edge of visibility like dawn testing courage.

“You found another one who carries the fire, Alise,” she said to the wind. “Let him keep it. Let you learn to stand near it without dimming.”

The air on the balcony brightened by a sigh.

5) The First Cut (shared)

On every screen, the compound shifted. Bell didn’t rush; he threaded. A spear swung; he wasn’t there. A sword thrust; he gave it empty corridor and took the lesson. When he needed to draw eyes, he did it properly—one bright feint that said I might and then I won’t.

At the Hostess, Syr’s breath fogged the lower corner of the orb. “He’s clean,” she whispered.

Alise’s cup creaked in her hand. “He’s present.”

On the Twilight terrace, Tiona barked a laugh. “He stole a step! Did you see that? That’s an Amazon trick!”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Tione said, but her mouth softened, just a little.

Lefiya watched his footwork with a student’s hunger. “He’s using… he’s—” She failed to name it. Riveria supplied, quietly: “Economy.”

Lili reached the postern. She knocked the way bread knocks. A bored guard grunted, cracked the door, and caught a smile so official he forgot to check the basket. The door closed. It did not latch.

In the dais shadow, Hestia’s fingers tightened once. Hermes’s quill flicked in airy approval. Asfi’s chin lifted the smallest degree: now.

Welf’s first grapple arced. The hook bit stone and held. Mikoto’s hands went spider-fast. Chigusa anchored, breathed, counted. Smoke—not choking, just rudely present—bloomed from a pot one of Welf’s friends had “accidentally” set beside a brazier. A tower guard coughed himself blind. The bell rope lifted a handbreadth and then stopped—a clean cut smoking near the pulley.

“And we’re in,” Hermes sang, softer.

“Don’t jinx,” Hestia warned, softer still.

6) Alise & Syr (back to the Hostess)

“Drink,” Ryu advised, appearing at Alise’s elbow with a tea refill only a saint could refuse. Alise managed one sip. It was hot enough to make her eyes water; she pretended that was why.

“Your work shows,” Syr said, not teasing. “The little things.”

“Ryu’s,” Alise deflected. “Aiz’s. Lili’s blood sugar. Welf’s stubbornness. The city’s mercy.” She watched the orb and the compound became a map she could almost touch. “I only cut tails and taught doors to be polite.”

Syr’s smile said liar and friend. “You’re allowed to be proud.”

“After,” Alise said, and the word had become capitalized in her bones.

On the orb, Bell shifted cadence—the little stop the Sword Princess had hammered into him—arrive, don’t chase—and the spear in front of him went from comfortable to startled. He didn’t take the opening. He remembered Ryu and bought it with hips, not heels. The cut landed like a stamp. It didn’t end anything. It announced.

The tavern breathed out in one go.

“Again,” Alise whispered at the glass. The boy didn’t hear. His body did.

7) Apollo, Preening

Inside his own keep, Apollo watched from a balcony flanked by silk and flattery. His teeth glowed like privilege. Hyakinthos stood at his shoulder, face carved into sincerity.

“An adorable display,” Apollo purred for the benefit of three other gods who loved stages. “Your boy is lithe, Lady Hestia. You must be… proud.”

On the dais, Hestia did not dignify that with a glance. Hermes made a doodle that looked suspiciously like a god in a dunce cap.

Hyakinthos signaled down the corridor, and the inner guard shifted like a chess set moving under a bored child’s hand. He rolled his wrist once, spear swinging lazy. “We will correct their etiquette shortly,” he said, to nobody whose opinion mattered.

Apollo clapped once, as if calling a dog.

8) Loki’s Balcony (Ais & company)

“They’re past the courtyard,” Riveria said. “If they hold that door—”

“They will,” Ais said, as certain as weather.

“Hyakinthos will take the keep stairs,” Tione predicted, hunger in the voice of a woman who wanted, someday, to see him try that with her. Tiona leaned forward so far the projection light turned her cheeks blue.

Lefiya’s eyes flicked to Ais’s face and stuck there, watching for the thing she would never have: an untroubled heart. What she saw instead was patience. She filed that away under someday.

Loki propped her chin on her hand and watched the little white figure in the halls of men who called themselves large. “Mm,” she said. “Wanna bet whether he says a speech or a sentence?”

“Sentence,” Riveria and Ais said together, then pretended they hadn’t.

9) The Long Hall (close-in, then out again)

Lili slipped from shadow into the long corridor like a punctuation mark. “Two left, breathing wrong; one right, angry knees,” she snapped, and Bell adjusted like a man who finally believes someone else’s eyes are his.

He didn’t rush the first pair. He took the corridor: footfalls light, shoulders quiet, knife poised like words meant to be said only once. The first guard overcommitted; Bell gave him emptiness and then the short—downcut, joint rude—enough to take a weapon from a hand and a pride from a face. The second hesitated and lived because Bell didn’t have time to impress his future self.

Welf jammed a winch with a wedge that would make a carpenter cry. Mikoto came off the stair like a soft hammer and removed a problem from the right with a mercy that still counted. Chigusa flowed past with a look on her face that meant she had found a rhythm faster than fear. Lili was a general disguised as a problem.

“Just like the market,” Alise said in the tavern, heart beating ribs like a made drum. “Read, don’t fight.”

Ryu’s hand brushed Alise’s wrist. It wasn’t comfort; they don’t do that. It was together.

On the Twilight terrace, Ais’s gaze warmed a degree. “He held the opening,” she said. Which, for Ais, was a bouquet.

10) The Spear (Hyakinthos vs Bell)

Inner keep. Stone learned to echo more expensively. Hyakinthos stepped into the hall and it felt, briefly, like the room expected to be impressed.

“Cranel,” he said, spear describing a neat little circle of contempt in the air. “Kneel and concede. Apollo is a generous master.”

Bell didn’t bother with a line. He set his feet the way Ais had taught him, stilled his shoulders the way Ryu had ordered, and let his wrists remember Welf’s forge heat. He lifted his blade like a worker lifting a tool. “No.”

On balconies and bars and street corners across Orario, people leaned closer.

Hyakinthos lunged, quick and true. The spear bit the air and the line was good enough to end lesser stories. Bell turned it with the tray-slam motion Alise had broken a man on three nights ago, wrists burning, ribs remembering; he let the butt whistle past his hip, close, then stepped inside the arc.

The next three breaths were all noise: steel on wood on bone, sharp and mean—then silence as both men found the distance again. Glee sparked and died in Hyakinthos’s eyes. The spear slid to a new angle.

“Again,” Bell said, not loud.

“Look at him,” Tiona crowed. “He’s asking for it!”

“Shut up,” Tione said, fond.

Lefiya’s hands gripped each other until they hated her. Riveria breathed out, slow. Loki grinned like a wolf with manners.

Hyakinthos changed tempo—needle-quick—and the spearpoint flashed for the throat. Bell barely caught it; the song of steel on steel was wrong and real; he forced the thrust off line and paid for it with a scrape along the collarbone that would blossom later. He didn’t flinch. He drove the kill-switch step in answer—half in, all out—and stopped with his point laid at the hollow of Hyakinthos’s throat.

He didn’t spend it. The spear slid up and knocked his knife aside a thumb.

“Enough show,” Hyakinthos hissed.

“Agreed,” Bell said, and the air changed.

He pulled Argonaut in the way he’d learned to—quiet, not screaming, belief condensing into the blade like frost. The orb caught it the way crystals catch light—a white halo tight around the knife, no flourish, only purpose.

In the tavern, the tea in Alise’s cup rippled.

On the terrace, Ais stood.

On the dais, Hestia’s lips moved around a prayer she didn’t know she knew.

On the ivy balcony, Astraea closed her eyes. “Balance,” she whispered, and her light woke a little more.

Hyakinthos saw it too late—the stillness that means too much. He snapped a guard…and Bell didn’t take that guard; he arrived where the line wasn’t. The charged thrust went through the seam at the spear’s joint, blew the leverage out of Hyakinthos’s hands without needing to break him, and set the point at the collarbone under silk.

It wasn’t big. It counted.

Hyakinthos’s fingers opened. The spear clanged to the floor, suddenly a long, silly stick. Bell didn’t smile. He didn’t gloat. He knocked the weapon aside with a boot and moved past him without fanfare, because the banner was what mattered.

“Sentence,” Loki said, proud as sin. Riveria answered with the nearest she had to a laugh.

In the Hostess, Alise finally breathed.

“Holy…,” Syr whispered, and forgot how to end the sentence.

“Proper,” Ryu said.

11) The Banner

The keep’s last room liked itself too much: arched windows, carpet like opinions, the Apollo banner hanging from a pole that believed in metaphors. Two men in blue stood in the way, fidelity-out-of-paycheck thick. Bell didn’t cut them down. He moved past—one joint, one shove, no cruelty—and put his knife through the banner just under the crossbar. He took fabric and name in the same motion.

Outside, the bell that should have tolled found its rope sliced and believed in silent cinema. Welf’s wedge held. Mikoto’s hands stayed quiet. Chigusa’s lungs were full of debt to be paid later with soup and sleep.

On the dais, the Guild arbiter lifted the wand and spotted the banner in Bell’s fist—Apollo’s sun facedown, Hestia’s child upright. “Victor,” he called, voice amplified by law. “Hestia Familia.”

Orario, as a unit, exploded.

12) The City (roars)

The foundry shook with laughter. A dwarf picked Bell’s name out of soot and said he always liked the kid.

On Babel’s steps, the child chanting “Firebolt” switched to “Bell!” like a song without a chorus.

At Soma’s, the clerk finally remembered the change. Zanis cursed something about truly detesting fate. The vat dwarf slammed his cup down and bellowed, “HA!” loud enough to make the glassware consider retirement.

Miach and Takemikazuchi traded a high-five that would be denied later. The dumpling vendor cried and gave them both extra soy, then tried to charge, then forgot why.

In the Twilight terrace, Tiona whooped. Tione exhaled in a way that meant her blade would be kind to someone later. Lefiya clapped a hand to her mouth and let herself be glad. Riveria’s shoulders lowered a whisper. Loki dangled off the chaise and shouted into the garden: “Tonight we drink on Apollo’s tab!”

Ais… sat down again. Her face did not change. Her pulse did. “He arrived,” she said, a private thing that wasn’t private anymore.

In the Hostess, the room became a storm—cheers, poundings on the table, Mia threatening to throw out anyone who didn’t celebrate responsibly. Ryu allowed herself an entire smile, which in Lion meant a small change with tectonic consequences. Syr hugged Alise without warning and was forgiven without conditions.

Alise laughed once and then covered her face with her hand because dignity has limits. When she dropped it, her eyes were bright and wet and furious with relief.

“Again,” she told the orb, and meant tomorrow, and meant everything.

13) The God Who Lost

Apollo’s smile finally slid off his teeth. Hermes took an elegant half-step away in case divine lightning decided to do paperwork today. The arbiter lifted a roll of writs. “As per Guild adjudication, by loss of War Game, Apollo Familia is dissolved; Apollo to be exiled per statute—”

“—until further review,” Hermes added, smiling with only a little malice. “We have to leave room for sequels.”

Hestia did not gloat. It isn’t in her. She held the rail and looked at her boy walking out of a building that had tried to be a story about some other god. When Bell lifted the banner in the courtyard for no one and everyone, she lifted her hand, small, fierce, and unafraid.

Hyakinthos, bleeding pride and a nicked collarbone, stared at the floor. On some roof, Alise’s memory of a corridor with no air shivered and then resettled into the shape of this day. Use when it matters, Lili had said. Today mattered and had been used.

14) Astraea’s Balcony

The crystal flickered out. Astraea remained still, eyes on the place where it had been.

“I heard you, little supporter,” she said to the air that had carried Liliruca’s plea yesterday. “And you, little god with a big heart. And you, boy who asks for ‘again’ and means it.”

She turned her face toward the city—not the big spine of Babel, but the messy part where rope lines and laundry make constellations. “And you, my captain. I see you seeing. You taught the boy how to walk through a trap without making it his stage. You didn’t steal his light. You kept it.”

The goddess placed two fingers over her own heart as if checking that it still beat. “Justice doesn’t always need a courtroom. Sometimes it needs a back stair, a rope, and someone who refuses to be the point.”

Her light—long quiet, as if afraid to wake the past—rose a fraction, silver-white, balanced.

“Come and tell me your truth when you are ready, Alise,” she said, almost smiling. “Bring wine. Bring your ache. I will fashion a skill that turns your witness into use.”

The wind took the promise and folded it into the city’s laundry.

15) Hostess: The Loud Quiet

The orb dimmed. The room didn’t.

“Oi!” Mia bellowed above joy. “If you’re celebratin’, do it with a drink that isn’t free!”

“First round on me,” Hermes said too quickly.

“On Apollo,” Ryu corrected, deadpan. Laughter detonated.

Syr pressed a cool glass to Alise’s hand. “Your tea died heroically,” she said.

“I’ll pour it on a plant and give it a proper burial,” Alise replied, voice steadier than her shoulders. She set the empty cup down and only then realized her fingers had cracked the porcelain hairline-thin. Syr whisked it away with a wink that promised secrets and glue.

“Go to him?” Syr asked.

Alise shook her head. “After.” The word held a hundred meanings again. After the judges. After the gawkers. After his goddess has squeezed the day out of him like laundry and fed it back as dumplings.

“Will you ever just… stand next to him and enjoy it?” Syr asked, friendly and rude in the way only Syr could manage.

“Yes,” Alise said. “When he won’t trip over my shadow.”

Ryu joined them, looking unruffled in a way that usually meant her pulse had been at a gallop for an hour. “He did not embarrass us,” she said, which in Ryu is a hymn.

“He embarrassed his enemies,” Alise said, which in Alise is dessert.

16) Twilight: Notes for the Future

The manor terrace emptied slowly. Tiona bounded off to break something celebratorily. Tione head-counted, as older sisters do. Lefiya stood beside Ais and found language that didn’t borrow. “He’s getting… right.”

Ais nodded. “He learned the part where you stop.” She looked into the city the way some people look into the sea when they expect it to bring a name back. “He will be faster tomorrow.”

Riveria adjusted the projection stone until it winked out. Loki slung an arm around the elf’s shoulders and got a glare for it. “What?” Loki chirped. “I like seeing a good story written by the wrong god.”

“Then donate to the Guild’s repair fund,” Riveria said.

“Consider it done,” Loki lied.

17) Dais: The Hand on the Banner

In the courtyard, Bell took a breath big enough for an hour and let it go. Hestia crashed into him like a small, warm meteor and nearly knocked him backward. Lili walked past them as if crying were against regulation and then returned to punch Bell’s shoulder like a rank pinned on with a fist. Welf lifted a hand and then, because he is Welf, put it awkwardly on Bell’s head like a blacksmith blessing an anvil.

Hermes twirled his quill. “Smile for the orbs.”

“Smile for the door,” Hestia told Bell, pointing toward the exit that a hundred people suddenly thought belonged to them. “Then run.”

They did—quiet route, not alley, three turns, then three. Bells in the city not connected to the War Game rang anyway because joy doesn’t read instructions.

On a roof two streets out, a bottle wrapped in a scarf sat in a niche and listened to footsteps. Its ribbon tail fluttered exactly twice, as if to say, soon.

18) The City That Kept the Noise

Night found the Hostess full and still somehow listening. When Bell finally, finally stepped through the door—with Hestia, Lili, Welf, and the dignified shell-shock of people who have been clapped on the back too often—he didn’t get three steps before Mia decided to be kind by being mean. “You look skinny,” she declared. “Sit. Eat. Pay later.”

He sat. He ate. He forgot to breathe between bites because the body remembers to be a child when soup is hot and safe is a thing that exists in the room. Lili stole a dumpling and made a rule about it. Welf tried to complain and failed. Hestia put her cheek against her child’s sleeve and pretended it was to rest her neck.

Alise stayed in the edge light. When Bell’s eyes finally found her, he didn’t wave. He touched the ribbon at his knife. She touched two fingers to her jaw.

“Again,” he mouthed.

“Again,” she mouthed back, and the word meant training at dawn and another hinge to file and the day she would walk up ivy steps with a bottle and a truth.

In the ivy balcony far away, Astraea watched the same moment with a smile that made her seem very young and very old. “All right,” she said to the quiet. “I will be home.”

The city exhaled, fed, slept badly, dreamed loudly. High above, the false stars of the orbs went out one by one, leaving the real ones to do their unadvertised work.

And somewhere in a room that smelled like ink and oil and dumplings, a hero’s legs began to ache in a way that meant growth, and a captain’s heart stopped shaking in a way that meant hope.

19) Rooftop Debrief (Alise & Ryu)

The tavern’s noise thinned to a purr under the eaves. On the Hostess roof, laundry lines drew constellations between chimneys; the night smelled like soap and spilled beer. Ryu climbed up without a sound and found Alise already there, sitting on the ridge, knees up, cracked teacup in her hands like a relic.

“You broke it,” Ryu observed.

“It volunteered,” Alise said. The smile was tired and dangerous with happiness.

They watched the square breathe below—stragglers laughing, someone singing off-key, three kids reenacting the banner cut with broom handles and a scarf.

“You stayed out,” Ryu said. Not a question. A verdict.

“I promised,” Alise answered. “Besides, he didn’t need saving. He needed exits.”

Ryu’s profile softened in the lantern-glow. “You gave him both.”

Alise turned the cup. A hairline fracture ran through the glaze like a river that had remembered its course. “He arrived, Ryu. I heard the beat. Aiz taught him how to place the point; you taught him where to stand; I… only cut the corners off the trap.”

“Only,” Ryu repeated, faintly amused. Then, gentler: “You also chose not to take anything from him.”

Alise breathed out. “That was the work.”

For a while they let the quiet sweat out the day. Then Ryu spoke what she’d been carrying.

“When you go to her,” she said, eyes on the dark line of the city, “don’t apologize for wanting more. Ask cleanly. Joy is not theft.”

Alise laughed, small and private. “I was going to bring wine.”

“You were always going to bring wine,” Ryu said, and the line’s affection warmed the tiles. “Go sleep. Tomorrow he asks for ‘again,’ and we will be cruel about stairs.”

“Twenty minutes,” Alise said, standing.

“Twenty-five,” Ryu corrected, because tomorrow had to be a promise.

20) The Ivy Niche & the Oath (Alise; cross-cut with Hestia)

Midnight slipped a cool hand over Orario. In the lane off Soma’s hall, ivy held its breath around a shallow niche. Alise climbed to it like a woman returning to an answer she had hidden from herself, unwound the sun-warm scarf (remembering Lili’s words), and took the bottle free. She retied it with a fresh loop of crimson ribbon—neat, square, deliberate.

“After,” she’d promised. She checked the sky, the street, the corners where trouble naps. Then she turned her feet toward the long, quiet road that ends at Astraea’s forgotten altar.

Across town, in a room that smelled like ink and dumplings, Hestia sat cross-legged behind Bell and let divinity run under her fingers. The Falna brightened—runes rearranging, singing themselves upward. She blinked fast, then laughed like someone who had just witnessed a small, polite miracle.

“Level… three,” she whispered, and kissed her teeth to stop from shouting.

Bell, exhausted and trying not to fidget, smiled into the pillow without seeing. The glow on his back wrote tomorrow.

Alise did not know numbers. She didn’t need them. She felt the city change shape—like a door unlocking in a building she had mapped a hundred times. She touched the ribbon at her wrist, thumb finding the knot.

“Use me when it matters,” she told the bottle, the street, the goddess, herself. “Teach me how to keep up without standing in the way.”

Far above, a quiet silver light stirred on a balcony that remembered justice.

Alise walked into the night, wine under her arm, stride steady. The bottle knocked softly against her hip, three little taps like an eager heart.

“Again,” she said to the road.

The road—very willing—carried her toward Astraea.

Chapter Text

Chapter 21 — The Flame That Does Not Die

“For ideals like ours, even the ashes must carry light.”
Alise POV — single-file edition

Orario at night was a thousand small lanterns arguing gently with the dark.

Alise kept to the rooflines where the wind could find her. Chimney smoke ribboned past, warm with bread and stew; somewhere a lute worried at a melody that refused to resolve. She had a bottle tucked inside her cloak and cradled against her ribs as if it were alive.

Soma’s seal gleamed frost-blue whenever moonlight slipped the clouds—like riverglass that remembered fire.

“Tribute,” she told it, grin tucked into the corner of her mouth. “Bribe. Apology. Whichever opens the door fastest.”

The city thinned to scrub and stone, then to a hill crowned by ruins that still insisted on being a temple. Columns, broken like teeth, ringed a square of cracked flagstone. Vines climbed where prayers had once stood. Her boots clicked once on the threshold; the sound went out into the night and came back answered.

“You’re late,” said a voice with the poise of someone who could turn any accusation into kindness.

Alise bowed too theatrically for the hour. “Goddess. I brought something that excuses all sins.”

Astraea stepped into the moonlight—bare feet silent on old stone, silver hair to her shoulders, eyes the color of clear judgment. For an instant Alise forgot how to be brave, then remembered, and her grin buckled into its straps like armor.

“You brought me trouble,” Astraea said, though her mouth had already softened.

“Your favorite,” Alise said, raising the bottle.

They didn’t light torches; they didn’t need to. Moon and city-glow made the courtyard a pale blue bowl, and the wine did the rest. It poured like moon-honey—cool as riverglass on the tongue, then warm as a hearth two sips later.

Astraea lifted her cup, amused. “You swore on your uniform you’d share this with no one but me?”

“It was either that or swear on my rapier,” Alise said, settling cross-legged on the cool stone. “And my rapier gets jealous.”

Crystal met crystal. The first taste shocked a laugh out of both of them.

“Oh,” Astraea said, shoulders unstringing. “That’s… indecent.”

“Divine,” Alise corrected solemnly. “Which is sometimes the same thing.”

They drank, and the ruin became less ruin and more memory: a place that remembered laughter. Soma’s wine bends time at the edges; it makes thoughts honest without making them cruel. It loosens the tongue just enough to let truth duck past its usual guards.

“You’re well,” Astraea said at last.

“I am unbroken enough to walk,” Alise replied. “Which is sometimes more than most.”

“You are also stalling.”

“Yes.” Alise tipped her cup and watched the light catch on the curve. “Do you ever miss us noisy?”

Astraea’s answer was the briefest close of her eyes—assent too dignified for a nod. “Noise was never the problem,” she said. “Only what the world did to make it stop.”

Alise placed her free hand flat on the stone and patted it once, fond. “We were very loud,” she admitted. “Kaguya with her straight lines. Lyra with her crooked ones. Neze’s bracelets. Celty pretending not to cry. Rane, quiet until she wasn’t—and then you listened. Ryu pretending not to worry.”

“And you,” Astraea said gently, “pretending not to be afraid.”

Alise lit up at that—caught and not minding it. “I prefer the word forthright, actually. Not even someone as forthright, wise, and virtuous as I claim to be can deny that fear and courage share a cup.”

Astraea hid a smile in her wine.

Alise leaned back on her hands and looked at the stars. “Do you know what I miss? Not victory. We were never greedy. I miss the usefulness of justice. Holding a line in a world that keeps trying to unteach itself its letters. I miss being the reason some stranger found a morning.”

The goddess regarded her in a long quiet that felt like benediction. “You still are.”

“Ah,” Alise said, wagging a finger. “But I have been hiding. Sometimes behind a hood. Sometimes behind a smile. Sometimes behind… nothing at all.” She caught herself and laughed. “This wine is persuasive.”

“It is,” Astraea agreed. “So is regret. And hope.”

They poured again.

“I saw a boy,” Alise said finally; boy came out softer than she expected. “White hair. Ears that listen more than they know. He runs like his heart is trying to be his legs.”

“Bell Cranel,” Astraea said—not a question.

“You know him?”

“I know the shape of stories that carry.”

“He is… earnest,” Alise said, tasting the word like unfamiliar fruit. “Earnest can be foolish, but his isn’t. Or rather—his foolishness is correctly aimless, which I admire. He’s chasing the right ghosts.”

“You like him.”

“I like what he reminds me of.” She set her cup down. “And I like the way Ryu looks near him—sharper, somehow, because for the first time in a long time she thinks the world might pay back what it owes.”

Astraea’s eyes warmed. “You would have teased her.”

“Relentlessly,” Alise said, making a halo with both hands. “Paragon to paragon.”

They laughed. The ruin seemed to approve.

“When you speak of justice now,” Astraea said, “what shape does it take?”

Alise rubbed her thumb along the cup’s lip, feeling the fine flaw where glass cooled too quickly. “It used to be a scale,” she said. “Perfect, arrogant, certain. Every wrong a weight; every right a counterweight. But balances tip in earthquakes no matter how carefully you place your stones.”

“And now?”

“A lantern,” Alise said. “A hand held high. Small light, stubborn light. Something you can pass. Something that makes one more person brave enough to step out of the alley.”

Astraea’s approval felt like a door opening. “Then carry it. And teach others how.”

“I’m trying,” Alise said. A blush crept in, owned and unashamed. “I want to be worthy of what I see when I look at him. Not love—or not only love. Aspiration. The clean kind of wanting that steals your excuses and gives you something better to fail for.”

“Then name it.”

Alise drew breath. “I want to keep up. Not to own his path—gods forbid—but to be there when the path goes dark and someone needs to remember where the stones are. I want to be strong enough that my hand does not shake when I pass the lantern.”

Astraea reached and laid two fingers lightly across Alise’s knuckles. “You are not required to be unafraid.”

“I am required to keep walking,” Alise answered, almost a reflex—and then, quieter, smiling at herself, “I am required to keep laughing, too.”

“That last requirement is mine,” Astraea said, and her smile could have taught a city to be kinder.

They shared the last pour. The bottle’s glow faded to an ordinary blue; even divine wine bows to the night eventually. The warmth it left behind was the warmth of shoulders relaxing, of swords sheathed clean, of someone promising to return.

“Will you update me?” Alise asked softly. “Not tonight. I like the world this blurry. But… soon.”

“Soon,” Astraea said. “At dawn, if you wish. When the sky tries its first courage.”

Alise let that promise settle where vows live. “I’ll bring breakfast.”

“You will burn it.”

“Tradition,” Alise said gravely.

They stood. The temple stones had kept their chill; the air had not. Astraea folded Alise into an embrace that felt like both blessing and welcome-home. For a moment the redhead let herself be held with all the unguardedness of someone who has spent too much time being her own shelter.

When they parted, Alise looked up at the ragged slice of sky. “We won’t clear all the dark away,” she said.

“Not even someone as forthright, wise, and virtuous as you,” Astraea murmured.

Alise huffed a laugh. “Especially not her. But we can make the dark argue with itself.”

“We can make it beautiful to resist,” Astraea said.

“Yes,” Alise said, and the word struck like a match.

They tidied the cups. Alise tucked the empty bottle back into her cloak—souvenir and relic as cousins. On the steps she paused, glancing back.

“Tomorrow,” Astraea said, answering the unasked thing.

“Tomorrow,” Alise echoed. “We light another candle.”

---

They lingered until the stars felt less far and the ruin remembered laughter. When Astraea slept, Alise stretched out on the steps and listened to the city breathe.

Midnight — Alise (awake) / Bell & Haruhime (hiding)

The ruin was quiet. Her head wasn’t.

Alise lay with her cloak bundled under her neck, the empty Soma bottle a blue ghost by her hip. The stars looked like spilled sugar on a black table.

“Where are you, rabbit?” she whispered to the sky. “Don’t tell me you tripped over another lantern.”

Her cheeks were warm. It wasn’t just the wine. It was the thought of him—white hair, ridiculous courage, running on legs made of vow. She covered her face with one hand and laughed into her palm.

“Forthright, wise, virtuous—” she muttered, teasing herself, “—and apparently capable of blushing. How undignified, Alise.”

She rolled to her side and watched the city glow. Somewhere down there a goddess fretted; a smith coaxed coals; a fox-eared girl asked fate for one more chance. And somewhere—

“Where are you, Bell?”

Hope came instead of sleep, which was worse and better.

---

A dusty storeroom. A sliding panel. Two people holding their breath as carefully as contraband.

Bell knelt by the rice bales with Haruhime tucked beside him, his coat around her shoulders. A narrow window smeared a band of moon across the floor. Footsteps passed—heavy, confident—and Aisha’s voice flickered by like a blade wrapped in velvet. The steps receded. Silence held.

Only then did Bell exhale.

Haruhi­me’s ears flattened, then slowly rose. “We… are safe, for now,” she whispered, voice trembling gently.

“For now,” he agreed. Up close he could see how tired she was, how carefully she’d been stitching herself back together, how much of her courage had teeth marks. He realized—mortifyingly—that they were very close. His face went red. He looked down at the floorboards as if prime numbers were carved there to save him.

“One… two… three… five…” he counted under his breath, because arithmetic is a rope you can hold.

Haruhi­me smiled, small and real. “You are kind.”

“I’m trying,” he said.

His hands were fists on his knees so they wouldn’t shake. He blushed for all the wrong right reasons: proximity, promise, the fear of failing someone already failed too often.

Outside, a door slammed. Laughter peeled away; the hive returned to its hum.

“Tomorrow,” he said, and the word was a vow. “We’ll get you out. No matter what it takes.”

Haruhi­me closed her eyes. Relief redistributed itself, a breath finally spent. “Then… I will believe you.”

They sat like that for a while: two pieces of the same small hope, bracing each other against the night.

---

Back on the hill, Alise propped herself on her elbows and squinted at the moon as if it kept schedules.

“Are you sleeping, hero?” she asked it. “Or doing that infuriating thing where you’re gentle in a dangerous place?”

Her heart did a strange little skip. She pressed a knuckle to her lips and laughed—quiet, giddy, embarrassed by the simple happiness of thinking of him.

“Get a grip,” she told herself. “You’re not sixteen. You’re… an age where one is very serious about breakfast.”

Breakfast. Yes. Something she could do. She sat up so quickly her head swam.

“Tomorrow,” she declared to the courtyard, “I will not burn it. I will make the best hungover breakfast for the best goddess. And then—” she waggled a finger at the city— “then we train. Then we work. Then we earn whatever this is.”

The night kept its secrets. Morning, as it does, kept its promises.

Dawn — Breakfast like a vow

Morning came the way courage does—hesitant, then all at once.

Alise woke with the pleasant ache of a night well spent and the indisputable throb of divine wine reminding her she was mortal. She sat up, breathed through fog, and drank from the cistern until her head agreed to join the day.

“Right,” she told the ruins. “No burning.”

She set a compact field stove and a flat iron pan blackened by a hundred old campfires. From her pack: a sack of tiny new potatoes; spring onions and flat-leaf herbs; a wedge of salty white cheese; half a loaf; a clutch of eggs filched fairly at an ungodly hour; a small jar of tomato confit she had promised to save for celebration—this qualified.

Heat first. She tested the pan with a flick of water—good. Potatoes in with a trickle of oil; she smashed them gently with the back of a spoon until their edges frilled and hissed. Salt, a patient hand. In with chopped onions; the smell alone could revive the penitent.

“Alise,” came Astraea’s voice, warm and amused from the doorway, “if you burn—”

“I will not! Have faith Goddess," Alise said, affronted dignity perched on a hangover. “Observe restraint, the rarest of my arts.”

She swept potatoes aside, dropped in a knob of butter, and cracked eggs into the cleared space. Not the furious soldier’s scramble—low heat, nudging, folding, coaxing them into glossy folds. A handful of herbs. A crumble of cheese. Bread to the pan for stripes. Kettle on for black tea—strong and honest—in chipped cups pretending to be fine.

She plated it like a prayer: potatoes crisp and frilled to gold; eggs just-set and shining; confit tomatoes blazing quietly; herbs brightening whatever they touched.

Astraea came to sit on the steps and take her portion. Steam curled into the early light. She tasted; the silence afterward was not diplomatic.

“Well?” Alise tried not to bounce.

“My favorite part,” Astraea said, deadpan, “is that you did not burn it.”

Alise clutched her heart. “Stop it. You wound me.”

“On the contrary,” Astraea said, smiling the kind of smile that turns ruins back into houses, “you’ve mended something.”

They ate. The world is simpler with good food and someone to hand it to. Alise hadn’t known how hungry she was for this kind of morning: no alarms, no orders—only the business of being alive together and making that count.

Halfway through her plate, words arrived that weren’t jokes anymore. She set her fork down and looked at Astraea—really looked, the way you do when you intend to be heard by yourself, too.

“Goddess,” she said, steady. “I want to be a hero for my hero—stand where his light is, and have mine ready when his back needs it. Guard the path he clears and clear the path he guards. Be worthy of the hope he makes other people feel. That’s my goal.”

There it was. Not a crush. Not only a calling. A shape her life could move toward without apology.

Astraea finished her tea and set the cup down with deliberate care. “Then train,” she said. “Laugh. And bring your lantern where it’s darkest—without asking the dark for permission.”

Alise swallowed a grin and the last bite of eggs at the same time. Happiness returned like blood to a sleeping hand—tingly, embarrassing, wonderful. She popped a confit tomato; the sweetness broke the salt and she nearly hummed.

“Eating my feelings,” she announced triumphantly.

“Good,” Astraea said. “They look delicious.”

They cleaned together—habit, comfort, a domestic ritual better than oaths shouted into the sky. When the last pan was wiped and the fire doused, the city had fully woken. You could hear it in the way the noise stacked.

Astraea’s gaze went thoughtful. “The Book will be ready when you are.”

“Not today,” Alise said gently. “Let me earn this clarity first. Soon.”

“Soon,” Astraea agreed.

Alise tightened her bracers, checked the edge of her knife, and squared her shoulders to the day.

“Let’s light another candle,” she said.

“And not burn the bread,” Astraea added.

“Once,” Alise protested. “Twice, at most.”

They shared a look belonging to two people who keep choosing the same hard thing. Then they stepped across the temple threshold—one to watch, one to walk—and somewhere across the city a boy and a fox-eared girl in a storeroom breathed easier because morning always does that.

Alise didn’t know exactly where he was. She didn’t need to. Her cheeks were still warm, but now it wasn’t the wine. It was direction.

She faced the city—the alleys that remembered her feet, the crowds that needed lanterns, the future that had been dared—and smiled like someone who had found the right road.

“Keep up, then,” she told the day, cheerful as a challenge. “I’m coming.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 22 : Falna at Dawn

Alise POV - Status Update & Manifest

The temple stones still held the warmth of breakfast. The kettle hissed once like a contented cat and went quiet. Alise folded her cloak, untied the scarf from her hair, and climbed the three steps to the inner dais where Astraea kept a book that was also a vow.

"Ready?" the goddess asked, voice soft as linen.

"No," Alise said truthfully, smiling. "Do it anyway."

She knelt, bracers off, shoulders bared, the old ritual sliding into place like a favorite scabbard. Astraea's fingers were cool and steady against her back; the prickle of divine script unfurling across skin made Alise think of the first time she'd put on a captain's mantle-too big until it wasn't.

Ink that was not ink gathered at Astraea's thumb. The goddess wrote.

Light threaded under the skin where the quill passed. The Falna-quiet for too long, patient as only ideals can be-woke as if it had been listening all along and had simply been waiting for Alise to say the words out loud:

I want to be a hero for my hero.

The room seemed to take a long breath. Alise felt it before she saw it-like a hidden muscle untying. The sensation wasn't a surge (she'd felt those in emergencies, ugly and bright); it was a clean alignment. The way a door swings true once the hinge is finally set right.

Astraea's hand paused. "There," she said softly, surprised and pleased. "You named it; it answered."

Alise's mouth went dry. "What does it say?"

"See for yourself."

She rose, the faint glow fading to a pulse she could feel rather than see, and took the parchment from Astraea's hand. The letters were the same as ever-simple, exacting-and somehow more beautiful for it.

ALISE LOVELL - Astraea Familia
Level: 5

Basic Abilities
STR: 862 (B) END: 811 (B)
DEX: 905 (A) AGI: 1048 (S)
MAG: 1124 (SS)

Development Abilities
• Hunter (A) - Bonus excelia vs. stronger foes.
• Perseverance (B) - Damage mitigation when protecting.
• Leadership (B) - Party coordination improves allies' action speed & discipline.
• Tactician (C) - Faster pattern recognition; improves feint/tempo control.

Skills

🕯️ Lantern's Echo (EX)

A unique Echo Skill born from lived justice - the will to carry another's light forward.

Effect Summary:
You may replicate and harmonize with the passive and active traits of allies you revere, when fighting for the same ideal.
Replication scales with respect, trust, and personal control, and is limited by your own Rank.

⚖️ Concordant Ideal: Bell Cranel

Clause 1 - The Same Flame

When your heart aligns with Bell Cranel's ideal - to save, to protect, to reach -
all Basic Abilities increase by one rank (to their cap),
and any borrowed traits stabilize without corruption.

Clause 2 - Shoulder to Shoulder

When acting alongside Bell Cranel or in formal opposition (such as a sanctioned duel),
you may synchronize to a bounded echo of:

Realis Freeze (growth acceleration)

Argonaut (charge-based hero's impulse)
Synchronization duration is limited by your focus and control,
and ends if your intent strays from harmony.

Clause 3 - Witness Link

When observing Bell with the intent to teach or protect,
techniques seen once may be echoed at reduced strain.
Repeated observation refines the echo toward full parity.

Special Notes:

No backlash or cooldown occurs under concordant intent.

Corrupted motives use will sever the echo.

This skill embodies the principle of shared ascent - the belief that one light can kindle another.

• Captain's Providence (A) - Your presence turns chaos into formation.
- Allies inside your command radius gain improved footing, timing, and morale.
- Non-lethal training, rescues, and de-escalations generate **full excelia**.
- When you name a ward (currently: Bell Cranel), your acts of protection
also prime their growth (no theft; no penalty to others).

• Scarlet Oath (B) - When you interpose for the weak, you may spend your own advantage
to double a single step (speed, cut, guard). The world keeps the receipt.

---

Alise read it twice, then a third time, eyes stinging in a way that pretended to be heat from the kettle.

"Lantern's Echo," she whispered, tasting the name. It fit. It fit like her own rapier in her hand. "And... he's in it. By name."

Astraea nodded. "Because you put him there first-in your choosing."

Alise swallowed, throat tight. "Bell is Level Three now," she said, a half-laugh, half-gasp. "In record time. He's going to shatter every barrier between us. If I don't learn to grow faster, to control this, I won't be able to protect him anymore. I won't even be able to train him."

"Then you have your road," Astraea said. "Not to chase him-" her eyes were kind and exact "-but to walk abreast."

Alise exhaled. The fear in her chest didn't disappear; it changed shape into something she could carry. "He runs on vow. I'll match him with discipline."

"Good," Astraea said. "Say your plan aloud."

Alise squared the parchment on the table as if it were a battle map.

"Control first," she began. "Echo without staggering. I will drill against phantoms until my body stops trying to pay interest on borrowed strength. Mornings: footwork and tempo-Captain's Providence on, no shortcuts. Afternoons: observation without interference; teach with my hands in my pockets so Witness Link learns patience. Evenings: sanctioned spars-Ryu will keep me honest and alive."

"She will," Astraea agreed, dry as winter.

"Middle Floors sweeps every other day," Alise continued, a commander again but happier. "Stronger parties, higher-stress packs. Hunter wants a say; we'll let it. Rescues prioritized; civilians escorted; Perseverance and Leadership active so excelia from non-killing counts in full. And-" she tapped the clause with Bell's name, cheeks warming despite herself "-formal duels with him when his goddess permits. Shoulder to shoulder when it counts, opposition when it teaches. I will not lean on his light. I will offer mine."

Astraea rested two fingers against Alise's temple, then her sternum. "Mind. Heart. Keep them in council."

Alise laughed, shaky and bright. "I can do that."

She looked down once more at the words Concordant Ideal: Bell Cranel. The letters didn't glow, but they didn't need to. She could feel the clause like a second pulse-quiet, steady, conditional in all the right ways.

"Thank you," she said, and did not specify whether she meant the goddess, the Falna, or the courage that had finally stopped asking permission to be true.

"Eat more," Astraea replied, which somehow was the same blessing as always.

Alise strapped her bracers back on. The leather felt different against skin that now remembered a new shape of strength. She rolled each shoulder, testing range, testing the way Lantern's Echo sat when she wasn't calling it. Not heavy. Not light. Present, like a promise made sensible.

"Do you want me to copy it?" Astraea asked, quill hovering.

"Yes," Alise said. "One for the book. One for a pocket I'll pretend not to check every hour."

Astraea smiled and made the neat duplicate. Alise slid the duplicate into an oilskin sleeve and tucked it under the inner flap of her vest-over the heart, where captains keep maps they don't admit are also prayers.

"Anything else you need?" the goddess asked.

Alise hesitated, then let the undignified truth out with a grin. "A running start."

Astraea gestured toward the door. "Orario is very obliging to those."

They stood together at the threshold. Morning had fully arrived; the city had shifted from promise to bustle. Somewhere out there, a boy at Level Three was already turning his vow into an itinerary. Somewhere, a fox-eared girl was learning to believe a little louder.

Alise touched the line on the parchment that carried his name and felt, absurdly, steadier. "We'll spar soon," she murmured, imagining his face when she told him. "Then we'll work. Then we'll laugh about how I tripped over my own speed."

"You'll also apologize," Astraea said, as if reading the future's good manners.

"I always do," Alise said. "Forthright, wise, and virtuous."

"Two out of three," Astraea corrected, amused.

They shared the kind of look that happens between people who have decided to keep choosing the same difficult, beautiful thing. Then Alise stepped out into the bright, folded the hood back not to hide, and set her feet to the road that would make these words true.

"Keep up, rabbit," she told the day, cheerful as a dare. "I'm coming-and I brought a lantern."

Chapter Text

Alise POV - with faint echoes of Astraea

The night split like cloth.

A pillar of light punched a hole in the clouds above Orario-pure, searing, vertical. For an instant the city seemed to hold its breath, every lantern paling before that god-born pillar of light. Alise stopped on the hill road with dust on her boots and wind in her scarf, and every nerve in her went cold.

Not again.

Old smoke crawled up out of memory-the reek of corridors turned to graves, the chaos years ago, subtraction of sound, the clatter of a rapier that would never be lifted again. Her fingers were suddenly empty of blood and somehow sticky with it. The world narrowed to a scream the sky had swallowed.

Move.

She moved. Down the switchbacks two steps at a time, then vaulting the last run, hair ripping loose of its ribbon. The city's outer fields flashed past-furrows, low walls, laundry strung like white flags-and then streets took her feet like old friends. She cut alleys she could have run blindfolded. Her shoulder hit a door and apologized only by not hitting the next. Somewhere a dog barked and then thought better of it.

Close, closer-the Pleasure Quarter's roofs. Perfume in the wind, incense, the unmistakable acid of fright. Alise skidded to a halt above a tiled lane and looked up into the wake of the column. The light was already thinning to a haze that tasted like iron and roses.

She felt it then, like stepping from fever shadow into clear air.

Not rot. Not that black-bellied hunger Evilus left in the world wherever it breathed. This was colder, cleaner, so perfectly indifferent it was almost honest. Freya. A queen's will, precise as a pin.

Alise's breath rattled in and steadied. The drumbeat in her chest changed meter.

"So," she whispered to the fading beam. "Not another war. Just another god playing queen."

She let herself laugh once-short, ragged, furious and relieved-and the sound shook the last of the old smoke out of her lungs. The night reassembled. Lanterns made their arguments with the dark again. A gull spoke rudely and nobody died.

Then a thought turned her by the shoulders.

Unless it touches him.

Her feet chose their answer. Away from the Quarter. Past Babel's shadow, toward the Guild plaza where dawn drills devour worry. The city flexed its maze around her and she threaded it the way a needle threads a seam it has sewn a thousand times.

"Keep up," she told the wind, and it did.

The courtyard breathed winter into early light. Frost clung to the low stones; the practice dummies wore the gray sheen of a sleepless night. Steam lifted off the back of a boy who refused to rest.

Bell's coat lay folded on the bench like a polite promise. He moved bare-armed, a tight vine of muscle that had not been there months ago. The Hestia Knife marked the air in clean syllables; the other hand rode rhythm like a metronome taught by wolves. His breath smoked small and exact; his feet whispered corrections to the flagstones.

He didn't notice her at first. That pleased her more than it should have.

"Rabbit," she said when she'd had enough of watching him earn the right to be watched. "When did you steal the sun?"

He startled; then his grin broke, helplessly honest. He bowed too low and nearly dropped the knife and recovered it as if it were part of the bow.

"Miss Alise! I-uh-didn't expect- I mean, welcome back!"

"Choose one," she said, fighting a smile.

"Welcome back," he said, and the warmth of it glanced off her like a thrown coin and landed in a pocket she had forgotten she had.

"You grew," she observed, walking a slow circle, letting him see she was unarmed before she was suddenly not.

He flushed. "A little."

"A little," she repeated, drawing the rapier in a line that could have cut hair without shame. The steel hummed like it remembered her hand. "You're burning daylight like someone who refuses to be left behind."

His eyes flicked to the blade; his shoulders rose a fraction. Not fear. Calibration.

"Just a test," she said, stepping onto the chalked line. "To see if the teacher still has the right to teach."

He nodded. It was not the boy's nod from the Hostess. It was the nod men make when they accept the weather.

"Ready."

Alise felt her goddess behind the moment-a calm weight like a hand between her shoulder blades.

Then carry it, Astraea's voice threaded the breath before the first step. And teach others how.

"Come, then," Alise said, and the first meeting of steel and divine fire rang the morning like a bell.

At first it was simply beautiful.

Bell's open and closed guards sang their counterpoint; he mixed Aiz's economy with his own willingness to trust the second step before it existed. Alise parried in comment more than correction, slide and turn, a scholar delighted by a well-argued passage in fluent vigor. He was faster. He was narrower. He was still Bell-each risk taken on behalf of someone else, even the imagined someones in a deserted yard.

They circled. The frost steamed at their feet. Twice she let him cut through the empty jacket of her guard and watch him choose not to exploit what an enemy would. Twice she punished the mercy-gentle, precise-because mercy that isn't disciplined gets other people killed.

"Again," she said.

He came. The Hestia Knife glanced. His left hand snatched for her wrist with clean surprise. She let him catch air and scolded him by not making him pay too much for having thought to try.

Then-without her conscious consent-the world made a new rule.

She felt it over her left ribs first: a second pulse sliding up alongside her own. Not foreign. Not unwelcome. Simply there, as if it had been waiting, as if a door she'd been knocking for months realized it had been unlatched all along.

Lantern's Echo woke.

Her blade tracked his knife without looking. Her weight found his weight's answers as if his considerations had left chalk marks for her on the stones. His breath fell into her lungs and went out again with her laugh.

"Oh," she said, and only the winter could have heard how the syllable carried delight.

He faltered-not with fear, with wonder. "You're-"

"Don't stop," she snapped, which was unkind because she said it like a dare and he is the kind of boy who accepts dares that look like rescue.

He drove tempo. She matched-not like a thief copying, but like a musician laying a harmony so near the melody you did not know they had been separate. The knife's arc and the rapier's line described the same solution. The air thickened under the strokes. Stone underfoot thrummed with a note neither of them had earned alone.

Bell's eyes widened. Somewhere under the sweat and grit his Argonaut gathered itself, that story-shaped engine humming in the old place beneath the sternum where vow becomes fire.

She felt that too.

Astraea laid a calm hand inside her skull. Mind. Heart. Keep them in council.

"Yes," she said to a goddess no one else could hear. "Yes, yes-"

Her next step forgot that advice.

The acceleration that hit her joints was not a surge so much as the removal of friction. The rapier's lightness became absence-of-weight. Her hips turned and the blade was already where it needed to be. She did not intend to cross the distance; she found herself there like a woman who has walked home without remembering any intersection.

Bell parried-and the parry wasn't late, it was correct-but it met an answer that had stepped into the space between decisions.

Steel kissed divine edge. The air between them punched outward as if slapped by a giant hand. The frost on the stones went to steam in a single white sigh.

"Al-" he started.

"Hold," she meant to say, I'm holding back, she meant to say, but the breath she stole from him to say it made saying it a cruelty. The next cut fell of its own perfected grammar.

His breastplate took it. For one heroic heartbeat the plate believed in itself.

Then the world made a terrible sound: not metal splitting, not glass breaking-something between. The armor exploded. White shards spun like snow caught in a storm from the wrong direction. A ribbon of red wrote itself across his ribs with awful calligraphy.

He went backward in a dazzle of fragments and struck the column at the yard's edge hard enough to knock dust from the cracks. The knife fell point-first and stuck, quivering, into the chalk line between them.

Silence. Dust ticking down. The thin toll of the blade's tremor.

Alise's rapier point kissed stone. Her hand didn't know how to be her hand any more. The yard expanded infinitely and also became a room too small to hold a pulse.

"No-no, no, no," she said, and the words didn't make sound until her knees hit the flags beside him. "Bell."

He wasn't dead. She saw it second. First she saw the wound and in it every other cut she had ever tried to put between the world and the people the world eats. Then she saw his chest move. Small. Incompetently. Alive.

Her fingers hovered, stupid with new power. The instinct to press and the instinct not to were the same volume.

"Idiot," she whispered, throat burning. It was not addressed. It included her.

Wind arrived like a reprimand given shape.

It leapt the courtyard wall in a green sheet and knelt as a woman. Ryu's boots landed silent; her coat snapped itself closed from its own discipline. She didn't look at Alise until she had looked at the boy. That was correct. It still stung.

"Move," she said, not as an order to a subordinate, not as a friend who knows her friend will obey-simply as the most reasonable instruction to the only other person breathing.

Alise's body obeyed before her head could bargain. She rocked back on her heels and made room. The yard removed a breath from her and set it in Ryu.

The first glow out of Ryu's hands was not bright. It was the color of the first courage, small and stubborn, and it strobed in her fingers like a moth deciding a lantern could be trusted. The smell it made was wrong for a courtyard-ozone, lilies, or rain.

"Stay," Ryu told Bell, and something in the word reached for the place his breath had been trying to go and made a path for it. The light ran out over his chest and, where it touched, the red writing rewrote itself into a script that meant not yet.

Alise didn't realize she was shaking until the hilt creaked under her hand.

"I didn't mean to." She wanted to tell the yard itself because the yard would never forgive and therefore would keep the secret properly. "Ryu-I didn't mean to. I only wanted to... test him. To keep up. To see-" She swallowed; the taste of metal argued with her tongue. "Everything moved. The ground took decision away from me."

"Intent doesn't stitch bone," Ryu said without looking up, and Alise took the rebuke like a clean cut: it hurt, and it told the truth, and it did not waste time.

Noah Heal ate the ugly edges of the wound. Where Ryu's palms hovered the skin remembered how to be a wall. The bright ached up Alise's arm through the floor and made her want to weep for reasons that had nothing to do with blood.

Bell's lips moved. The name that fell out was not a name but a shape that could have been one. It might have been hers. It might have been the goddess's. It might have been the word the world makes when a boy refuses to stop.

"Again," he breathed, and then-blessing or cruelty-passed fully out.

"He'll live," Ryu said after a time measured in a thousand heartbeats and one, and only then turned her face to Alise.

Ryu's anger had always been a gentleman. It took off its shoes before it entered the room. It still tracked in rain.

"You nearly split him in half," she said, voice level; the level was a blade. "What possessed you to-"

"Echo," Alise said, too quickly, and then slower, hating the word because it had felt like joy. "He moved and my body... remembered a way to move I hadn't known I knew. It harmonized. The power stacked. I tried to break the rhythm. It broke me back. I wanted to stop and the stop wasn't in the sentence any more."

Alise showed her the status sheet.

Ryu looked at her hands-the tremor, the fine white dust of shattered plate on her knuckles, the new steadiness under the shake like a second balance trying to be consulted. Her own mouth pressed thin, then relented a fraction.

"You're not a wild thing," she said. "Don't let a new strength tell you that you are."

Alise laughed because it hurt. "Tell that to the boy's armor."

They both looked. The shards lay everywhere. Some had stuck point-up in the dirt around the chalked line like a flowerbed of wrong stars. The largest curled like peeled bark. A few glittered with frost where Realis Freeze had licked them before heat uncoupled them.

It was obscene how pretty ruin can be.

Ryu set a palm flat over Bell's sternum and breathed him into an easier place. She closed her eyes. When she opened them she had made a decision about how much of her anger to spend.

"You will learn to speak to that echo," she said. "On mornings when no one needs you. Against dummies. Against me. On days when you do not deserve joy."

Alise nodded. It was automatic at first; then it was consent.

"And you will not touch him with a blade until I say."

The flinch started in Alise's shoulders and finished in her teeth. "Agreed."

Ryu tilted her face toward the eastern wall; dawn had put two fingers over it and was testing purchase.

"You wanted to be a hero for your hero," she said, not unkind. "But you forgot that your hero bleeds."

Alise gripped her own wrist until the need to shake had something to hold. "I didn't forget," she said, and the lie dissolved. "I remembered too late."

Silence attended them. It was not the terrible silence of emptied corridors. It was a courtyard's silence, patient as stones that have held practice and apology for years and intend to hold both tomorrow.

Ryu's breath eased. "He will wake. He will be annoyed he missed an ending he wanted to earn. He will forgive you before you forgive yourself."

"If he forgives me I'm going to be very cross," Alise said, because the only thing you can sometimes do with pain is make it obey grammar. "I reserve the right to sulk."

"You will bring tea," Ryu said, almost smiling. "And an apology the size of a city gate! Oh and don't forget the armor."

"Fine two gates," Alise said. "And dumplings. And a lecture about not accepting duels blind."

"You issued it," Ryu said.

"That's why he shouldn't accept them," Alise said, and the laugh that got out found a place to sit that didn't hurt.

The light climbed the wall. Bell's lashes flickered and then did not. His breath made a small sound like a mouse deciding to live in a safe house. Ryu's hands went from work to watch.

Alise stood.

The yard held her at knee height a second longer than gravity required, as if to ask if she were sure. She was not. She went anyway.

She bent and picked up the Hestia Knife where it quivered, gave it back to the stone with care, then changed her mind and brought it to the bench instead. It felt wrong to leave that kind of devotion lying on the ground; it would cut its own way home if it had to.

She looked down at her sword. The rapier's line was as innocent as a signature on a petition. She slid it home and it made the sound clean steel makes when it refuses to apologize.

"Restraint," she said under her breath, tasting the old word like it had learned a new shade. "Discipline."

Astraea's voice curled warm in memory: Bring your lantern where it's darkest-without asking the dark for permission.

"I'll bring it," Alise said to the day. "But I won't burn the house I'm trying to light."

She took three steps toward the arch and stopped. The shards still glittered, accusatory and lovely. She crouched and began to gather them, one by one, into her hand. A foolish task; there were too many. A necessary one; there were just enough.

"What are you doing?" Ryu asked after watching her for a while.

"Cleaning up after myself," Alise said, holding a handful of ruin that had been a boy's idea of safety. "And learning where the edges were wrong."

Ryu nodded once. Approval like a thin ribbon tied around a wrist.

When the pile in Alise's palm grew too bright to hold she carried it to the bench and set it down beside the knife, as if the two of them wanted to speak to each other without her.

She came back.

Bell lay very still. His hair was a blindfold of white in bad light. The ragged line across his chest was now a narrow blush that would become a scar that would become a story he would tell badly and other people would tell better.

Alise looked at him and wanted to howl. Instead she put a hand against her own sternum and counted to ten like a captain checking whether a wall will hold the next wave.

"I asked to be a hero for my hero," she said at last, soft enough that the frost might keep the secret. "Today I was a hazard."

Ryu did not disagree. That was kindness.

"So I will master this," Alise continued, because once spoken the sentence was easier to finish. "I will learn to speak before the echo does. I will put my joy on a leash and teach it to heel. I will never let my light blind what it's meant to guide."

"Good," Ryu said.

"Also," Alise added, because sorrow is allowed a flourish, "I will buy you tea that costs more than honesty."

Ryu almost smiled. "Honesty is expensive."

"I have a wine account," Alise said. "I can manage."

They stood with the morning a while longer. The city put its noise on, one layer at a time. Somewhere a child laughed at a cat that had misjudged a jump. A cart complained. A vendor chose a shout. The Guild would open its shutters soon and the courtyard would be a place for other people's progress again.

Alise looked once more at the boy, at the friend kneeling by him, at the shards on the bench, at the chalk line where the knife had stood like a flag. She took all of it in and put all of it somewhere she would not misplace it even if the world shook.

Then she turned toward the arch.

"Where are you going?" Ryu asked, not to forbid-only to know where to send the wind if it needed to carry a word.

"To find a wall that won't bleed when I hit it," Alise said. "And to learn to stop one step earlier than I want to."

She crossed the line, ducked the arch, and let the yard's breath return to its ordinary work.

Outside, the light was brighter than she thought. She squinted into it until it blinked first.

"Keep up, rabbit," she said to the day, cheerful because the alternative would break things. "I am coming-and next time I will remember to use my hands when the world forgets to breathe."

The city took her back and. She made a quick stop to see Welf. Explained everything, paid in full and credited him with any equipment he needed.

Chapter Text

Chapter 24 — Voices in the Deep

Alise POV, with interludes from Lyd and the Benevolent Hostess

The thirtyth floor breathed like a sleeping beast.

Not the ragged, hungry panting of the upper wilds, but a slow tidal draw that tugged at the lantern’s flame and made the crystal veins along the walls throb faintly with blue. Water ticked from a ceiling rib, counted to seven, and ticked again. The ground was damp, forgiving in a way that made your footfalls sound farther away than they were.

Alise adjusted the strap across her chest and let the light fall ahead of her, just enough to carve a tunnel out of the dark. She had come down alone because some lessons deserved privacy—because shame made a poor teacher, but pride made a worse one. The memory of Bell collapsing into Ryu’s hands—armor blooming outward like killed snow—kept a tight, honest rhythm beneath her ribs. It wasn’t a wound; it was a metronome.

“Control,” she told the dark, as if it had volunteered to be a student. “Not less fire. Better hearth.”

The rapier rode at her side. The ribbon at the knife’s guard lay warm against her palm. When she breathed in and held, something answered—Lantern’s Echo, the new and frightfully obedient thing that wanted to make everything easier than it had any right to be.

“On my count,” she warned it, because it was not a creature, and yet it behaved like one—eager, loyal, too much. “Not before.”

She came to a long chamber ribbed with calcite and decided it would do. She set a chalk circle, rolled her shoulders until the joints remembered her, and began.

First: footwork. She mapped Ryu’s economy over her own stride—heel-kiss, toe-speak, weight like a thought you only half believe. Second: Ais’s line—no waste, no flourish, a blade that told the truth and only the truth. Third: Bell’s cadence—those small, strange hesitations that made no sense until they made all the sense, the little glottal stop before the surge, the courtesy breath before the vow.

Echo wanted to help. It always did. It slid up beside her pulse and matched it. The rapier felt both lighter and more honest. Her hips turned and the world obliged. Stone answered. Water ticked faster.

“Good,” she murmured. “Better. Hold.”

She cut a line down the center of the air and the line made a sound like a string plucked on a distant instrument. A spray of dust leapt where the tip nicked a stalagmite; she winced. Control meant not cutting the scenery unless the scenery had been rude first.

Something scrabbled in a side tunnel.

She stilled. The sound stopped as if scolded. Alise lowered her light until the dark regained its authority and moved toward the noise, careful as prayer.

Silence. Then—faint, unmistakable—words.

“…not that way. The scent’s stronger along the right vein.”

She froze. Not the words—the cadence. The words were clipped, the grammar simple, but the cadence was command. Not the blundering bellow of a minotaur-driven pack, not the mindless chorus of a rush—orders.

Her shoulders did a thing halfway between squaring and flinching. “Adventurers?” she breathed, and knew even as she said it that it wasn’t. No adventurer on the thirtieth floor sounded like that when telling a companion not to bleed to death.

A shadow crossed the mouth of the side tunnel. The lantern caught a gleam of something that wasn’t stone.

Alise eased the rapier up—not extended, not threatening, simply available. She stepped forward. The lantern light broke across the figure crouched three paces inside and made nonsense of what she knew.

Scaled. Horned. The eyes lambent like gemlight. A body built like a lizard’s argument with a man’s. The head turned toward her—not mindless, not hungry: aware.

Another shape behind it—lighter, wing-edges shivering, one arm bandaged with something that had once been a cloak. A third, taller, in back, hand lifted, palm open, in a human’s sign for wait.

The first one saw her—really saw her—and its mouth moved.

“Human,” it said, and the syllables were thick but clear. “Lower your weapon.”

For a second every sinew in Alise tried to be a harp string. Lantern’s Echo lunged to the front of the line like a child who has known the answer since before the question. She held it back with the flat of her will.

“Monsters,” she said, and heard the stupidity of the word as she used it. The blade wavered—up, down. Mercy wanted to speak; training wanted to finish the sentence.

The one in back—taller, horned, eyes the color of caution—stepped into full view. The light spilled over a face that was wrong in all its right ways: snout too short to be a beast’s, too long to be a man’s; teeth too white; gaze too steady.

“Put it away,” he said gently. “We don’t want to fight.”

The echo of the words bounced around the chamber and brought back a different sentence: We don’t want to fight. The accent was the Dungeon’s; the intent was not.

Alise’s mouth did something unhelpful. “You’re speaking,” she said to her own steadying hand.

“Not often enough to be believed,” the tall one said. “But enough.”

Her training hated everything about this. It was a map with the river running uphill. It was the taste of sweetness when you’ve braced for salt. It was wrong, in the way the first new truth is wrong.

The smaller winged one flinched as the bandage slipped. Instinct knocked Alise forward before caution could object.

“Don’t—” the leader barked, and then checked himself, because she had not lunged to kill; she had reached into her pack for a strip of clean linen like a woman who had tied too many field dressings to count.

They stared at each other over the offered cloth. The winged one’s eyes were blown wide, then narrowed with something like suspicion, then flicked to the leader and back. The leader regarded the linen like a riddle whose answer he already knew.

“She means it,” the winged one whispered, voice higher, softer. “She smells like… the surface when it rains.”

Alise didn’t know whether to laugh or weep.

A scrape to her left solved the dilemma. Something larger—four-limbed, plated—bold from the deeper tunnel, drawn by light and habit. A knight lizard, the kind that broke parties and took trophies out of their names. Its head turned; the eyes found her lantern and dilated with ugly intention.

“Down,” Alise snapped, every muscle selecting a task and performing it like it had been born for it. She didn’t think about the Xenos behind her; she thought about the charge and the way its weight would break, and she moved.

The knight lizard hit the chalk circle she had left in the practice chamber like a question-mark made of stone. Her rapier found the seam under the high plate and slid along it, not deep—just insultingly correct. The thing roared, tried to turn; she let it and punished the angle. It was simple work and it should have been done two cuts ago.

Echo poured in—Bell’s reckless second step, Ais’s spare grammar, Ryu’s disdain for wasted motion—and the world obliged her with a surge that made the blade sing like a thing too happy to be safe. The follow-through slammed the lizard into the wall and made the calcite ribs ring.

Alise stopped because she had decided to stop, not because she had run out of stroke. The lizard slumped into a heap of wrong angles and dust. Somewhere in the back of her head a kettle of shame came to the boil and clicked itself off again.

She turned to the Xenos. They had not run. The winged one’s hand was still on the torn bandage. The leader’s palm was open again, and the sight of it hurt worse than the sense that she had almost let herself enjoy that last cut.

“We’re not your enemy,” he said, as if that had ever mattered to an adventurer and a monster in a room.

“Then what are you?” Alise asked, not unkind. “Because I have lived my life on the answer to that question.”

He tilted his head—curious, alert. “Children,” he said simply. “Born wrong. Learning right.”

Her throat caught on the simplicity and the audacity and the honesty of it.

“Lyd,” the winged one breathed—warning? plea?

“It’s all right, Ray,” he said without looking away from Alise. “She is not like the others. Her blade sings justice. I have heard that song before.”

The simple past tense squeezed the breath out of her ribs. A white head. A boy’s vow. The way he had smiled when he’d bled and apologized for bleeding.

“Leave,” she said, and her voice did not shake, and that terrified her more than the thing she was saying. “Go. I don’t know how to—” She made a helpless gesture that could have been save or tell or keep. “If others see you… they won’t hear ‘children.’”

“We know,” Lyd said. There was sorrow in it and also a kindness she didn’t deserve. “We are learning to be careful. And to defend those who cannot be.”

She wanted to put her sword on the ground and sit down and have tea. She wanted to give the winged one the bandage and a small speech about keeping wounds clean and dignity cleaner. She wanted to drag them to the surface and demand the world make room.

Instead she made the only choice she still trusted.

She stepped aside.

The winged one looked like someone had moved a wall they had been sheltering behind and given them a door in its place. Lyd nodded once—deeply, with a warrior’s promise folded into it—and the Xenos melted back into the rift they had come from, a whisper of scales and a gust that smelled like the underside of rain.

Alise stood in the blue-veined chamber and listened to the receding sound of the impossible.

Only when the last echo died did her knees entertain the option of not being knees. She sat where she was and counted her breath until the number meant something other than don’t break.

“They spoke,” she said, to the tick of water and the lantern’s small bravery. “They pleaded.”

Echo shifted under her skin, unsettled; it wanted to harmonize with the newest rhythm in her chest and didn’t know how. It had learned the shape of vows and the taste of heroism; it had not learned yet that sometimes justice is a closed mouth.

She wrapped her arms around her shins and rested her chin on her knees. “If I tell anyone, they will die,” she said aloud, because the world was perverse and needed to have its worst habit named. “If I tell no one, I might.”

A memory of Astraea warmed the damp—her hand on Alise’s hair, her voice amused in the way that makes courage easier to lift.

We cannot clear the darkness. We can decide which paths our little light makes visible.

“All right,” Alise whispered to the air that would not keep a secret but would carry a promise. “I will not shout. I will listen. And I will make room in my light for them, even if it means standing farther from the center of my own warmth.”

A laugh startled out of her—small, cracked, grateful at its own audacity.

“I am going to need so much tea,” she told the ceiling.

The Dungeon breathed around her—once, like acknowledgement—and let her stand without argument.

Interlude — The Benevolent Hostess

The first snow of evening powdered the Hostess of Fertility’s eaves, then thought better of it and became rain. Inside, the tavern carried its weather: steam off stew, a sling of laughter, the smell of Mia’s patience running thin.

Syr set a teapot on a back table where the light was always kind to tired faces. She poured into two cups, then left one to steam alone. Ryu raised a brow without raising her eyes from drying the same glass for the third time.

“She’s below,” Syr said, which was not a question, because there are some absences you can tell by the shape of the room. “We won’t see her tonight.”

Ryu set the glass down and did not look at the empty chair. “She runs toward anything that hurts more than thinking,” she said, factual as weather. “She will come home when she has convinced herself that not thinking will kill someone.”

Syr’s smile curved with something like pride. “You sound fond.”

Ryu’s mouth considered confessing and settled for discipline. “I am practical. Fondness wastes time.”

Mia clapped a plate on the bar and scowled because that was how she said be safe. “Tell your phantom to drink something with protein when she drifts in on guilt. And don’t let her in the kitchen. Her idea of breakfast could kill a goddess.”

“She cooked like a saint last time,” Syr murmured, laughter hiding in her cup.

“She cooked sober,” Mia said. “If she brings that wine again I’m locking her in the broom closet until she sleeps it off.”

Ryu fidgeted once—small, scandalous—and set a hand near the spare cup without touching it. “Leave it,” she said. “Let it go cold. She’ll scowl at that, and scowling is warmer than the way she smiles when she has seen something beautiful that the world will not allow.”

Syr hummed under her breath—one of those little tunes that find lost things—and tilted her head toward the window, where rain drew a veil over Babel’s ribs. “Sometimes the world shows her something beautiful,” she said, almost to herself, “and it breaks her all over again.”

Mia grunted. “Then we glue her back with soup.”

“And tea,” Ryu said.

“And scolding,” Syr added.

“And bills,” Mia finished, satisfied with the economy of her mercy.

The spare cup breathed steam into the quiet. After a while it breathed less. Ryu turned it so the handle faced the seat, a small ritual that meant we expected you even if you didn’t come.

Alise climbed.

The dungeon did not throw a tantrum to keep her. It let her go with the weary grace of a tide that knows this rock will be back for another wave. She kept her lantern low and her thoughts lower, because both had too much to say and neither was to be trusted unsupervised.

On the twenty-sixth, a pack of imps tested the edge of her patience and found it sharp. On the twenty-third, she had to stop and breathe through the sudden, senseless urge to cry. On the nineteenth, she put her hand to a cold wall and said “thank you” to no one for reasons unknown to her.

Alise slipped through a side street that smelled like damp rope and old apples and came up along the Hostess’s alley wall. Light fanned out under the door in a warm, treacherous wedge. She put her palm against it and let the heat bite her. It felt like permission.

Inside, the room did what it always did: it held. Ryu’s head came up and went down in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Syr’s smile did that thing pride does when it pretends to be simple. Mia judged her wet boots and said nothing rude enough to count as care.

“Tea,” Ryu said, sliding the cold cup toward the edge of the table without looking like she was sliding anything toward anything. “It suffered in your absence.”

Alise wrapped both hands around it and drank like an apology could be a liquid. It was terrible, because it was cold, and perfect, because it had been waiting.

“You were below,” Syr said softly.

Alise nodded. The words would have to be careful, and most of the ones she owned were not. “I met…” She stopped. Every word she could think of would turn the thing into a headline. She tried again. “I heard voices.”

Syr watched her from beneath her lashes the way you watch a river decide whether to flood. “And?”

“They asked me to put my sword away,” Alise said. Then, because Mia was in the room, “I did not. Immediately. I made a choice that wasn’t my best. And then I made a better one.”

Ryu’s mouth twitched. “You came back. That is also a better one.”

Alise lifted the cup in a small toast and let the edges of the night soften. A laugh, impossible and necessary, nudged her ribs from the inside.

“Soup?” Mia asked after a while, but what she meant was, Do you want to be stitched up with meat and salt and scolding until you are whole enough to make new mistakes.

“Yes,” Alise said. “And something sweet, so I can lie to myself about why my hands are shaking.”

Ryu stared at those hands until they had the decency to be still. “Tomorrow,” she said, very calm, “we will work on stopping one step earlier than you want to.”

“Tomorrow,” Alise agreed. “And the day after. And the day after that.”

She put the cup down and watched the steam she imagined rise off it, even though it had long since stopped pretending to be warm.

In the blue-veined dark, a horned man set a hand on cool stone and listened to the memory of a woman’s footsteps retreating.

“Lyd,” Ray whispered, wing brushing his arm. “Do you think we made a mistake?”

“We survived,” he said, which was not an answer but was, for his people, a close cousin. He thought of the way her blade had moved—dangerous as justice and twice as exact—and of the way she had stepped aside like a door that knew it had been blocking the wrong room.

“She smelled like dawn,” Ray said, and the confession lay small and brave between them.

“She smelled like rain on the city,” Lyd said. “And something else.”

“What?”

“Mercy,” Lyd said, and decided that if the world was going to turn them into stories, they might as well insist on this one. “A human word with fangs.”

He turned the patrol toward the safer vein. They would have to move. They always had to move. But for the first time in a long while he let himself imagine that all this going might be a kind of arriving.

Alise ate soup that burned her tongue just enough to prove she was alive. She let Syr tuck a blanket around her shoulders like a conspiracy. She endured Ryu’s quiet because it was kinder than comfort. She did not tell them the part where she had wanted to reach out and fix a stranger’s bandage the way you fix a child’s collar before a festival. She kept that one in the pocket where she kept the ribbon and the memory of Bell’s ridiculous, indomitable smile.

Later, in the room Mia rented to people who needed to remember they had bodies, she sat on the floor with her back against the bed and her knees up and her hands steepled and pretended she was already better at breathing than she was.

“Children,” she said into the quiet, and the word did the awful, beautiful thing of remaining true after you said it.

“If the Dungeon can dream,” she told the dark, very softly, “maybe justice isn’t ours to teach… but to listen to.”

Lantern’s Echo settled under her skin, chastened and attentive.

Tomorrow there would be more drills. There would be Ryu’s terrible kindness. There would be Bell, somewhere below, doing the impossible with good manners. There would be gods, still too high for any of this to touch them in a way that would change them.

But tonight there was a bed, and a room that smelled like stew and rain, and a promise that did not need witnesses to be binding.

Alise let herself lie down. She tucked one hand under the ribbon at the knife’s guard and one under her cheek and slept in the shape of a person who intends to keep her word.

Chapter Text

Chapter 25 — Our Two Flames

Alise Pov :
She sees them on the street before she ever touches the door.

A boy in white, moving careful as if the air were made of glass. A small figure under a hood—too small, too careful—one clawed hand vanishing back beneath the cloak when sunlight kisses it. Bell bends his head to murmur something gentle; the hood tilts, listening the way children listen when the world is new and a little cruel.

Alise feels it before she names it: that same fragile warmth from the depths, the not-monster who had clung to a bandage like a ribbon of courage. Her body makes three choices at once—step forward, step back, say hello—and she chooses the fourth: watch him keep a promise.

She turns down a side street, lets them pass with the crowd between them, and only when she’s sure he’s brought his impossible guest home safe does she knock at the Apollo mansion’s door.

The wood is new; the laughter behind it is older than gods.

It opens in a flurry of tails and apologies.

“Ah! Forgive me—I—I tripped—!” Haruhime bows so fast her hair nearly salutes the ceiling. Mikoto slides in behind her, steadying both girl and tray. Lili appears like a drawn crossbow, eyes narrowing, mouth preparing a thesis on mistakes.

Then Bell’s face fills the doorway—bandaged, bright. “Miss Alise!”

The bandage across his ribs is neat; the blush across his cheeks is not. He’s barefoot. The hero of Orario forgets shoes when he answers the door. Something in Alise’s chest softens like bread under steam.

“Good afternoon,” she says, because her voice will only do practical if she wants it to be steady. She lifts the crimson-wrapped parcel in both hands. “A gift. For a boy who refuses to stop making the world larger.”

“A boy?” Lili mutters. “A calamity, you mean.”

“Our calamity,” Mikoto corrects primly, then flushes.

“Let her in!” Hestia sings from deeper in the hall, the undeniable sound of a small goddess carrying an oversized teapot. “If you make the woman with the scary smile wait on the stoop, I’ll be the calamity.”

They usher Alise through corridors that still smell faintly of Apollo’s sun-oil and very strongly of Hestia’s cinnamon. The main room is all mismatched chairs and ambitious plants and one long table that has seen more elbows than etiquette. It looks like a home that accidently got good at being one.

Hestia arrives, sets the teapot down like a gavel, and plants fists on hips. “So. You’re the one who almost shattered my child and then apologized with tea.”

“An early draft of the apology,” Alise replies, bowing. “I brought something less sensible.”

“Good.” Hestia grins, all flame and mischief. “Sensible is for weekdays.”

They make room. They always do. Bell gestures to the chair nearest the balcony doors—the one that catches the last of the afternoon light. Alise sits with a posture that has been accused of being theatrical and calls itself disciplined.

“Tea first,” Hestia declares, “because I am a goddess of priorities.”

The cups make a soft ring against wood. Alise tastes warmth and spice and the kind of comfort that embarrasses you if you’re out of practice at accepting it.

Bell watches her over the rim of his cup, eyes searching her face the way you check a bridge before crossing. “Miss Alise… are you all right?”

“I am exactly as all right as a person who discovered the Dungeon has children and did not kill them,” she says lightly—and sees the flinch he tries to hide. She lets him keep his secret and lays her own down like a truce. “I will tell you what I saw,” she adds, softer, “and you will tell me when you are ready. For now… gifts.”

She sets the parcel on the table and undoes the knot with a care that admits excitement. Red paper parts. Metal winks. Bell leans in like a boy at a festival.

The lantern is palm-sized, starsteel shoulders with glass panels etched in fine lines: Astraea’s scales twined with a single feathered flame. Hestia whistles low. The wick takes fire from nothing at all; white-gold light blooms, steady, not bright, the kind of glow that makes you lower your voice because shouting at it would be rude.

“For when the night feels too long,” Alise says, suddenly bashful at her own sentiment. “And for your handwriting. Heroes need decent lighting.”

Bell laughs—quick and honest—and reaches. The lantern’s glow lifts a little, as if pleased.

“And this,” Alise continues, drawing out the second half: a book in two parts, one white with silver edge, one red with gold, spines aligned so the sigil completes when they touch. “Is a… problem I made for you.”

Hestia leans hard over the table. “Oho.”

“It’s enchanted,” Alise explains, sliding the white half to Bell and resting her palm on the red. “Hephaistos did the binding. Astraea humored my poetry. When either of us writes” —she opens to the first leaf, cream-pale and expectant— “the words appear, faintly, on the other’s page. They will keep secrets from everyone except the one we address. And they will refuse to tolerate lies.”

“Refuse?” Lili echoes, highly suspicious of any book with opinions.

“The ink fades,” Alise says. “It prefers sincerity.”

Bell’s expression goes through three phases—delight, awe, panic—and settles on a fourth she likes best: responsibility. He touches the page with a fingertip. The paper warms, and a thread of gold chases his skin like a shy firefly.

“What… do I write?” he murmurs, as if speaking too loudly will erase the possibility.

“Try ‘hello,’” Hestia suggests, because goddesses enjoy making history sound domestic.

He picks up the pen. Alise flips open her red half. The lantern’s flame leans toward the page.

Hello, writes Bell Cranel, very carefully, as if the word could break and spill.

On Alise’s page the same hello unfurls—thin at first, then blooming a soft, warm gold. The letters smell faintly of cedar smoke and rain.

She laughs—quiet and unguarded. “You write like you swing—too earnest, somehow correct.”

He colors, pleased and mortified. “What should I put next?”

“An apology,” Lili suggests. “For scaring half the city yesterday.”

“Or a promise,” Haruhime says, gentle as steam.

“Or gossip,” Hestia adds. “But I accept promises as a second option.”

Alise taps the page with the end of the pen. “Let’s test how shameless you are, Hero.” She writes in her half, strokes neat even when her heart is not: Training. Dawn. Rooftops. Bring shoes this time.

Bell’s page flares faintly—gold tempered by a cheeky flicker of crimson. He reads, freezes, and then cocks his head, cheeks going pink. He bends, writes in a hand that tries to be restrained and betrays him with enthusiasm:

I thought heroes trained barefoot.

Her page blooms with his words and a little spray of careless stars where he pressed too hard. The lantern flame tips toward a brighter gold.

Hestia puts her chin in her hands and sighs like a playwright whose favorite couple finally said the line correctly. “If you two start flirting in ink at my dinner table, I will charge postage.”

“Goddess,” Bell squeaks.

“Postage,” Lili repeats, measuring the market for this new tax.

“Balcony,” Mikoto suggests, saving Bell’s life with a bow.

They step out into the late light. Orario hums under them—vendors arguing lovingly with customers, Babel’s ribs catching cloud. The lantern is small enough to hang from the balcony’s ironwork; it casts a circle just big enough for two conspirators and their better selves.

“Try something… private,” Alise says, and this time her voice has the softness she uses for frightened colts and brave children. She turns a page. The paper greets her palm like a hello of its own.

Bell looks at the city as if asking permission. He writes, slower now, careful with both ink and himself.

I am scared of how fast I’m changing. I’m also happy.
Is it all right to be both?

The letters glow silver at the edges, then settle into a warm, steady gold. They are very Bell: brave enough to be simple.

Alise takes a breath that finds all the hollow rooms in her chest and lights one by one.

She answers.

It’s the only honest way to grow.
I am scared too. And happy that you are alive to annoy me.

A little comet of gold skates across his page; the lantern tosses up a pleased flicker.

“May I—” he begins, then stops, tongue fighting manners. “Miss Alise… about earlier. The girl in the cloak. If—if you—”

She touches the white cover’s edge. “I know,” she says, and the softness is also a vow. “She has a beautiful voice. It will be safer if I pretend I never heard it until you want me to. Write to me when you need more light.”

He nods so hard his hair decides to be a weather vane. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Alise lets herself tease, because tenderness unattended gets sentimental. “Also, you owe me thirty laps for answering the door without shoes.”

He groans like a martyr and then grins like a boy. “I’ll do thirty-five.”

“Show-off.”

They write nothing for a moment and yet say a great deal. The lantern burns soft and sure. Inside, kitchen sounds begin the nightly liturgy—pans finding their place, Hestia humming a hymn that sounds suspiciously like a drinking song.

Bell clears his throat. “Can… can I put rules in here?”

“Try me.”

He writes:

Rule 1: If I don’t answer, assume I’m training or saving someone and not avoiding you.
Rule 2: If you don’t answer, I’ll assume you’re scolding someone or saving everyone and not avoiding me.
Rule 3: Be honest, even if it’s messy.

Alise’s mouth does that dangerous soft thing. She adds beneath:

Rule 4: If you fall, call my name.
Rule 5: If I fall, I will call yours.
Rule 6: Bring shoes.
Rule 7: Don't forget to write everyday!

He laughs so hard he has to put the pen down. When he lifts it again, the ink makes a small bright halo around the next word:

Deal.

They test the little magics: she sketches a ribbon, he traces it; he writes thank you and the letters warm her hands; she writes eat your vegetables and the ink, traitorously, turns a stern green. They lean shoulder to shoulder without meaning to and then step apart at exactly the same startled pace, which only makes them smile harder.

“Bell!” Hestia calls from inside. “Soup’s on! And by ‘soup’ I mean ten thousand calories!”

“Coming!” He glances at Alise, then at the lantern. “Will you… stay? For dinner?”

“Yes,” she says, though the word is also home and she does not say that one out loud. “But I must leave you with your goddess before she eats me out of gratitude.”

They rejoin the ruckus. Lili inspects the lantern like a customs agent and grudgingly approves it. Haruhime strokes the journal’s spine the way you pet a shy animal and whispers, “So pretty…” Mikoto asks dry questions about the enchantment that only a swordswoman thinks to ask. Hestia watches Alise with the look of a hearth that has decided to warm a stranger and call it even.

After food and laughter and the ritual of too many hands washing too few bowls, Alise stands in the foyer with the wrapped box now empty and the ache of good company in her bones. Bell hovers, an earnest moon.

“Tomorrow,” she says, tapping the white cover in his hands. “Dawn. Rooftops. Ink if not feet.”

He lifts the lantern and the light kisses both their faces. For a heartbeat she sees what Astraea meant by passing the flame—not relinquishing, but multiplying.

“Tomorrow,” he echoes.

On the threshold she turns back once, unable not to. “Bell.”

He straightens. “Yes?”

Alise looks at the boy who will not stop becoming the person she prayed the world could hold, and she chooses the smallest, truest fan-service she knows: she lets her smile be unarmed.

“Write me when you’re afraid,” she says. “I like those pages best.”

His answer lands in the journal before he can find the courage to say it aloud.
Her page warms; gold blooms:

I will.

Outside, the city is all blue roofs and chimney breath. She tucks her red half close, hangs the lantern from two fingers, and walks into the evening with a light made for writing and a book made for being brave.

☕ Looping Tea Time #0 — The First Page

A silent meadow floating in starlight. Night is silent. There’s no up or down, only a patch of grass, a blanket, and a single silver teapot that never empties. Two lanterns — one red, one white — hover beside them, glowing in rhythm with their hearts.

Bell sits cross-legged, the journal open on his lap. Alise sits opposite, hair loose, legs folded under her as if they’ve done this a thousand times. They don’t question where they are — they simply exist, as though dreaming the same dream.

> Bell: “It really works... I can read your words, even from here.”
Alise: “Then stop reading so slowly! I can feel you squinting through the ink.”

Her laughter drifts like wind over paper.
He sketches the moon; she doodles a crooked heart beside it.

> Alise: “You’d think a Hero could draw straighter lines.”
Bell: “You’d think a Knight could spell better after three cups of tea.”

For a heartbeat, neither writes.
The lantern between them hums softly, pages glowing gold.

> Alise: “Maybe this is what happiness looks like... small, quiet, written between words.”
Bell: “Then let’s never stop writing.”

Steam curls, the stars fade — and their letters linger, waiting for tomorrow.

Chapter Text

Chapter 26 — Lanterns Beneath the Stars

The guild hall smelled of ink, paper, and faint candle wax — the fragrance of endless reports and exhausted dreams.
Alise Lovell stepped inside wrapped in a plain traveler’s cloak, hood pulled low, hair hidden, expression shadowed. The disguise fooled no one who knew her — even suppressed, her presence shimmered like warmth in the cold.

She had come for routine paperwork: expedition notice, dungeon clearance, and a little peace. But peace rarely lasted for her.

A flicker on the mission board caught her eye — fresh parchment, still curling at the edges.

SUBJECT: TALKING MONSTER — LIZARD-TYPE (Designated: Lido).
Threat Level: Unverified.
Reward: 5.500,000 valis.
Note: Capable of speech. Possible mimicry of human language.

For a long moment, she stared. The air thinned. Around her, the buzz of adventurers faded into silence.

Talking monsters. I know that one though he was real strong. Almost like a level 5.
Her mind replayed the sound — that hoarse, broken voice echoing through the dark, words heavy with fear and wonder.

“Please… don’t hurt us.”

Her hand clenched into a fist. That day in the lower levels, she had treated it like a battle.
But what if it wasn’t?
What if she had cut down something that wasn’t meant to be killed?

Alise folded the paper, slipped it into her cloak, and walked out without a word.

Outside, Babel Tower loomed against the morning sky — proud, terrible, beautiful.
Her reflection shimmered in its marble as she whispered, “Guess I’m going back down.”

The lower floors welcomed her like an old scar.
She had left the surface with only her sword, a pack of supplies, and a quiet pulse of guilt she couldn’t explain.
The deeper she went, the more the air shimmered — faint traces of her new strength spilling through her movements.
When she swung her sword, the wind followed; when she blinked, her eyes tracked too much, saw too far. It was thrilling — and dangerous.

She was still learning to control it.

Monsters lunged — fanged, massive, relentless — and she danced between them like a flame across oil. Each swing came too easily, every strike cracked the stone, every parry scattered sparks.
And for every victory, unease grew.

“Stronger isn’t safer,” she muttered, staring at her trembling hands. “It’s… lonelier.”

The 27th floor opened wide beneath her, vast and glowing blue. A lake spread like glass, reflecting the ceiling’s crystal stars. She sat down by the water, boots sinking into damp moss, and laughed softly.

“You’d charge in without thinking, wouldn’t you, Bell?”
The thought came with warmth and ache. “And I’d yell at you for it. Some things never change.”

A Familiar Light

“Still talking to yourself, Captain?”

Her heart skipped.
That voice. Steady as moonlight, soft as memory.

She turned — and there she was.
Ryu Lion stood at the edge of the glade, emerald eyes reflecting the lake’s glow.
The air between them carried five years of silence, grief, and unspoken words.

“Ryu…”
Her name left Alise’s lips like a prayer.

“I thought it was you,” Ryu said, stepping closer. “Only one person moves like that.”

Alise laughed weakly. “What, beautifully?”

“Recklessly.”

They stared at each other until the distance finally broke. Ryu knelt beside her, quiet and graceful as always, the faintest smile curving her lips.

“You shouldn’t be down here alone,” she said. “It’s dangerous.”

Alise shrugged. “Dangerous is relative. Besides—”
She tapped her chest. “—I needed to think. The surface is too noisy. Too many questions. Too many eyes asking what justice means these days.”

Ryu’s gaze softened. “You’re still chasing it.”

“Of course I am.”
Her smile faltered. “Only this time… I’m not sure what I’m chasing for.”

They sat together in silence, the lake’s ripples brushing their boots.

Candles in the Dark

“Do you remember,” Ryu began softly, “what you told me that night on the roof? About the world’s darkness?”

Alise chuckled. “Even a person as forthright, wise, and virtuous as I am can’t deny it’s a mess.”
Ryu smiled — that same old exasperated smile.
“But it’s still beautiful,” Alise continued, eyes half-lidded. “Because we choose to fight for it. Because we keep lighting candles even when we know they’ll burn out. That’s the beauty. That’s the point.”

Ryu looked away. “You haven’t changed.”

“Neither have you. Still the quiet one who worries too much.”

“Someone has to worry for you.”

Their laughter echoed through the cavern.
It was the sound of two ghosts remembering they were alive.

Then Alise’s tone shifted. “I fought one of them, Ryu. The talking ones. They called themselves Xenos. I didn’t believe it at first — until I heard their voices.”

Ryu’s breath caught. “You saw them?”

Alise nodded slowly. “They didn’t fight like monsters. They defended each other. They spoke. And for a moment, I didn’t know if I was the hero or the villain.”
Her eyes glimmered in the blue light. “I think I might’ve hurt something that could’ve been… good.”

Ryu’s hand found hers. “You didn’t know.”

“That doesn’t change what I did.”

They stayed that way, hand in hand, as the faint hum of the Dungeon echoed around them.

“Bell’s growing fast,” Alise said after a while. “Level three in record time. When I left, I thought I’d leave him in the dust… but he’s catching up. Maybe even surpassing me.”
She smiled faintly. “If I can’t keep up, I can’t protect him. Or guide him. So I’ll train until I can. I’ll go deeper, face what scares me most. Not for glory — just to stand beside him when the world starts burning again.”

Ryu’s expression softened. “You really believe in him.”

“I do.”
Alise stood, stretching, eyes on the lake. “He reminds me of us — of who we used to be. Before the world got complicated.”

She glanced back, grin returning. “And besides, someone’s got to keep him from doing anything stupid.”

“That’s rich coming from you.”

“I know.” She laughed.

Two Lanterns

They spent the rest of the night in that quiet glade. Talking. Remembering. The laughter of old friends turning into the silence of mutual understanding.

When the lake’s light dimmed to embers, Alise rose.
Her cloak fluttered in the cold breeze. The reflection of her red hair burned faintly in the water.

“Ryu,” she said softly, “thank you for still believing in me.”

Ryu’s voice trembled. “I never stopped.”

They embraced — brief, fierce, trembling with everything unspoken between them.

Then Alise turned toward the deeper stairs, her path lit by the faint glow of her sword.

“Where are you going?” Ryu asked.

“Down,” Alise said. “As far as it takes. Until I understand this power… and myself.”

Ryu nodded. “Then I’ll wait for you on the surface.”

Alise smiled. “Don’t wait too long. The world won’t.”

She vanished into the shadows — a crimson lantern swallowed by the endless dark.

Above, Ryu watched her go, whispering to the empty air:

“Light your flame, Captain. I’ll guard the spark.”

Here’s your short “Tea Time Between Worlds” entry for Chapter 30, featuring the Shared Flame Tea brewed in that timeless meadow of stars 🌌☕ — written like a gentle dream note shared between Alise and Bell through their enchanted journals.

---

🌠 Tea Time Between Worlds – Chapter 26 Interlude

Tea: Shared Flame Blend (Astraea’s Dawn + Crimson Lantern)

The meadow floats in silence.
No sky, no ground — only the shimmer of starlight folding softly around them. Two lanterns sway in rhythm, one red, one white, their glow pulsing like twin heartbeats.

Alise tilts the silver teapot, and the tea flows in two mirrored streams — amber and gold — merging in the air before landing in their cups.

Alise (writing):
“You’d laugh if you saw me now. I nearly burned breakfast again, Ryu had to save it. But I think I’m finally learning how to be still… not every battle needs a sword.”

Bell (appearing on the next line):
“Then I’m learning too. I didn’t fight today. I just… listened. Maybe that’s another kind of courage.”

They lift their cups — worlds apart, yet side by side.
Steam curls into constellations that remember their names.
The tea never cools, and the stars never fade.

“Until next time, my hero.”
“Until next time, my flame.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 27 — The Red Shadow Follows the White Flame

The Hostess of Fertility wore its usual evening—laughing too loud to hide the ache underneath. Lanterns painted the rafters in honey; the room smelled like frying batter and rain-wet cloaks. In the corner nearest the stair, a hooded patron kept her hands wrapped around a mug that had stopped steaming ten minutes ago.

Alise didn’t drink when she was listening.

“…swear I heard it,” a spearman at the next table insisted, tapping the rim of his tankard. “A girl’s voice. From a lizard.”

His partner snorted into his stew. “You were drunk.”

“I’m drunk now. Then I was sober and terrified.”

“Talking monsters,” a server clucked, breezing past with a tray. “Next you’ll tell me the Dungeon apologized for the mess.”

“Not apologized,” the spearman said, quieter now. “Begged.”

Across the room, Aisha leaned back in her chair and laughed at something Syr had said, one long leg draped over the other like a dare. Lili and Welf bickered over the proper placement of a scabbard by the door, making a ceremony of it because rituals keep hands from trembling. Haruhime tucked a strand of gold behind her ear, her smile soft as a prayer. None of them noticed the red-haired shadow in the corner.

Alise did not move. She watched the way gossip changed the air—the way certain words made people lean in and others made them look at the door.

Talking monsters. Begged.

The memory arrived like a dropped plate. Stone. Claws. A voice from the wrong throat: Please… don’t hurt us. She had cut through the dark because that was what the work required. She knew how to kill a problem before it learned her name.

What if it wasn’t a problem.

Syr drifted by with a fresh pitcher and the kind of smile that made secrets want to confess. “Top-up, traveler?”

“Not yet,” Alise said, voice pitched a step lower than her own. “Too many stories to drink.”

Syr’s eyes flicked toward the soldiers, then back. “Half the city’s telling them. The other half is pretending not to listen.” She tipped the pitcher anyway, adding a finger of heat to Alise’s mug. “Your friend hasn’t been in tonight.”

“Which friend?” Alise asked carefully.

Syr’s mouth tilted. “The rabbit with the hero eyes.”

Alise felt the smile before she let it out. “He is busy learning to run without tripping over destiny.”

“Mm.” Syr’s gaze sharpened and softened at once. “Be kind to him when he returns. He’s carrying something heavy.”

When Syr moved away, the door opened on a fold of cool air and quiet. Ryu slipped through the room like a blade too thoughtful to gleam. She scanned once, found Alise in the shadow as if there had never been a world where she could not, and crossed to the corner with her hands loosely at her sides.

“You heard,” Ryu said without preface.

Alise lifted her mug, pretended to sip. “Enough to choke on.”

“Then come with me,” Ryu said. Not begged, not ordered. Asked. The single word wore years of being the one who arrived after the worst was done.

Alise angled her hood back so the lantern could find her face. “What would you tell me if I said I was already going?”

“The truth,” Ryu said. “That you shouldn’t be alone. That the boy is doing something right and something impossible at the same time. That the Guild is willing to call mercy a hazard if it keeps the ledger clean.”

Alise let the mug touch the table. The long bone in her throat clicked once when she swallowed. “Uranus put his hands on it?”

“Fels delivered the order. Wiene must be returned below. Quietly.” Ryu’s voice did not change until the last word. “Ganesha’s guards are spreading out. Loki Familia’s hunters smell rain.”

Alise watched the door as if justice might walk through it in travel-stained boots. “He will obey the order?”

“He will obey his conscience,” Ryu said. “Which sometimes looks like the order from far away.”

“And you?”

Ryu’s eyes were green in the lamplight and gentler than they had been in years. “I am going where you go. I won’t let the Dungeon keep you again.”

Alise’s laugh broke and reassembled in her mouth. “You always find the line that ties the knot,” she said. “Fine. We leave when the kitchen wipes its last plate.”

They did not say goodbye to anyone. Some departures need the dignity of quiet.

---

The night had rinsed the streets; Babel Tower wore the moon like a pin. Alise and Ryu walked in step without talking—the old cadence that made city and stone pay attention. At the tower gate, a Ganesha guard checked a list and made a show of squinting at Alise’s cloak.

“Expeditions are supposed to be logged—” he began.

Ryu inclined her head a fraction. “Observation. No engagement,” she murmured, low enough for his pride to think it had been included. “By order of—” she let the sentence fray just shy of a name. The guard blinked, decided against trouble, and stepped aside.

The descent took them into the marrow of Orario. On Floor 12 a knot of fresh adventurers stopped bragging to stare at Ryu Lion and the unknown shadow with her; on 15 a wounded party limped past, one of them crossing himself in a habit learned for gods who had stopped listening. By Floor 18 the air smelled like wet stone and the memory of festivals. Ryu slowed; Alise didn’t.

“We are not staying,” she said.

“No.” Ryu’s hand hovered at her shoulder a moment and fell away. “We are passing through.”

On the 19th stair the Dungeon exhaled wrong, and both women stopped because wisdom listens before it moves. Faintly, like a rumor whispered to moss, came the rattle of mugs and a low, rough chorus.

“Ray,” Ryu breathed. “They’ve begun.”

Alise cocked her head, letting the sound unwind into specifics—laughter, not hunting. Relief with a tremor under it. “A party,” she said, and the word felt obscene and perfect. “They’re celebrating the wrong kind of miracle.”

“Or the only kind anyone gets,” Ryu said.

They skirted a broad cavern whose crystal columns had learned to imitate a forest. The singing drifted across their path. Alise kept to the edges—her red hair wrapped under dark cloth, her scent masked with a dab of oil that tasted like rain and mint and told beasts I am part of the weather. Ryu moved like permission denied.

On the far side of the stalactite grove the cavern opened into a bowl. Firelight hopped from stone to stone. Shapes shifted around it—short, tall, scaled, furred, horned—monsters remade by a god’s joke or grace. In their midst a small dragon child danced in awkward loops, her cloak too big, her joy too earnest for this world. Wiene. The name rolled through Alise’s chest like a lantern down a hill, dangerous and illuminating.

At the edge of the firelight Bell stood with his friends, a tin mug held without the intention to drink. Lili was scolding him with her eyes; Welf stared as if trying to forge what he was seeing into a useful shape; Mikoto’s palms were folded as if even her doubt prayed; Haruhime smiled so carefully it would not startle a sparrow.

Alise and Ryu crouched in the shadow of a fallen pillar.

“Look at him,” Ryu whispered, and wonder had snuck into her voice. “He found a way to be gentle when the world demanded a sword.”

Alise did not answer. Her knuckles were white on the rim of the stone. She had imagined this boy a hundred ways—running, bleeding, boasting, failing elegantly—but she had not imagined him listening this well. He bent when Wiene spoke. He put his body between her and every casual gesture that might bruise a heart. He laughed when the laughter needed a permission. He was quiet when the quiet needed to make room.

Alise felt Lantern’s Echo warm in her bones, not with the rush that wanted to borrow his recklessness, but with a hum that recognized its own reason. Same flame, her Falna murmured, old law finding a new clause. She let the breath out slowly.

“I am proud,” she said, very softly, as if the world could ruin a thing by hearing it. “And afraid. The city will call this treason.”

“The city always does at first,” Ryu said. “It called us worse.”

The feast thickened. Ray poured something golden and moral into cups and made a toast that did not care if the gods were listening. Lyd clapped Bell on the shoulder with a gentleness that must have taken practice. Names were exchanged the way children exchange treasures—earnestly, with the belief that the telling itself is a binding. For a long time the past shrank to give the present its due.

When the music eased into murmurs and tired smiles, Bell’s party began to gather their packs. Duty never sleeps long. Wiene’s hand tightened around Bell’s; he knelt to speak to her at eye level, and even from a distance Alise could tell he was promising something impossible with a face that meant it.

“They’re leaving her?” Alise asked.

“For now,” Ryu said. “Orders.”

“Orders,” Alise repeated, and the word thudded like a dull hammer. “I have less patience for them than I used to.”

“They will meet again,” Ryu said, and her certainty sounded borrowed from a future.

Bell’s group took the tunnel toward the upper levels—Lili ranging like a small, furious hound; Welf carrying more than metal; Mikoto counting threats under her breath; Haruhime looking back until looking back would have broken her. Wiene stood with Ray and Lyd in the fading circle of firelight, eyes bright and terrified and brave, like anyone learning how to be alive with a new name.

Alise and Ryu did not follow the party. They waited until the last ember nodded into ash. Only then did Alise stand.

“I wanted to hate this,” she said. “It was easier when the world fit in the sheath of a sword. But I don’t. I can’t. They speak, Ryu. They choose. That is enough to shift the ground under every oath I ever loved.”

Ryu lifted her chin toward the dark. “Then what do we do?”

Alise set her palm on the stone and felt the old city breathe through it, slow and stubborn. “He’s going to need a shield made of discipline, not speed. If I can’t keep up with his growth, I can at least refuse to be his gravity.” She looked at her hand where old callus met new strength. “I train. Harder than I want. Smarter than I like. Until this… Echo answers to me instead of my fear.”

“You won’t do it alone,” Ryu said.

“I know.” Alise smiled, and the smile had edges and warmth in equal measure. “It’s why we’re not dead.”

They turned away from the cooling camp and took the ladder that dropped like a judgment into deeper dark. Floor 27 received them without ceremony. Somewhere far above, a goddess might have been yawning; somewhere far below, another decided whom to spare by accident. On the landing, Ryu stopped and simply looked.

“What?” Alise asked.

Ryu’s mouth almost smiled. “I never thought I’d say it to you, but—don’t burn too fast.”

Alise tilted her head. “Learned that line on a roof?”

“From someone forthright, wise, and virtuous.”

Alise laughed, and the laugh went farther than she’d intended. “Then listen to your own advice,” she said. “If I start to blaze, be my wind.”

They went. The ceiling crystals thinned until they were a rumor; the walls grew closer, then farther; the path decided not to be a path and had to be corrected. Twice they fought—once an overconfident Ogre that learned grace by subtraction, once a school of Needle Bats that discovered how clean a cut can be when made by two people who know how to be alone together. Between fights they did the truest work: they did not speak when silence was earning its keep, they drank when thirst had become a liar, they named their dead without saying the names.

On Floor 30 the Dungeon took a breath. The air felt like a truce.

Ryu touched Alise’s wrist and nodded toward a shelf of stone that had learned to be a bench. “Eat,” she said, and because authority should come from love or not at all, Alise obeyed. She bit into a dumpling so perfect it felt like an argument won and chewed with the reverence owed to small mercies.

“You scold me for bringing too many,” Ryu said mildly.

“I scold you for scolding me,” Alise corrected, and the old banter settled over their shoulders like a cloak that had never stopped fitting.

When they had finished, Alise set the empty tin aside and drew her rapier across her lap. The blade hummed, faint and eager. Lantern’s Echo warmed to her pulse.

“You realize,” Ryu said, watching the glow, “that if you keep chasing him, you’ll forget which of you is running in front.”

Alise’s smile went small and true. “That is the plan.”

Ryu considered that and nodded once. “Then we train until your plan doesn’t kill you.”

“Teacher Lion,” Alise said solemnly, and bowed over the blade.

Ryu rose, rolled her shoulders, and let her own sword whisper out of the scabbard like a sigh of relief. “Stance.”

They faced each other in the pale, patient light of the safe zone. Above them the false sky considered being blue and decided on honesty instead. The first clash rang clean and bright and familiar; the second drove dust from a crack and memory from a scar; the third set both women leaning over the line between caution and joy.

When they broke, breathless, Alise planted the tip and leaned on the hilt. “Tomorrow,” she said, and it tasted like a vow.

“Again,” Ryu answered, and it tasted like home.

They did not notice, not then, the faint scuff far up the corridor where someone had paused and gone on—another witness moving in some other story. They did not hear the city deciding how to punish kindness. They only knew that the dark was less certain than it had been, and that two lanterns were plenty if you trusted your feet.

Back in the tavern above, Syr would set two cups next to an empty chair and smile at the space like a secret. In the church where a goddess slept chin-in-hands, a rabbit would dream of a field where even monsters could feel the sun. In the long, cold halls where old orders are written on warm paper, a god would tap his fingers and wait for outcomes. But here—in the earned pause of Floor 30—the work was simple.

They cleaned their blades. They waited for their hands to stop shaking. They set a watch and split it without arguing.

Alise lay back on her bedroll and looked up at the rock that never pretended to be sky. “Ryu?”

“Hm.”

“Thank you for following me.”

Ryu’s answer came without ornament. “Thank you for stopping.”

Alise closed her eyes and let the safe zone do the smallest magic it had: hold. Lantern’s Echo settled against her ribs like a tame thing remembering the wild. Somewhere above, a boy walked a road he refused to abandon. Somewhere ahead, the Xenos sang because they had found a word that fit in their mouths.

Alise slept with her hand on the hilt. Ryu watched the dark with the patience of someone who knows it personally. The Dungeon listened, as it always does, and changed nothing at all.

Tea Time Journal — Chapter 27 Interlude

(The starlight meadow outside of time. A blanket. A silver teapot that never empties. Two lanterns—one red, one white—glowing in rhythm.)

Alise → Bell

I brewed the jasmine you like—the one that smells like first courage.
Today I tried to measure my strength against the Dungeon and learned (again) that the Dungeon does not own a ruler. It only owns surprises. I am unhurt; my pride, lightly scuffed. That’s healthy.

Tell me something true: when you stand between fear and the people behind you, do your knees still shake? Mine do. I let them. Knees that know to tremble also know when to stop.

I heard a rumor of a child who shouldn’t exist being sheltered by a boy who shouldn’t stop. I won’t ask you to confirm. Some truths ripen by being carried, not confessed. If your path tonight requires quiet, I will keep pace with my silence.

Assignment (yes, on a date disguised as tea): list three ways to retreat without yielding. Heroes must learn to step back while keeping the door wedged open.

P.S. The red lantern pulsed when I wrote “boy who shouldn’t stop.” Flattering. Inconvenient. Correct.

—A.

Bell → Alise

The jasmine tastes like… breathing out. Thank you.

Something true: yes, my knees still shake. I think that’s how they remember to bend for a sprint. When I’m scared, I look for lines: where a wall ends, where a guard drops, where a friend is waiting to catch the second beat of a rhythm. You taught me that—“speed opens the door; conviction walks through.”

Three retreats that aren’t surrender (homework)

1. Exchange: trade ground for angle; leave a knife’s width to steal a heartbeat later.

2. Braid: fall back into an ally’s lane so two paths become one rope.

3. Promise: mark the floor with intent—I’m coming back for this. (It makes my feet stubborn.)

If there is someone the world says shouldn’t exist, I want them to. If there’s a place the world says they can’t stand, I want to make one step of room and then two. I don’t know if that’s wise. I know it feels right.

P.S. The white lantern flickered when you wrote “date.” Absolutely not flustered. (Slightly flustered.)

—B.

---

Alise → Bell (margin, in quick strokes)

Good answers. Add a fourth: Borrow—use a teacher’s breath until your own smooths out. I’m nearby, even when I’m not.

Also, when you write “feels right,” remember that right is a verb.

—A.

---

Bell → Alise (small, neat hand)

Borrowed. Returning with interest.

If tomorrow is loud, meet me here after. I’ll bring stories; you bring corrections.

—B.

The teapot refills itself. The red lantern hums, the white lantern steadies. Somewhere far away, Orario turns. Here, two pages face each other and refuse to close.

Chapter Text

Rogue Poluda

Chapter 28 : Encounter

Bell Cranel's heart pounded as he descended the spiraling tunnel into the 22nd Floor. The mid-level Dungeon air hung heavy with humidity and the scent of rot. Enormous tree roots twisted across the cavern floor, forming dark alcoves that flickered in the dim light of glowstone crystals. Bell's every sense was on edge-something felt off. Perhaps it was the eerie silence; not a single monster cry or skitter had greeted them for several minutes. He swallowed hard, adjusting his grip on the Hestia Knife. Stay alert... Each footstep of his party seemed too loud in the hush.

Just ahead, Alise Lovell strode confidently, red ponytail swaying. The former captain of the Astraea Familia moved with casual grace, one hand resting on the hilt of her elegant mithril rapier. Bell still couldn't believe she was here with them in the Dungeon. Only yesterday she'd reunited with Ryuu and joined their group under special Guild permission. Now Alise was leading the formation as if she'd always been part of Hestia Familia. Even in the gloom, Bell could see her emerald eyes scanning for threats. Despite the tense atmosphere, Alise's lips were curved in a small, reassuring smile. "Stay close, everyone. Middle floors like this can be tricky," she said lightly, voice echoing. Her calm confidence eased the knot in Bell's stomach a little. She's incredible... he thought, admiring how unruffled she seemed. Beside him, Ryuu Lion silently kept pace, her face composed but eyes warm whenever they flicked to Alise. This was the first time Bell had seen Ryuu truly at ease in the Dungeon-having her long-lost captain back had lifted a great weight from the elf's shoulders.

Behind them, the rest of Bell's party followed carefully. Welf Crozzo had his greatsword out, broad shoulders taut with readiness. Liliruca Arde kept to the center, amber eyes sharp behind her goggles as she balanced her huge backpack of items. Mikoto walked near Lili, one hand hovering over her katana's sheath, while Haruhime lingered close to Mikoto's other side with her fox ears pressed flat in nervousness. It was the full Hestia Familia, united and reinforced by Alise's presence. For the first time, Bell felt they might truly be prepared for anything.

Yet the oppressive quiet persisted. No distant howl, no rustle of monsters in the undergrowth-like foliage. Welf frowned. "Not even a squeak from a bugbear or mad beetle... It's too quiet." His whisper echoed. Lili nodded, ears twitching as she listened. "It's as if the floor has been emptied," she murmured. Mikoto's purple eyes narrowed. "An irregular? Or perhaps a floor boss is on the prowl outside its usual chamber..." Her words trailed off, uncertainty thick in the air.

Alise halted at a junction where the tunnel opened into a cavern shrouded by giant tree trunks. She raised a hand, signaling the party to stop. Everyone tensed, weapons drawn. Bell felt a prickle across his skin-danger. He stepped up beside Alise, and Ryuu did the same on her other side, forming a trio at the vanguard. The three exchanged glances. In that moment, Bell saw the unspoken understanding between Alise and Ryuu-a bond forged years ago. Alise's smile faded as she studied the darkness. "Eyes open. I don't like this feeling..." she whispered. Ryuu's pointed ears twitched. "Captain-" Ryuu caught herself and corrected softly, "Alise. I sense something watching us." Bell inhaled sharply and peered into the black spaces between roots and stalagmites. He couldn't see anything, but a creeping dread climbed his spine.

They advanced slowly into the cavern, back to back in a defensive circle as Lili directed softly, "Form up as practiced. Protect Lady Haruhime." Bell took front guard with Alise and Ryuu flanking him. Welf and Mikoto guarded the sides, Lili and Haruhime stayed center. It was a formation born of trust and countless battles-though Alise was new to it, she slotted in seamlessly. The red-haired woman spared a quick glance over her shoulder, giving Haruhime an encouraging wink. Haruhime managed a brave smile and began quietly murmuring the start of a protective enchantment under her breath, fingers trembling around her grimoire.

They passed a massive root cluster that formed a natural archway-and Bell saw it. At the base of a gnarled tree trunk lay the remains of an adventurer's shield, shredded and pockmarked. And next to it, the ground was littered with... spines. Long, dark-green quills stuck out of the earth like arrows. Bell's eyes widened. Quills? A monster with projectiles? He knelt quickly, tapping one with his knife. The tip broke off, oozing a viscous purple fluid. Poison. A waft of acrid odor burned his nose and he recoiled. "Everyone, careful!" he warned, "These needles are coated with venom."

Welf crouched beside him, grimacing at the stench. Mikoto drew a talisman from her pouch, sensing the miasma. "What monster leaves these?" Welf muttered. Lili's face had gone pale; she rifled through her mental bestiary. "Quills and poison... could it be a Venom Hound? But no, those are smaller." Haruhime hugged her talismans, tails quivering in fear. Bell carefully pushed aside a broad leaf and then saw what made Lili's voice die in her throat-a half-devoured form of a dungeon lizardman, its scaled body riddled with identical quills.

Alise stepped closer, her jaw tightening at the grisly sight. She touched the dead monster gently with her boot. "Killed by those needles..." she murmured. "But these are far larger than any I know on this floor." She exchanged a look with Ryuu. The elf's eyes were haunted, as if recalling an old nightmare. Ryuu's voice was tight. "Captain, you... don't think..." Ryuu couldn't finish the thought, but Bell understood. His heart skipped. Quills, deadly venom, something slaughtering everything... It was disturbingly reminiscent of that creature-the Juggernaut. Bell felt cold sweat on his palms. The Juggernaut he and Ryuu had faced deep in the Dungeon had used razor shards of its body to kill, and its very aura had been terror. Could another such horror be here?

Alise looked between Ryuu and Bell, noticing their uneasy expressions. "You two know something," she said quietly. Bell opened his mouth to explain, but a wet crunch echoed from the darkness beyond. Everyone froze. Skreee... A low, chittering hiss resonated through the cavern, raising every hair on Bell's neck. Slowly, Bell lifted his gaze toward the sound. High above, on a twisted tree limb, two glints of dim light reflected back-a pair of eyes, watching them.

"Above us!" Bell shouted. In that split second, the darkness erupted. A hail of whistling quills showered down from the blackness. "Scatter!" Alise cried, already moving. Bell dove to the side, rolling over a root as several poison spikes slammed into the ground where he'd stood. Mikoto yelped as one grazed her shoulder, slicing her sleeve; she winced but kept running. Welf lifted his greatsword like a shield-three quills thudded into the blade, inches from his face. Lili grabbed Haruhime and pulled her behind a bulwark of stone just in time, a needle skittering off the rock with a plink.

For an instant, Bell's vision was chaos-shadows and darts raining from above, his friends dodging for cover. A primal screech reverberated, filled with unbridled hate. Bell's blood ran cold at the sound. It was intelligent, full of rage-a monster's cry unlike the mindless roars he knew. He scrambled behind a fallen trunk and shouted, "Is everyone okay? Sound off!"

"One scratch-nothing vital," Mikoto called back, though her voice was strained. She pressed a hand to the shallow cut on her arm; already the skin around it was angry red, veins darkening. Poison. Welf cursed under his breath, ripping the embedded quills out of his sword. "I'm fine! Blasted needles-almost had me." Lili peeked from behind the stone, crossbow in hand. "Haruhime and I are uninjured." The pallor of her face belied her calm tone. Haruhime clutched her fox-tail and nodded quickly, though tears of fear brimmed in her eyes. Ryuu had flipped backward in a graceful arc and now crouched beside Bell, her wooden sword drawn. The elf's face was steeled, but Bell saw it-just a flicker of dread in her teal eyes, recognition of an all-too-familiar threat. "I'm alright," she said softly. Finally Alise's voice came from somewhere to Bell's left: "Still in one piece!" There was a fierce determination in her tone.

Bell pressed his back against the trunk, panting. His heart thundered. Above, the creature skittered across the ceiling of the cavern with a horrible scraping sound, claws against stone. In the meager light, he caught glimpses of it: a long, serpentine silhouette slithering between stalactites, its body covered in spiny protrusions. It moved unnaturally fast, one moment on the ceiling, the next clinging to a vertical pillar of rock like an insect. Bell's stomach clenched. It was like a dragon, yet lean and flexible as a snake. And those eyes-he'd seen them for an instant-glowed with a cunning malice.

Alise emerged from behind a boulder, standing in the open to draw its attention. "Face us, you damned monster!" she shouted, voice echoing defiantly. In the gloom, her red hair and scarlet armor plating seemed to blaze. Bell realized she was deliberately baiting it. The creature paused in its frenetic movement, perhaps surprised by the lone human bold enough to challenge it. With a guttural hiss, it began to descend a wall, entering a shaft of faint crystal light. At last, they saw their attacker clearly.

Bell felt a chill despite the humid air. The monster was massive-at least eight meders long. Its body was dark green and scaled, like a dragon's hide stretched over a sinuous frame. It stood on four splayed, clawed feet when on the ground, but its posture was low and serpentine. Along its back bristled hundreds of long quills, each tipped with glistening purple poison. The face was draconic yet strangely lean, almost skeletal, with needle-like fangs protruding from its maw. And its eyes... its eyes held a cruel intelligence, gleaming yellow slits that darted between each of them.

"A-A dragon? Here?" Welf breathed, stepping up alongside Bell with disbelieving horror. Lili's throat bobbed. "No... I think I've heard of this in stories-Peluda," she whispered. "A creature with a snake-like dragon body and venomous spines... But those are supposed to dwell in the Deep Floors." Her words trembled with fear. Bell's mind raced. Peluda-a name from an old bestiary entry he'd once read, a monster known to be as lethal as it was rare. What was one doing here? And why... why did it feel so evil?

Ryuu's knuckles were white around her sword. Bell heard her sharp intake of breath. "That thing... it feels just like..." she murmured, unable to finish. Alise's gaze never left the monster as it crept closer, but she spoke, voice tight with restrained emotion: "The Juggernaut." Ryuu flinched at the word. Bell's chest constricted. Alise had guessed what he and Ryuu feared-this creature's murderous aura was the same as that calamity. Bell remembered the carnage the Juggernaut had wrought on the deep floors, how unstoppable it had seemed. And now a similar horror was before them.

The Peluda lowered its head, lips peeling back in a grotesque approximation of a grin. "Adventurersss..." a sibilant voice issued from it, surprisingly clear. It could speak-at least that one word, dripping with hate. Bell felt a jolt. A talking monster confirmed it: this was a Xenos, one of the intelligent monsters he had sworn to help. But everything about its glare promised no kinship, only malice. The creature's voice bubbled into a guttural snarl. "Kill... you... all." The final word twisted into a screech as it lunged forward.

"Scatter and regroup!" Lili cried out, trying to maintain formation, but the Peluda's sudden charge shattered their circle. The monster barreled at Alise, recognizing her as the provocateur. Alise stood her ground with a fearless grin. "Come then!" she yelled, bracing. At the last instant she sidestepped with incredible agility, avoiding the monster's snapping jaws by a hair. Her blade flashed out, scoring a line of sparks across the creature's scaled flank. The Peluda howled in irritation, whirling far faster than something its size should. Its tail whipped around, a blur of spines aimed straight at Alise.

Ryuu was there in a blink. "Alise, above you!" Ryuu's warning came as she interposed herself, wooden sword raised. The tail collided with Ryuu's block, the force sending a shockwave through the air. Ryuu gasped at the strength, feet skidding back. Quills from the tail shattered, spraying. One nicked Ryuu's cheek, drawing blood; another glanced off Alise's shoulder plate. Alise's eyes went wide. "Ryuu!" In that heartbeat, Bell darted forward with lightning reflexes, seizing Ryuu by the waist and pulling her out of range as the tail slammed down, exploding the ground where she'd stood into splinters and poison dust.

A cloud of toxic purple mist billowed from the broken quills, forcing Bell, Ryuu, and Alise to retreat coughing. Mikoto unfurled a paper charm and incanted, "By the cleansing wind, disperse!" A burst of enchanted air current cleared the poison fog before it could engulf them. But in that moment of chaos, the Peluda Xenos scuttled back into the darkness with alarming speed. Its mocking hiss echoed from somewhere above. It was toying with them-striking and vanishing like a ghost.

Bell's arms trembled as he steadied Ryuu. She had a shallow cut on her face, and beads of sweat from the poison's burn dotted her skin. "Ryuu, are you okay?" he asked urgently. She nodded, regaining her footing. "I'm fine... just a scratch." Alise checked her own shoulder where a quill had glanced off her crimson armor. The spike hadn't pierced the special plate, and Alise appeared unaffected by the poison. Bell recalled that Alise's equipment was said to protect against venom-a relief, given their foe.

Around them, the others regrouped, forming a tighter cluster. Welf's face was grim. "That thing moves like a damned insect!" he growled. "How do we hit it if it won't stand still?" Mikoto grimaced from the sting in her arm. "It struck and retreated... This is a predator's behavior. It's trying to wear us down." Lili's small frame shook but her eyes were determined. "We need to find a defensible spot. This open cavern leaves us exposed." She quickly surveyed their surroundings. "There, against that rocky ledge-if we put our backs to it, it can't circle completely around us."

"Agreed," Alise said at once, already motioning everyone toward the rock wall. Bell covered their retreat, senses straining for the next attack. Somewhere in the darkness, he heard dripping water and the faint scrape of claws. The Peluda was circling, looking for another angle to strike. And Bell realized with dawning horror that it was herding them, as a hunter drives prey. This Xenos was no ally of theirs-it was a rogue, an outcast consumed by bloodlust.

They pressed into position with the wall at their backs. The entire party breathed heavily, adrenaline coursing. Bell found himself shoulder-to-shoulder with Alise and Welf at the front, Ryuu and Mikoto just behind, and Lili and Haruhime in the center. The dynamic had shifted-where Bell usually led, Alise now naturally assumed command. But rather than feeling undermined, Bell felt relieved. Alise's presence was like a beacon of courage. He saw her draw a deep breath, calming herself. Then her voice rang out clearly in the dark: "We don't want to fight you!"

Bell and the others looked at her in surprise. Alise took a step forward, raising her sword defensively but not attacking. Her eyes searched the shadows. "If you can speak, you can reason. Why are you doing this?" she called. Bell realized she was attempting to reach the Xenos with words. It was a slim hope, but one worth trying-Bell himself had befriended Xenos like Wiene before. Perhaps this one could be reasoned with? He held his breath, heart hammering as silence fell. For a moment, the creature ceased moving. Those glowing eyes blinked from a high perch.

Then a guttural, hate-filled laugh emanated. The Peluda Xenos crept forward into a pool of dim light once more, head cocked unnaturally. "Reasssson? Hah... You killed usss. All of you adventurers..." it snarled, voice gravelly yet intelligible. "No peace... only death for my kind." Bell's chest tightened. He could hear genuine rage and pain in the creature's voice-a twisted echo of what the kinder Xenos had expressed about humans who hunted them. This monster had let anger consume it entirely.

Alise's face fell slightly, sympathy flickering in her eyes. "We're not all like those who hurt you," she tried to say, softer now. "Some of us want to help the Xenos-" But the monster's roar cut her off. "LIES!" it howled, spitting droplets of poison from its maw. "Adventurers killed me... over and over... Now I'll kill you!" Bell felt an icy realization: this Peluda was beyond reason. Perhaps in its past life, it had known nothing but slaughter, and even rebirth as a Xenos hadn't broken its cycle of hatred.

With a shrill cry, the Peluda leapt from the wall directly toward them. "Incoming!" Bell shouted. There was no more room for talk-battle had begun in earnest. Alise's jaw set with resolve. "Everyone, prepare for combat!" she commanded. Bell raised his knives, fiery determination surging despite the fear. He exchanged a look with Alise and Ryuu on either side. This was their first fight together, and it was against something truly nightmarish. Yet in Alise's confident smirk and Ryuu's fierce gaze, Bell found courage. They would face this horror together.

The Peluda Xenos hit the ground before them with earth-shaking force, cracking the stone floor. It reared back and unleashed a shriek that reverberated in Bell's bones. Quills bristled along its spine like a thousand drawn arrows. In the half-light, Bell saw venom dripping from each tip. He tightened his grip and steadied his breathing. The cavern lights dimmed as a cloud drifted across a far crystal-casting them all in gloom with two blazing amber eyes glaring out.

Horror and uncertainty hung thick as poison in the air. Bell's voice was barely above a whisper as he vowed, mostly to himself: "We will make it through this... all of us." His friends around him tensed but nodded, sharing that fragile determination. And then the rogue Xenos struck, and the cavern erupted into chaos once more. The deadly encounter had begun in full, with fate itself hanging in the balance.

(to be continued...)

Chapter Text

Chapter 29 : Fight

The rogue Xenos lunged, and the battle for their lives began. A fusillade of poisonous quills rained down, clattering against rock and weapon. Bell darted forward, engaging the creature head-on to draw its focus. His Argonaut skill stirred faintly in his blood-facing such a powerful foe ignited that heroic yearning within him. But charging a monster of this caliber alone would be suicide. Fortunately, he wasn't alone.

"Cover Bell!" Alise shouted. In a flash of red, she was at Bell's side, matching his advance. Alise moved like a crimson lightning bolt-her sword Crimson Order arced, trailing embers as she activated a fragment of her fire enchant magic. With a roar, she unleashed a narrow burst of flame toward the Peluda's eyes. The creature recoiled, hissing, momentarily blinded by the sudden blaze. Bell didn't waste the opening; he dashed in low, slicing at one of its front legs with the Hestia Knife. His blade bit into scale, drawing dark ichor and an enraged screech.

The Peluda retaliated with a sweep of its claws. Bell gasped as a taloned foot larger than his body came crashing down. In that split second Alise rammed her shoulder into him, knocking Bell out of the claw's trajectory. The ground where he'd stood exploded under the impact, shards of stone flying. Bell rolled to his feet, stunned. "Thanks-!" he managed, but Alise had already moved, her attention fully on the enemy. There was no time for anything except raw instinct and trust.

Ryuu appeared on the creature's opposite flank, silent as a shadow. The elf sprang up with incredible agility, kicking off a root to gain height. "Tempest!" Ryuu intoned, casting her magic without the full chant-emerald wind swirled around her wooden sword. She brought it down in a two-handed slash, blades of wind scything toward the Peluda's hide. The cutting gales struck true, drawing shallow gouges and distracting the monster with stinging pain.

Meanwhile, Welf and Mikoto took up positions guarding Lili and Haruhime. "We've got your backs!" Welf yelled. He swung his greatsword in a wide arc to intercept a cluster of quills the beast shot towards the group's center. His blade shattered them mid-air in a burst of toxic splinters. Welf hissed as a few shards cut into his forearm, but he shook off the pain. Mikoto stood poised, her injured arm tucked close but her sword in her other hand, ready to deflect any attack on the rear. Despite the poison coursing through her scratch, she steadied her breathing in a practiced meditative focus, suppressing the spread of toxin as best she could. Lili was rapidly pulling vials from her backpack, lining up antidotes and potions for quick access, her small hands astonishingly steady. Haruhime knelt behind them, golden eyes wide with worry as she resumed chanting her support magic under her breath-preparing to invoke her Level Boost when the moment was right.

Bell ducked another swipe of the monster's spiked tail, wincing as the tail smashed into the stone wall behind them, cracking their supposed defensive cover. They couldn't let this battle turn into a war of attrition; the Peluda's strategy was clear. It wanted to wound them, let the poison and panic take hold, and finish them off once they were weak. We have to turn the tide. Bell realized they needed to strike a decisive blow soon, or they'd all be in grave danger.

"Lili, any plans?!" Bell shouted between exchanging blows with the creature. Lili's analytical voice rang out, projecting over the din: "Aim for the magic stone! It's likely in the chest or forehead. But its hide is tough-normal attacks barely faze it!" She bit her lip, watching their attacks leave only superficial marks on the sinewy dragon scales. "And beware its breath attack!" she added. "Peluda can breathe fire!"

As if on cue, the monster reared back and sucked in a great gulp of air. Its chest swelled. Bell's eyes widened in recognition. "FIREBREATH, MOVE!" he screamed. Bell leapt away just as a cone of scorching flame erupted from the creature's maw. The inferno whooshed past, heat singing his white hair. Welf tackled Haruhime and Lili behind the ledge, shielding them with his armored back. Mikoto flipped behind the rocky outcrop, but cried out-her slower, poisoned reflexes left her leg grazed by the edge of the flames. Alise however did not retreat; instead, she planted her feet and crossed her arms in front of her face, enduring the blaze head-on. Her crimson breastplate glowed from the heat but held firm, designed to resist flame. When the fire cleared, Alise stood unharmed, steam rising from her enchanted armor. Bell stared in awe-her bravery was beyond anything he'd seen.

Alise seized that moment. With a defiant grin, she began to chant, voice ringing: "O unconquered flame, scarlet justice-Agaris Alvesynth!" In response, fiery red runes ignited around her free hand. Flames erupted to coat her legs, gauntlets, and blade. Her magic enveloped her like a living aura of fire. Empowered and ablaze, Alise launched herself at the Peluda with renewed ferocity. She moved faster than before, an afterimage of fire trailing each strike. Her flaming sword crashed against the monster's scales, each blow now leaving charred cuts where before there had been barely scratches.

The Peluda shrieked in anger as Alise drove it back a few paces, her relentless assault forcing it on the defensive. Yet even as she pressed it, the monster twisted its serpentine neck and fired another volley of quills at close range. Alise gasped as several poisonous spikes struck her-two glanced off her heat-resistant breastplate, but one found a gap in her side armor, piercing into her waist. She staggered, flames around her wavering. "Alise!" Ryuu cried in alarm.

The monster snarled and slammed a forelimb forward. Alise, regaining focus despite the pain, managed to parry the claw with her sword but was knocked off balance. The Peluda's tail whipped around viciously, this time targeting the support line. It arced towards Lili, Haruhime, and Welf with deadly intent. "Look out!" Bell yelled, already sprinting. Lili froze, eyes wide behind her goggles as the spiked tail sped at them like a giant flail. Welf roared and planted himself in front of the smaller girls, sword raised horizontally. The tail hammered into Welf's greatsword, a massive force meeting an immovable object. Welf held, muscles bulging, but the impact was tremendous. He coughed blood as the shock reverberated through him, knees buckling. The tail withdrew for a split second, then came crashing a second time even faster. Welf couldn't fully block-this hit sent him flying back, slamming into Haruhime and Lili. All three tumbled hard against the cavern wall.

"Welf! Lili! Haruhime!" Mikoto shouted, desperate, as she saw them crumple. Welf slumped forward onto hands and knees, his sword shattered into two pieces. Blood dripped down his back where dozens of small quill fragments had embedded. Lili lay dazed, a trickle of blood on her forehead from hitting the wall; her eyes fluttered. Haruhime was sprawled, breathing but clearly stunned, her chant cut off mid-spell. The protective line had collapsed in one blow.

Bell felt a surge of panic and fury. Without thinking, he charged at the monster's tail, which was recoiling for a possible third strike. He couldn't let it hit them again-if it struck the fallen group now, they could all die. "Hyaaaa!" Bell unleashed an angry shout and slashed at the tail with his Hestia Knife and Ushiwakamaru dagger in a cross. His blades cut into the scaled tail, drawing a spurt of dark blood. The Peluda hissed and yanked its tail back, away from the vulnerable party members. Bell placed himself between the monster and his downed friends, breathing hard, knives raised. His arms trembled from the force of blocking the tail's momentum, but he held firm, glaring defiantly at the beast.

The Peluda's eyes narrowed, assessing Bell anew-this small human who dared stand against its might. With an almost contemptuous growl, it pivoted, deciding to eliminate this nuisance first. "Bell, careful!" Ryuu shouted as she darted to cover Welf and the others, dragging Lili and Haruhime further from the fray. Mikoto scrambled to assist her, handing Lili a quick antidote for Welf. Despite her ringing head, Lili forced herself up to tend to Welf, who was coughing and cursing his broken sword. Haruhime, shaken but conscious, resumed her spell through trembling lips, knowing their only chance now lay in her magic.

The monster lunged at Bell, claws extended in a flurry of swipes. Bell's reflexes were pushed to their limit. He bobbed and weaved, parrying what he could with his daggers, acutely aware that a single solid hit could rip him apart. He felt each near miss as a rush of wind against his skin. One glancing blow caught his left arm, tearing his light armor and sending a flare of pain through him. Bell gritted his teeth; warm blood trickled down to his elbow, but the cut wasn't deep.

He retaliated, darting in to thrust his knife at what he hoped was a soft underbelly spot. The Peluda twisted and a quill from its chest shot out point-blank. Bell barely twisted aside-the quill grazed his ribs, slicing his side open with burning agony. He cried out as the toxin burned like fire, momentarily staggering him. Seeing Bell hurt, Alise let out a furious shout, her aura of flames flaring bright once more. "Get away from him!" She rushed the creature's flank and slammed her flaming sword into its hind leg with all her strength. There was a crackle-at last, scale gave way as her blade bit deep. The Peluda roared in pain, momentarily forgetting Bell. It spun on Alise, tail and quills lashing wildly in defense.

One of those wild quills struck Alise's thigh. Another grazed her cheek, drawing blood. But Alise didn't back down, even as her leg wobbled from the venom seeping into it. Bell knew the poison's pain well-like liquid fire in the veins-yet Alise held her stance. Her eyes met Bell's for a heartbeat across the frenzied melee. He saw her silently ask: Are you still with me? Bell clenched his daggers and nodded, ignoring his own throbbing wounds. He wouldn't let her fight this thing alone.

The two charged together in tacit synchrony-Bell from the right, Alise from the left. Bell ducked under a snapping jaw and slammed his dagger into the Peluda's side, aiming for between ribs. At the same moment, Alise leapt and brought her flaming blade down toward the creature's neck. The combined assault confused the monster; it flinched from Bell's sting, spoiling the angle of Alise's strike. Instead of decapitating, her sword carved a burning gash across the beast's shoulder. The smell of charred flesh filled the air as the flame enchantment seared its scales. The Peluda shrieked, tail thrashing in agony, catching Bell across the chest as it flailed.

Bell was flung backward, pain exploding where several quills raked across him. He hit the ground hard, vision flashing white. The world rang. Gasping, he tried to push himself up, but his muscles twitched, unresponsive for a moment. Three quills had torn shallow furrows across his torso-his armor ruined, blood welling from poisonous lacerations. The pain was instant and overwhelming; the toxin burning in the wounds sapped his strength. Bell's breathing quickened in panic. No... if I go down now...

Alise landed from her jump, but her wounded leg buckled and she fell to one knee. She yanked the quill from her thigh with a grunt, tossing it aside. Her breath came in ragged pants, yet her eyes blazed with refusal to surrender. The Peluda itself was bleeding from multiple wounds, its movements a fraction slower now, but its anger had reached a fever pitch. It gathered itself, preparing a lethal pounce to finish both Bell and Alise while they were struggling.

"Bell! Alise!" Ryuu's voice cut through the haze. Bell turned his head weakly to see Ryuu standing partway between them and the others. She had Welf's spare longsword in hand-Welf himself was conscious but badly injured, propped against Lili. Mikoto stood guard near Haruhime, who was still chanting desperately, tears streaming down her cheeks as she forced the magic. The glow of her summoning circle was growing under her, almost ready. But they might not last until it was done.

Ryuu knew it too. Summoning all her will, the elf planted her feet, facing the monster directly to protect her fallen comrades. She locked eyes with the Peluda Xenos. To that hateful gaze she proclaimed coldly, "I will not let you harm them further." Something in her voice-an icy fury-actually made the beast hesitate a half-second. Ryuu's body tensed, and Bell recognized that stance. She was going to unleash that spell: Luminous Wind at full power, the very magic that had nearly cost her life against the Juggernaut once. If she did it without Haruhime's boost or any support, at her current level, it could kill her from Mind exhaustion or shatter her weapon. But Ryuu seemed ready to make that sacrifice. Her eyes flickered to Alise, a silent apology and love in them.

Alise's face twisted in horror as she realized what Ryuu intended. "Ryuu, NO!" she screamed. But Ryuu had already begun to recite the final trigger of her spell. A green aura pulsed around her as wind gathered, responding to her desperation. The Peluda, sensing a threat, hissed and charged at Ryuu to stop her casting. Its broken leg dragged slightly but it still covered ground with terrifying speed. Ryuu stood her ground, the hurricane of magic building around her.

Before the monster could reach her, a new voice rose above the din-soft, ethereal, filled with resolve: "Burn to cinders the karma of battle-Uchide no Kozuchi!" Haruhime's chant completed at last. In a flash of golden light, her fox-spirit magic engulfed Ryuu and Alise both. Bell watched in awe as Haruhime's Level Boost took effect. Ryuu's body glowed briefly, her strength and speed temporarily surging as if she were a full level higher. Alise too was bathed in the golden light; despite not being a member of Hestia Familia, Haruhime's magic-born of her earnest wish to save them-extended beyond its usual bounds to Alise. The red-haired warrior felt sudden vitality flood her veins, burning away the haze of poison and fatigue. Her injuries didn't vanish, but a newfound power welled up inside her like a second wind.

Ryuu's incantation, already at the tipping point, now exploded with amplified might. "Luminous Wind!!" she cried, slashing her sword forward. A storm of emerald blades of air howled forth, magnified by Haruhime's magic to a scale never seen before. The pressure of the wind was so intense that Bell, still on the ground several meders away, had to shield his face. The hurricane-force blades tore into the charging Peluda. The monster roared as dozens of invisible slashes cut across its body, shredding scales and quills alike. Under the relentless onslaught, the beast was actually forced backwards, digging its claws in to resist. Chunks of quills and blood sprayed as Ryuu's magic ravaged it.

When the wind finally died, Ryuu staggered, the glowing enchantment around her fading. She managed to remain standing, but Bell could see the exhaustion in her eyes; the level boost had prevented her from collapsing outright, but she was nearly spent. The Peluda Xenos was now covered in wounds-several quills shorn off, one eye cut and bleeding, its front limbs quivering from deep lacerations. It bled from a dozen gashes. The cavern floor was littered with green scales and broken spines. The monster's breathing had turned ragged, a mix of fury and labored pain.

Yet somehow it still stood. And its hate had not dimmed-a rasping snarl escaped it as it prepared to gamble everything on one final attack to annihilate them.

Chapter Text

Chapter 30

Bell struggled to his feet, swaying. His own wounds screamed, but the scene before him compelled him to move. Alise rose as well, fire still flickering around her, now intermingled with Haruhime’s golden aura. She looked like a war goddess reborn—her red hair flowing, her blade coated in flame, eyes burning with determination. Bell’s heart skipped; even injured, she was magnificent and unyielding.

The Peluda reared up, putting all weight on its hind legs—a desperate stance. It opened its maw wider than ever, magical energy coalescing in its throat alongside flames and vile miasma. Bell’s eyes widened in alarm. “It’s gathering everything for a blast—fire and poison both!” he shouted hoarsely. If that hit them, none would survive. Mikoto, Lili, and Welf, all battered, looked on in horror, unable to intervene in time. Ryuu tried to lift her sword again, but her arms trembled with exhaustion—she had nothing left for another big strike.

Alise, however, stepped forward calmly to meet the monster’s do-or-die assault. A serene focus had overtaken her features, even as blood dripped from her side and thigh. She glanced back at Bell, giving him a fearless grin despite everything. “Bell, fight with me,” she said, as if inviting him on an adventure rather than into mortal peril. Bell felt a swell of emotion—admiration, trust, and something more—flood through him. In that instant, pain and fear fell away. He returned her smile, nodding firmly. “Right by your side.”

Bell willed the last dregs of his strength into his skill. He raised his Hestia Knife, the blade chiming with faint light. The image of a hero saving his companions filled his mind—his unwavering desire to protect everyone. Argonaut activated. A shimmering, pale glow began to engulf his knife, growing brighter as he poured his heart into it. Seeing this, Alise seemed to sense what he was doing. To Bell’s surprise, she shut her eyes for a heartbeat, whispering something like a prayer. When her eyes opened, they flashed with crimson light—a trigger of her own skill. Alise’s Falna markings burned under her armor, responding to dire need. Lubrude Bequia—her rare skill that skyrocketed her abilities in the face of powerful enemies and adversity—fully bloomed. Combined with Haruhime’s boost, it elevated her to a realm of strength beyond a normal Level 5 or even 6. Flames around her sword intensified, turning white-hot.

The Peluda Xenos spewed its final attack: a terrifying torrent of mixed flame and toxic smog blasted toward them, a hurricane of fire and poison potent enough to melt stone. Alise and Bell moved in unison. “NOW!” Alise cried. Both of them lunged forward, side by side, straight into the oncoming blast.

Bell channeled every last ounce of Argonaut power he had charged into a single thrust. “Firebolt!” he roared, layering his fast-cast magic atop the charged knife. His Hestia Knife glowed brilliant gold and red, flaring like a small sun in his hand. He drove it forward into the heart of the oncoming fiery maelstrom. The golden Argonaut energy and his crimson flames combined in a blinding flash. For a moment, it was as if Bell held a shining spear of light that pierced through the monster’s attack. The fire breath split around the radiance, the poisonous fumes vaporized by its intensity.

In perfect sync, Alise leapt through the parted flames right beside that spear of light. “For justice… and for my family!” she cried, voice echoing with raw emotion. Her sword, wreathed in incandescent fire, sliced through the air in a horizontal arc as she passed through the breach Bell created. Alise and Bell’s combined onslaught struck the Peluda like a divine hammer.

Bell’s Argonaut-infused Firebolt hit first, exploding against the monster’s open maw. The golden-red blast detonated with a thunderclap, snapping the Peluda’s head back and silencing its attack. In that same breath, Alise closed the distance and struck. Her blade, glowing white-hot, cleaved clean through the Peluda’s thick neck in one sweeping motion, empowered beyond mortal limits. For an instant, time seemed frozen: Alise landing on the far side of the beast, kneeling with sword extended, Bell standing just before the monster with arm outstretched, his knife still crackling with residual light.

Then a slick shhhhlick sound followed. The Peluda’s head slid from its neck and thudded to the ground with an earth-shaking weight. The massive body remained upright for a heartbeat, claws twitching, before crashing down in a cloud of dust and ash. A final wheeze escaped its jaws… and then it moved no more. The rogue Xenos was defeated.

For a long moment, no one made a sound. Bell stood panting, trying to comprehend that it was over. The air was thick with the scent of charred flesh and ozone from their attack. His knife’s glow faded, leaving only the flicker of flames along the cavern walls from residual fires. The Peluda’s corpse began to dissolve into ash, its monstrous form collapsing into the Dungeon floor as all monsters do upon death—Xenos or not, it returned to its origin.

Alise slowly rose from her kneel, her sword still in hand. The flames around it sputtered out as her magic ended, leaving the blade smoking. Blood trickled from her many wounds, yet she paid them no heed. She turned back toward Bell. Their eyes met through the settling dust—Bell’s wide and silver, Alise’s fierce green softening with relief. A smile, warm and victorious, blossomed on Alise’s face. Bell felt one answer on his own lips, an overwhelming gratitude and admiration swelling in his chest. They had done it, together.

Behind them, the others began to stir from stunned silence. Lili let out a whoop of joy, though it came out weak and wobbly. “They… they won!” she exclaimed in disbelief and happiness, slumping against Welf in relief. Welf, battered and poisoned, managed a grin. “Hah… That Rabbit… always pulling off something crazy,” he rasped, pride in his eyes as he watched Bell. Mikoto closed her eyes and murmured a prayer of thanks to the gods, her shoulders sagging with exhaustion and gratitude. Haruhime burst into sobs of relief, covering her mouth with trembling hands—her spell had worked, they were saved. Ryuu, swaying on her feet, finally allowed herself to collapse to her knees. She was smiling—truly smiling—tears gathering at the corners of her eyes as she beheld Alise standing triumphant. A weight that had burdened her heart for years seemed to lift in that moment.

Bell’s knees buckled as the adrenaline drained away. He nearly fell, but Alise was suddenly there, catching him under the arm. She helped lower him gently to sit on a fallen root. “Easy, hero,” she teased softly, though her voice was thick with emotion. “That last move took a lot out of you.” Bell realized he was shaking; the toll of the battle and Argonaut’s strain made his limbs feel like jelly. Still, he managed a chuckle. “Y-you… you’re one to talk, Miss Alise,” he replied, noting her own trembling form. Blood stained her side and leg heavily now that the fight was over and nothing held back the pain. Her face was gaunt with fatigue, yet she remained upright, concern for Bell seemingly overriding her own hurts.

Before Bell could protest, Alise suddenly pulled him into an embrace. Bell’s eyes widened in surprise. Alise was warm—and despite the metallic scent of blood and the soot and sweat, she smelled faintly of something comforting, like embers and roses. She hugged him tightly to her armored chest for a brief moment. “Thank you,” she whispered near his ear, voice shaking. Bell realized her shoulders were trembling. Was she… crying? Just a little? “Thank you for fighting by my side… and for giving me the strength to end it.” Bell felt his face heat, and an ache in his heart that wasn’t from injury. He lifted his arms and returned the hug awkwardly around her waist, mindful of her wounds. “We did it together,” he said softly. “All of us.”

Alise released him, brushing quickly at her eyes. The rest of the party gathered around now, limping and shuffling but grinning with elation. Lili and Mikoto hurried to Bell and Alise’s side, already fussing over their injuries. “Sir Bell, Lady Alise, you’re hurt! Here—potions, now!” Lili insisted, pressing a high-grade potion into Bell’s hand and practically uncorking another with her teeth for Alise. Mikoto, despite her own burn and poison, lent her shoulder to Alise to lean on. “Please, drink. We can’t have our saviors collapsing after the victory,” Mikoto said kindly.

Welf lowered himself next to Bell with a groan, one arm around Haruhime for support. He thumped Bell’s back lightly. “That was one hell of a flashy finisher, Bell,” he said, trying to sound light, though his voice quavered from lingering pain. “Remind me to never doubt your crazy ideas.” Bell gave a sheepish smile and winced as the potion stung his cuts closing. “Honestly, I didn’t know if that would work either.” He looked over at Alise, who was obediently drinking her potion under Mikoto’s stern eye. The gashes on her leg and side began to knit slowly, though she’d clearly need more treatment later, especially for the poison. “If Alise hadn’t been there… I… I couldn’t have done it alone.” Bell’s admission was quiet, but everyone heard it.

Ryuu, now sitting on the ground, coughed softly. “And if Bell hadn’t been here, Alise might not have succeeded either. You complemented each other perfectly.” Her eyes shone with pride for both of them. Haruhime nodded vigorously, wiping her tears. “It was like watching two halves of a whole,” she agreed. The renart’s face was flushed from crying, but a radiant smile was on her lips.

Alise, having recovered enough to stand on her own, stepped over to Ryuu first. Without a word, she knelt and threw her arms around the elf. Ryuu gasped softly as Alise embraced her tightly, but then closed her eyes and returned the hug with equal fervor. “I thought I’d lost you again,” Alise whispered, voice hitching. “Seeing you nearly sacrifice yourself… please, never scare me like that, Ryuu.” Ryuu’s composure finally broke; a sob escaped as she held Alise close. “I-I’m sorry… I just couldn’t bear the thought of losing you… or anyone,” she managed. Alise stroked Ryuu’s hair comfortingly. “We’re alive. All of us. That’s what matters.”

The others respectfully gave them a moment. Bell felt a lump in his throat at the sight. He remembered how often Ryuu had spoken of her late familia, how she’d carried guilt and loneliness for so long. And here was her beloved captain, alive and in her arms, both of them crying softly in relief and joy. It warmed Bell’s heart beyond words, and he discreetly wiped his eyes, which had grown misty.

After a minute, Alise helped Ryuu to her feet and turned to the whole group. She placed a hand on Bell’s shoulder, another on Ryuu’s. With a grateful, almost motherly look, she said, “You all fought bravely. Each one of you.” Her gaze swept across Welf, who gave a thumbs-up despite leaning on Lili; Mikoto, who bowed her head modestly; Haruhime, who blushed at the praise; Lili, who straightened proudly despite tears in the corners of her eyes. “This monster… this Xenos… was unlike any foe I’ve faced. Without everyone’s support—Haruhime’s magic, Ryuu’s ferocity, Welf and Mikoto’s defense, Lili’s leadership, and Bell’s… Bell’s heart—we could not have prevailed.” Alise’s voice was warm and sincere, carrying the weight of her respect for them.

Bell felt embarrassment and happiness flood him in equal measure. Coming from Alise Lovell—the hero he’d heard so many stories about—that praise meant a great deal. “We only succeeded because of you, too,” he insisted. “Your command and strength… it held us together when things looked grim.” He gave her a genuine smile. “Fighting alongside you, Lady Alise—it was an honor.”

Alise laughed softly. “Just ‘Alise’ is fine. We’re comrades now, aren’t we?” She playfully ruffled Bell’s white hair, and Bell laughed, feeling oddly at ease. It struck him how naturally she fit with them—like a missing puzzle piece clicking into place.

Lili cleared her throat, practical even amid the emotional moment. “We should leave this floor soon. Welf and Mikoto need proper antidotes and treatment, and we’re all exhausted.” She eyed the slowly dissolving remains of the Peluda uneasily. “And before the Dungeon spawns something nasty to replace that thing.” It was a fair point; they had made a tremendous racket, and no doubt the Dungeon was destabilized here.

Welf tried to stand tall, though Lili and Haruhime hovered to steady him. “I can walk,” he insisted. “Don’t fuss.” But he gave a grateful nod to Haruhime, who had begun applying a light Chienthrope salve on his quill cuts to slow the poison. Mikoto sheathed her sword and adjusted her stance, hiding a slight limp. “I concur. Our mission is accomplished: the threat is neutralized.” A small smile touched her lips. “Though it was hardly the mission we expected.”

The party began to gather their belongings, Lili quickly retrieving any unbroken quarrels and distributing the last of the antidote doses. She made sure Mikoto drank one for her burn, and forced Welf to down another despite his grumbling about the bitter taste. Bell took a dose too, at her insistence, even though the potion had healed his cuts—the poison in his system still needed purging. Alise, to everyone’s surprise, seemed relatively steady despite being hit by venom multiple times. She shrugged when Lili looked at her in wonder. “Abnormal resistance. Perk of my old status,” she explained with a wink. Nonetheless, she accepted an antidote draught to be safe.

As they prepared to depart, Bell walked over to where the Peluda’s enormous head lay partially dissolved. Its once-fierce eyes were now lifeless orbs. Despite everything, Bell felt a pang of sorrow. This creature had been born a Xenos, intelligent and feeling, yet consumed by rage and pain. Perhaps in another life, under different circumstances, it could have been an ally. He murmured a quiet apology in his heart that they couldn’t save it in a better way. Gently, he placed a hand on the cooling, scaly snout for a moment—a gesture of respect for a fallen opponent.

Alise came to stand beside him, leaning lightly on him for balance. “It had to be done,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. Her tone was sad but firm. Bell nodded. “I know. I just… wish the Xenos didn’t have to suffer like this. That hatred…” He swallowed, recalling the creature’s venomous words. Alise sighed softly. “There is much wrong in the world, Bell. We do what we can, with justice as our guide.” She turned to him, giving a gentle smile. “Today, our justice was protecting our friends from a great evil. No one can fault that.” Bell looked into her kind green eyes and found reassurance. “You’re right,” he said, standing a little straighter. “Thank you.”

The group formed up to leave, Alise and Bell both keeping themselves at the ready in case the Dungeon had any surprises left. But the path back was strangely calm—almost as if the Dungeon itself acknowledged the removal of an abomination from its depths and granted them safe passage. Only the distant drip of water and crackle of fading flames from their battlefield accompanied them.

Ryuu walked close to Alise, their hands brushing now and then. Finally, after stealing a few glances, Ryuu broke the silence. “Alise… earlier, your finishing move with Bell… it was astonishing.” There was a subtle lightness in Ryuu’s expression, a pride that her beloved captain had achieved something new. Alise chuckled. “I didn’t even have a name for it. It just… happened.” She flashed Bell a grin. “Guess we’ll have to come up with something cool to call our synchronized technique, huh?” Bell felt a flush of embarrassment and honor. “Maybe leave the naming to Lili or Welf,” he joked bashfully. “I’m bad at naming things.” Everyone chuckled, the tension finally melting into relief-fueled mirth.

Welf rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “How about Crimson Argonaut?” he proposed. “There was a lot of red and heroism going on.” Lili snorted. “Too on the nose. What about Twin Flame Strike?” Haruhime murmured shyly, “It looked like two shooting stars. Perhaps… Gemini Nova?” Mikoto gave an approving nod at that. Bell and Alise exchanged looks, laughing at their friends’ enthusiasm. “We have time to decide,” Alise said brightly. “I have a feeling Bell and I might pull that trick again someday.” She gave him a playful nudge, and Bell found himself smiling ear to ear at the prospect.

As they exited the cavern, leaving behind the horror and darkness, Bell felt a profound sense of catharsis. They had faced death and won, together. Each member of his party had fought with everything they had, and they emerged not only victorious but closer than ever. Bell glanced around at his companions—Lili offering Welf her shoulder despite him protesting he was fine, Mikoto quietly thanking Haruhime for saving them all, Ryuu walking in step with Alise, talking softly about the past and future. It warmed Bell’s heart. This was his family, bound not by blood but by shared struggle and care. And now Alise was a part of it, even if only temporarily. In this moment, it felt as if she had always belonged.

Bell’s gaze met Alise’s once more as they climbed the winding path upward to the safer floors. There was a newfound respect and kinship shining in her eyes when she looked at him. Bell realized that to someone like Alise—who had fought true horrors in the past and even lost her life to one—seeing Bell and his friends stand against a similar horror and refuse to give up must mean a great deal. Perhaps it even eased some of her old pain, knowing Ryuu had found comrades who would not falter. Alise inclined her head to him in a small, almost reverent nod. “You’re quite the hero, Bell Cranel,” she said quietly so only he could hear. “I see now why Ryuu and so many others place their hopes in you.”

Bell felt his face grow hot, and he quickly shook his head. “I’m just… trying my best. I couldn’t do anything without everyone.” He looked forward at his friends. “We all became heroes today, I think.” Alise smiled softly. “Spoken like a true leader. Humble and earnest.” She then chuckled and added with a wink, “But don’t sell yourself short. That spirit of yours… it’s something special. I felt it, resonating with mine back there.” She placed a hand briefly over her heart, as if recalling the surge of power in their joint strike. “It awakened something in me I thought I lost long ago.”

Bell tilted his head curiously. “Awakened something?” Alise just gave a mysterious smile. “Maybe a new skill, maybe just an old flame rekindled. Either way, I’m grateful.” Bell decided not to press—if it was a new skill, the gods would decipher it later. What mattered was that Alise had found new strength and perhaps some closure.

At length, the party reached a safe zone where they could rest properly. As they settled down on the stone floor, Bell looked around at their tired, smiling faces illuminated by the soft light of luminescent moss. He felt an overwhelming rush of affection and relief. They had survived a nightmare and were all here to tell the tale. The horror and uncertainty of that first encounter had given way to triumph and revelation.

Lili began scolding Bell for reckless moves mid-fight even as she dabbed a cloth on his remaining scrapes; Welf started regaling Haruhime with how he planned to forge a new, stronger greatsword that won’t break next time; Mikoto offered to brew soothing tea from her pouch herbs for everyone; Ryuu and Alise sat side by side, fingers intertwined as they quietly reminisced about something that made them both laugh softly—a sound none of the others had heard from Ryuu in a long time.

Bell leaned back against the cool stone and closed his eyes for a moment, content. In his mind flashed the terrifying image of the Peluda’s eyes, the feeling of despair as it nearly overwhelmed them, then the blazing light of their combined attack, and finally the sight of Alise standing victorious amid ashes. It felt almost like a heroic tale out of the storybooks he loved as a child. Perhaps someday, this would become a story—of how a rookie adventurer and a resurrected hero teamed up to slay a fearsome rogue Xenos deep in the Dungeon. But Bell didn’t care for glory or renown at this moment. He was just profoundly happy that everyone was alive and together.

Opening his eyes, Bell saw Alise watching him, a soft, sisterly affection in her expression. He realized that in this short time, they had forged a bond of trust. Fighting side by side in life-or-death has a way of turning strangers to close comrades. He found himself saying, “Alise… I’m really glad you’re here with us.” Alise reached over and squeezed his hand. “So am I, Bell. I couldn’t ask for a better new family.” Ryuu rested her head on Alise’s shoulder, smiling in agreement. “Welcome to Hestia Familia’s crazy adventures,” she said softly, earning a round of gentle laughter.

As they rested, the Dungeon around them was quiet once more. The horror had passed, giving way to peace. In that calm, with wounds slowly healing and hearts full, the group allowed themselves to relax. They had faced uncertainty and terror and emerged not just with victory, but with stronger bonds and newfound faith in each other.

In the flickering light, Alise pulled out a small crimson flower emblem from a pouch—a keepsake of her old Familia. She turned it in her fingers thoughtfully. “I think… Astraea would be proud of us today,” she murmured. Ryuu placed her hand over Alise’s, the flower caught between their palms. “I’m certain of it,” Ryuu replied, eyes shining. Bell and the others watched in respectful silence. Alise then surprised Bell by gently pressing the emblem into his hand. “Here,” she said. “Carry this for a while, Bell. A little good luck charm from me.” Bell was stunned, knowing how precious it must be to her. “I-I can’t take this…” he protested. Alise insisted with a grin, “It’s not a gift, just a loan. Until our next battle together. So you remember that I’ve got your back, and you have mine.” Bell closed his fingers around the emblem carefully, feeling the etched petals of the scarlet rose symbol. He nodded solemnly. “I will. I promise to return it to you… after we create many more stories of fighting side by side.”

“Good,” Alise said, satisfied. “We’ll make those stories reality.” Around them, the party began to pack up to move again, injuries tended as best they could. They were eager to get back to the surface to rest properly. But no one’s spirit was downtrodden now—the atmosphere was buoyant, everyone exchanging light banter and gentle ribbing, a cathartic release of the earlier tension.

As they started the trek upward, Bell walked near the front with Alise and Ryuu. Haruhime and Mikoto followed, speaking quietly about how to improve their coordination. Welf, refusing a stretcher, hobbled with Lili’s help, joking that he’ll be feeling this fight for a week. Lili retorted that it would be a lesson not to block giant tails with his body. Welf laughed and replied something that made Lili huff, but she was smiling too. It was as if the fight had washed away many doubts they carried: doubts about their own strength, about trusting new allies, about facing the traumas of the past.

Bell took a deep breath. The air smelled fresher already as they neared the upper levels—tinged with the scent of moss and a promise of sunlight filtering down from the distant surface. He felt alive. Sore and battered, yes, but alive in a way that only overcoming true peril can make one feel.

He glanced at Alise once more. She was limping slightly—poison aftereffects still working out of her system—but her face was content. She caught him looking and raised an eyebrow. “Something on your mind, Bell?” He scratched his cheek. “I was just thinking… in the midst of all that, I never properly thanked you.” Alise tilted her head. “For what?” Bell flushed a little. “For saving me. You pushed me away from that claw, and took on so much to protect all of us… If you hadn’t been here, I—” Alise gently interrupted by poking his forehead. “Silly. We save each other. That’s how it works with family.” She then gave a cheeky grin. “Besides, I wasn’t about to let a promising young hero get squashed before my eyes. We have more battles ahead, don’t we?” Bell nodded, smiling. “Right. Together.”

The path ahead was long, and they would all need time to recover. But as Bell led his party upward with Alise by his side, he felt a profound hope ignited in his chest. The Dungeon would surely throw more dangers at them in time—yet now he knew they could overcome even the worst of horrors, if they stood united. Each member had grown from this ordeal: Haruhime discovered her inner courage to support everyone, Mikoto and Welf proved their unwavering loyalty even in dire straits, Lili’s quick thinking had kept them organized under pressure, Ryuu had faced the nightmare of her past and come out stronger, and Bell himself… he felt a little more like the hero he aspired to be.

Alise stretched her arms upward as they walked, wincing slightly but then laughing at herself. “Ahh, I’m definitely going to sleep well tonight,” she joked. Ryuu chuckled. “After Airmid’s elixir, you mean.” Alise waved her hand. “Yes, yes, we’ll go straight to the Dian Cecht clinic, I know the drill. You lot aren’t rid of me that easily.” Her playful tone drew chuckles from all. Lili added, “We wouldn’t dream of it, Alise. Hestia herself will want to hear of your heroics—after she finishes hugging the life out of Bell for scaring her, of course.” Bell blushed, imagining his goddess’s tearful wrathful hugs, and everyone laughed louder, the sound echoing pleasantly through the tunnels.

In those echoes, there was triumph and camaraderie. The terrifying rogue Poluda-type Xenos was vanquished, but more importantly, their bonds had been tested and proven true. They had faced horror and uncertainty and emerged into hope and trust. Bell felt it in every smile and light jibe as they ascended: a cathartic sense of closure, and excitement for what lay ahead now that Alise was with them.

Whatever challenges the Dungeon or fate threw their way next, they would face it—together, stronger and more in sync than ever. And Bell had no doubt that in those future battles, a crimson-haired warrior and a white-haired adventurer would once again join hands—literally or metaphorically—to unleash a devastating technique born of unity and resolve. The story of their first battle together would become a cherished memory, fueling the flames of their spirits for all the adventures to come.

As they climbed toward the light of the surface, Bell allowed himself one last backward glance into the darkness below. The cavern where the Peluda fell was out of sight now, but he could still picture it vividly. He silently promised the fallen Xenos that its rage would not be in vain—that he would fight for a world where such tragedies between people and Xenos no longer occurred. With that vow in his heart, he turned forward once more, toward his friends—his family—and the bright future they would forge.

Thus ended the battle with the rogue Xenos. In its wake, fear had transformed into courage, trials into growth, and strangers into true companions. And as the Dungeon’s shadows gave way to sunlight at the end of their ascent, Bell Cranel and Alise Lovell stepped out side by side—ready to greet whatever dawn awaited them, their hearts ablaze with hard-earned hope.

Chapter Text

💮 Chapter 31 - The Sleepless Lantern

The world hummed softly.
Even here - in this halfway haven between sky and abyss - the air tasted like peace. The rivers shimmered like glass under a painted moon, and somewhere in the canopy, unseen birds whistled lullabies to no one in particular.

Alise sat cross-legged beside her little campfire. Her red cloak was gone, replaced by a thick traveling hoodie that made her look more like a runaway scholar than a hero. Her tent was simple - no door, no wards - because honestly, who would attack someone on the 18th Floor?

She had meant to keep watch for a few hours, maybe write a note to Bell in their shared journal, but the wine from Astrea's farewell was still heavy in her blood. Her head dipped. Her pen slid. The journal closed itself with a whisper.

And then something moved.

A shadow scurried across the grass - small, quick, silent. Then a soft plop.
The creature tilted its head. Scales the color of pale jade. Fins that fluttered like ribbons. An Iguazu, one of the tricksters of the dungeon.
It climbed up her sleeve, curious, and then, with all the authority of a crown prince, perched itself squarely on her forehead.

For a moment, it just sat there, watching the sleeping human who smelled like wild steel and sunlight.
Then, with a satisfied chirp, it coiled up like a cat and slept too.

🌸 Morning

Alise woke to a weight on her head and an unfamiliar sound - something like a whistle and a sneeze combined.
She blinked. Crossed her eyes upward. Met two enormous, glassy ones staring right back.

"...Oh. Hello."

The Iguazu chirped, tail flicking.

She laughed - a sound like wind through bells. "You're bold, aren't you? Sitting on a lady's face without permission. You're lucky you're cute."

The creature hopped down to her lap. She noticed then - the pattern of scales on its body shimmered faintly like runes. Ancient, intelligent runes.
Her eyes widened. "You're not a normal one, are you...?"

It tilted its head, as if offended by the accusation.

"Hmm." She leaned forward, nose to nose. "You've got spirit. I'll call you Izzy. You like that? Izzy?"

A happy trill.

"Good. I like you, Izzy." She smiled and scratched its chin - and the creature let out a sound that was way too similar to a purr.

Hours passed. She packed up her tent, her armor, her sword. Izzy followed, hopping from rock to rock. When she reached the tunnel to Floor 19, she hesitated.
"I shouldn't... but... ah, why not. Just a peek. It's been too quiet anyway."

She stepped into the darkness.

What followed was not quiet.

A shape lunged out of the gloom - a pack of Killer Ants, their mandibles flashing like glass. Alise drew her rapier on instinct - the blade singing.
But before she could strike - blur.

A streak of green and silver tore through the tunnel. The ants froze - and then collapsed, clean lines slicing through their joints. Blood hissed on the stone.
Izzy hovered there, fins fluttering, eyes bright like lanterns.

Alise just... stared.
Her sword lowered. "What just happend? That speed....there's no way"

She couldn't even see the movement.
A heartbeat ago there had been ten monsters. Now only silence remained.

She laughed again, a little breathless. "Alright, Izzy. I guess you're the strong one here."

The creature trilled again and floated toward her shoulder, nuzzling her cheek. For a heartbeat, she could have sworn it smiled.

Bell,
I found a friend today.
He's scaly, smug, and faster than my eyes can track. I think he might be a good sparring partner... or maybe a guardian I didn't know I needed.
His name's Izzy. If you ever meet him, bring tea - apparently he likes it.
Don't worry, I'm not lonely down here. The 18th Floor's sky is brighter than I remembered.

- A.

Chapter Text

💮 Chapter 32 - The Sleepless Lantern

The world hummed softly.
Even here - in this halfway haven between sky and abyss - the air tasted like peace. The rivers shimmered like glass under a painted moon, and somewhere in the canopy, unseen birds whistled lullabies to no one in particular.

Alise sat cross-legged beside her little campfire. Her red cloak was gone, replaced by a thick traveling hoodie that made her look more like a runaway scholar than a hero. Her tent was simple - no door, no wards - because honestly, who would attack someone on the 18th Floor?

She had meant to keep watch for a few hours, maybe write a note to Bell in their shared journal, but the wine from Astrea's farewell was still heavy in her blood. Her head dipped. Her pen slid. The journal closed itself with a whisper.

And then something moved.

A shadow scurried across the grass - small, quick, silent. Then a soft plop.
The creature tilted its head. Scales the color of pale jade. Fins that fluttered like ribbons. An Iguazu, one of the tricksters of the dungeon.
It climbed up her sleeve, curious, and then, with all the authority of a crown prince, perched itself squarely on her forehead.

For a moment, it just sat there, watching the sleeping human who smelled like wild steel and sunlight.
Then, with a satisfied chirp, it coiled up like a cat and slept too.

🌸 Morning

Alise woke to a weight on her head and an unfamiliar sound - something like a whistle and a sneeze combined.
She blinked. Crossed her eyes upward. Met two enormous, glassy ones staring right back.

"...Oh. Hello."

The Iguazu chirped, tail flicking.

She laughed - a sound like wind through bells. "You're bold, aren't you? Sitting on a lady's face without permission. You're lucky you're cute."

The creature hopped down to her lap. She noticed then - the pattern of scales on its body shimmered faintly like runes. Ancient, intelligent runes.
Her eyes widened. "You're not a normal one, are you...?"

It tilted its head, as if offended by the accusation.

"Hmm." She leaned forward, nose to nose. "You've got spirit. I'll call you Izzy. You like that? Izzy?"

A happy trill.

"Good. I like you, Izzy." She smiled and scratched its chin - and the creature let out a sound that was way too similar to a purr.

Hours passed. She packed up her tent, her armor, her sword. Izzy followed, hopping from rock to rock. When she reached the tunnel to Floor 19, she hesitated.
"I shouldn't... but... ah, why not. Just a peek. It's been too quiet anyway."

She stepped into the darkness.

What followed was not quiet.

A shape lunged out of the gloom - a pack of Killer Ants, their mandibles flashing like glass. Alise drew her rapier on instinct - the blade singing.
But before she could strike - blur.

A streak of green and silver tore through the tunnel. The ants froze - and then collapsed, clean lines slicing through their joints. Blood hissed on the stone.
Izzy hovered there, fins fluttering, eyes bright like lanterns.

Alise just... stared.
Her sword lowered. "What just happend? That speed....there's no way"

She couldn't even see the movement.
A heartbeat ago there had been ten monsters. Now only silence remained.

She laughed again, a little breathless. "Alright, Izzy. I guess you're the strong one here."

The creature trilled again and floated toward her shoulder, nuzzling her cheek. For a heartbeat, she could have sworn it smiled.

Bell,
I found a friend today.
He's scaly, smug, and faster than my eyes can track. I think he might be a good sparring partner... or maybe a guardian I didn't know I needed.
His name's Izzy. If you ever meet him, bring tea - apparently he likes it.
Don't worry, I'm not lonely down here. The 18th Floor's sky is brighter than I remembered.

- A.

Chapter Text

Chapter 33 — Footfalls Past the Garden

Morning on the Eighteenth is a trick the Dungeon plays on homesick hearts. The lake threw back a counterfeit dawn—silver, then blue—until the palisade of Rivira looked almost like a shoreline town instead of a stall-and-rope dream inside a monster’s throat. Peddlers barked over the hiss of frying oil; armorers tested buckles with the same brisk patience as mothers tying shoes.

Alise did not go in.

She stood on the goat path that hooked behind the guard posts, red scarf tucked beneath a travel hood, and watched the town wake from a distance where no one had to pretend not to see her. Her pack sat square between shoulder blades. Her rapier rode easy at the hip; the ribboned knife, snug to her right hand. She had slept well under false stars. It was the particular sleep that follows a vow.

“Breakfast, Captain?” someone called without turning—a fishmonger whose eyes never quite found hers. “Good price on the small ones.”

She lifted two fingers, a salute no one could fault, and moved on.

The forest swallowed the town in three paces. Eighteenth’s last pines gave way to Nineteenth’s first roots: pillars of wood thicker than round towers, knotted and veined, their bark slick with a soft blue breath of moss. Light filtered green. Somewhere water laughed and then hushed itself, remembering where it was.

Something the size of a thumbprint dropped onto her hood with the exact weight of mischief.

“Izzy,” she said.

The Iguazu peered over her brow, the pale-jade fins of his “wings” lifting and falling like sighs. He chirped a syllable that managed to be both hello and you’re slow.

“I’m savoring the walk,” Alise murmured, letting her stride lengthen. “Heroes do not sprint into mysteries unless they want to land face-first in obvious lessons. Besides, your idea of a stroll is a war crime.”

Izzy tilted his head, unoffended by slander.

The sap-air sharpened hungers she hadn’t fed yet. She set one hand to the old trail-spine that hugged the tree-bases and let the rhythm find her again. The Dungeon’s silence on these upper-deep floors wasn’t empty; it was attentive, like a crowd holding its breath during a dangerous trick. She could feel it on her skin—the way sound went soft just before something important happened.

The important thing announced itself with the insectile clatter of a dozen chitin legs.

Almiraj—horned rabbits, not the cute sort—erupted from a lipped burrow ahead, their ears pinned back, their eyes glittering with meanness. Behind them, dirt heaved, and a Dungeon Worm shouldered up through the root-web like a knuckle punching through cloth. The little ones came first, yapping knives; the big one would split the line when you were busy counting the small deaths.

Alise didn’t draw.

She breathed once, counting in the old Astraea cadence—one for the threat, two for the room, three for the path through. The Almiraj pack fanned. The Worm’s mouth—rings of tooth like an obscene flower—yawned.

“Quiet,” she told herself.

The rapier came then, not as a startle-reflex, but as a conclusion. A step, a heel, a lift: the point kissed horn, not skull; rabbit number one pitched left and rolled, no longer the spear-tip for its fellows. She pivoted on the ball of her foot, let a second overreach, swatted its teeth with the flat until it remembered being prey. The third she left entirely—gave it her back and the silence of a woman who has decided not to die today. It chose to believe her.

The Worm lunged. Izzy blurred.

For an eye’s blink, Alise saw only the line the Iguazu drew: not a slash so much as a subtraction, a cut taken out of the air where a body used to live. The Worm’s forward momentum suffered the indignity of suddenly not being attached to its own hunger. It slumped back into the hole like a curtain falling in the middle of a scene change.

Alise’s blade did not drip. She kept her breathing shallow; she did not let the little acidic pride in her chest uncoil into something greedy.

Izzy came back his mouth holding a half eaten magic stone like a kitten 🐾 showing off his kill.

“Show-off,” she told Izzy, who preened with the enormous innocence of a creature that had just saved someone’s life and would absolutely do it again even if it made him insufferable.

She wiped a smudge of blue moss from the guard of her rapier and checked the grooves of her boots for spore-pollen. The fungi here could lay claim to lungs you weren’t using politely. Satisfied, she pushed deeper.

The trees closed ranks. The world narrowed to a lane of roots and the low chorus of things with too many legs. Nineteenth’s ceiling hung a handspan lower in her mind—no true drop, just the psychological compression of a place that wanted you to lower your voice. Which was fine. She had learned a long time ago that justice carried better when whispered.

Far overhead, a bird whistled three notes like a coded apology. Alise paused, head canted. The answer came not from above but from the earth: a click, a click, a click-click-click, in two registers, as if a child and a grandfather were trying to clap at the same time and failing.

“Call and response,” she murmured. “Not birds.”

They reached the first of the sap-bridges—bark polished by generations of feet into a dull sheen. Light oozed green through a film that made everything look as if it had been submerged in a bottle. On the far side of the span, a trio of Lizardmen came into view, dragging a net bundle between them. Their shields were bone plates cinched with cords; their javelins were resin-hardened, tipped with a glassy barb that would tear more coming out than going in. Brave, even clever. Not equipped like a random patrol.

The smallest of the three stumbled. The eldest—scarred, his crest broken—set his hand at the youngster’s elbow. The bundle groaned, a wet sound that wasn’t pure monster.

Alise stepped sideways into the rib-cave of a root and made herself thin as a thought. The Iguazu settled, fin-wings flattening to match the pulse of her breath. She let the scene pass across the bridge in front of her while her heart thumped its old argument.

We slay monsters. We protect people. What about monsters who carry their wounded like people?

She set the blade down in her mind. She did not intervene.

The three crossed, their call-and-response clacks flicking out of sight along the next buttress. The bundle gurgled. The eldest murmured something low. The child lifted his chin and matched the tempo. Alise let them go with an exhale that felt like it had been holding since she put on the red ribbon the first time.

“Not our fight,” she said aloud. “Not yet. Not here.”

Izzy chirped a single note: acknowledgment, not judgment.

They took the old maintenance vein east to avoid a choke point she could feel in her knees before she saw it: a place where the Dungeon would be happy to make a lesson out of overconfidence. The vein was a hollow in the wood that hummed in a key the human ear has to translate as teeth-set-on-edge. The lesser traps along its walls—pore-jets that would blow spores into your sinuses until your nose forgot its job—puffed and then hesitated; somewhere someone was singing.

Not the high, terrifying keen some Xenos raised when grief hollowed them. This was tired, and sure, and practical: the song of a woman coaxing a pump to prime. Alise followed the tune down three turns until she found a knotted bend where her rapier hilt snagged, metal kissing wood with a small, betraying cough.

The song stopped.

Alise froze, breath arrested mid-step. Izzy’s little claws dug into her hood. The world hung.

Then the voice came again, softer, further away—not an alarm, a warning: the melody shifted three notes lower, a pattern that said this is where the air is sour and this is how to breathe around it.

“Thank you,” Alise whispered into the grain and meant it.

They made the three floors in long, careful lines. She marked passage not in strides or turns but in the thread of restraint she kept between her teeth. Twice, Lantern’s Echo flared in her chest in that hungry way new power does, as if offering to make a hard thing simple. Twice she reached out and put the lid on the pot.

“Not yours,” she told it gently. “Not yet.”

The first true test came at the edge of Twentieth, where the Large Tree Labyrinth narrows into a place the maps call The Needles and the people who live through it call worse. A trio of resin-gray spears snapped across her line at head height, one-then-two in a stuttering rhythm she would have mistaken for clumsiness if she hadn’t seen the way the throwers placed their feet.

Lizardmen again, but these wore cords with shells on them that chimed when they moved—signalers. One threw high. One threw low. The last held a hewing blade and waited, stance angled to punish the flinch.

Witness. The boon does not mean stealing. It means understanding.

Alise let her grip relax—not loosening, only stopped strangling the hilt—and watched the angle of the shield that wasn’t moving. Bell would step inside the beat, she knew that now. He would make “slow” happen to someone else. She… she could.

Her left hand rose—not a parry, not yet—and the resin spear that should have chipped her teeth rang off the exact angle of her guard, skittered down the blade, and bit harmlessly at her boot. She blinked once. Izzy blinked with her, delighted.

“Okay,” she breathed. “That’s a good trick.”

The signaler hissed, surprised that a human had stopped the rhythm instead of being taught by it. He overcommitted. Alise slid—two inches of travel, no more—and set the rapier’s point into the outside of his knee with a touch light enough to be a reprimand. He folded. The other two pulled him back without pride, eyes on her blade, not her face. Professional. She let them go.

She carried on east, the root-ribs thinning then swelling, a living thing’s architecture, until she felt the floor dip underfoot and heard the particular hush of a place that had decided to hide something valuable. Twenty gave way to twenty-one without ceremony except for the smell: less sap, more stone. The air lost its sweetness and picked up a metallic taste, like rain dreaming about itself.

They moved under a lattice of knuckled roots. Alise counted her steps the way she used to count the heartbeats of a guilty man waiting to say the wrong thing. Eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one—

Izzy stiffened.

The Iguazu’s fins went from soft to blade in the space between breaths. He hopped to the nearest root, pressed his tiny claws into the wood, and traced a small glyph with an economy that made Alise want to applaud. The rune was a narrow oval crossed by a single, exacting line.

“Turn… quiet,” she translated, the sense of it rising from the root itself as much as the mark. “Not silence. Not stop. Quiet.”

She held still. The world obliged. Under the root-lattice, the forest’s little noises gathered their skirts and went to ground. The only sound left was the drum.

It was far away and very close at once, as big sounds always are when they move through something larger than themselves. It came up through her boots and lived for a moment in her bones. Not a heartbeat. Not quite. The pattern was not human, not animal—it was the disciplined thud-thud of a dozen feet stamping on hollow wood in a cadence someone had taught them.

Izzy turned his head, eyes glass-bright, and made a sound she had not heard before: not a chirp or a trill, but a fractional croak, as if two notes had been asked to occupy the same space and had agreed to share.

“Organized,” Alise said softly, as if naming it made it less so. “Someone is drilling them.”

She crouched, letting her pack rest against a root-swell to keep the weight from sliding when she had to move in a hurry—because there would be hurry, very soon. She touched the ribbon at the knife and felt it steady under her thumb, like an old friend reminding her that sacrifice is not a habit but a choice you make once and then carry forever.

“I am not here to break your house,” she told the trees. “I am here to pass through it without making the baby cry.”

The drumbeat shifted from head-on to a flank. She wrapped her scarf closer over the hood and started forward, each footfall placed as if the floor had a favorite song and she meant to sing along without stepping on the words.

Before the corner, she felt the air thin in that way it does when the Dungeon opens a throat and waits to see whether you will notice before it swallows you.

She smiled without teeth.

“Show me,” she whispered.

The drum answered.

Chapter Text

Chapter 34 — The Lantern Won’t Shut Up

Floor Twenty-Two had the manners of a library and the lighting of a chapel. The trunks rose like stacked columns, rings tight as scripture. Lattices of pale fungus puddled a quiet glow along the path, so soft that every footstep felt like an apology for breaking it.

Alise apologized anyway.

“—and that’s exactly why your foot turns in, Izzy,” she said to no one in particular, which is to say to the Iguazu perched on her shoulder like a jeweled epaulet. “When you hover too long on the left, your right fin compensates and you drift, which is adorable but tactically irresponsible. We cannot have you adorable and irresponsible. Pick one.”

Izzy flicked his tail once, the precise angle of a shrug.

“Mm. Counterargument noted,” she said, not missing a beat. “But you’ll thank me the day a killer ant decides to develop a sense of humor.”

The air smelt of sap, iron, and the water-rust breath of cavern rivers further below. A few fat spores drifted past, lazy as confetti at a party no one had the heart to attend. Alise tightened the scarf under her hood—habit, not fear—and tapped a thumb against the ribbon at her knife as if knocking on wood would keep the Dungeon polite.

“Form six,” she told herself. “Conserve motion. Speak only when the silence is worse.”

She failed immediately.

“Anyway, when I said ‘adorable’ I meant it in the respect sense, not the belittling sense. I’m very dignified about cute things. Ask anyone who’s seen me with dumplings.”

Izzy turned his head and blinked with exaggerated slowness. She took it for permission to continue. A terrible mistake.

“Right. The justice thing. We can do that while we walk.”

She stepped over a root the size of a fisherman’s boat, set her heel gently on the far side, and kept moving. The forest damped sound the way a careful hand smooths a child’s hair. Even the weapon at her hip seemed to accept the hush.

“I used to think justice was a flag you planted,” she said, ducking under a low fungus shelf. “Big gestures. Dramatic speeches.” She slanted him a smile. “You should have seen me. I was insufferable and correct.”

Izzy made a sound that lived somewhere between a breath and a chirp, the little forward pin of his head betraying interest.

“But these past days… weeks… months,” she went on, “I keep finding that justice is climate, not storm. You set it, you keep it, you live inside it. No one sees the work until they sweat. You know?”

Silence. His tail swung once, a metronome’s patient click.

“Of course you know,” she said, amused at herself. “You breathe it. We’re practicing the climate where a small, fast miracle and a stubborn woman don’t die for free. That’s all I ever wanted.”

They reached a narrow knuckle of wood where the path necked and then widened. Someone had slashed old grooves into the bark to mark safe footing. The pattern stepped in fives. Alise matched it out of respect for the long-gone hand that carved it.

On the far side, a pair of Almiraj sniffed the air, ears twitching at the smell of human. Alise held up a finger. They stared. Izzy tilted his head. The rabbits reconsidered the day and disappeared into the moss like wrong ideas persuaded back into silence.

“Thank you for hearing reason,” Alise said to the underbrush. “I’m trying to model good behavior for the small one.”

Izzy preened, then flattened in an elegant line as a rustle traveled through the leaves off her right. Lizardman patrol. Three. No—four, a limper. Shields bone-ringed, javelins resin-tipped, chords on their shoulders chiming. The elder placed a hand on the limper’s elbow, not roughly. Alise stepped into the crease of a root before the thought finished forming, slim as her own shadow. She breathed with the trees. The patrol passed, heads high. One’s eye flicked toward the crease where she hid, and slid off it like oil.

When they’d gone, she counted to nineteen in the Astraea cadence and stepped back out.

“You see?” she murmured, resuming her steady pace. “Restraint is a tactic, not a pity. The difference is what you owe the world when you walk away.”

Izzy’s tail thunked softly against her hood. Agreement, or at least comfortable ambiguity.

They walked. She talked. The world arranged itself to be listened to.

“Vocabulary time,” she said eventually. “You’ve been very expressive today, but I don’t want to lie to myself about what you mean. That way lives so many poor marriages.”

She drew the little leather notebook from the pouch she wore high, where swinging couldn’t drag it into trouble. The book’s spine had been cut and re-bound with red thread. The right-hand pages were Bell’s—their twin—and the left-hand were hers. Between them, a seam of enchantment throbbed like a quiet vein.

She licked her thumb and flipped to a fresh leaf on the left.

IZZY’S DICTIONARY
Chirp (single): “I am here.”
Chirp (double): “I heard you.”
Soft trill: “No/Maybe/Stop fussing.”
Croak (fractional): “Warning, not panic.”
Snort-click: “Boredom disguised as stoicism.”
Tail tap: “Agreement or a good imitation.”

“Is that fair?” she asked, quill poised. Izzy produced a soft trill.

She wrote: Soft trill — protest when human attempts semantics

“Rude,” she said, amused. “You’ll fit right in at the Hostess.”

They made camp under a root-arch, the wood overhead ribbed like the inside of a whale. Alise built a tiny, neat fire the way Astraea had taught all her children—efficient, shy of smoke—and put the kettle on the small grate she carried because sanity sometimes depends on tea.

“Today we test a hypothesis,” she said while the water listened for its boil. “That you understand tempo and intention better than words. I will now demonstrate three types of awful.”

She set her rapier across her knees, closed her eyes, and hummed the Astraea march in a key the Dungeon could respect. Izzy settled immediately, fins breathing in the same slow pattern. She shifted the melody into the brash, bragging tune of a guild victory parade. He flinched and went stiff. She grimaced.

“Too loud,” she said softly. “Meant for crowds, not caves.”

She softened the line into the little song the Astraea girls used to sing when someone had a fever and couldn’t stop worrying they’d miss the morning drill. Izzy’s pupils dilated. His fins trembled sympathetically.

“There,” she whispered. “That one.”

The kettle ticked itself into a simmer. She poured, breathed the steam as if it were instruction, and sipped. Izzy nose-tapped the warm cup with a sound near delight.

“You may have a drop,” she said, dignified and generous, and tilted the saucer. He tasted the tea with priestly solemnity and then purred in a way that made her want to write a letter to an apothecary about bottling happiness.

“Bell would mock me for mothering you,” she said, smile turning wry. “He’s worse than I am. He’d feed a dragon biscuits if it looked underfed.”

She found herself  thinking of him then—not romantic ache, not even clean friendship, but the ache of an idea you’d given yourself permission to believe. She set the cup down and opened the shared journal to the right side. Bell’s latest entry burned faintly through the paper like a blush.

Wiene smiled. he had written. We’re trying to make this work. I think kindness is practical, even if it looks foolish from far away.

Alise added beneath, tight hand steady:

Kindness is just foresight with better manners. Keep your feet.
—A.

She shut the book gently and tucked it away before nostalgia could turn into softness. The Dungeon did not like women who softened. It preferred them either hard or dead. She had chosen a third option: supple.

When the ashes cooled, she doused. They moved.

The path sloped. The pale glow of fungus dimmed to a thinner drape. Here and there, lantern-moths slept like little folded fans. Alise’s steps shortened. The quiet had the clear edges of a decision.

“That drum line from yesterday,” she said softly as they entered a long, ribbed throat of wood. “Do you remember? The way it moved through your bones? I hate organized monsters. I admire them. That kind of discipline hurts to build. It means someone told them a story of themselves and made them believe it enough to bleed.”

She paused, listening to her own words arrive at her like advice from someone kinder. Izzy made the fractional croak that meant I’m watching.

“I know,” she said. “We can’t assume their story loves us back.”

A spray of resin darts snapped from the left. Alise didn’t think—thought would have been too slow—she cut her body into the gap between darts the way you knife between quarrels, hips tight, shoulder low. The last dart sang across the scarf, theft of a single hair. She set two fingers to the root that had spat them and felt the trigger seam.

A lizardman stepped from behind a bulge of bark and stopped when he saw her not die. He was young. The cracked shell at his shoulder had been glued with care. He had the look of someone trying to grow into the idea of being brave.

Alise lifted her empty left hand, palm open. The youngling clicked his teeth, confused by a fight with no dance, then bared them out of habit. She could have punished the habit. She didn’t. She drew a slow circle with two fingers and touched the trigger seam again. He watched the motion, understood the trap’s hunger, and reset the safety with an embarrassed huff. Behind him, an elder’s hand tapped the youngling’s arm once—good—and guided him back.

“Practice well,” Alise said in Astraean, which no one here should understand. The elder chuffed the exact pitch of a laugh of relief and did not look at her twice.

They moved on. Alise did not comment on the tremor in her own hands until it was gone.

“See?” she told Izzy lightly. “You talk too little; I talk too much; somewhere between us is a functional adult.”

Izzy made the snort-click. She wrote it down in the little dictionary as audience sigh.

The day stretched. They crossed a sap bridge where the view through the slats was stars—not sky stars, but the thousand-eyed glints of cave crystals drinking up light and giving it back like small confidences. They threaded a grove of roots so old the bark had taken on another language. Izzy traced one glyph with a delicate claw—oval and slash—and the grain under Alise’s finger said hush as you pass; there is a baby sleeping in the same way a mother says I’m not mad, I’m disappointed.

They hushed.

At a stand of shelf fungus lacquered smooth by time, Alise halted and chose to be very plain with her small, silent miracle.

“I am afraid,” she said simply.

The word did not echo. The Dungeon has always respected honest admission.

“Not of dying,” she added. “Of changing faster than my judgment can learn. Lantern’s Echo is… greedy. Not like a person. Like a seedling. Eager. It wants to pick up everything I love and turn it into power. That’s beautiful, and it’s a way to become a villain while thinking you’re a hero.”

She set a hand to her chest, where the skill sometimes warmed when Bell’s courage ran toward something he had no business reaching. It was warm now, faint, as if listening to its own name being spoken in another room.

“I need you,” she told Izzy, “to keep not talking. For now.” She smiled at herself. “Look at me. Astraea would be proud of the humility, if nothing else.”

Izzy leaned his forehead to her temple with a weight that said I am here. It was enough.

They made the last push down to Twenty-Three as the false light cooled to that late afternoon color caves invent when they want to make people generous. The path widened into a palmy cavern where the air tasted of old coins and wet stone. Somewhere in the dark, a pump sang quietly, coaxing a stream to remember it was a river.

Alise took the ledge to the right instead of the open lane. The ledge pinched, then broadened above a hollow rib. Below, a little caravan of traders from Rivira coaxed a stubborn mule-lizard over a ridge with a song too sweet to be safe. She watched until they reached better footing. She did not wave. She was a rumor, not a rescue.

When the echo of their laughter had drained, she found a pocket in the wall—just big enough for a woman and her miracle to sit like stowaways in their own lives. She did not make a fire. She ate hard bread she had soaked in tea until even its pride softened. Izzy stole a crumb and looked at her so grave about it she nearly wept laughing.

“Fine,” she said. “Next time I’ll bake you your own.”

She opened the journal to his page and wrote small in the thin light:

Bell,
Did you know there are drums on Twenty-Two? Not war. Practice. Something is teaching. I am not sure it hates us. That might be worse.
I gave a boy-lizard mercy and he gave it back. I don’t know what to do with that information except keep it safe.
If I talk too much down here, forgive me. Silence is where my ghosts practice speeches.
—A.

Her hand hesitated, then she added, almost an afterthought:

I’m happy.

She stared at the words for a long moment as if they were a monster she might have to fight and then smiled, utterly undone by the ordinary miracle of saying true things to a page.

She shut the book, lay back against the cool stone, and let the cave press its palm to her forehead the way a mother checks a fever. Izzy curled against her collarbone, a small, warm punctuation at the end of a long sentence.

“Goodnight, little climate,” she murmured, and closed her eyes.

The Dungeon listened. It adjusted itself around two small breaths and chose, for once, not to test them.

Tea-time Interlude (outside of time)

A: I spoke the whole day. The cave didn’t scold me.
B: I thought the whole day. The city didn’t help.
A: Then we’re even.
B: Then we’re alive.

Chapter Text

Chapter 35 — The Colosseum That Eats Itself

The stair from Thirty-Six spilled them into thunder.

Not the clean, sky-born sound, but a cavern’s thunder—the kind made by meat and stone and speed. A thousand collisions braided into one continuous roar, punctured by the wet crack of something breaking and the bright ring of something sharp surviving it.

The corridor widened by degrees until there was no corridor at all, only a lip of rock looking down on a cratered amphitheater the size of a proper city square. The Colosseum. Floor Thirty-Seven’s mouth, rimmed in jagged terraces and broken buttresses where the Dungeon had tried to grow architecture and given up in favor of appetites.

There were no cages. No pens. No gates. Only monsters.

They were everywhere—skinned lightning and furred avalanches, plated torsos and ropy limbs. Almiraj bounding over the backs of Lizardmen; War Shadows flickering like spilled oil between the knees of Ogres; a pack of Hellhounds yanking a single irritable Minotaur into a spin as their leashes of fire went taut. It wasn’t a battle. It was a premise. Kill here. Die here. Repeat.

Alise stood on the lip and did what the living do in the presence of a ritual too big for language: she breathed in and made a promise small enough to keep.

“Observation first,” she said, voice pitched low to be heard by exactly two souls—hers and the one coiled on her shoulder. “Action second.”

Izzy lifted off her cloak and hovered, fins a slow, sovereign beat. He was a lantern pretending to be a fish, all pale jade and knife-clean lines, and the roil below did what predators do when they notice a thing that does not flinch: it looked up.

Ten heads turned. Twenty. Then the Colosseum remembered that any new thing is a problem to be solved by teeth.

The first wave broke from the melee as if shaken loose by the idea of her: a wedge of Lizardmen with resin javelins; a ropey pack of war shadows shivering with edges; an Ogress loping behind as punctuation. They crashed over the rubble swale that separated the arena from the rim, claws scrabbling for purchase, eyes greedy.

Alise did not draw.

“Not yet,” she said, mostly to her own blood. She had learned what an impatient redhead can ruin. “We cross. Not conquer.”

The wedge hit the lip.

Izzy moved.

He did not streak. Streak implies a body finds a line and fills it. Izzy unstitched the air and re-did it in his own handwriting. One heartbeat there was distance between him and the oncoming front; the next there was no distance at all, only fine incisions through helmets and throats, javelins that were suddenly two shorter javelins, a War Shadow that tried to split and found it had been asked politely to remain in only one place.

Time in the Colosseum did a thing Alise’s mind had never allowed it to do: it slept with its eyes open. She watched the blur and didn’t see speed so much as intention arriving earlier than it was scheduled. Izzy’s fins trembled between beats like gossamer in a breeze only he could feel. Everywhere he passed, the world tidied itself into clean, terminal lines. It would have been beautiful if it weren’t so practical.

The first wave came apart.

It didn’t matter.

Where death occurred, the Colosseum did what it was born to do: it made more.

Half-formed bodies boiled up from seams in the ground and the ragged mouths in the wall. Not copies. New arrivals from wherever the Dungeon keeps its inventory of bad ideas. A Hellhound shook itself wetly out of rock like a dog from a river; a pair of Ogres shouldered past one another into existence, already annoyed.

Alise smiled without mirth. “Endless,” she said. “So we don’t argue. We use it.”

She dropped from the lip.

It was not a dramatic fall. Drama is a luxury. She chose a jutting buttress, slid, stepped, and landed as if the stone had offered her a hand and she had taken it with thanks. She didn’t draw. She didn’t need to yet. The goal was not a skull count. The goal was the lane she could keep open long enough to get across.

“Right,” she said, and the single syllable was a metronome for her feet. “We go fast. We go low.”

Izzy understood before the second word left her mouth. He flared, and the air around them changed flavor—thinner, colder at the edges, as if a winter morning had been poured into a line in front of them. Lantern’s Echo woke inside Alise’s sternum with the polite, urgent heat of a kettle about to sing. Concordant intent, the skill said, in the way a learned thing says its name by how it behaves. Protect. Reach.

She ran.

The Colosseum is a circle, but every circle is made of chords if you pick the right moments, and Alise had spent a lifetime making wrong shapes behave. She threaded through a stampede of hopping Almiraj like a dancer cutting through a brawl, shoulders in, breath held, one hand laid flat against a black furred flank that didn’t notice the apology. A War Shadow poured itself toward her boots; she stepped over it without giving it the dignity of a glance and felt, rather than saw, the crisp wind of Izzy’s passing as the Shadow came apart in a whisper.

Ahead, a knot of Lizardmen had the good sense to array shields. Better than good sense—training. They’d learned to hook their bone rims together and make a wall that might have held against a lesser rush.

“Rabbit draw,” Alise said under her breath by force of habit. Bell was not here. She lengthened her stride anyway.

Izzy arrived a fraction before her and authored a door in the wall. There’s an art to cutting a hole that does not immediately collapse; he possessed it, and the way the bone rims sighed open like a mouth made for pleading told her what kind of mind designed this arena.

She slid through the new gap sideways, shoulder to shield, and now she did draw because you don’t insult a craftsman by refusing to show your own. The rapier kissed the haft of a raised javelin and turned it into a polite cane on accident. Her ribboned knife flicked out to un-tie the seam of a leather shoulder guard with such firm respect that the Lizardman wearing it bowed from the waist involuntarily to pick up his newly liberated armor.

“Pardon,” she said, already gone.

Respawn ticked.

Everywhere Izzy cut a problem into smaller problems, the floor answered with more problems, as if the Dungeon were a bad host with an endless tray of hors d’oeuvres you didn’t want but must take because refusal was rude.

The roar pressed in, intimate now. A Hellhound’s breath seared past her cheek; she felt the singe and did not register fear. Fear was a luxurious thing to have later. Part of her mind, the piece trained by Astraea to be in charge when flesh failed, kept count of useful information like a ledger she could glance at without thinking.

—Minotaur on the left, favoring right knee.
—Ogre behind, reach longer than its sense.
—War Shadow ahead, more shadow than war.
—Respawn interval tightening near Izzy. Ravenous curiosity. Noted.

She cut right and dropped into a culvert that had decided to be a trench. The trench ran like a gutter across the arena floor; anything larger than an Almiraj had to jump it, and she took those jumps as opportunities to pass below massive bodies without offering them an argument. Twice she bent so close to the stone that she kissed dust and the dust stuck around to see how the story came out.

Izzy’s light winked and reappeared, always slightly ahead, always exactly where her next choice needed it to be. She felt her skill sync to his vector—not stealing speed (that would have ended with her organs making different plans) but borrowing rhythm. Argonaut’s pressure gathered under her breastbone, small and precise, the way it does for Bell when he chooses not to be afraid but to be committed. She let the pressure smooth her steps, not burst them. Speed is loud; rhythm is a lock pick.

The Colosseum noticed them finally as more than appetites to be fed into machinery. The ambient fight exhaled. A Minotaur free of immediate dogs lowered its head at her like a question.

“Not today,” she said, and set her palm flat on its horn as it passed, a priestess blessing a thing she did not worship but refused to hate. The Minotaur—massive, scarred, annoyed—missed her by a girl’s width and found itself in a family dispute with two Ogres and a Hellhound who resented being used as punctuation.

She ran the line Izzy made like a tightrope.

Halfway.

The arena’s geometry tweaked. The respawns were no longer random; they were placed. A War Shadow arrived exactly in her step and raised a blade so simple it was almost rude. She caught herself changing the form of her stride to accommodate it. Lantern’s Echo warmed further in her chest in the way a teacher clears a throat.

“I know,” she murmured. “Don’t let them teach me.”

She didn’t correct the stride. She corrected the reason for it. Her foot landed where it had intended to in the first place, and the Shadow’s blade discovered that the world kept its promises in ways that broke things not committed to those promises. He cut air. She didn’t.

Izzy flared, and for the first time she saw the blur not as velocity but as choices collapsed into each other. A Hellhound reared to vomit fire. Izzy was already the length of a memory past it, and the fire arrived late to an appointment it had made with the floor. In the wake of that lateness, monsters hesitated. Hesitation killed more reliably than steel.

“Lane!” she called, because some words are doors and naming them opens them.

Izzy gave her one: a long clean corridor between colliding lives, the breath after a slap when everyone decides whether they are going to cry about it or laugh. She sprinted through the breath. The far side climbed to a half-crumbled shelf that might have been a balcony when the Dungeon had illusions about architecture. If she could reach it, she could run the rim and the Colosseum’s core would get bored of her and go back to eating itself.

The last twenty spans always cost the worst.

A wall of Ogres tumbled into her path like a bad idea made of meat. Behind them, a Wisp cloud seethed, electrical and offended by the notion of bodies. The Ogres were not clever, but they were invested; the Wisps were clever, but did not care if cleverness burned.

“Up,” Alise said.

Izzy obeyed as if the word were a lever built into his name. He went vertical, fins shredding the air into silk. The Wisps snapped toward him—light loves light—and tore past her like angry stars. An Ogre swung a club the size of a bench; she rotated her shoulders the way you apologize for leaving a conversation and the club went by, ripping air she no longer occupied. She jumped—the small sort of jump that starts in your feet and finishes in your judgment—and put a boot onto a club’s back as it returned, using its regret as a step.

The shelf was three spans above her, then two, then one. Fingers brushed the edge. Stone bit her nails. She caught and hauled with the unlovely efficiency of a person who has pulled herself out of worse holes.

Something grabbed her boot.

Not claws. A hand.

It belonged to a Lizardman half-crushed by a fallen buttress. Black blood slicked the stone around him. His eyes were bright and wrong with desperation. He held her like the world owns you when you are heavier than your choices.

Alise set her knife to his wrist—not to cut, to threaten. He looked at the blade and then at her face, and in that breath she saw the discipline in him that had set the shields earlier; the way the elder had reset the trap; the way a god might love even an ugly creation because it does its job with care.

She shifted her grip, planted her other boot, and kicked the buttress hard enough to slide his lower body an inch into a gap she’d spotted. He hissed—pain is democratic—but the shift freed the hook of stone that had kept his leg from moving. She seized his forearm instead, hauled once, and put him half on the ledge with her by pure leverage and the sort of grunt you do not admit to making in public.

A War Shadow landed where her head had just been.

Izzy wrote a line through it. The ink of that line was the absence of Shadow.

“Go,” she told the Lizardman, breath white at the edges. He went, because people do when you give them a verb that saves their lives. His tail lashed once—a word she didn’t translate correctly because there’s a dialect to gratitude that doesn’t survive being written.

She stood, one boot slipping a touch on blood, and ran the rim.

Below, the Colosseum resumed eating itself with greater enthusiasm, which is to say it pretended she hadn’t just crossed a room that has killed better dressed people than she is.

On the far side, a tunnel yawned: a ribbed throat leading into the path toward Thirty-Eight. The entrance was choked with a skirmish between a Minotaur too angry to die and a contingent of War Shadows who hated being made to be dramatic. Between their arguments was a sliver of not-sword.

“Izzy.”

He understood the rest of the sentence. He always did.

He fell into the sliver like a violin slide into a note and stretched it until it became a doorway. The Minotaur bellowed and leaned too far into his own weight. The Shadows, being more petty than clever, snapped at his ankles. The doorway brightened with the possibility of getting through it alive.

Alise went.

She didn’t look back. It wasn’t stoicism. It was arithmetic. The Colosseum had her number and would dial it again if allowed. She rounded the corner into the throat of the next corridor and kept running until the roar behind them became a lesson instead of a demand.

Only then did she stop. Only then did she let the tremor in her hands become a conversation.

Izzy hovered in front of her and did the thing he does when he is proud of her and refuses to admit it: he tapped his forehead to hers once, very gently, as if checking the temperature of her faith.

She laughed then, a raw sound, and felt Lantern’s Echo cool from a boil to a simmer. The skill had wanted to run ahead of her; she had kept it beside her. That felt like virtue. Maybe it was just restraint.

In the thin quiet of the corridor’s first bend, with the Colosseum’s thunder still drafting her breath, she opened the twin journal on the hilt of her knee and wrote on the left-hand page.

BELL,

The Colosseum is a mouth that chews its own tongue. Killing feeds it. Crossing confuses it. We chose confusion.

A small miracle wrote doors in rage and I chose to use them instead of love them. That felt like justice. It might only be survival with cleaner diction.

If you ever come here, do not fight for a crowd that cannot applaud. Run for the person who’s waiting on the other side. Then teach them the route.

—A.

Ink dried. The page took the words without judging them. Somewhere far above, in a city that would call this nightmare a “dungeon story” over cheap beer and proud laughter, a white-haired boy might feel a warmth in his pocket and not know why his courage had just been given a napkin and asked to sit up straight.

Alise closed the book, set her back to the stone a moment, and let the quiet climb into her shoulders and knead them once like an old friend who refuses to say hello first.

“Observation,” she said to Izzy, the dregs of adrenaline smoothing her voice into a rhetoric softer than speeches and kinder than orders. “The Dungeon loved you. It hated you. It learned from you faster than I can teach you how to tilt your fins.”

Izzy made the soft trill that in their dictionary meant stop fussing and also please continue.

She smiled. “Action second. We move. Thirty-Eight will have a different song.”

They moved. The roar receded. The corridor remembered it was allowed to be a corridor again.

Behind them, in the arena that was not an arena so much as an argument with mortality, the respawn timer ticked and, for just the length of a human breath, hesitated—like a machine hearing a lullaby and forgetting which gear does the killing.

It remembered. It resumed.

But in that fraction, a new chord had been added to the Colosseum’s song—thin, human, stubborn. The kind of line a lantern sings when it’s tired of being a metaphor and would like to keep a person alive.

Tea-Time Interlude (Outside of Time)

A: I crossed a room that refuses to end.
B: Then the room learned something honest.
A: That I am smaller than it is?
B: That you fit more people into your smallness than it fits into its size.
A: You are unbearable when you’re kind.
B: You are unstoppable when you are.

Chapter Text

Chapter 36 — The Hollow Choir

The descent began with silence.

Not the comforting hush of the 18th Floor’s eternal twilight, nor the calm that followed victory — this silence was expectant. It pressed on the skin like water, as though the air itself waited for her to speak.

The walls had changed.
No longer stone — but crystal.
They breathed light.

Each of Alise’s steps made a sound like a fingertip brushed over glass, a resonance that traveled up her spine and vanished somewhere deep within the earth. She stopped once, touched the wall, and felt a faint vibration hum beneath her palm.

“…You hear that, Izzy?”

The Iguazu tilted his head, fins trembling faintly. His scales shimmered with dim pulses that answered the wall — not in reflection, but in conversation. The dungeon was singing, and Izzy was humming back.

The air smelled faintly of copper and lilies, a contradiction that tugged at her memory.

She took out her shared journal, flipped to Bell’s side, and whispered as she wrote:

Bell,
The Dungeon hums today.
I think it remembers music.
—A.

When she closed the journal, the sound echoed.
A faint chorus repeated her words a heartbeat later — “Remembers… music… music…” — the syllables stretching like smoke.

She froze. “That’s new.”

The corridor widened into what should have been a vast chamber, but instead of pillars or walls, there were columns of sound — standing waves made visible, suspended in pale green light.
Each shimmer carried notes that rose and fell, soft, mournful, and utterly inhuman.

Izzy floated ahead, fins flaring. His outline blurred as if seen through running water. For a moment, Alise could swear she saw script burning across his scales — ancient runes shaped like feathers or tears.

“Don’t go too far,” she murmured, though her voice was stolen by the air. It came back to her a second later, warped.

“Don’t go too far—far—far…”

She winced. “Right. Talking’s rude here.”

Still, she kept moving. The chamber’s center opened into a spiral amphitheater, each tier lined with crystal statues — human, beast, god. All were unfinished, half-melted into the walls.
Some wept water instead of tears. Some smiled with mouths that were only song.
And when Alise stepped down the first stair, the choir woke.

Thousands of faint voices rose, humming through her bones.

She staggered, clutching her temple. The music wasn’t music anymore — it was memory trying to force itself into her head.
Words without mouths. Hymns without worshipers.

A thousand-throated whisper bled into one clear, childlike voice:

“Justice.”

She exhaled slowly. “That’s my word.”

The voice echoed back, warped and breaking:

“Just us… just this… just once…”

Her hand trembled around the hilt of her rapier. “That’s not what I said.”

“That’s what you meant.”

The sound came from everywhere — the statues, the floor, even the pulse in her throat. The air was turning into language.

Izzy darted back toward her shoulder, pressing his forehead against hers. His fins pulsed in counter-rhythm, trying to drown out the voices, but they only grew more curious, more alive.

“Who walks?”
“Who remembers?”
“Who burns and does not die?”

Alise laughed softly, though it came out cracked. “A polite guest. Passing through. No plans to die today.”

“Die anyway.”

The echo wasn’t threatening — it was factual.

Izzy shrieked suddenly, wings flaring. His light blazed so bright it painted the room in molten green. The runes on his scales pulsed again, this time in sequence — a glyph pattern, repeating like a heartbeat.
The choir changed pitch to match.

“No, no, no—don’t harmonize!” she hissed, dragging him close. “You’ll wake—”

The air convulsed.

A shockwave of sound burst from the amphitheater floor, scattering crystal dust like stars. Alise hit her knees, one hand on Izzy’s body to shield him. The hum turned into a scream — and then into shape.

Creatures unfolded from the resonance — not flesh, not ghost, but outlines of noise condensed into form. Translucent silhouettes of soldiers and singers. Their faces shimmered with overlapping expressions.
Every step they took rippled the floor like disturbed water.

“Alright,” Alise breathed, drawing her rapier. “I’m awake now.”

The first of the sound-beasts lunged.
She pivoted — too slow. Its limb cut through air, trailing a wave of distortion that knocked her sideways. Her ears rang, balance broken.
She rolled, cut upward, but her blade met nothing. The creature dissolved and reformed behind her.

“Great,” she muttered, blinking through dizziness. “They don’t even respect physics.”

Izzy answered with a sharp chirp — a harmonic pulse that shattered the nearest figure into mist.
The sound hurt her ears.
The monsters screamed, clutching invisible heads — their bodies fracturing into static.

“That’s it!” Alise shouted. “Cancel the tone!”

She thrust her sword, not into a body but into tempo — each swing timed to the rhythm of Izzy’s pulses. Her footwork became percussion; her breath, melody.
Together, they fought like duet — light and echo, rhythm and burn.

Every sound that struck her, she turned back.
Every distortion, she redirected.
Until the chamber itself began to quiet.

The last creature hesitated, eyes trembling like candlelight. It knelt, bowed its head, and whispered in a dozen dying voices:

“The god never left.”

Then it collapsed into silence.

For a long time, Alise didn’t move.
Her breathing came ragged, but not from pain — from awe.
The amphitheater was empty again, its crystals faintly aglow with residual resonance. The same tune still hummed, soft now, almost reverent.

Izzy landed on her shoulder, spent. His fins flickered weakly.
She touched his head. “You saved my hearing, little one. Remind me to get you something shiny later.”

He chirped faintly — exhaustion and affection blending into one sound.

At the center of the amphitheater, a fissure yawned open.
A staircase of glass spiraled down into black radiance — each step faintly luminous, each pulse synchronized with her heartbeat.

The hum returned, quieter now, coaxing.

“The god sleeps, but his echo does not…”

Alise approached, hand hovering above the first step. Her Lantern’s Echo stirred — the faint, inner warmth of the skill awakening like an eye.
It recognized something below.

She closed her eyes. “Then let the lantern burn quietly.”

Izzy made a low hum — agreement, or maybe prayer.

And so they descended.

☕ Tea-Time Interlude — Outside of Time

A: The air sang today. It knew my name, or borrowed it.
B: Maybe it likes you.
A: I don’t think it knows what liking means.
B: Then teach it.
A: You’d flirt with a cave if it had good rhythm.
B: You’d lecture it on morals first.
A: That’s why we survive.

Chapter Text

Chapter 37 — The hidden White Palace

The glass stair did not creak.

It rang—a faint, bell-thin note each time Alise’s boot met the step, the sound traveling down the spiral and vanishing into an invisible throat below. Izzy floated at her shoulder, fins close to his sides, green light banked to a restrained glow. The air cooled as they descended. The crystal walls brightened, not with warmth, but with that clinical, surgical clarity of moonlight on ice.

At the hundredth curve, the stair released them into a hall of pale geometry.

No seams. No mortar. A palace poured in one breath from an impossible glass: ribs of translucent stone braided into vaults, floors that held her weight like frozen water, pillars with veins of sleeping light. Everything in the hall had the color of memory—almost-white, almost-blue, the tint of paper left beneath a window for one winter too many.

Alise set two fingers to the nearest pillar. It trembled, like a chord plucked and left to sing. She drew the touch back quickly and smiled at her own caution.

“Be polite,” she told herself, and then, quietly to Izzy, “If this place has a temple voice, don’t answer it unless I do.”

Izzy’s tail tapped her shoulder twice: heard, agreed.

The corridor narrowed and then opened without warning into a nave wide enough to hold an army’s silence. At its far end, a dais rose like a single step in the sea. Upon it stood a throne with no back, only a curve—something to lean into rather than against. Behind the dais, a disk of glass floated within a ring of the same crystal—a window, or a mirror, or a memory still deciding what it wanted to be.

Alise took all of this in quickly, the way a fighter reads a battlefield: height, exits, obstacles, lies.

Not empty.

A dozen figures waited in the nave. Not people—manikins of pale stuff, a little softer than glass. They were sculpted in the act of listening: heads tilted, hands at the breast, feet slightly apart as if the floor vibrated under their soles. Each wore a collar: a slim circlet with a single vertical notch. Osirian. She knew the mark from old dossiers—the “barque,” their symbol for passage.

“Listeners,” Alise murmured. “Priests. Or the idea of priests.”

She moved between them. Some watches she had worn in the Dungeon made her take big steps, loud steps—let the monsters know you were too proud for skulking. Not here. Here she kept her stride small, exact, respectful as kneeling.

On the dais, the floating disk brightened.

It was not glass.

It was river.

A thin circle of water hung in the air, flat as a coin, skin smooth as prayer. Beneath its surface, shapes drifted slowly—a distorted sun, a line of reeds, a man’s palm. No, not drifted. Looped. The same sequence, turning over itself, again and again.

A memory trapped in a basin without depth.

“Show me,” Alise whispered, because some doors answer only soft voices.

The water listened. The image drew closer. The palm became a hand marked with the Osirian barque, the wrist cuffed by a clasp of white. The hand reached—and could not reach, pressed against the inside of the water as though a man drowned without lake or river to oblige him.

A voice came, thin as thread pulled through velvet:

> “We will teach the stone to ferry the living and the dead. We will anchor the god. We will bring the cycle indoors.”

Alise’s mouth went dry. Anchor the god. A phrase from the forbidden notebooks Finn had once hinted existed and then denied. She had suspected. She had not believed it could be this literal.

Izzy made the fractional croak that meant warning, not panic. His fins trembled in a staccato pattern, glyphs rippling across his side. The palace answered: light ran through the walls in a slow wheel, once, twice, as if testing a heartbeat.

“Not now,” she told the palace, ridiculous and sincere.

The river-coin shivered. A second voice entered the narrow choir—clearer, nearer, like a man speaking down a long pipe:

> “Lord Osiris stands at the threshold. The god descends. Hold fast. Hold—”

The voice tore itself into wet filament and snapped. The water went still. The chamber exhaled a long-held breath in the crackle of settling light.

Alise did not move for a while. She listened to her own pulse and remembered a girl with a ribboned knife who believed a speech could reshape a city.

She touched the ribbon now, the crimson at her hilt—the old vow line, the new hinge.

“Lantern,” she said, very softly, to the skill that lived in and under her bones. “Do not be greedy in this house.”

A warmth at her sternum acknowledged and held.

Movement—right aisle.

She pivoted, rapier up, but not high; there was something sacrilegious about raised steel here. A shape peeled itself from the edge of the nave: a sentinel, much like the manikins, but this one moved. Its steps produced no sound. Its face had no features save the collar. Where its eyes should have been, a glossy depression reflected her like a flaw in the glass.

“Custodian,” Alise murmured. “Or a test.”

It halted at the foot of the dais. A seam opened across its chest with a soft mouth-tear sound, and from that seam a length of glass unrolled into a staff, long as a man, edged with light.

It did not lower the staff. It did not raise it. It held the posture of a dancer waiting for the measure.

Alise bowed at the neck—a captain acknowledging a gate-warden. “I am a traveler,” she said. “I watch my fire. I extinguish what must not burn. I pass, if passage allows.”

The sentinel’s head tilted the smallest degree. It shifted its encircled hands, and the staff angled to the diagonal.

Duel.

Alise smiled once, a quick, almost private thing. “Very well.”

They moved.

The sentinel’s staff cut not air but angle; it seemed to know how to place its length where her future step would be. Alise did not fight that kind of fight. She trimmed intent. She shortened every reach by the width of a fingernail, letting the staff miss the version of her the palace expected and find the one she had not yet committed to.

The first exchange left a single hair shaved from her scarf. The second left a bright line on the floor where her rapier had kissed the light without complaint. The third found her blade caught in a little notch near the staff’s tip—the notch of the barque—and for one heartbeat she felt the weight of a river trying to drag her sword downstream.

She let go.

Not of the hilt—of the idea that she must win the bind. She rolled her wrist, gave the current a smaller surface, and the weapon came free without force, like someone returning a borrowed book without smudges.

“Thank you,” she said to the staff, to the palace, to the old Osirian that had written this test with hands made of logic.

The sentinel stepped in as if to press her advantage back into her chest.

Izzy moved first.

No flash this time, not the murder-speed of the Colosseum. A tone. He opened his mouth and sang. Humans would have called it a whistle. The palace called it key. The staff’s light guttered and returned—but now it vibrated with Izzy’s frequency, answerable.

“Lesson,” Alise murmured, and stepped in.

Her rapier wrote a minuet on the shaft—three small circles, a comma, a line. The sentinel tried to counter; the staff’s length gave it advantage. She erased it with punctuation. Where it wanted a paragraph, she gave it footnotes. When it bent to force, she offered relevance. On the fourth exchange, she set the point where the barque notch met the grip and said, calm as a librarian, “Yield.”

The sentinel stilled. Its staff dimmed and slid back into its chest with a sigh like a door shutting against evening wind. It lowered its head, collar catching the glass-light.

Izzy hovered nearer, fins like a little cathedral’s prayer flags. The sentinel extended a hand, palm up. On its skin—if skin this was—lay a chip of glass the size of a fingernail, feather-light, feather-thin. A shard of the palace, marked with two notches nested: one barque, one unknown—toothed, angular, a sigil that suggested jaw.

Set.

Alise did not touch the chip. She looked at it until looking became respect rather than greed. Then she laid the tip of her finger in the space between the notches, careful as if petting a live coal.

“Two crews on one boat,” she said. “And it cracked.”

The sentinel retracted its hand, turned, and walked to the river-coin. Its fingers became thin knives. It cut a simple sign into the water: three vertical lines and a hook. The water did not bleed. It remembered. The mark remained.

path.

Alise nodded once more and descended from the dais—down a slope that had not been there a moments before, down a corridor that slid open like an eyelid. The palace rearranged itself not to invite, but to permit. She would not mistake the courtesy.

The new hall curved, then split into five small chapels.

Each chapel held an alcove.

Each alcove hosted a different instrument.

Alise stood and listened to the centuries.

In the first: a harp, all angles and frost. Its strings were hair-thin rods of glass. When she breathed, they tolled faintly, a winter constellation chord.

In the second: a drum with a skin of translucent stone. She pressed a palm lightly to its face and felt a heartbeat that was not hers.

In the third: a reed pipe carved into the wall. A whisper into its mouth returned not as echo but as advice—a braided phrase in a language she did not speak and yet understood enough to bow to.

In the fourth: a bell. The clapper was missing. The vacancy rang the loudest of all.

In the fifth: an empty stand with a groove for a staff.

Izzy drifted to that last one and set his forehead to the groove. The stand brightened. A single line of light rose from the slot as if remembering a staff once placed there.

“Yours?” Alise asked him.

He made the soft trill that meant No/Maybe/Stop fussing, and for the first time she almost wanted to argue with an absence of words.

She did not touch the instruments.

Instead she stood in the doorway between the five and closed her eyes. Lantern’s Echo warmed against her ribs—expectant. It loved patterns. It loved agreements. She held that longing at arm’s length the way one holds a drunk friend out of a fight.

“We are guests,” she told it, smiling because telling your own miracle to behave like a person was a ridiculous luxury of the living. “We listen.”

The palace listened with her.

Rain—that was the first thing it offered. Not water; the grammar of rain. How drops choose their path to ground. How a roof decides who is dry and who learns. That rhythm braided itself through the harp. The drum lent it pulse. The pipe taught it when to turn. The bell—clapperless—was a question, and Alise’s restraint made it an answer.

“Justice is climate,” she said under her breath, and the palace, impertinent, agreed.

Far below, something stirred.

Not the shout of a waking god.

The long exhale of a complicated machine remembering it had a purpose.

Shadows bent as though wind moved beneath them. Hairline cracks laced the floor in a pattern too pretty to be accident. A smell rose—the lily-and-copper from the first hall—stronger now, edged with earth, edged with riverbank after flood.

Alise’s hand fell to the ribbon at her knife. The last of the old Astraea children in her wanted to stand and make a speech at the darkness. The captain in her remembered who her audience was.

“Walk,” she said. “Don’t announce.”

They moved again.

The palace tightened. Walls slid nearer, then withdrew; it was like walking the throat of a great fish deciding whether to swallow. Izzy kept his light small, trusting her pace. Twice she stopped before an arch that smelled wrong—resin and ash—and stepped sideways to a seam that felt right, the way a true door hides in wood-grain long enough for a careful hand to find.

At last the hall spilled them into a square chamber with no adornment save a simple plinth. Upon it lay a book.

No cover. No pages. A book written in the palace’s own tongue: thin sheets of glass stacked like leaves, each inscribed with lines and knots. Some sheets were cracked. Some had bled a little light that dried into frost.

Alise approached like a penitent.

She lifted the top leaf and read with more fingertips than eyes—she had learned to read structures during the Astraea years, the way one can learn to hear a city’s algebra in its markets.

Ships. Doors. Names for passages unfit for the living.

She turned the next leaf.

Formulas, yes, but shot through with poetry the way vines will claim a wall if no one instructs them otherwise. Bend not the soul; bend the route. Make a ferry where the river has not learned to be yet. The god is path, not throne.

She turned the third leaf.

The writing changed hand, the way voices gray when hope does. There was more Set here: sawtooth sigils appended to curves, commands where there had been arguments. The barque sign doubled, inverted, bit its own tail.

Izzy pressed his head to her wrist.

“Yes,” she said. “They stopped asking and started telling. That is how people break gods, or try to.”

She kept the anger. Anger is a leash when you choose the post yourself.

On the fourth sheet, she found a line etched less carefully, as if the writer had carved with a shaking hand while listening for boots.

> If the anchor fails, sing the hall shut.
If the song fails, break the barque.
If the break fails, kill the god.
— S

“‘S,’” Alise said. “Seshat? Scribe? Or…”

She did not say Set. Names call things. She set the leaf down as if it were an infant.

A draft passed through the chamber though there were no doors. The plinth shuddered. The book dimmed as if someone had set a hand upon a candle.

And from the floor, where the hairline cracks had made their quiet garden, something grew.

Not a person.

A shadow with rules. Angular, jointed like a man drawn by a geometer on a cruel day. It had no face, only a collar with two notches interlaced. It held nothing in its hand and yet her teeth ached as if a blade had been unsheathed nearby.

Izzy went very still. Alise followed his lead—there is wisdom in the hush before judgment.

The figure inclined its head a celestial fraction and moved its hands in a pattern that meant permission denied in four civic codes she had enforced in a happier life.

“Gate,” Alise said with her captain’s voice—soft, but made to carry when it needed to. “Your master is gone or dreaming. Your law is old enough to respect a guest’s oath. I carry no god into this room.”

The shadow’s head cocked. Its hands changed position. Now: Trial. It stepped toward the plinth. A second shadow rose from the cracks like ink drawn up a wick. A third. A fourth.

Not a fight to win.

A custom to fulfill.

Alise let her lungs find the little march the Astraea girls sang on nights they were too tired to sleep. Izzy took the key, humming low. Lantern’s Echo rose, eager; she pressed it to the posture of obedience. The shadows took their stances around the plinth, not to defend, but to witness. She understood: the book demanded guardians; the guardians demanded form.

“Form Six,” she said, and now the hall had the manners of a cathedral and the rules of a court.

They began.

Every step she took, a shadow took the counter-step. Every pause, they offered her the opposite—stop to her go, ask to her answer. She understood on the fifth exchange what they wanted: not victory. Consistency. If she changed her rhythm to grasp at advantage, they would erase her from the room like a poorly written line. If she kept her word to her own feet, they would admit that she belonged with the book for one more page.

She kept her word.

The dance wrote itself: nine exchanges, bow, nine again, bow, then the little turn of heel and shoulder known to honest constables and priests with good posture.

On the final bow, the first shadow stepped back and smiled the way glass smiles when it chooses not to break. The collar on its throat dimmed. The book brightened. The other shadows sank into the cracks with the same courtesy with which they had come.

Alise did not touch the book again. She had seen enough.

“Path,” she said, and felt the palace oblige.

A vein of brighter glass ran like a vein down the chamber’s far wall, curving to a slit that learned to be a door as she approached. Cold air gusted—not dead air, but air that had waited a long time to move.

At the threshold, she looked back once.

“Thank you,” she told the palace, not mocking. “For restraint.”

She passed through.

The door had no mind to shut, and yet it shut, dignified, concluding the argument with a sound like wet parchment finding its place between other truths.

Beyond, the pragmatics of the Dungeon returned. Stone, at last. Wet. The vein of the palace faded behind her like a thought she could remember at will but chose, wisely, to save. Izzy’s light brightened, relief limning his edges.

Alise leaned one shoulder to the living rock and exhaled. The shiver that had been trying to get out since the amphitheater rolled through her and out, clean.

She slid the shared journal from her pouch and wrote small in the crack-light:

> Bell,
The White Palace is not a nest. It’s a bridge.
Someone tried to bring the river under the city and park a god there. They almost managed it.
If I vanish, know that I went where oaths go when they are honored—downstream.
Don’t follow yet. Finish saving the part of the world that still remembers your name first.
—A.

She hesitated, then added:

> P.S. I dueled a door. It was good at its job. I was better.
P.P.S. Tell Hestia I didn’t touch everything. (Yet.)

She closed the book, kissed her fingers to the ribbon, and pushed off the wall.

Onward, then. The White Palace behind her, the hush of ordinary floors ahead, the memory of a god not entirely gone sleeping where a river had no right to be.

Izzy tapped her cheek once, twice.

“All right,” she said, and let the Lantern burn quietly in her chest. “We descend.”

---

☕ Tea-Time Interlude (Outside of Time)

B: You wrote “I dueled a door.”
A: The door started it.
B: Did you win?
A: We agreed.
B: That’s your favorite kind of victory.
A: It’s the only kind that scales.
B: You’re doing impossible things.
A: So are you. Keep your flame.
B: Keep your lantern.
A & B (together): And meet in the middle.

Chapter Text

Chapter 38 — Descent of Ash and Silver

1. The Door That Wasn’t There

At first, Alise thought it was just another tunnel.

The same kind of corridor she’d walked through for days — carved by time, softened by wind that wasn’t really wind. But something about this one felt wrong.

The air was thick, damp, and faintly metallic, as if she were breathing through silver dust. Her lantern flame flickered even though there was no draft. The walls weren’t stone anymore — they glimmered, faintly alive, veins of black and pearl threading through the rock like roots that pulsed with memory.

Izzy’s light dimmed to a wary ember. His fins spread wide, like banners catching invisible pressure.

“Easy,” she whispered, glancing at him. “We’ll take it slow.”

Her voice came back to her — not as an echo, but as a whisper from the walls themselves, lower, slower, like the Dungeon was repeating her words in another tongue.

She stepped forward. The sound of her boot echoed — once, twice — then was joined by another, half a beat behind.

Her hand dropped to the hilt of her rapier.

“...Izzy,” she said quietly.

The Iguazu rotated midair, fins rigid, eyes narrowing at the tunnel ahead.

The second set of footsteps stopped.

Alise exhaled softly. “Alright,” she murmured. “So it hears us.”

Her lantern flared, red light crawling across the silver walls.

The tunnel yawned open into a chamber — wide, round, hollow as a bell — and there the air changed again. The sound died. The world held its breath.

It wasn’t silence.

It was listening.

2. The Chamber of Memory

The light here didn’t behave like normal light. It didn’t cast shadows — it sculpted them. Every mote of silver dust in the air gleamed faintly, catching the red shimmer from her lantern. It was like walking through a thousand tiny mirrors, all showing fragments of other worlds.

Then the mirrors began to move.

The dust twisted, spiraled, gathered — and the darkness bled into color.

Alise blinked hard. For a heartbeat, she was no longer underground.

She was standing in Astraea’s courtyard again.

The smell of tea leaves drifted from the open window. The garden hummed with insects and afternoon wind. The stones were warm under her boots.

And standing there — not five steps away — was herself.

Younger. Brighter. Smiling as if the world could still be saved by trying hard enough.

Her younger self saluted sharply, ribbon flaring.

> “Justice is a flame, Captain! It must burn the shadows until none remain!”

Across from her, Astraea smiled — calm, kind, endlessly patient.

> “And what if the flame forgets to warm, little lantern?”

The young Alise laughed, her voice ringing like sunlight on glass.

> “Then I’ll make it burn brighter!”

The vision wavered. The silver dust swirled, carrying the sound away.

The older Alise stood motionless. Her throat ached. She tried to say something — to warn the girl, to thank her — but her voice failed.

Only one word made it out. “...Sorry.”

The image shattered into light.

3. The War of the Sky

The garden dissolved into storm.

Black clouds tore open above her. The sky flashed with divine light — not magic, not flame, but the real thing. The kind that shakes worlds. Lightning thicker than trees split the horizon. The air tasted like iron and ozone.

Below her feet, the world burned.

She saw banners — Hera’s white and gold, Zeus’s azure thunder — cutting through fire and dust.
She saw the Sobek Familia’s beasts falling in waves.
She saw Set’s disciples dragged down into the sand, their curses turning into prayers.
And in the middle of it all, standing like the last pillar of a dying temple—

A god in green and gold armor, holding a staff shaped like an ankh.

Osiris.

He didn’t fight like the others. He didn’t strike for glory. He fought like someone trying to preserve something sacred while the world tore it apart.

His Familia gathered around him — human, elf, beastman — a desperate army of believers against the storm.

> “Retreat to the root!” his voice thundered. “The heavens have claimed the sky — then we’ll claim what’s below! The earth remembers her children!”

He raised his staff. The ground split open, revealing a spiral stair that plunged into darkness.

> “Go! Carry our faith where the light cannot follow!”

They obeyed, dragging the wounded and the dead alike. His eyes met Alise’s through time — sorrowful, burning with purpose.

> “If the gods above forget,” he said, “then let the earth remember.”

Then Zeus’s bolt struck the horizon, and the world ended in light.

When the radiance faded, Osiris stood alone. He turned his back on the sky, pressed his palms together, and the stair sealed behind him — a tomb and a promise in one motion.

The last thing Alise saw before the dust took him was the faintest trace of a smile.

> “I will remember the fallen, if you remember the path.”

4. The Palace of the Dead

Alise stumbled. Her knees hit smooth, cold stone.

The battlefield was gone. She was standing on the balcony of a pristine white tower. Its walls shimmered faintly — polished marble laced with silver veins. Beneath her feet, faint golden lines pulsed rhythmically, like a heart trapped beneath glass.

She knew where she was.

“The White Palace,” she whispered.

But this wasn’t the Palace of the living. It was underneath it — a mirror buried beneath the surface, a reflection of its forgotten foundation.

Izzy hovered at her shoulder, wings trembling. The silver glow beneath them answered his light in perfect rhythm, as though recognizing him.

“You’re part of this,” she murmured, eyes wide. “Aren’t you?”

The Iguazu didn’t look away.

The glow intensified. The floor beneath them pulsed faster. The walls rippled — not shaking, but breathing. Light and shadow formed faces that were not faces. A thousand memories burned in the same silence.

She saw Sobek’s children crawling through the dark, their scales melting into armor, their eyes glowing red with divine rot.
She saw Set’s surviving priests carving sigils into their skin, whispering to the dark: “He will wake. He must.”
And at the very bottom of it all — a throne carved from bone and gold, with a god’s shape still seated upon it. Osiris, unmoving. His eyes closed. His lips whispering prayers in his sleep.

And she understood.

The Dungeon wasn’t cursed because a god had died here.

It was alive because he refused to die.

5. The Lantern and the Grave

“Osiris,” she whispered. “You buried yourself to keep the world whole.”

Her voice broke. “And they forgot you.”

The silver light trembled like a breath. For a heartbeat, she thought she heard something — a whisper not in her ears, but in her bones.

> “Red Flame.”

The voice wasn’t angry. It was exhausted. Ancient. Beautiful.

> “You walk where my children drowned. You burn where the world went cold.”

Alise swallowed. “You’re… still here.”

> “A god cannot die where the world remembers him. The Dungeon is my memory. The monsters are my dreams.”

The light dimmed slightly. The air felt thicker, like grief given form.

> “I wanted to rest. But the sky forgot. The earth remembered too well.”

Izzy trembled violently beside her. His glow flared, and for a brief, terrifying instant, Alise saw the mark etched in his light — a symbol identical to Osiris’s ankh.

Her stomach turned cold.

“You’re his echo,” she breathed. “His last prayer.”

Izzy’s glow shivered in confirmation — then dimmed.

The silver dust began to rise again.

6. The Mirror of the Flame

The light gathered in front of her, swirling faster and faster until it formed a shape — her own.
Alise stared at herself: taller, colder, with a faint silver crown gleaming above her head. Her hair moved like smoke. Her eyes were pale as moonlight.

The mirror-Alise looked down on her with quiet disappointment.

> “You carry his torch,” it said. “You burn, but you forget to see.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Alise said quietly.

> “Then why are you here? Why walk this path alone?”

“Because someone has to.”

The phantom tilted her head, eyes glimmering like tears that refused to fall.

> “And when you die, who will remember you?”

Alise drew her rapier halfway — not in defense, but as a gesture of respect.
“I don’t need them to remember me,” she said. “I need them to continue me.”

The mirror stepped forward. “That’s what he said too.”

“I know.” She smiled faintly. “But I’m not him.”

The phantom lunged.

Her rapier stayed sheathed.

The impact hit like a wave of heat, rushing through her — pain, guilt, memory. Every failure she’d ever carried bloomed in her chest all at once: the faces of her Familia, their last words, the fire, the screams, the silence that followed.

It was unbearable.

Her knees hit the ground. She choked on air that wasn’t air — silver dust clogging her throat.

Izzy screeched, light flaring, and struck the phantom dead-on.

The mirror exploded into a thousand sparks.

But Izzy’s light shattered too.

He dropped like a stone.

7. The Wake of Gods

“IZZY!” she screamed, catching him in her hands.

His body was burning with light, his fins twitching weakly. The mark of Osiris pulsed once, twice — then faded to black.

“No, no, no—” She pressed a hand to her heart, shaking. “You’re not done yet, do you hear me?”

For a moment, the entire chamber pulsed with her heartbeat. The silver dust froze midair.

Then — slowly — the light around them began to shift. The cold glow softened. The oppressive hum eased into something quieter.

A whisper came again, faint but unmistakable.

> “He is my echo. And you are my lantern. Walk together. End this dream.”

Then the presence faded.

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was relieved.

Alise knelt there for a long time, cradling Izzy against her chest, until his breathing steadied — faint, fragile, but real.

She let out a long, shaking sigh. “You stubborn miracle,” she whispered. “You and I both.”

8. The Journal and the Promise

Later, when her strength returned, she opened her pack. Her hands still trembled as she pulled out the shared journal — the one Hephaistos had enchanted. Its twin binding pulsed faintly in her hand.

On the right page, Bell’s handwriting glowed softly. He’d written recently.

> Wiene smiles again today. I think… I think we’re making it work. Even monsters deserve a place to belong.

Alise smiled faintly through tears she hadn’t realized she was holding. She took up her quill and wrote beneath it.

> The Dungeon remembers gods the way people remember love — painfully, and forever.

There’s a god buried beneath me. He’s dreaming, and his dreams are shaping this place.

If I can wake him… maybe we can both rest.

Keep your light burning, Bell. I’ll follow it home.

She closed the journal. The heartbeat of the Dungeon was quiet now. Peaceful.

Almost grateful.

9. The Lantern and the Tomb

She built a tiny fire and set Izzy near it, wrapping him in a fold of her cloak. The Iguazu’s breathing steadied, each exhale glowing faintly like a pulse of memory. His eyes stayed closed, but his fins fluttered whenever she spoke, as if he still listened.

“Sleep,” she murmured. “You’ve earned it.”

Then she looked out over the glowing valley of the White Palace below — vast halls of silent marble, silver spires glimmering like stars turned inward. The light came from no source and every surface.

“This was your kingdom,” she said softly to the emptiness. “Your grave. Your curse.”

She lowered her head, her voice trembling.

“But I see you, Osiris. I see what you were trying to protect.”

The silver veins in the stone pulsed once, like a nod.

She rose, her silhouette framed by the pale firelight, cloak fluttering around her.

“Then I’ll do what you couldn’t,” she said. “I’ll bring your light back to the surface.”

The Dungeon didn’t answer.

But the pulse beneath her boots followed her steps — steady, rhythmic, like applause.

10. The Whisper and the Dawn

When Alise finally lay down to rest, she didn’t dream of Astraea or fire.

She dreamed of water — calm, still, endless.
In that water, a man of light sat beside her, his eyes kind, his armor cracked.

> “You remembered,” said Osiris.

Alise smiled weakly. “You made it hard to forget.”

> “Then wake me.”

He reached out — his hand made of sand and sunlight — and touched her forehead.

> “Tell the world I was more than a curse.”

When she woke, the chamber was silent again. Izzy was perched on her chest, asleep, glowing softly.

The silver dust had settled into calm ripples across the floor, as if something vast beneath them had finally stopped turning in its sleep.

Alise exhaled, slow and steady.

“Good morning,” she whispered.

Her lantern flickered once — and then burned brighter than it ever had before.

Chapter Text

Chapter 39 — Whispers Beneath the Skin

The descent ended without warning.
One blink, and the floor turned from stone to sand that glittered like powdered bone.
The air was wet and still, heavy with something that remembered prayer.

Alise lowered her hood.
“Smells like incense and rust,” she whispered. “A temple that forgot its god.”

Izzy gave a low trill—the worried one, the one that meant stay close.
She did.

Ⅰ.  The Hall of Murals

The tunnel opened into a great circular hall.
Paint peeled from the walls in long curls, but beneath the decay the murals lived: armies of mortals marching beside rivers of light, a sun with no sky, three gods sharing one horizon.

She brushed the dust away with her glove.  Beneath it:

> “Osiris the Rememberer, Sobek the Fang, Set the Survivor.”

Her stomach tightened. “Three kings under one oath,” she murmured. “And the world buried them.”

From the darkness behind, a voice answered—not echo, not monster. A man’s voice, soft and rough as paper.

> “The world forgot. We did not.”

Alise spun, blade half-drawn.  Izzy’s fins flared emerald, casting the room in ghost-light.

Five shapes stood in the archway—human.  Real skin, real eyes.  Ragged robes stitched from monster hide, emblems long faded.  Each bore a different scent of power: blood, dust, storm.

The leader stepped forward, hands empty. His face was lined, his hair silver at the edges.  But his posture was military, disciplined.

> “You shouldn’t have come here, surface-born.”

“Neither should you,” Alise replied.

A flicker of surprise crossed his eyes. “You know who we were?”

“I know what your gods did,” she said. “And what they almost destroyed.”

He smiled—a tired, human smile. “Then you know why we stayed.”

Ⅱ.  The Last Disciples

They called themselves The Remembered.

Their story spilled like confession.
When Zeus and Hera’s armies burned the lower continent, Osiris refused to flee.  He swore his Familia would preserve balance between life and death—whatever the cost.
So they sealed themselves beneath the earth, “until the world was ready for memory again.”

But centuries below had changed the oath into something else.
They no longer prayed for resurrection. They harvested the Dungeon’s dead mana, feeding it back into the broken divine tether that pulsed beneath the White Palace.
It kept Osiris half-alive—and kept them bound to his will.

Alise listened in silence, her pulse steady but her eyes soft.

“How many are you?” she asked.

The leader hesitated. “…Eighty once.  Nineteen now.”

Izzy whined quietly. Alise’s hand found his back, soothing him like a heartbeat. “And what happens when the tether breaks?”

A younger woman spoke—her voice like cracked glass.
“Then the sun returns. Or everything ends. We don’t know anymore.”

Something inside Alise broke for them.
They weren’t zealots. They were exhausted people running on the last echo of belief.

Ⅲ.  The Choice

The elder extended a hand.  “If you truly carry Astraea’s flame, help us strengthen the seal. The god sleeps peacefully now. We only guard the dream.”

Alise shook her head slowly.  “Dreams aren’t peace. They’re cages that smile.”

At that, Izzy hissed—a sharp, protective note.
The tension in the room rippled like heat.

From the rear ranks, another man moved—a warrior built like a pillar, crocodile teeth strung on his belt.  Sobek’s mark burned faintly on his arm.

> “You speak as if mercy were knowledge,” he growled. “But mercy killed our sky.”

He lunged.

The rapier sang free, but Alise didn’t strike to kill. She turned the blade aside, pivoted low, let his weight roll past.
“Stop,” she snapped. “I didn’t come here to add ghosts.”

The blow that followed came not from him, but from his own shadow—alive, liquid, twisting.  Set’s mark glimmered on another survivor’s wrist.  The shadow shot toward her like a spear.

Izzy flashed forward—pure light, pure sound—splitting the darkness in two. The shockwave scattered sand across the murals.

The survivors gasped.
“Impossible—!”
“He carries divine current—!”

Alise held her ground, voice even. “He’s the Dungeon’s child. You’ve been feeding its heart. You should know what happens when it fights back.”

The elder closed his eyes. “Then perhaps you are the punishment we prayed for.”

Ⅳ.  The Collapse

The tether beneath the floor shuddered—one deep pulse, like the Dungeon inhaling through broken lungs.  The murals bled light.  For a moment, Alise saw through the wall: veins of green fire snaking downward, connecting to a massive shape asleep below.

Izzy shrieked, fins blazing white.
“Back!” Alise cried, grabbing him and diving behind a fallen pillar.

The hall cracked open.
Stone peeled away like bark, revealing a staircase spiraling into blackness, each step glowing with carved hieroglyphs that pulsed like living words.

The elder shouted over the roar.

> “The god stirs—your presence wakes him! If he rises, this floor will drown in mana!”

Alise stood, her hair whipped by wind that had no source.
“Then I’ll go down,” she said simply. “If he’s dreaming, someone should tell him it’s time to wake up.”

Izzy fluttered to her shoulder, weak but unyielding.
She smiled at him. “You’re coming too, aren’t you?”

He chirped once. The sound was small but fierce.

Ⅴ.  The Journal

They paused at the edge of the broken stair. The survivors stood in the ruin behind her, half-in fear, half-in reverence.

Alise opened the journal. Her hand trembled, the ink already smudging from falling ash.

> Bell,
The Dungeon breathes people. Not monsters. People.
They waited centuries for a god who forgot to die.
I don’t know if I’m saving them or ruining them, but I’m going deeper.
Izzy’s tired, but he won’t leave me.
If you feel a tremor under Orario tonight, it’s just us—
shaking hands with ghosts.
—A.

She shut the book, tucked it close to her heart, and stepped onto the first stair.

Below, something ancient exhaled—a breath long enough to bend time.
The walls shimmered with faint hieroglyphs, and a single voice whispered up through the stone:

> “Come, Red Flame. The dead remember you.”

Izzy’s glow flickered, and Alise’s eyes hardened to emerald fire.

“Then let’s remind them,” she said, and descended into the dark.

Chapter Text

Chapter 40 — The Cathedral of Bone

(A stage in darkness. Then the faint pulse of green torches. The chamber breathes like lungs made of stone.)

[SFX – Drip. Echo. Wind inside ribs.]

ALISE enters, lantern low, Izzy a hovering ember at her shoulder.

ALISE:  Start talking. You’ve lived under the world’s feet for centuries. Why?

ELDER:  Because the world stopped deserving the sun.

ALISE:  That’s not an answer.

WOMAN #1:  We were born here. Children of those who fled Zeus’s purge. Osiris saved us when the skies burned.

ALISE:  Saved you—by burying you alive?

ELDER:  By giving us purpose. We kept the root breathing. The surface forgot the balance between birth and return. Down here, we remember.

ALISE:  “Balance.”  You mean control.

YOUNG MAN:  Call it what you wish. When the gods above fought, they broke the cycle. Life went on multiplying—souls crowding the river of death. We mend that river.

ALISE:  By feeding monsters into it?

ELDER:  Monsters, men—it makes no difference when the current is jammed.

ALISE:  That’s madness dressed like philosophy.

WOMAN #1:  It’s arithmetic. The surface breeds without measure. You have cities now that scrape the clouds. You harvest crystals from the Dungeon but never ask what bleeds to make them grow.

ALISE:  You think the Dungeon is alive.

ELDER:  We know.  It is Osiris’s breath trapped in stone. Every birth of a monster is a heartbeat he spends to stay dreaming.

ALISE:  Then you’re killing your god every day.

(pause)

YOUNG MAN:  Perhaps that’s what he wants.

ALISE:  …You’re serious.

ELDER:  He whispers through the walls: “Remember me until remembering hurts.”  We obey.

ALISE:  Obedience isn’t faith. It’s fear with better manners.

WOMAN #1:  And what is your justice but obedience to another voice?

ALISE:  Mine argues back.

IZZY:  [soft trill]

ALISE:  See? Even he agrees.

ELDER:  He carries our god’s fragment. You feel it, don’t you? The light in him is the same that sealed us here.

ALISE:  He’s not your relic. He’s my friend.

ELDER:  Friends burn out. Gods endure.

ALISE:  Then let’s test which flame lasts longer. Tell me the truth. What are you hiding below this cathedral?

(silence)

WOMAN #1:  The heart.

ALISE:  Say it plain.

ELDER:  The true Osiris.  Not the echo you saw in visions. The body sleeps beneath. Still divine. Still dying.

ALISE:  And you feed him monsters to keep him dreaming.

YOUNG MAN:  Yes. Each death buys another dawn down here. If he wakes fully, the Dungeon will rise.

ALISE:  Rise?

ELDER:  Not climb. Emerge.  The Dungeon itself will break the surface and devour the sky that condemned him.

ALISE:  So it is revenge.

ELDER:  Balance.

ALISE:  Genocide in prettier words.

WOMAN #1:  You’d call it mercy if Astraea ordered it.

ALISE:  Astraea would never me to bury the world.

ELDER:  You misunderstand. We are not seeking war. We are guarding grief.

ALISE:  Then open the path and let me end it.

YOUNG MAN:  End?  You’d kill a god?

ALISE:  If he’s the weight choking the Dungeon, yes.

ELDER:  You’d unmake what keeps Orario standing.

ALISE:  If Orario only stands because someone else suffocates, it deserves to fall.

(silence)

WOMAN #1:  You talk like fire thinks—beautiful, suicidal.

ALISE:  I talk like someone who’s seen too many tombs pretending to be altars.

ELDER:  Then you’ll walk to him yourself?

ALISE:  I always walk.

YOUNG MAN:  You won’t return.

ALISE:  None of us really do.

IZZY:  [low hum, fading light]

ALISE:  Don’t worry, Izzy. I’m not dying yet. Just arguing with history.

ELDER:  If you reach him, tell him we kept the promise.

ALISE:  Which one?

ELDER:  “I will remember the fallen, if you remember the path.”

ALISE:  I already am.

The last lines echo in the hollow hall.  Alise turns toward the stair spiraling down, Izzy’s faint glow reflecting in the bones around them.

Then a final exchange:

WOMAN #1:  Red Flame—when you see him, ask if the dead ever forgive the living.

ALISE:  I’ll ask. But I doubt he’ll answer in words.

Chapter Text

Chapter 41 — The Garden of Osiris

[Journal Entry — written on the back of a half-burnt page]

Bell,
They asked me if the dead forgive the living.
I think they have the question backward.
It’s the living who must forgive the dead for leaving their work unfinished.
I’m going to ask a god why he built a cage and called it peace.
If I don’t return, tell Ryuu I finally found a door worth walking through.
—A.

1. Descent

The ink had barely dried when the floor beneath her boots began to hum.

It wasn’t the mechanical vibration of stone or air. It was older — like the memory of music before instruments were born. Each step forward sank deeper into stillness. The tunnels ahead were smooth, not carved, but grown: ivory walls banded with veins of gold light that pulsed in a rhythm she could almost mistake for breath.

Izzy drifted close to her cheek, fins low, every pulse of his glow syncing faintly with the heartbeat in the stone.

“Feels alive,” she whispered.

He trilled once, softly — agreement, or warning.

The slope curved downward in a perfect spiral. The deeper they went, the more the light changed — gold to green, green to a faint pale silver. It reminded her of moonlight seen through water, and she realized after a moment that they were walking beneath water. The roof above them rippled faintly, but no drop fell.

She stopped when the air grew heavy enough to taste.
Something vast was waiting.

2. The Garden

The spiral opened into an impossible cavern.

It wasn’t dark. The light came from below, a wide, circular lake whose surface shimmered with liquid glass. Around it, trees rose — but no roots broke the ground. Their trunks hovered a few inches above the water, branches arching like cathedral ribs, dripping golden sap that fell upward into the air, glowing brighter as it ascended.

Flowers bloomed on invisible stems, suspended midair, their petals flickering with fragments of memories — faces, voices, a battlefield sky.

At the lake’s center, a throne.

No — a sarcophagus, carved from the same pearl stone as the spiral, half-buried, half-floating. The lid was open just enough for light to seep through, soft and steady as a sleeping pulse.

Alise stepped forward, boots brushing the water’s surface — and it didn’t ripple. It accepted her weight.
She exhaled, the sound swallowed instantly by the air.

“Osiris…” she whispered. “You built a tomb that dreams.”

Her voice carried, and the answer came not as sound but as vibration through her bones.

“Lantern-bearer.”

The light from the sarcophagus flared. Dust rose, coalescing into form — not solid, not human, but close enough for her mind to recognize the symmetry.

A man’s outline, clad in shifting light and shadow, the silhouette of an ancient crown hovering above where a head might be. His voice was a river speaking to itself.

“You stand in remembrance’s root. Few mortal feet dare.”

“I didn’t come to desecrate,” Alise said quietly. “I came to understand why this world keeps bleeding.”

“Because gods do not die cleanly,” the voice said. “They stain what they love.”

She took another step. Izzy hovered beside her, light flickering like candlelight in a storm. The god’s shape tilted — not hostile, not gentle, simply observant.

3. Dialogue with a Dying God

ALISE: “You were Osiris once. Lord of Return.”

OSIRIS: [A low hum.] “Still am. Though the name is now only half a word. You walk on the skin of my dream.”

ALISE: “Why hide here? Why let your followers twist into monsters?”

OSIRIS: “Because the sky cast us out. The war above left no place for mercy. I sought the only kingdom that would not refuse me.”

ALISE: “The Dungeon.”

OSIRIS: “Yes. The living labyrinth. I offered it worship; it offered me survival. In time, we forgot which of us was the god.”

She frowned. “You built soldiers. Sobek, Set… all of them. You bound them to this place.”

OSIRIS: “They bound themselves. Their faith had nowhere left to climb but down. Each swore to me in the dark — to preserve what the heavens destroyed. You call them monsters; I call them children who refused to forget.”

Alise’s hand tightened on her rapier. “And the Xenos? The talking ones? Are they yours too?”

OSIRIS: “No. They are the Dungeon’s apology. It tried to mimic love and failed. Even divinity can miss the shape of compassion.”

Izzy’s light flickered once, sharply — as if in protest. The god’s gaze turned toward him.

OSIRIS: “Ah. A fragment. You carry my resonance, little one.”

The Iguazu hissed, fins spreading wide, his glow intensifying until his body became a streak of emerald light.
Alise stepped between them, hand raised. “Don’t touch him.”

The god paused — then laughed, the sound like shifting sand. “You defend what was once mine. Fitting. You remind me of her.”

“Who?” Alise asked.

“Astraea.”

The name was a thunderclap through her chest.

“She judged me once,” Osiris continued. “She stood in light and called me false. I told her mercy was a kind of memory. She told me justice was forgetting the past so it cannot chain the future. We were both right, and so we both fell.”

Alise’s throat tightened. “She forgave even those who killed her familia.”

“Forgiveness is easy when you are divine. Harder when you live among corpses of your own making.”

Silence stretched. The light of the lake dimmed slightly, its calm pulse quickening. Alise felt the pull of that rhythm deep in her chest — the Lantern’s Echo thrumming in time with it.

“I didn’t come to judge you,” she said at last. “But if you’ve merged with the Dungeon, if you’ve made it remember pain, then every life above still suffers from your grief.”

Osiris’s shape flickered, parts of his body dissolving into dust. “Would you have me forget? To erase the record of loss? That is all justice ever asks — the silence of memory.”

Alise shook her head. “No. Justice doesn’t erase. It learns. It moves forward. You’ve been standing still for centuries.”

“And you would move on without me.”

“Yes.”

The lake begins to churn — hundreds of silhouettes rising from beneath the glass water.

“You wanted justice, Red Flame. Come see what it looks like when it fights back.”

Chapter Text

💮 Chapter 42 — The Army of the Dead Gods

The garden did not crack so much as decide to open.

Water that had been a mirror unstitched into veins; lily pads folded like hands ending a prayer; the white gravel bed beneath the lake divided along hair-thin seams until the whole basin breathed out and became a labyrinth—terraces, bridges, and ribbed arches of bone-white stone. The air cooled. The light went the wrong direction.

Alise set her feet where the shore had been moments before. Rapier low, point kissing the ground. Lantern’s Echo warmed behind her ribs—steady, present, not greedy. Izzy hovered at her shoulder, fins taut, glow hummed down to a disciplined pulse.

Across the newborn terraces, a thousand pale ovals rose through the water like surfacing moons. Not eggs. Masks—lacquered, river-smooth—each tied with green cord. Behind every mask: a face, a breath, a vow.

“Stand with me,” Alise said, voice level.

Izzy did not answer with words. He widened his orbit to cover the flanks and let his light sharpen until it cut shadows into neat, reliable lengths.

The first men emerged with the slow, ritual calm of people who had rehearsed dying. Crocodile-leather harnesses. Bone-gold torcs. Scarified swirls across arms and throats that looked like art until you realized the ink had been mixed with ash.

“Sobek’s scions,” Alise said—recognition without hate. “Forward shock.”

Their leader climbed the nearest terrace in a single, elastic bound—bare chest ridged like river stone, jaw rucked with a crocodile’s teeth worn into a necklace. He planted a spear whose head was a polished jawbone carved with short prayers.

His eyes found Alise. Took in the red ribbon at the knife-guard. Lowered, then raised again with something like respect that had chosen to become contempt.

“Red Flame of Astraea,” he said. His voice was a river after flood—still too full to be gentle. “You come to put our god back in the ground.”

“I came to see if he wanted to leave it,” she said. “Now I’m here to stop his dream from swallowing the living.”

“Living?” He laughed without humor. “The surface cast us down here to rot like roots. Set called us cowards. Zeus and Hera called us enemies. You call us wrong. This is the only place that remembered us.”

Izzy’s glow flickered at the names. Old thunder. Old lightning.

Alise’s grip quieted on the rapier. “Then fight me for memory,” she said. “Not for forever.”

He slammed his spear against stone. All the masks on the terraces looked at once. The sound that rose was not a war cry. It was a breath held and finally let go.

The first wave hit them like a wall learning how to run.

Alise moved on the first chord: side-step—quiet foot—draw—the lunge cut short into a half beat because the tall man feinted high and came low with the butt, trying to break her knee. She let her heel go soft and wrote a small answer with the rapier that re-arranged his wrist so his spear decided it wanted to be clumsy. Izzy burned a silver bar through the air that turned three thrown jawbone knives into steam.

“Right two,” Alise said, and Izzy was there, cleaving a brute’s acid spit into a harmless spray of glowing mist that rained down like cheap fireworks.

They did not slaughter. They edited. The front ranks pressed, and Alise pressed back with angles and refusals. Thrusts that went to the edge of arteries and then changed their mind. Parries that touched nerves and wrote sleep along tendons. Izzy stitched light across the field—short, exact lines that robbed momentum without robbing life.

It worked for six counts. On the seventh, the maze itself joined the fight.

Bridges slid a handspan; terraces lurched; a pale stair bucked under her foot like a horse remembering it hated saddles. A spear scraped her cheekbone—a line of heat she did not take time to name. Lantern’s Echo pulsed: adapt.

“Anchor,” she told herself. “Not charge.”

She chose a node—a cracked pedestal with a wilted lotus carved into it—and put her back to it so no angle was behind her. Izzy shifted to two points: right shoulder, then far left at the same time—afterimages that confused thrown javelins into choosing the wrong history. A masked woman in crocodile-scale greaves lunged high; Alise ducked under, pinged the woman’s elbow so the blade kissed stone instead of throat, then stamped the woman’s foot—not enough to crush, enough to decide the leg would rest. The woman sat down with surprised dignity.

“Next,” Alise said, breath even.

Sobek’s leader smiled grimly. “Mercy. The luxury of the strong.”

“Discipline,” Alise corrected. “The duty of the strong.”

“Then hold it,” he said, and raised his arm.

The second wave did not roar. It rose. Something in the lake turned over and came up—the water bulged, split—and a shape the size of a cottage shouldered into the air. A crocodilian construct—monster sinew pulled through a scaffolding of carved white ribs, every bone etched with running script. Its eyes were mother-of-pearl. Its mouth shadowed by a net of iron hooks.

Izzy’s light flared in warning. Alise felt the weight of the thing before her eyes caught up. The rapier would scratch, not speak. She slid the blade home and retrieved the ribboned knife—a short, severe length of steel that had learned honesty from Ryu’s hands.

“Welf would complain about that thing,” she muttered, settling into a half-crouch. “Then make three better.”

She did not wait. She moved first, because the first move belongs to the one who remembers what a body can do. The construct lunged; she stepped into the lunge, not away, and poured her whole weight through one tiny seam at the hinge of a rib where spell and sinew had not made friends. The knife bit; Lantern’s Echo warmed; Izzy layered light over the cut like solder. The construct stuttered—not pain, but surprise—and in that hiccup she found two more seams and taught them respect.

“Pull!” she snapped.

Izzy dragged the welds apart with a twist of light that had learned leverage from watching her. The construct came down like a wall deciding the conversation was over. It should have smashed her, but she was not there anymore. She had gone under and through, and came up with a design note: the script on the ribs was a loop, not a line.

“Break the chorus,” she said. “Not the drum.”

Izzy surged. His fins carved three counter-glyphs into the air, bright and clean. They did not strike the construct. They struck its instructions. The script on the bones flickered, misread itself, and the monster’s mouth closed on nothing, teeth clacking like a stupid gate.

“Down,” she said.

They put it down.

The garden hauled in a breath that tasted like old incense and brackish water. The Sobek scions paused. A few touched their masks like rosaries and whispered gratitude that sounded like grief.

“Enough,” the leader said through his teeth. He’d watched the way she moved; he’d learned she did not lie with her hands. “Fall back to the second terrace.”

The ranks flowed away, professional and unpanicked. The labyrinth obliged, sliding bridges to make space and closing one behind Alise with a gentle finality that said: Now another voice.

Blue flame kinked into existence on the far arch. Shadows stood up from the floor and remembered they had opinions. Knots of night took the shape of men and women with thin chain veils, blue-rune rings circling their wrists.

“Set,” Alise breathed. Her cheek stung where the spear had kissed it. She did not touch the blood.

The man in front moved like a scribe who had learned to kill between writing. He did not wear a mask. He wore a circlet of black stone with an ankh sigil rendered in negative—a hole through which the world looked back.

“Scholar,” Alise said. “You designed the corridors that eat people.”

He inclined his head. “I designed paths. The eating is an emergent property of fear.”

“I’ve seen emergent properties,” Alise said. “They don’t draw contracts.”

“Astraea’s child,” he said, weary amusement in the flat of his voice, “you flatten everything into guilt or grace. We live in the gray, and the gray kept us breathing.”

Izzy drifted closer, light narrowed. The blue runes around the scholar’s wrists turned, selecting. Alise watched his fingers, not the pretty phosphor. He raised two fingers. The shadows answered.

They did not rush. They appeared—one to her left where a bridge joined, one below her right foot where the stone had worn slick, one behind her because the labyrinth had decided behind existed again. Alise’s body answered before her mind wrote commentary. Step—cut—turn—the knife wrote a square around the space she chose to exist in and the shadows respected geometry long enough to get hurt.

“Your trick is placement,” she said aloud, to keep her breath regular. “Not pressure.”

“We don’t need to break you,” the scholar said. “We need to slow you.”

His shadows obeyed. They fought like ink and the memory of hands—never enough to kill, always enough to take one more step from a woman whose whole life had been taught to count steps. Izzy tried to counter-rune the floor, but every glyph he set melted into a blue cousin and laughed.

“Change the key,” Alise said. “He’s trained against you.”

Izzy hissed—no longer a songbird’s sound, but a crossed-wire current—and switched tactics. He stopped writing. He beat time. One long, low thrumm that made the blue rings around the scholar’s wrists stutter as if a drum had told them they were off-beat.

Alise went in during the stutter. Not deep; not greedy. She shaved one of the rings off the scholar’s left wrist the way a careful barber takes a curl. The ring dropped. The floor forgot which shadow belonged to whom. Three of his own shades grabbed his ankles like guilty children.

He was very good. He got free with embarrassment instead of panic. His eyes—clever, careful, lonely—flicked to Alise’s cheek. He saw the thin bleed. He looked pained on her behalf and furious at himself for feeling it.

“Why are you here?” Alise asked, genuinely, panting now. “Revenge? Pride? Habit?”

“None,” he said. “Debt.” He glanced toward the lake, toward the sleeping god that was not sleeping any more. “You think he’s only a prison. He was a shelter first. He gave us a story that did not end in a gutter.”

“And now it ends under a lake,” Alise said, and threw her knife.

He didn’t expect that. No one expects a rapier fencer to overset the table and hurl the cutlery. He parried on instinct with the flat of a shadow; Izzy curled light around the knife mid-flight and yanked its weight sideways in a trick that made physics blush. The blade curved like a gull and clipped the scholar’s circlet, shaving the ankh hole into a broken oval.

The shadows winced. They lost a privilege: the right to be behind her.

“Yield,” Alise said, breath hard.

He bared his teeth—not a grin, exactly; a scholar’s sad admission that the proof had gone against him. He stepped back and raised both hands. The blue rings turned without his fingers.

“Not up to me,” he said, and the labyrinth sang.

From a dozen arches, a dozen voices answered—priest-tones, gutter-rasps, women with broken noses and boys with broken prayers, old men who had kept pebbles of light in jars for decades and were tired of being careful with them.

They came.

Not flood, not frenzy—procession. Sobek’s bruisers returned with new cuts taped tight and new conviction hammered flat. Set’s shadow court flowed around them, veils whispering. Masked women with lotus-ink wrists bore stretchers on which lay small light-sick children whose eyes did not belong in a war. Men with carpenter’s hands carried spears they had never wanted to learn. A grandmother leaned her cheek to a mask and wept without wetting it.

Alise’s stomach dropped. This was not an army. It was a town that had decided to die standing.

She set her back to the pedestal again. Izzy’s light trembled—fatigue, not fear—and rallied when her shoulder touched him.

“Listen to me,” she called, because not speaking would have been a lie. “I am not here to erase you. I am here to keep the world above from drowning in the dream you made to breathe.”

A woman with a cracked mask and a scar that dragged her smile sideways shook her head. “The world above never wanted our breath.”

“Then I do,” Alise said, louder. “Breathe where the rest of us can hear you. Not under a god.”

A murmur. Not belief. A small, dangerous maybe.

Something in the lake did not like maybe. The water pitched, and from the center rose a pillar of white stone punched through with lines of green fire. Not a statue. A conduit—the artery that fed Osiris’s echo. The air around it rang like a struck bowl.

The Sobek captain planted his spear and shouted over the sound. “Form four! Children back! Shields up!”

The scholar spun two new rings onto his wrist and grimaced as they cut into skin not yet healed from losing the old. “Veils! On me!” he cried. “No gaps!”

They moved well. They moved together. Alise loved them for that and hated what it was for.

“Alise,” Izzy said into her mind—not a word, a pressure, a shared need—If we keep cutting heads, the river feeds the heart.

“I know,” she thought back, teeth clenched.

The conduit swelled. The white palace trembled. The maze rearranged again—bridges sliding into a shape that reminded Alise of a throat preparing to swallow.

“Then we go for the heart,” she said.

“How?” The question was honest. He was a miracle, not a sledgehammer.

“Together,” she said—an old answer, truer now than it had been under any sun.

She took a step. Sobek’s captain barred her with a spear butt that could have broken a less-stubborn shin. He did not strike. He refused passage.

“Move,” she said.

“No,” he said, simply. “If he dies, we go with him.”

Behind him, the scholar flinched and didn’t quite hide it.

Alise’s mouth went dry. “There’s a way to end this without ending you. I know it.” She wanted to know it.

“Believe that,” the captain said, and in the same voice added: “Prepare to be wrong.”

Izzy lifted, ragged, and poured light across the field in a long, low chord that made every jaw set, every foot dig in. Even the children straightened. The labyrinth stopped rearranging to watch.

“Then I’ll be strong enough to carry it,” Alise said, too quiet to be a boast, too loud to be a lie.

She moved.

The bridge they’d been given became a blade. The terrace they stood on decided to tilt. The conduit pulsed—and the first of the truly divine constructs rose: a jackal-headed sentinel of human height and absolute poise, its obsidian skin inscribed with ankhs that ticked like clocks.

It came for Alise with a straight line and a promise: you will be corrected.

She met it with a circle and another promise: no.

Steel rang. Light split. Time stretched to fit them both.

Behind her, the town-that-was-an-army set its feet and raised its shields. The captain of Sobek shouted things that kept people alive. The scholar of Set muttered equations that converted panic into timing. The conduit climbed into its own light and the lake threw off its mirror for a crown.

Alise threaded a thrust through the jackal’s wrist and turned it into a wick. Izzy set the wick alight with a kiss of green. The sentinel did not scream. It stopped, surprised to discover it could, and fell into itself with grace.

The field exhaled. Then inhaled as one, deeper than before.

“Again,” Alise said, not out of bravado, but because language needs anchors.

“Again,” Izzy agreed, voice frayed but unbroken.

They stepped forward into a war that had waited too long to be argued and was finally being answered.

Above them, far away on a surface that had forgotten this place existed, a white-haired boy felt an ache in his chest with no proper name and tightened his grip on a promise he could not see.

The garden rang like a bell struck twice.
Don't worry Bell I'll finish this and come back. For now, hold that thought.

The second wave came.

Chapter Text

💮 Chapter 43 — The Last Breath of Osiris

The first sound was not a scream.
It was breathing.
The dungeon itself exhaled — a slow, shuddering sigh through a thousand cracks of ancient stone. The light in the White Palace dimmed to red, and the temperature rose until every breath tasted like ash.

Alise lowered her stance, sword gleaming with sweat and reflected fire. Her boots slid half an inch in the molten dust. Around her, the surviving zealots of Osiris chanted in three overlapping tones — one human, one monstrous, one that vibrated inside the bones.

“The root remembers. The god endures. The dead return.”

Dozens of them. Maybe more.
Their armor wasn’t uniform — it was scavenged from ages: some plates bearing old Hera sigils, some shaped from monster bone. All branded with a vertical scar down the chest — the mark of resurrection, Osiris’s gift.

At her shoulder, Izzy hissed, his fins opening in bright warning. His scales gleamed gold-green, but they were dulling at the edges — signs of exhaustion. He’d been fighting for hours, striking through waves of the god’s zealots and surviving constructs.

“Keep your focus,” Alise murmured. Her breath left trails of steam. “If we stop moving, we’re fossils.”

One of the zealots — a man with a spine of obsidian growths — stepped forward and raised a staff shaped like an inverted ankh. “You should not be alive here, little flame,” he rasped. “Osiris calls the dead his kin. You burn his children.”

Alise twirled her rapier once, the motion precise, almost lazy. “Then maybe he should raise better children.”

The zealot screamed, and the army surged.

---

1. THE FIRE REBORN

She didn’t run. She ignited.

Flame leapt from her palms, racing down her limbs and coiling around her blade. Agaris Alvesynth — not invoked, but awakened.
Her skin shimmered under the living fire; her veins glowed molten gold. The very air bent from the heat distortion around her.

She moved — and the first three zealots never reached her. The flame along her sword didn’t slice; it consumed, clean and absolute.

Izzy became a streak beside her — his fins unfurled into shimmering wings of refracted flame, each beat of his body detonating the ground in concussive bursts. He tore through the left flank in a blur, his claws glowing bright enough to blind.

The zealots countered with spells — black sand rising from their tattoos, coalescing into whips and serpents of petrified light. Alise ducked beneath a lash, fire trailing from her braid like a comet’s tail, and thrust upward. Her rapier pierced a shield of bone — the shield melted. The wielder screamed and turned to slag.

“Left!” Izzy’s voice — clear, crystalline, not words but direct meaning — flared through her mind.

She spun.
He dove.
Two enemies vanished in one heartbeat.

Still, there were too many. Every time one fell, two more stepped from the dark, their eyes bright with hollow faith.

The walls pulsed like veins.
At the far end of the grand hall, the statue of Osiris began to bleed gold.

---

2. THE GOD STIRS

Alise froze for half a breath. The statue was massive — twenty meters tall, carved of ivory and basalt, its head crowned with a broken halo of stone feathers. But it moved.

Hairline cracks spread down its chest. The sound wasn’t stone breaking — it was a heartbeat, slow and titanic. The floor shook with each pulse.

“Osiris…” she whispered.

The zealots dropped to their knees.
“The god wakes! The god wakes!”

Izzy flared his fins, sparks scattering off the marble. “Alise.”

“I see it.”

The cracks widened, and from within the fissures poured light. Not divine, but something older — an inverted radiance, the brightness of things that should stay buried.

A voice rolled through the hall, not from the statue but from everywhere.

> “You trespass. You carry fire where only silence may dwell.”

Alise swallowed, meeting the unseen gaze. “You made silence by killing life.”

> “Life forgets. I remember. I am memory given mercy.”

“Then remember this.” She raised her sword. “You’re still dead.”

---

3. THE ARMY OF THE DEAD

The zealots rose as one. The ground split, spilling bones that assembled themselves mid-air — skeletons of creatures unknown, their ribcages pulsing with gold light. From above, spears of petrified resin rained down.

Alise darted through the first wave, her movements too fast to trace. The floor glowed where her feet touched. Flame spun from her strikes like ribbons. She cut through six soldiers in a single arc.

But they reformed. Every one of them.

“Not enough!” she hissed.

Izzy swooped low, his scales blazing white, and unleashed a shockwave of concussive sound. The shock cracked marble and vaporized a line of enemies. Still, more came.

“They’re tethered!” Alise shouted. “He’s feeding them through himself!”

The statue’s eyes opened — glowing blue-green like a drowned sea. The voice thundered again.

> “I grant them return. I grant them meaning.”

“Meaning isn’t yours to grant!”

She slammed her palm against her chest, channeling deeper into Agaris Alvesynth. The flames shifted hue — from orange to deep red, then to blinding white. The floor under her feet liquefied.

“Izzy! Take the sky!”

The fox obeyed. His body expanded — a flare of energy that tore apart air itself — and he became a burning streak spiraling above the battlefield. His roar turned into a beam of compressed heat, carving a trench through the army below.

Alise sprinted straight for the statue. Every zealot in her path melted or burned to vapor. Her rapier became an inferno’s tongue.

But even as she closed the distance, a colossal hand moved — the statue reached down.

💮 Chapter 44 — The Last Breath of Osiris
Part II — The God Who Would Not Sleep

The hand of stone descended like a falling gate.

Alise ran into its shadow.

Heat peeled off her like a second cloak; Agaris Alvesynth tightened around muscles and bone, turned breath into fuel. She slid under the huge palm at the last blink, sparks streaming from her boots, and slashed up the length of the wrist. Basalt blistered. Gold light bled from the cut like molten honey.

The hand slammed the floor where she’d been. Marble jumped. Cracks raced outward, and from each crack rose another zealot, another bone-thing, another prayer with teeth.

“Izzy—cover!”

A white-green bolt tore past her cheek. Izzy corkscrewed through the air, each wingbeat a thunderclap. He sheared a crescent out of the swarm, then doubled back, claws raking a priest’s mask from face to spine. The man dissolved into dust, only to reform near the statue’s ankle, eyes blazing emptiness.

“They’re tied to him,” Alise muttered, jaw tight. “So we cut the tie.”

The statue moved again—too smooth for stone, too heavy for life. One foot lifted. When it fell, the air punched out of her lungs. She threw herself behind a column of bone; the impact turned the column to powder, blasted her across the floor. She hit hard, rolled, came up with the taste of blood and iron in her mouth.

> “You came to bury a god,” the voice said. Everywhere. “You cannot bury what became the ground.”

“Watch me.”

She sprinted—not at the statue, but at the veins of black crystal webbed under the floor—those slow, pulsing capillaries she’d seen in the walls higher up. If Osiris was pumping life back into corpses, there had to be a heart.

She knelt on a pulse-point, jammed her free hand to the stone, and listened. Heat hummed through her bones, through the knife-ribbon at her wrist, through the quiet burn of Lantern’s Echo. The throb wasn’t random. It had a beat. A pattern.

Left—left—hold—right—down.

“Found you,” she breathed.

“Alise!” Izzy’s warning flashed across her mind like lightning. She leaned to the side without looking. A spear of black resin screamed past where her spine had been.

“Thank you,” she said out loud, and stabbed.

Her rapier, white-hot, went straight into the floor.

The veins screamed.

The hall stuttered. For an instant the statue stopped. Bones collapsed mid-crawl. The zealots clutched their chests like men drowning in air.

It lasted one heartbeat.

Then the pulse surged back, harder. The statue’s eyes went brighter, blue-green drowning everything.

> “You hurt me,” Osiris said, and for the first time the voice carried surprise.

“Good,” Alise said. “Feel something real.”

The nearest zealot leapt. She pivoted, took his wrist, burned straight through, and kicked the ash of his forearm into the next man’s eyes. Izzy hit the flank again—streak, impact, burst—and for a breath they had space.

“Alise,” Izzy sent, the word a chime against bone. “The heart isn’t here.”

“I know.”

“Can you reach it?”

She watched the veins. Counted the beat again. Down. Always down.

“Yes,” she said. “But we’ll drown in bodies before we get three steps.”

Izzy’s fins flared. Pain rippled across their link. “Then I burn a road.”

He rose—straight up, a lance of light. For a second all sound died; then the air tore. Izzy screamed without voice. Waves of compressed heat slammed the hall, peeled enemies from stone, shattered totems, blew priests from their knees. The statue rocked. Gold bled from its eyes in sheets.

“Go!” Izzy blasted into her mind.

She ran.

---

The floor’s pulse-lines formed a spiral staircase if you knew how to see it. She bounded the steps the way Astraea had taught them to run in smoke-filled streets: breath measured, eyes soft, body small. The heat around her dressed the walls in wavering mirrors; in each, a version of her died—crushed, burned, stabbed, swallowed by black sand.

“You’ve had your say,” she told the mirrors. “I’m busy.”

Something huge slammed the spiral above her. Stone rained. She leapt the last six steps in one stride and hit a landing that wasn’t a landing at all—it was a membrane, a thin film of something living stretched across a shaft. The blood-warm surface flexed under her boots.

Below, a dim green flooded up like deep water.

She swallowed. “I hate this plan.”

“Agreed,” Izzy sent, strained. “Still good.”

She drove her sword straight down and fell.

The membrane parted around her like cloth. Heat roared against the cool below; steam hissed; light fought light. She tucked, rolled, came up on a ribbed ledge above a cavern that did not belong in stone.

The heart was a lake.

No—an organ so massive it used a lake to cool itself. Black crystal grew from the walls like frozen thunderheads; between them, green light pushed in slow pulses, every wave sending ripples through a pool the size of a stadium. In the center of the pool rose an island of white—bone? alabaster?—and on that island stood a small shrine of salt and gold.

At the shrine, a man knelt.

Not stone. Not memory.

A god.

Osiris looked nothing like the statue. He was young and old in the same breath; skin the color of wet clay; hair bound tight; eyes lit from within. His chest rose and fell. Each breath pushed the lake a finger’s breadth up the shore, then pulled it back.

He turned his head.

> “Red flame,” he said softly. No echo. No thunder. The voice of a man who had been speaking to himself for too long. “You found my pulse.”

Alise had a thousand things to say. She said none of them.

“Stand,” she answered. “If you can.”

He stood. The air around him thinned like something making room. He looked past her, up through the hole she’d torn.

> “Your companion burns prettily.”

“He’s not a torch,” she said.

> “Everything is, down here.” He tilted his head, studying her as a scribe studies a word that should not fit. “You came to kill me.”

She nodded once.

> “Good.” He smiled, and it hurt to look at. “I do not want to live like this anymore.”

That knocked her breath crooked. “Then end it.”

He spread his hands. “I cannot end what I built to keep remembering.”

The lake pulsed, slow and sorrowful.

There were footsteps behind her.

Alise did not turn. The hair on her arms told her what had come through the hole: more zealots, and the biggest shadows of their making. She tightened her grip on the rapier until the hilt printed her palm.

“You bound them to you,” she said. “To your heartbeat.”

“I bound memory to breath,” he said. “Because the ones above forgot too quickly what it costs to make a world.”

“They didn’t forget,” she said. “They moved forward. That’s different.”

The green light hummed. The god’s eyes softened. “You have learned since you wore your ribbon for the first time.”

“My teacher would be pleased.”

> “She would,” he said simply, and Alise’s heart stuttered.

A shriek from above: “There! The heretic!” A rain of black sand poured down the shaft, trying to smother the hole into a plug.

Osiris looked up at it like a man watching snow. “They will not stop.”

“No,” Alise said. “They won’t.”

> “If I let go,” he said, “they all die at once.”

“They keep dying anyway,” she said. “And you keep walking them back.”

His mouth twitched. “I remember the dead so the living don’t have to.”

“That isn’t mercy,” she said. “It’s theft.”

The zealots hit the ledge.

Alise didn’t move. Izzy crashed through the hole instead—the size of a spear, a scream made flesh—and smashed the first rank clear off the stone. He landed by her feet, sides heaving, fins in tatters. His light burned too bright and too thin.

“Don’t apologize,” she said without looking. “We’re almost done.”

“Good,” Izzy sent, the word frayed.

Osiris watched them with the kind of attention that makes truth sit up straighter.

> “If you kill me,” he said gently, “you become a god for a breath. The place my will leaves tries to fill itself with yours.”

“I’ll survive one breath.”

> “Will you?” A shadow of humor. “You are very loud, red flame. The Dungeon likes loud.”

The zealots re-formed, pouring onto the ledge. Alise raised her rapier. Izzy pulled himself up, a tremor running through the length of him. The nearest zealot hissed and spread his hands; a net of shadow leapt for her throat.

Osiris lifted one finger. The net dissolved.

> “Last gift,” he said. “A clear path.”

He stepped back onto the island, and for a moment he was only a man, very tired, in a room he had kept too long.

> “Do it,” he said.

Alise swallowed. The heat in her veins didn’t feel like power now. It felt like tears.

“Stay with me,” she told Izzy.

“Always,” he sent, small and fierce.

She ran.

---

There are cuts you practice for a thousand mornings. Most never find their day. This one did.

She sprinted the edge of the lake. Each footfall threw steam. The shrine’s steps rose; she took them three at a time; the air thinned to the edge of nothing.

Osiris opened his arms as if to embrace a long-lost friend.

Alise thrust.

The rapier point entered just below the sternum, where breath begins and ends. Flame roared outward and inward at once—consuming and cauterizing, ending and closing. The god did not fight. He exhaled.

The lake screamed.

Light blasted the cavern. The pulse stopped. For a single, blinding instant Alise felt everything—names, faces, battles, births, a map of grief and pride and stubborn prayer stretching back beyond the city, beyond the age of gods, to the first person who watched another person die and could not stand it.

The world tried to pour that map into her hands.

“No,” she said, weeping, and let it fall.

The light went out.

Osiris folded around her blade like a man kneeling at the end of a long day. He put one hand over hers, not to push it away, but to say thank you. His mouth shaped a word. Maybe remember. Maybe rest. Then his body turned to ash and drifted away on a breath that came from nowhere.

Above, the zealots howled.

Then they went silent.

One by one, they fell where they stood. The bone-constructs sagged into piles. The black sand lost its malice. The net of passageways—those pulsing veins—dimmed to a dull, ordinary dark.

Alise pulled her blade free and went to her knees.

“Alise,” Izzy sent, so faint she barely heard it.

She gathered him up. He was hot enough to burn skin. She didn’t care. “I’ve got you.”

For three breaths, there was only the sound of her heart reminding the room it wasn’t empty yet.

Then a pair of footsteps rang against the stone.

Not the skitter of zealots. Not the clatter of bone.

Measured. Bare. Calm.

Alise turned.

A man stood at the top of the shrine steps—tall, long-limbed, skin the matte bronze of old coins. His hair was braided back; his eyes were the pale yellow of a snake’s belly. He wore no armor, only a wrapped tunic inked with red runes. In his left hand, a staff of black wood capped with a broken ankh. In his right, a curved knife the color of dried blood.

He bowed, very slightly. It wasn’t mockery. It wasn’t respect. It was acknowledgment, the way a storm acknowledges a mountain.

“Red Flame,” he said. His voice was cool water over knives. “You have finished a long labor for me.”

Alise rose, every muscle screaming.

“Name,” she said.

He smiled without warmth. “Khensa.”

The air around him tightened. The runes on his sleeves woke and crawled like ants.

“Osiris is dead,” Alise said. “So are you.”

Khensa tilted his head. “I never carried Osiris’s blessing.”

The room remembered how to be cold.

“Set,” Alise said.

“Set,” he agreed. “God of knives and necessary endings. I ate my name the day Hera’s brats shattered our court. I have been an empty mouth ever since.”

He looked past her, at the lake, at the drift of ash. For the first time something like feeling crossed his face. It wasn’t grief. It was clarity.

“You have proven,” he said, “that stories can be killed. Good. We are almost done.”

He lifted his staff and cut the air.

The chamber buckled. The shrine steps turned into two places at once. Alise took a breath and felt it try to leave before it arrived.

Izzy lurched in her arms, light spiking, pain flaring through their link. “Move,” he sent. “Now.”

Khensa didn’t come down the steps so much as appear at the bottom of them. The curved knife blurred. Alise met it on instinct. Metal kissed metal; sparks fell like rain; the sound crawled up her teeth.

“You’re tired,” Khensa observed mildly.

“You’re in my way.”

He smiled—this time with teeth. “Delightful.”

He pressed. She gave. He stepped; the room tilted; for a heartbeat she was fighting in a corridor sideways to gravity. She shoved through the angle the way she’d shoved through grief, and the world snapped straight. Izzy snapped a blast into Khensa’s flank; the man turned his staff and ate the blast—the air went dull where it touched the wood.

“Don’t,” Izzy warned.

“I see it,” Alise said, breathing hard. “He unthreads intent.”

Khensa’s eyes warmed a fraction. “You feel quickly. Your Lantern is nosy. Good. Learn this, too.”

He struck the staff against the floor. Sound vanished. Not muted—deleted. For a half-second Alise felt her heartbeat stop. The panic that followed wasn’t fear; it was the body’s fury at being tricked.

Khensa came in on that fury, blade low, staff high. Alise parried high, ducked low—he wasn’t faster than Izzy, but his angles were wrong. Every thrust arrived crooked from a place she hadn’t taught her muscles to watch. He clipped her shoulder; heat flared; blood hissed on the floor. She struck back and scored his hip. The cut closed without blood.

“Concept weapons,” she panted. “Eat force. Kill sound. Unname intention.”

Khensa’s teeth flashed. “Yes.”

Izzy darted; Khensa swept the staff; Izzy flickered. For a breath he forgot he could fly. He dropped a handspan before will pulled him back up.

“Don’t you dare,” Alise snarled, stepping into Khensa’s space on a bad angle and making it good by stubbornness. Her rapier kissed the rune-lines on his sleeve; three sigils went out with a faint baby-cry.

Khensa’s smile thinned. “Better.”

Behind him, the first of the Osiris-followers who hadn’t yet crumbled reached the ledge, saw their god’s ash, and screamed like broken instruments. Khensa didn’t look. He cut the air again. The scream lost its name and died to a whisper.

“This is between us,” he said.

“Unfortunately,” Alise agreed.

He came like a tide. She let the tide push and didn’t drown. She risked nothing flashy. Form six; conserve motion; speak only when the silence is worse. When she did speak, it was to anchor herself.

“Bell,” she whispered, parrying. “Keep your feet.”

Khensa’s blade glanced off her guard. He arched a brow. “Prayers?”

“Habits.”

The fight ran hot and cold. Twice she almost died. Twice Izzy erased a line that would have ended in her throat. Twice she turned a killing angle into a glancing blow by doing something stupid and honest, like stepping where no one steps because it’s rude to physics.

Khensa’s knife finally kissed her rib. Pain punched through. She gasped, dropped to one knee, flung herself sideways. The knife carved a piece of the shrine where she’d been. The stone did not fall. It forgot to be stone and became dust.

“Alise,” Izzy sent, terrified and furious. “Enough.”

“I know,” she thought back, shakier than she wanted.

Khensa’s blade dipped, inviting surrender. “You are out of blood,” he said softly. “Out of tricks. You killed a god. I will make your death quick to honor that.”

Alise spat blood and a laugh. “You don’t honor anything.”

“Correct,” he said, and lunged.

She threw Agaris Alvesynth wide.

Not a beam. Not a wave. A climate. Heat flooded the chamber in a single, rolling front. The lake’s surface went to glass. The runes on Khensa’s tunic brightened and then started to crawl backward as the air around them refused their stories.

Khensa’s eyes narrowed for the first time.

“Now,” Alise said.

Izzy answered. He broke himself into light.

He didn’t explode. He shed. Every hard edge softened into aurora. He ran himself down to the echo—the pure, bright syllable of what he had meant ever since the Dungeon shaped him around a wish to guide. That echo dove into Alise’s blade. The rapier stopped being steel. It became a line between yes and no.

Alise stood. Her wounds didn’t close. They burned. The pain steadied her.

Khensa stepped in, staff cutting to unname the blow before it began.

“Speed opens the door,” Alise said, raising the point.

Conviction walked through it.

She thrust.

Khensa tried to step the future away. The staff met the thrust to devour it. The blade did not consent to be eaten. It didn’t carry force to swallow. It carried a decision. It went through the staff’s trick the way an answer goes through a stale question.

Point met fabric. Fabric refused to be fabric and became a problem. The point solved it. The blade entered the cage of Khensa’s ribs and found the rune that said Khensa, the one he had eaten long ago and kept in a secret place to know where to stand in the world.

She un made it.

He did not bleed. He did not fall. His breath caught on a moment that could not find his name to hang on. For a second his eyes were a boy’s, blinking at a dawn he did not expect.

“Necessary endings,” Alise whispered. “Then let this be one.”

The light inside her sword went out—not failure, but completion. Izzy’s echo slid back into a seed and curled against her heart, small and hot and sleeping.

Khensa opened his mouth as if to argue and found he had no word left to stand on. He exhaled as Osiris had. He became dust that did not remember being a man.

Silence fell like snow.

Alise lowered the blade.

Her knees went out from under her. She sat on the shrine steps, one hand over the hot pulse where Izzy slept, the other still wrapped around a hilt too light for what it had done.

The lake moved again. Not with a god’s will. With the ordinary breath of water. The veins in the walls cooled from sick green to slate. Somewhere high above, the White Palace cracked like a shell. The Dungeon adjusted itself around a small woman and decided, for once, not to crush her.

A last survivor staggered into the chamber—one of Osiris’s high-priests, mask cracked, eyes wild. He took in the ash; the missing; the quiet.

“What have you done?” he whispered.

Alise looked up at him. Her smile was tired and kind and not for him.

“Mercy,” she said.

The priest sank to his knees and began to sob the way men do when a story they lived in forever goes away.

Alise let him.

She drew the shared journal with fingers that shook and wrote three careful lines on Bell’s page.

> I killed a god today.
Then I killed the shadow that would have replaced him.
I am tired. But not done.

She closed the book.

“Up,” she told her legs. They argued. She stood anyway.

She turned once, put two fingers to her brow in the direction of the lake. “Rest,” she said to a room that had held too much.

Then she began the long climb back through a palace of bones that were already forgetting they had pretended to be a throne.

Chapter Text

💮 Chapter 44 Interlude: The Shadow of Set

The battlefield smoldered beneath a bruised twilight sky. Remnants of war littered the ground where Osiris had fallen. Alise’s blade and Izzy’s faith had sundered the false god’s form, yet silence did not follow his death. For even as hope flickered, new horrors stirred.

At the edge of the chaos stood Khensa, bloodied but unbowed. In Osiris’s final breath, few realized this warrior served a darker lord — not the slain deity, but Set himself. He had never truly bowed to Osiris. Through the clamor and dust, Khensa’s allegiance passed unnoticed. It was this secret devotion that now sustained his power when others had thought it broken.

Khensa unfurled the sigil of a black sun at his chest, and the air around him pulsed with ancient strength. The world had not witnessed the half of his might — only the feint of a longer nightmare. In the waning light, his eyes blazed with a storm’s fury. The war was far from over; it had only just begun.

Khensa’s form coalesced from shadow into flesh and muscle as he strode between the wreckage. A heavy silence enveloped the scene as the temple’s banners spun in the hot wind. The dawn painted his silhouette in scarlet, the mark of an ominous new era. Though Osiris lay broken on the ground, Khensa rose like a dark phoenix from his ashes, more terrible and resolute than any had believed possible.

Khensa’s Arsenal and Arcane Might

Every weapon and spell Khensa wields is a twisted reflection of his nihilistic creed. As the last captain of the Set Familia, he bears gifts from a god of chaos: black-bladed scythes that devour reality, gauntlets that crush will, and arcane curses that unravel existence itself. His battle gear is both brutal and symbolic, meant to break body and soul.

Weapons and Artifacts: Khensa fights with ancient relics steeped in the power of Set and oblivion. The Djed-Reaver Scythe is his signature blade – a massive, curved weapon carved from obsidian. Each swing cleaves not just flesh, but the very concept of life, leaving behind nothingness where a name once existed. He also wields The Shadowcrest Dagger, a serrated blade that erases divine contracts on contact. Worn across his shoulders is the Cloak of Endless Night, a tattered mantle that billows like eternal darkness. This cloak isn’t just cloth – it is woven from the Memories of the Nameless, granting Khensa shadowy concealment and resistance to light-based attacks (and literally snuffing out luminous magic that touches it).

Curses and Spells: His magical arsenal is built on concepts rather than simple damage. One of his signature spells is Rite of the Nameless, a dark incantation that causes those struck by Khensa’s blade to forget their own names – and gradually their very existence. In practice, this allows him to turn enemies into unwitting echoes; their skills fade and they stumble as Khensa casually erases them from reality. Oblivion Rift is another devastating spell: Khensa tears a rift into the weave of the world, unleashing a wave of unmaking energy that can peel away structures or blast foes into nihility. When he casts Eclipse of Set, the sky above them darkens unnaturally, and Khensa’s power surges—during this eclipse, his attacks carry additional force, as if Set himself fuels his arms. Finally, Ma’at’s Reversal forces the cosmic scales to tip into chaos: it inverts positive magics around him, turning healing into harm and protection into vulnerability.

Inherent Powers and Skills: Beyond his gear, Khensa possesses frightening innate abilities. The Name-Eater’s Embrace means Khensa can silence a target’s voice and memories with a touch, as if swallowing their identity whole. When Khensa surrounds himself with his Avatar of the Abyss, he becomes a living void: his form grows shadowy and intangible, shrugging off physical blows as they pass harmlessly through a silhouette of darkness. One of his most eerie talents is Willbreaker Visage – for a terrifying moment, Khensa’s face adopts a featureless mask, and anyone who looks at him feels their fighting spirit drain away. Psychologically unprepared foes hesitate or flee as their courage is stripped bare. Finally, because Khensa’s faith is in oblivion rather than any god, he has the passive skill Set’s Endless Night – the death of Osiris and the unraveling of divine order only sharpen Khensa’s edge, replenishing his strength each time the world around him falls apart. In short, Khensa doesn’t just fight with steel and magic; he fights with the very fabric of existence.

Each weapon lash, each spell, each skill of Khensa’s is designed to tear the world down to nothing – making the desperate, final confrontation against him as punishing and awe-inspiring as a collapse into the void.

Even now, rumors stirred like sand in a gale. In distant lands, whispers of a fallen king gave way to rumors of a darker master behind the carnage. The desert itself seemed to breathe under his unseen command. Men huddled in frightened towns as winds carried the promise of doom on the horizon. None yet grasped the full scope of Khensa’s renewal — the true height of terror was still hidden.

Far above these mortal fears, a lone figure stood atop a distant cliff. Alise’s eyes narrowed at the curling smoke on the eastern winds. She sensed a shift in the world’s cadence — a drumbeat of war long feared had begun anew. Though twilight had faded, a strange dawn colored the skies, as if fate itself was brandishing its blade. Alise drew a steady breath; the next battle awaited, and she would face it with sword in hand.

The air in the heart-chamber did not stir. It was dead. Spent. The only movement was the slow drift of divine ash—the last breath of Osiris—falling soundlessly onto the still lake like dusk upon a mirror.

Alise stood in the ash-snow and felt every wound arguing with every breath. Her rapier hung heavy in her hand, the leather of the grip slick with blood and steam. Agaris Alvesynth—the heat she wore like a second life—flickered low in her chest, a candle bullied by a draft. Izzy lay a small, fevered weight at her sternum, a green-white ember tucked beneath her torn cloak, his light pulsing weakly against her ribs.

Across the round of the shrine, a man watched her like a scholar reading a final line aloud to an empty room.

“It is done,” he said. His voice sounded like papyrus rubbed smooth by years of fingers. “Osiris is unmade. A necessary, if regrettable, pruning. His grief had become a rot. A god who wishes to die is no god at all.”

Alise didn’t answer. She spent the words on breathing. In. Hold. Out. Live.

The man took one measured step forward. Bare feet on stone. Long-limbed, runes inked in tidy rows up both sleeves. His hair tied back. Bronze skin, eyes the pale yellow of a desert snake’s belly. A staff of black wood capped by a broken ankh tilted lazy in his left hand. In his right, a curved knife the color of dried blood.

“But you,” he went on, calm as the dead lake, “you are a fascinating paradox. A flame that burns for justice in a universe that understands only balance. And balance…” The broken ankh lifted, turning over his palm as if it were the moon. “…is rarely just.”

The glyph at the ankh’s tip spun. Once. Twice. A third time. It etched violet through the air like a quill writing on glass. It flared.

The world turned inside out.

No sound. No light. Just wrongness rolling over her like cold sickness. Every law her body trusted betrayed her at once. Her back wound knit shut in a fast, crawling itch—relief—then a tide of numbness surged down her arm and turned muscle to porcelain. She flexed and felt nothing. A breath of green fire licked her fingers—comfort, promise—and froze to lace, each crystal biting, beautiful, and useless. She raised her blade to parry out of habit, and a spike of pain shot through her skull—Izzy—a feedback scream knifing behind her eyes.

Her stance hurt him.

“Your every virtue is now your vice, Red Flame,” the man said. His form blurred at the edges, as if the idea of him were more solid than his body. “Your resilience makes you brittle. Your compassion drains you. Your desire to protect—”

He let a shard of black energy lazily fall from the staff. It drifted like a feather. She could have batted it aside without thinking in any other fight. Now she didn’t dare: to block would hurt Izzy. To dodge would spend strength her own body would punish.

The shard tapped her thigh. A dull, cold thud. Fatigue unspooled through her like smoke. Her knee softened.

“—makes you weak,” he finished, and the softness of it made it worse.

She set her foot. Her leg shook like a leaf deciding not to fall.

“This is the truth you surface-dwellers refuse,” he said, the staff tracing a slow curve that cut nothing and everything. “No light without shadow. No creation without destruction. No justice without cost. Your ‘justice’ is a child’s fantasy. I offer you its adult form: perfect, impartial, terrible balance.”

Balance. Ma’at. The word felt clean and wrong in equal measure. The glyphs on his sleeves glowed with it. The lake took it up and offered her stillness as an insult. Above, the round hole she had cut through the palace roof looked so far away it might as well have been the sky.

Her own words stung her: I am tired. But not done.

What did “not done” mean in a room where motion punished love and stillness sharpened the knife?

She looked inward, the way Astraea had taught them to look at themselves when no one else could. Lantern’s Echo warmed faintly, as if listening. Beneath her sternum, Izzy burned thin as a thread. He was pushing his light outward, trying to catch and cancel the wrongness of this new law before it reached her. He was hurting for her. He was hurting because of her.

“Izzy,” she thought, and the name was a prayer and an apology.

He flared: With you.

I know. Her hand shook. She tasted iron. Her shoulder throbbed with dead strength. “Stop trying to fight it,” she whispered aloud, her breath frosting. “Don’t push. Don’t add. Let it… let it be.”

Confusion pulsed back: a small ache with edges. But it hurts you.

“I know,” she thought, and sent down the line everything she had left that wasn’t bone and stubbornness: affection. Trust. The kind of peace that isn’t peace so much as a refusal to lie. “He made a law. We won’t break it. We’ll feed it.”

She loosened her fingers one by one. The rapier fell. The clang rang too loud in the reversed air, a child banging a pan in a chapel.

The man—Khensa, he had named himself—paused mid-step. A slant of amusement creased his mouth. “Acceptance? A wise, if belated, choice.”

“No,” Alise said gently, and found the strength for gentle from someplace past sense. “A trade.”

She closed her eyes. She reached for what every fight had taught her to guard: the steady, stubborn center. The flame that had grown greedy. The echo that had learned to love. The will that kept dragging her to her feet. She did not extinguish them. She held them up.

Take this, she thought, and pulled.

She hauled everything ugly and heavy to the surface: the sting of a spear grazing her cheek; the ache of a rib that moved when it should not; the taste of killing a god; the grind in her knees; the small, beautiful hurt of wanting a better ending than any world should owe. She gathered it into a mantle of silver-black and let it pour out of her skin like a tide.

The law of reversal obeyed.

It flipped pain to power.

The aura flashed white-gold. Not pretty. Absolute. The chamber didn’t shake. It sang, like struck crystal. The lace of frost on her hand burst to molten gauntlet. The numb shoulder woke with a snarl and gave her back a strength that felt like laughter remembered.

Khensa’s eyes—not warm, not cold—widened. Ma’at’s equation buckled: in trying to punish virtue and heal harm, it had no line for someone who offered harm on purpose to feed the machine. The spell had to return the inverse of what it was given. She gave it loss.

It gave her life.

Khensa snapped the staff up to cut the connection. The runes at the tip flared. Violet characters streamed like fleeing fish.

Too late. The law was the law.

“You taught me balance,” Alise said, and her voice resonated through stone and rib and lake, not because it was loud, but because it agreed with itself. “Here is the cost of my justice. I pay it.”

She stepped. The floor hummed, not cracked. Izzy understood all at once. He stopped adding. He shaped. He turned his little life into a lens and bent the flood so it did not tear her apart. He didn’t make her stronger; he made her precise.

Khensa moved finally without measure. The curved blade leapt like night. He had to cut the source. He had to end the unbalance before it unmade him.

Alise didn’t parry. She met the scythe with her bare, burning hand.

Metal met a word that had already agreed to die.

There was no ring, no spark. There was a pause so complete the universe held its breath to watch. The scythe’s edge—built to unname anything that stood against it—found nothing to cut. How do you unname a thing that has already surrendered the luxury of being called safe?

The runes on Khensa’s sleeves flared, skittered backward like frightened ants, and popped—soft infants’ sobs—out of existence. The scripts that tethered him to a name he had once eaten unraveled as if tugged by a more patient hand. He was a theory of endings neatly inked. She had become a contradiction written in blood and consent.

“This is not—” he said, and the knife in his voice chipped. He looked young under the logic. “—possible.”

“It is,” Alise said, and her hands began to fray at the edges, not into ash but into light. The flood was burning the wick as it passed. “It’s the one thing your perfect balance doesn’t have a shelf for: a will that chooses to lose.”

She let go.

It was not an explosion. Explosions impose themselves. This was a returning.

The golden light washed out across stone and water, soft as a sigh. Laws snapped back to where they prefer to live. Fire burned again. Healing healed. A hand raised to protect stopped hurting a friend across a bond. The shrine’s black stone became simply rock that had once been part of something grand and now was not. The veins in the walls went from sick glow to ordinary dark, the way a fever leaves and the skin remembers what it is to be cool.

Khensa stood before her, suddenly a man in a tunic with good posture and a broken ankh held like a question. His scythe was gone. His staff was powder sifting through his fingers. He looked down at his chest where the rune that said Khensa had been hidden. There was nothing to look at. Not destroyed. Simply forgotten.

He lifted his head and actually looked at her then, not as a problem, not as a proof. As a person. Pale yellow eyes, sharp and tired, took her in: the red ribbon shredded, the burn on her palm, the line of her mouth that said I told the truth and it hurt me and I did it anyway.

He opened his mouth.

Nothing came. No sound. No name. He had devoted his existence to necessary endings and found himself at the most ordinary one: a silence that was not cruelty, not victory—only absence, finally allowed to be itself.

He dissolved. Not into ash—ash remembers what it burned. Into a hush that didn’t need remembering.

The last taste of power left Alise. The gold winked out. She went to her knees, the world tilting and then steadying around the simple motion. She felt hollowed and honest, like a temple swept after a festival. She put one shaking hand over the small heat beneath her ribs. Izzy pulsed weak and warm.

“I have you,” she whispered, and it wasn’t a promise so much as a description of the present. That was enough.

Somewhere behind her a man made an animal sound, small and lost. The last of Osiris’s high-priests had stumbled in during the quiet. His mask hung cracked like a split seed. He looked at the lake, at the ash on the still surface, at the empty space where arguments used to live, and the years fell off him the way a robe does when hands forget how to tie it. He sobbed without language.

Alise let him. Mercy is sometimes letting someone’s world fall without telling them which pieces to pick up first.

She stayed kneeling until her breathing learned the room again. Then she reached for the journal with fingers that didn’t quite trust themselves. The seam of enchantment along the spine throbbed faintly, like a vein in a wrist.

She turned to the right-hand page. Bell’s ink—thin, hopeful—showed through from an earlier entry like a blush pressed too hard.

She wrote beneath her last line, each letter careful as a step in the dark:

I learned the cost today.
Balance is not justice.
Justice is the choice to pay the cost anyway.
We are coming home.

The last word smeared where a tear fell. She huffed once, halfway a laugh, wiped it with her thumb, and closed the book.

The lake moved—not with a god’s will, but because water cannot hold still forever. The White Palace above them shifted like a shell deciding what to be next. The Dungeon listened to the new quiet, adjusted its weight, and—for once—chose not to test a small woman standing alone with an ember under her ribs.

Alise pushed to her feet. Her legs argued. She stood anyway.

On the island where a god had asked to stop, she set two fingers to her brow and then to the air, the way Astraea had taught them to salute something they respected enough to oppose.

“Rest,” she said, not to Osiris in particular, not to Khensa, not to the screaming bones that had pretended to be a court. To the room. To the idea. To herself.

She turned toward the slope she had cut, toward the long climb back through the palace of bones already forgetting how to be a throne, and took the first step.

Behind her the ash settled into the water, thin as memory. Ahead of her the dark made room without malice. Beneath her cloak a sleeping light kept time with her heart.

She went.
Ahead, the tunnel was no longer ivory and gold, but simple, worn stone. The air no longer hummed with a god’s dream, but carried the clean, damp scent of earth after a long rain. It was just a path, now. And she was just a woman, walking it.

Of course. This is a beautiful and necessary beat—a quiet moment of choice and commitment that seals their bond before the final, ethereal interlude. It provides perfect closure.

Here is the epilogue, placed immediately after she begins her climb and before the Tea-Time Interlude.

---

Epilogue: The Ascent and The Promise

The climb was long, and the silence was a different kind of heavy. It was not the oppressive stillness of a god’s dream, but the quiet of a house after a great storm has passed. The golden veins in the walls had cooled to the color of old parchment. The air no longer tasted of incense and memory, but of dust and settling stone.

Alise’s boots scuffed softly on the spiral ramp. Each step was a negotiation with her exhaustion, but a clean one. The pain was just pain now; it no longer carried a curse.

Halfway up, she paused, leaning a hand against the cool, smooth wall. She could feel the faint, feverish pulse against her sternum, a little heart beating out of rhythm with her own.

She didn’t speak aloud. The words formed in the quiet space of her mind, shaped by the Lantern’s Echo and worn smooth by shared suffering. “Izzy?”

The pulse stuttered, then strengthened. A thread of awareness, thin as a cobweb, brushed against her consciousness. It wasn’t a word, but a question. A presence checking in.

“You’re still here,” she thought, and let the thought be filled with a warmth that had nothing to do with Agaris Alvesynth.

The response was a wave of pure, uncomplicated affirmation. Here. With. It was followed by a flicker of imagery—the crushing weight of the reversed energy, the terrifying choice to become a lens, the sheer relief of finding her heartbeat still there on the other side.

“You hid yourself,” she sent, understanding dawning. He hadn’t just been drained. In that final, catastrophic moment, he had made a choice. To preserve the core of himself, he had anchored it to the only stable point in the chaos: her.

A concept shaped itself in her mind, slow and deliberate, like a child arranging precious stones. No more flying beside. Too much… between. Now I fly… inside. Safer. Warmer.

Tears pricked at the corners of Alise’s eyes. She saw it then, not as a loss, but as a deeper forging. He was choosing his cage, and it was the space between her heart and her cloak.

“You can’t stay there forever, you know,” she thought, a gentle tease in the mental voice. “You’ll get bored.”

The ember under her ribs pulsed, a flash of bright, playful green that she felt rather than saw. Never boring. I see what you see. I feel the road. This is better.

He was right. It was. The thought of him flying beside her again felt suddenly… distant. Separate. This was unity. This was a promise made flesh and light.

“Alright,” she conceded, her spirit settling into a profound peace. She touched the spot over her heart, where the fabric of her tunic was warm. “Then this is your home. For as long as you want it.”

Forever-home, came the simple, devastating reply.

She pushed off from the wall and continued her ascent. The weight in her chest was no longer a burden, but a compass. She had a direction now, more certain than any spiral staircase.

“We’re going to the Hostess of Fertility,” she told him, the name of the pub a talisman of normalcy, of soup and laughter and a white-haired elf’s steady hands. “There’s someone there… Ryuu. She’ll know what to do. She’ll help me make sure you’re safe. That you can rest.”

A sense of contentment, deep and weary, flowed back from the ember. It was the feeling of a long journey nearing its end, of a door waiting to be opened.

Take us home, Alise.

And so she did.

---

Tea-Time Interlude (outside of time)

A starlit meadow that has no up or down. Two lanterns hover—one red, one white—breathing with two hearts.

A: I paid too much.
B: You paid exactly what only you could.
A: That’s not comforting.
B: I know. It’s true.
A: He asked me if the dead forgive the living.
B: Do they?
A: I don’t think they need to. I think we forgive the dead for leaving us work.
B: Then let’s work.
A: Tomorrow. Tonight I’m allowed to be small.
B: I’ll hold the lantern.
A: Thank you and oh I will bring a friend home.

The silver teapot never empties. The night does not end. Two hands rest near each other without touching, and that is enough.

Chapter Text

Chapter 45 - Return to the Surface

The river on the Eighteenth Floor sang to no one.

Alise stepped out of the tunnel mouth and paused, listening. This level was usually a living postcard-campfires, barter calls, the clink of kettles, adventurers arguing about stew. Today, the air held only the hush of running water and leaf-breath. The trees leaned in like they, too, were trying to hear where everyone had gone.

"Strange," she murmured.

Izzy rose from her shoulder, a green coin of light, and drifted a slow circle above the clearing. No threat-pulse. No nearby monsters. Just emptiness, the kind that made silence feel heavy.

Alise exhaled. "Then we borrow the quiet."

She crossed the flat stones to the spring. Steam lifted in white ribbons. The pool reflected the false sky like a patient eye. She knelt and set her gloves, cloak, and sword in a neat line, Astraea-fashion, as if the goddess might check her kit from afar and nudge a strap into place.

"Stand guard?" she asked softly.

Izzy trilled once-I am here-and posted himself on a warm rock, fins folding like silk fans.

Springsong

She unpinned her ribbon and shook her hair out. The red fell past her jaw in a clean, practical line, catching a few sparks of light. She eased out of battered leathers and the travel-stiff hoodie, wincing at old scuffs and fresh bruises blooming like watercolor. The steam wrapped her first; the water welcomed after.

Heat climbed her calves, her knees, her hips; she let herself sink to the collarbones and went perfectly still, the way you do when you've been running too long and the world finally gives you a chair. The spring's warmth threaded through muscle and bone, finding all the quiet aches that heroics never put on the report.

She tipped her head back against smooth stone, closed her eyes, and breathed. The sound of the pool around her-soft licks against skin, light taps against the rock-became a metronome for her thoughts.

"Ridiculous," she whispered, smiling up at the artificial clouds. "A captain who forgets to bathe is a menace."

She scooped handfuls of water and let them fall through her fingers. Little comets ran down her arms. She scrubbed the travel from her shoulders, traced the pale line of an old scar with a fond, exasperated thumb-as if greeting an elderly cat who still insisted on sleeping across her notes-and let the heat do the sermon Astraea would've given: You can't hold a line if the hands holding it are shaking. Rest is discipline too.

Izzy edged closer on his rock, head cocked. She flicked a light splash his way. He pretended not to enjoy it, then enjoyed it anyway.

"You want a show?" Her mouth tugged crooked. "Very well. For the esteemed audience of one."

She swept wet hair back and fixed it with her ribbon, set her shoulders, and paddled the small perimeter in lazy, dignified arcs-more a glide than a swim. When she turned, the water slipped in sheets off her collarbone, catching in a row of little firefly droplets that clung and then fell. She flipped onto her back, drifting to where the false moon shimmered through the cavern's ceiling. The steam curled over her like a gauze veil, soft and forgiving, barely hiding her soft beauty. She stretched toes to the far stone, touched, and drifted back, letting the spring carry her.

Fan service, then-Alise style: not salacious, but alive. The curve of a smile that admitted she still loved being in her own skin. The warmth-stung flush on her cheeks. The sigh that left her when heat loosened the last knot under her shoulder blade. She pulled herself to the edge, rested chin on forearms, and let the steam blur the leaves above into a soft green lantern.

"Better," she decided. "Acceptable enough to scold Ryuu for not sleeping."

After a time she rose, water drawing a clean line down her spine, and stepped out with the careful respect of someone leaving a chapel. A towel from her pack, a quick rub, breath fogging faintly in the cave air. She pulled on a fresh linen shirt-the good one, a little too white for dungeon work-and laced it with nimble fingers, tying the red ribbon at her throat as the final note of herself. Armor next. Cloak last, shaking it once so it fell exactly right.

Izzy alighted on her shoulder. She reached up and tapped his chin, soft.

"Thank you for letting me be human for twenty minutes."

He chirped-I heard you-and they set off.

Upward

The way back to Babel felt longer. The Dungeon watched her pass and did not test her. Monsters slipped away early, shadows rewrote themselves to keep the path clean. Once, across a gulf between roots, she saw a line of lizardmen cross-disciplined, shields high, the limper from before now walking easier. When the elder caught sight of her on the ledge above, he touched two fingers to his brow and kept marching. Respect offered like a coin placed quietly on a shrine.

"Practice well," she said to the stone.

On Twelve, she paused at an old adventurer's mark etched into a rib of wall-five little grooves, spaced like a certain laugh. She touched them with the same two fingers. "We're still walking."

By the time the Tower of Babel rose around her-the lift, the merchants, the watchful Guild clerk's quick intake of breath at the sight of her-the city's noise had changed. Not bustle. Not festival. Alarm.

"Monsters," someone hissed near the marble pillars. "On the surface."

Alise's jaw set. So that's where everyone went.

She kept her hood up and her eyes kind, moving with the current until she could step sideways into an alley and breathe without someone's panic climbing into her lungs. Then to West Main, to the little corner that always smelled like broth, to the door that had framed so many firsts and lasts.

Hostess of Fertility

The bell over the door chimed and, for one heartbeat, the room froze.

Syr's smile broke before her tray did. "Alise-!"

Ryuu nearly dropped a glass. It clinked, wobbled, and settled-like the elf herself, breath held in the space between disaster and grace.

"You look like you've been to hell," Ryuu said, voice steadying, eyes betraying the storm underneath.

Alise tipped her head. "Hell has nicer baths."

Syr was around the counter by then, a small, fierce comet. She stopped just short of an actual tackle and opted for both hands wrapped around Alise's, squeezing warmth into bone.

"You're alive," Syr breathed. "You're late," she added, wiping at a corner of her eye with the same hand she used to swat pesty patrons.

"Terrible at schedules," Alise said. She tilted her shoulder. Izzy, sensing applause, puffed himself a little and blinked. "This is Izzy. He's very brave. And smug."

Syr leaned in, stage-whisper: "Oh he's adorable. Can he have milk?"

"Absolutely not," Ryuu and Alise said together.

For a few minutes, they let themselves be ordinary-Syr bantering, Ryuu setting tea that Alise did not have to brew herself for the first time in weeks, the other girls hovering like guardian sparrows pretending to wipe tables. Alise sipped, closed her eyes, and let the taste tell her she was allowed to stop running for three breaths.

"Bell?" she asked quietly.

Ryuu's gaze cut to the street. "Fighting."

"Where?"

"North-Daedalus Street."

Alise set her cup down. "Right."

Ryuu reached, not quite touching her arm. "Do you need-"

"No," Alise said, soft and sure. "You need to hold this place together if it frays."

Ryuu nodded once. Orders given and taken without rank. Syr squeezed her hand again.

"Come back," Syr said.

"I like it here," Alise said simply, and left.

The Street and the Stone

She found the fight by sound first-the rhythm of panic, the low thunder of bodies moving as one, the sharp clarion of someone refusing to back up. She climbed a stoop and took a roof, then another, then the broken ridge of a wall where ivy had decided to be architecture. From there, she watched the strip of street below like a small coliseum cut into the city.

Gros stood in the dust, muscle and tusk and wounded pride. Around him, adventurers in a wide, nervous ring. In the ring, white hair and a red coat and a boy who had decided mercy was practical even when it looked like a bad idea: Bell Cranel.

Alise did not shout. She did not leap down with some grand speech. She became a quiet witness-the kind this city had so few of-eyes steady, breath even, hands loose at her sides. Izzy dimmed until he was a second lantern to her heartbeat.

She watched the boy who insisted on a future. She watched the beast who wanted to be understood and could not find the grammar. She watched the people around them hunger for a simple answer and be denied. When a spear flew, she watched Bell choose to bleed rather than move in a way that would turn Gros from person to problem.

"Good," she said under her breath when the boy's voice broke on a plea, and no one threw the next stone. "There you are."

When the dust settled into that awful, expectant quiet-the kind that always comes after an almost-tragedy-Alise was gone from the roof.

Lyd

She moved down-canyon through Daedalus Street, where alleys fold over themselves and doors remember secrets. Twice she let a patrol pass. Once she let a pair of children dart across her path with arms full of bread; she stepped back into shadow until their laughter was safely around the next turn. The city's heart beat against her knuckles when she touched stone to find the right wall.

A grate. A stair that wasn't on the map. The whisper of scales against flagstone.

"Peace," she said softly into the dark. "I'm not here for trophies."

A shape unfolded from the gloom. Horns first, then the deep-set eyes, the armored lines of a body that had been forced to be weapon and decided instead to be wall: Lyd.

"Red woman," he rumbled. Not a question. Recognition carried by rumor and by a certain way a person stands when they've already made the hard decision.

"Lyd," she answered. "You have people who need you."

He studied her for a long breath. "And you?"

"I have... had a god to bury," she said, and watched the truth land. "And a friend to loan."

Izzy rose from her shoulder and hovered between them, tail lashing once, uncertain.

Alise touched his side. "You need rest. And company that knows how to be quiet without being afraid." She looked back to Lyd. "He listens. He remembers. He will not betray you."

Lyd looked from Alise to Izzy and back again. Something like a smile moved under his scars. "We will keep the small lantern safe," he said. "And he will keep us from forgetting."

Izzy bobbed, then, in a rare show of solemnity, pressed his forehead to Alise's. A pulse, warm against her skin, the soundless word that had carried them both this far: I am here.

"I'll find you soon," she said. "I promise."

He drifted to Lyd's broad shoulder and settled, a little green star pinned to basalt. The big Xenos bowed-not deep, not subservient, but the way one sentinel acknowledges another.

"Go," Lyd said. "Your city still burns at the edges."

Alise's mouth tipped. "It always does."

The Walk Back

She took the long way to Babel, because the shortest path was full of people who needed answers and she had none she could give without making new fires. Evening crept into the city's color. Bells from the Guild went up and over roofs like birds looking for a place to land.

Halfway up West Main, she stopped and turned. Smoke made a low halo where the fight had been. Somewhere, Siren Street had started singing too early, a tavern's effort to plug the fear with music.

"The world still turns," she said to the sky that wasn't a sky. "That's enough."

She tightened the ribbon at her throat, squared her shoulders, and stepped into the tower's shadow, where tomorrow's decisions were already sharpening their knives.

---

Tea-Time Interlude (outside of time)

A: The spring forgave me.
B: The city didn't.
A: It will. It's slow, not cruel.
B: Then keep the kettle warm. I'm late again.
A: I know. I waited anyway.

Chapter Text

I’m sorry for the wait. I’ve been rereading the light novels over and over, trying to figure out the perfect way to continue the story. I’m really sorry for the delay—it will be a little while before the next chapter.

You can comment here if you have any questions or ideas.

Basically, we’re heading toward the Juggernaut—hell is coming. I’ll try to create a mirror effect.

Alise will go with a team in Knossos, and Bell will go with his team into the dungeon.

This storyline will continue for a few chapters.

Please allow me some time to work on it a little more.

Chapter Text

Chapter 46 : Two Flames, One Sky

Alise’s Perspective — “The Invitation”

Location: Hostess of Fertility — Late Evening

The tavern air was thick with laughter and the smell of spiced ale.

Alise Lovell wiped down the counter with a worn cloth, her movements smooth, practiced — a rhythm meant to keep memories at bay.

Five years since Astrea Familia fell. Five years since she last set foot in Knossos.

Her fingers traced a faint scar along the edge of the wood. A small gesture. An old wound.

Click.

The tavern door opened.

Not with a bang. Not with a shout.

Just a shift in the air — a coolness that cut through the warmth.

And there she was.

Aiz Wallenstein. The Sword Princess. Standing in the doorway like a silver dream, her golden eyes scanning the room before locking onto Alise’s.

The noise around them seemed to fade.

Alise: (softly, to herself)

“Well now… this can’t be good. I haven't seen the sword princess in her since... I first met Bell.”

Aiz moved forward — not hesitant, but deliberate. Her boots made no sound. The adventurers nearby instinctively made space without knowing why.

Aiz:

“Alise Lovell.”

"Here we go"

Her voice was quiet, yet it carried. Clear as a bell through the clamor.

Alise: (leaning on the counter, grinning)

“Sword Princess. Didn’t take you for a tavern crawler. Here for a drink?”

Aiz:

“Sure, i'd love to, thank you.”

She didn’t smile. She blinked. Just stood there — a storm waiting to break.

Aiz:

“Loki Familia is preparing an expedition. Into Knossos.”

The word hung between them. Heavy. Poisonous.

Alise: (setting down her cloth)

“Knossos…”

Her voice dropped. The grin faded.

“That place took enough from me. From all of us.”

Aiz:

“You’ve been deeper than anyone still alive. You know its tricks. Its heart.”

Alise: (raising a brow)

“You have Finn. Riveria. Gareth. Why come to me?”

Aiz: (stepping closer, voice dropping)

“They’re commanders. You’re a survivor.”

For a moment, neither spoke. They sipped their drinks. The clatter of mugs and murmur of voices felt miles away.

Alise: (sighs, runs a hand through her red hair)

“You’re serious.”

Aiz:

“I need you.”

Alise looked down at her hands — hands that once held a sword drenched in blood and hope.

She thought of Bell — his bright, stupid, reckless courage. The way he looked at her after she’d trained him — like she was still a hero.

“You can’t keep hiding, Alise,” he’d said. “Not when you still burn like this.”

She met Aiz’s eyes again.

Alise:

“Fine. You’ve got me.”

(extends a hand — calloused, firm)

“But if we die down there, you’re buying the next round. In heaven.”

Aiz: (grips her hand — a warrior’s clasp)

“We won’t die.”

Alise: (a smirk — sharp and real)

“Then let’s make sure the Dungeon remembers our names.”

Bell’s Perspective — “The Echo of a Fall”

Location: Hestia Manor — Night

Bell Cranell stood on the rooftop, the wind cooling the heat in his chest.

Orario glittered below — a city of dreams and graves.

He could still feel it — Wiene’s small hand in his. The way she smiled. The way the mob screamed “Monster!” at something kinder than they’d ever be.

His fists clenched.

I won’t run. Not again.

The memory of the Xenos haunted him — not as failure, but as fuel.

Hestia: (from below)

“Bell? You’re going to catch a cold.”

She climbed up, her blue eyes soft with worry.

Bell:

“I’m okay, Goddess. Just… thinking.”

Hestia:

“About the expedition?”

He nodded. The Guild had announced it this morning — His Familia leading a deep-run into the dungeon because of his recent level up. Smaller familias were invited. Support roles. Scouts. They would form a united front.

The task felt like a curse on his tongue.

Bell:

“It’s not just about getting stronger anymore. It’s about… protecting what matters. No matter what they are.”

Hestia: (softly)

“You sound like her.”

Bell didn’t need to ask who.

Alise.

Her words echoed in his mind — “We fight for the world we believe in, kid. Even if it doesn’t believe in us.”

He remembered sparring with her — the way her flames mirrored something in his own soul. The way she never once treated his dream like a joke.

And Aiz…

Her wind, her silence, her strength.

Two women — two legends — pulling him forward in ways he didn’t fully understand.

Bell: (whispering to the stars)

“This time… I won’t let anyone down.”

He made a promise — to himself, to Wiene, to the two flames guiding him from the shadows.

I’ll be strong enough. For all of us.

Chapter Text

⚔️ Chapter 48: The Return to Twilight Manor

Location: Loki Familia War Room
Morning after their conversation

The great doors of the Twilight Manor swing open. The morning light streams through tall stained glass, gilding the banners of past conquests — Goliath, the One-Eyed Black Dragon, the 59th Expedition.,

Alise Lovell steps through beside Aiz Wallenstein, her crimson hair catching the gold. The room turns subtly — murmurs, quick glances, the sound of a map being rolled up mid-sentence.

Tiona: (whispering to Tione)
“Whoa… she’s even prettier in person. The Crimson Saint herself.”

Tione: (arms crossed, low voice)
“Pretty’s not the word, sis. She’s the one who bled out half of Daedalus Street. Don’t let the smile fool you.”

At the head of the room, Finn Deimne straightens. His blue eyes, sharp as a dagger, flick toward them with recognition and a hint of warmth.

Finn:
“Lady Lovell. It’s an honor. Been a long time since we’ve had your kind of fire in this room.”

Alise: (bows lightly, voice steady)
“Captain Finn. I didn’t expect a formal welcome. Or a round table.”

Loki: (lounging in her chair, grin wide)
“Oh, don’t let the table fool you. Half the people around it would rather strangle each other than talk strategy. Sit down, sweetheart. Let’s get to the fun part — war.”

Riveria gives Loki a sharp look but stays composed. Her eyes linger on Alise — analytical, unreadable.

Riveria:
“Fun isn’t the word I’d use. It’d be fun if you God's did the fighting”

Loki: (Leaning forward, her grin sharpening into something knowing and theatrical)
“Ara~?If we did the fighting, dear Riveria, you’d be out of a job! And what would you do all day? Glare at paperwork? Polish your staff?”
(She lets out a breezy laugh,but then her expression shifts, eyes glinting as she spreads her arms wide in a grand, dramatic gesture.)
"Why swing a sword when I can watch my beautiful children become legends? Your blood, sweat, and tears are my favorite epic—so don’t cancel the show now, we’re just getting to the good part!”

A wide, brilliant grin spreads across Alise’s face, not from amusement, but from a kind of fierce, joyful acceptance. Her eyes, gleaming with a touch of that old heroic fire, sweep over the detailed map.

Alise: (Her voice is warm, steady, and carries effortlessly)
"Well, well ! If this is the stage, I'd say it's about time we put on a show worthy of a standing ovation.”

Alise approaches the table. On it: a sprawling parchment map of the Daedalus District, riddled with tunnels and red markings.

She leans over the table, her red hair falling like a curtain of flame as her finger confidently finds a specific, heavily marked tunnel on the parchment.

Alise: "And I've already got the opening act right here. This 'good part' your goddess mentioned? It starts by not repeating the same old tragedies. This corridor—D-14—it's a slaughter chute if you go in blind. But it's also the fastest way to the heart if you know its rhythm."

She looks up, her gaze meeting Riveria's analytically, then Finn's strategically, and finally landing on Aiz with a spark of shared understanding.

Alise: "So, let's rewrite the script. Together.”

Finn:
“Alrighty then, we’re breaching Knossos again. This time through the secondary sub-level — here.” (he points)
“We’ll move in with Aiz and her team as the vanguard. Support teams will follow once we secure the entry.”

Alise: (leans over, eyes scanning the lines)
“The second entrance beneath Daedalus Street.” (nods slowly)
“I’ve seen it. The walls hum with distortion — Daedalus’s madness embedded in the stone. If you enter with a full formation, you’ll trip every trap within a hundred meters.”

Gareth: (gruffly)
“Then what’re you suggesting, lass?”

Alise:
“Two smaller units. Parallel vanguards. Move as one heartbeat — same pulse stone frequency.” (taps the map, confident)
“One team here — Aiz leads from the west, you’ll take the north. We draw the enemy’s eyes in two directions, collapse their command flow, and converge at the lower core.”

The room pauses. Even Riveria looks slightly taken aback.

Riveria:
“Two simultaneous entries into Knossos? Without synchronized magic signals, it’s suicidal.”

Alise: (calmly)
“Not if you trust the stones. And your people.”

Tione: (snorts)
“Trust won’t save us from cursed walls and ambushes.”

Aiz: (cold, firm)
“She’s right. But Alise has fought there. Her plan isn’t reckless — it’s survival.”

Lefiya: (timidly, glancing between Aiz and Alise)
“M-Miss Lovell, um… if I may — are we certain the pulse stones won’t interfere with long-range support magic?”

Riveria: (nods approvingly)
“Good question.”

Alise: (measured tone)
“They’ll interfere, yes. But only if your chant is unbounded. Short-range focus, tier two at most. If we use Riveria’s signal chant to harmonize, the frequency should stabilize.”

Riveria: (impressed despite herself)
“…You studied magic flow frequencies in Daedalus’s architecture?”

Alise:
“I bled for them.”

A silence ripples through the table. Even Bete, who’d been leaning back with arms crossed, glances up.

Bete: (dryly)
“So, we’re trusting a ghost now?”

Loki: (laughing)
“Oh, Bete, don’t be jealous. She’s got more bite than you, and she doesn’t even howl.”

Bete: (grumbles)
“Hmph. Just don’t get in our way, Saint.”

Alise: (grinning without offense)
“Don’t worry, wolf boy. I don’t follow — I will burn on ahead.”

Tiona snickers, Gareth chuckles. Even Finn hides a small smile.

Raul: (half nervous, half awed)
“Miss Lovell… if I may, um… what happens if we lose synchronization?”

Alise:
“Then we improvise.” (looks up, eyes steady)

Alise: "Then we improvise." (She looks up, eyes steady) "But that's why I'm here, and why Fels sent me with these."
(She produces six pulsing magic spheres, placing them on the table.)
"Guild-made communication spheres. They'll keep us linked, even through Knossos' distortion. I also know how Knossos breathes. Every trap, every echo — I’ve heard them scream. It’s not madness, Raul. It’s rhythm. Follow that rhythm, and you live.”

Finn: (eyes bright with interest)
“Spoken like someone who’s survived hell.”

Alise: (quietly)
“Hell’s the only teacher that sticks.”

The room settles. The unease turns into something heavier — respect.

Gareth: (grins, voice low)
“Well, I’ll be damned. The Crimson Saint’s got steel in her words. I like it.”

Riveria: (to Finn, softly)
“She’s dangerous. But so is genius.”

Finn: (nodding)
“Which makes her perfect for what’s ahead.”

He steps forward, folding his arms with the commanding calm of a born leader.

Finn:
“Then it’s decided. Alise Lovell will act as co-vanguard under Aiz Wallenstein. Both units will synchronize via shared pulse stones. We breach Knossos in five days.”

Loki: (raising her wine glass, smile sharp as her eyes)
“Welcome back to the big stage, Red. Try not to burn down my Familia this time.”

Alise: (smirks, crossing her arms)
“No promises.”

Finn places two markers on the map — one red, one gold.
They glow faintly, pulsing in unison — fire and wind, side by side. The room’s light dims, the reflections painting everyone’s faces in shades of war and resolve.

Aiz: (quietly, almost to herself)
“Two flames… one sky.”

The other side of town, the night was cold, with the faint hum of laughter, clinking glasses, and the smell of stew and baked bread.
Outside, the moonlight spills across the cobbled streets — the city’s heart unaware of the plans forming beneath its surface.

Bell pushes open the tavern door. The warmth inside rushes over him — chatter, light, the scent of ale. He looks… tired, but at peace for once.

Mia: (behind the counter, barking orders)
“Bell, you’re late! You want dinner or just air to breathe?”

Bell: (smiling awkwardly)
“Ah, just air for now, Miss Mia. Maybe a drink… non-alcoholic, please.”

Mia: (snorts)
“Figures. Syr! Your little rabbit’s here again!”

Bell winces at the nickname, but before he can protest, Syr glides from the back — her smile soft, her eyes shining like the candles flickering between them.

Syr: (setting a cup down in front of him)
“Warm honey tea. You look like you need something kind today.”

Bell: (grateful smile)
“Thank you. It’s been… a long week.”

Syr: (tilting her head, playful but gentle)
“Hmm. Long week, or long month?”

Bell: (chuckles softly)
“Both.” (pauses, then more quietly) “We’re preparing for something big. An expedition.”

The noise of the tavern fades a little — or maybe Syr just makes it feel that way.

Syr:
“I heard. The Loki Familia’s moving too. Dangerous depths, right? Somewhere beneath Daedalus?”

Bell: (nodding)
“Yes. The Guild’s asking for information on the lower floors — the 20s and below. Knossos… and maybe even deeper.”

Syr: (eyes flickering with quiet understanding)
“Knossos.” (she repeats softly, like the name itself has a scar in it)
“That place eats the brave and spits out ghosts. You’re going anyway, aren’t you?”

Bell: (without hesitation)
“No I have my own expedition to attend to.”
(He takes a sip of his tea, then adds with a small smile)

There’s a pause. Syr studies him in that way she always does — like she’s memorizing not his face, but the courage that hides behind it.

Syr: (softly)
“You’ve grown, Bell. Your eyes used to tremble when you talked about the Dungeon. Now they just… burn.”

Bell: (looks down, embarrassed)
“I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

Syr: (smiles faintly)
“Oh, it is. Fire is what makes heroes — and destroys them. It’s a fine line, isn’t it?”

Bell: (nods quietly)
“…I think I finally understand that.”

For a moment, the scene softens. Syr reaches across the table, brushing her fingertips against his hand — not flirtation, but something else: an unspoken prayer.

Syr:
“Then promise me something, Bell.”

Bell: (looks up)
“Anything.”

Syr:
“When you go down there… when the world starts to collapse around you — don’t forget the surface. Don’t forget that there’s light waiting for you here.”

Bell blinks, a little startled by the intensity of her words.

Bell:
“Syr…?”

Syr: (smiling, masking it quickly)
“Ah, don’t mind me. I just don’t like it when my favorite customer comes back in pieces.” (she giggles lightly, then adds)
“And you still owe me a story about that silver-haired friend of yours. Lefiya says she saw you two fighting monsters like it was a dance.”

Bell: (flustered, blushing)
“W-We were just training!”

Syr: (leaning forward, teasing but kind)
“Mhm. Then make sure your next dance partner is life itself. Don’t let it lead you to death, okay?”

He laughs softly — but something in him feels the weight of her words. The faint, haunting sadness behind her smile.

Outside, the bells of Babel Tower ring faintly — nine slow tolls.
The candles on their table flicker as if the sound carried down from heaven itself.

Bell: (after a pause, quietly)
“…You really worry too much, Syr.”

Syr: (eyes warm, almost whispering)
“I don’t worry. I remember.”

The moment stretches. Then Mia’s voice cuts through the quiet like thunder.

Mia:
“If you’re done flirting, Syr, table three’s dying for another round!”

Syr: (mock sighs, standing up)
“Duty calls. Heroes and waitresses — we both serve someone, don’t we?”

Bell: (smiles softly)
“…Yeah. I guess we do.”

As Syr turns away, her voice floats back with a playful lilt — but her tone carries a quiet ache:

Syr:
“Don’t die on me, Bell.”

Bell watches her go, the cup of honey tea cooling in his hands. He exhales slowly — and for a second, his reflection in the tea looks older, harder, more determined.

Bell: (softly, to himself)
“I won’t.”

— the faint echo of the tavern’s laughter fading into the hum of the city.
Then a slow fade transition back to Twilight Manor — where the red and gold lights on Finn’s map pulse again, as if answering Bell’s vow from afar.

Afterward
☕️ SCENE: “Tea Time for Two Flames”

Location: A small, balcony overlooking Orario, tucked away behind the Hostess of Fertility. It’s late at night. A simple wooden table holds a steaming pot of tea and two chipped but clean mugs.

Bell fidgets slightly, holding his cup with both hands. Alise leans back in her chair, one leg crossed over the other, watching the city breathe below. Her crimson ribbon is slightly loose, and she looks more at ease than he’s ever seen her.

Alise: (Grins, lifting her mug)
“To not dying horribly in a pit full of traps and bad memories.”

Bell: (Blinking, then smiling faintly)
“That’s…a little dark, Miss Alise.”

Alise: (Chuckles)
“Kid,when you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you either laugh at the dark or let it swallow you whole. I’ve always preferred laughing.” (She takes a sip, her eyes crinkling.) “Besides, you’re one to talk. I heard about the Xenos. You stared down the whole city for a monster girl.”

Bell’s smile fades, replaced by a quiet solemnity. He looks into his tea.

Bell:
“I just…did what I thought was right.”

Alise:
“That’s what makes you dangerous,Bell Cranell. And what makes you good.” (She sets her mug down, her tone softening from teasing to sincere.) “You still see the world in ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Most of us… we just see ‘survivable’ and ‘not survivable’.”

He looks up, meeting her gaze. There’s no judgment there, only a deep, weary understanding.

Bell:
“Is that why you’re going back?To Knossos? Because it’s the ‘right’ thing to do?”

Alise: (Leans forward, her voice dropping to a near-whisper)
“I’m going back because it’s the thing I didn’t finish. Because people I loved died in those tunnels, and their ghosts have been waiting for someone to sing their names again.” (She taps a finger on the table, a steady, quiet beat.) “And because Aiz Wallenstein looked me in the eye and asked for my help. You don’t say no to a look like that. You know the one.”

Bell’s cheeks flush pink. He knows the look. The one that says I believe you can do this, and I need you, all at once.

Bell:
“...Yeah.I do.”

A comfortable silence falls between them, filled only by the distant city sounds. It’s not the silence of strangers, but of two people who’ve shared a piece of their soul and found it understood.

Alise: (Her grin returns, a little softer this time)
“You know,when I first agreed to train you, I thought I was just polishing a shiny new hero. I didn’t think I’d be the one learning something.”

Bell: (Looks up, surprised)
“Learning?From me?”

Alise:
“Mhm.That stupid, beautiful, reckless hope of yours… it’s contagious. It’s reminded an old, tired flame what it feels like to burn clean again.” She winks. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

He laughs, a real, unburdened sound. The tension in his shoulders finally eases.

Bell:
“I won’t.I promise.”

Alise reaches across the table and ruffles his hair, her touch warm and sisterly.

Alise:
“Good.Now, drink your tea before it gets cold. And when we both get back from our respective suicide missions…” (Her eyes glint with a familiar, fiery challenge.) “…you’re going to show me everything you’ve learned. No holding back.”

Bell: (Smiling, a new determination in his eyes)
“It’s a deal.”

They clink their mugs together — not as teacher and student, not as legend and rookie, but as two flames, one seasoned and one brand new, sharing the same sky, if only for a quiet moment over tea.

Journal closing on the two of them, sitting in the warm darkness, the steam from their cups rising and intertwining in the night air.]

Chapter Text

Chapter 49 – Three Paths into the Dark
(Knossos – Daedalus Street / Bete’s Group / Ryuu’s Shadow)
Daedalus Street looked less like a neighborhood and more like a wound.
Stone houses leaned into each other at impossible angles, stacked and twisted like a child had taken Orario’s building blocks and broken the rules. Underfoot, the cobbles were scarred — blast marks, scorched lines, dried blood in cracks no one had bothered to scrub away.
Today, it was crowded.
Armored boots, polished greaves, sharpened spears. Banners of Loki Familia, Hermes Familia, Ganesha Familia, and others swayed in the dust-thick wind. Supply carts rattled, healers checked straps on bulging potion satchels, and gods watched from the edges with eyes too quiet.
At the very front of the chaos, a “building” that wasn’t a building at all yawned open — a massive stone gate built into a slanted wall. Anyone who didn’t know better might have taken it for a collapsed house.
Everyone here knew better.
This was a mouth.
And below it was Knossos.

1. Aiz & Alise – The First Line
“Form up! Final check, five minutes!” Raul shouted, voice cracking a little as it bounced off twisted facades.
Alise stood beside Aiz at the edge of the staging line, looking up at the crooked houses. Wind tugged at her crimson ribbon; she adjusted it once, more out of habit than nerves.
“They rebuilt fast,” she murmured.
Aiz followed her gaze. “From the Daedalus battle?”
“Yeah. Last time I came here, there were more screams.” Alise huffed a small breath. “Guess that’s an improvement.”
Ahead, Finn stood on a raised slab of stone with Riveria, Gareth, Asfi, and Loki beside him. Around them, squads organized into their three main attack paths:
Northeast route – Finn’s group, with Airmid and heavy support.
Southwest route – Gareth, Riveria, Lefiya, Loki, Dionysus’ forces in canon.
Southeast route – Bete’s Beastmen spearhead, plus Hermes Familia and “assorted others.”
Alise and Aiz were slotted into Riveria’s strike team, the one that would enter through the hidden 12th Floor pathway using Hermes’ Daedalus Orb.
For now, though, everyone listened.
Finn raised his spear. The hubbub dimmed.
“Today, we enter Knossos again,” he began, voice clear and steady. “You all know what waits below. Traps. Curses. Spirits. And something worse pulling the strings.”
He didn’t say “Enyo.” He didn’t have to.
“We are not here to die as martyrs,” Finn continued. “We are here to learn and to cut. The first strike is reconnaissance and decapitation where possible: Evilus bases, Demi Spirits, command routes. Ganesha Familia will secure the surface. Xenos support will anchor our lower flank. Hermes will handle special operations.”
He paused, letting the words settle.
“Some of you still aren’t sure about fighting alongside monsters,” he said, glancing over the crowd. “Some of you lost friends to them.”
Alise felt a few glances flicker her way: Astrea Familia, Daedalus Street, Line Arshe.
Finn went on anyway.
“We fight with anyone who stands against Evilus and this thing wearing the Dungeon like a coat. If that includes monsters—no, if that includes Xenos—we adapt. If that offends you…” he shrugged, “you’re still free to walk away.”
No one moved.
Gareth grunted approvingly. Riveria nodded once. Loki smirked and stretched, making a show of yawning.
“Good,” Finn said. “Then listen up for path assignments.”
He began calling out names and positions. Groups formed tighter lines.
“Riveria’s unit — northeastern sector, 12th Floor entry,” he listed. “Composition: Riveria, Aiz, Alise, Lefiya, Gareth will join later from below, Hermes auxiliary—”
Lefiya, standing not far behind them, swallowed loudly. Her hands trembled just enough for Alise to notice.
Alise glanced back and offered her a brief, crooked smile. “Hey, elf. You keep us alive from the back, yeah?”
Lefiya’s cheeks pinked. “Y-Yes! I– I mean, I’ll do my best!”
Aiz watched the exchange quietly, then spoke in her usual flat tone: “Her magic is strong. We will need it.”
Lefiya’s ears reddened further
Lefiya lingered near the edge of the war room long after the others had started to disperse. The plans were decided, the markers set — yet her heart was tangled somewhere else entirely.
She hadn’t noticed Alise approach until a warm shadow fell across her.
Alise tilted her head, studying her with a gentle, knowing smile.
“You’re carrying a storm in that little chest of yours,” she said lightly. “That kind that crackles even when you’re standing still.”
Lefiya flinched faintly, fingers tightening around the hem of her robe.
“I—I’m fine,” she lied.
Alise chuckled softly. “Sure you are.”
Then her tone shifted — not teasing anymore, but calm… sincere.
“The other day,” Alise said, eyes narrowing just a touch in memory,
“I saw you staring at Bell.”
Lefiya’s breath hitched.
“You were all puffed up with awe,” Alise continued, “and at the same time, you looked like your heart was tearing itself apart.”
She turned fully toward Lefiya now.
“So,” Alise asked gently,
“What happened between you two?”
Silence stretched.
Lefiya’s lips trembled. For a second, it looked like she wouldn’t answer at all.
Then, quietly—
“He keeps running ahead,” Lefiya whispered. “No matter how much we train… no matter how hard I push… he’s always further than where I can reach.”
Her fists clenched.
“I’m proud of him,” she admitted. “But I’m also afraid. Afraid that one day, I’ll only be watching his back disappear.”
Alise listened without interrupting.
When Lefiya finished, Alise didn’t laugh.
Instead, she smiled — soft, steady, and full of fire.
“That fear?” she said. “It’s proof you’re alive.”
She stepped closer and rested her hand gently on Lefiya’s shoulder.
“And if you want…”
“I can teach you a thing or two.”
Lefiya looked up, startled.
Alise tapped her own chest once.
“He’s my hero too.”
Then, softer — almost like a confession whispered into a flame—
“And I have very high hopes for this human.”
Lefiya’s breath shuddered.
Not from fear.
From resolve.
Alise turned toward the door with an easy grin, her crimson ribbon swaying behind her.
“Don’t fall too far behind,” she added lightly. “Heroes hate being lonely at the top.”
And with that, she was gone.
Lefiya remained standing there long after.
Her heart still racing.
Her fear still burning.
But now — so was her will.

Aiz stood just beyond the threshold of the corridor, half-hidden by the stone archway.
She hadn’t meant to listen.
It simply… happened.
When Alise’s last words drifted through the air—
“He’s my hero too.”
“And I have very high hopes for this human.”
Aiz’s fingers tightened around the strap of her sword.
Just slightly.
So slightly that no one else would have noticed.
Her eyes shifted a fraction to the side — unfocused for a heartbeat. The faintest hitch passed through her breath, almost inaudible.
Then—
A tiny change.
Not jealousy.
Not anger.
Something quieter.
Acceptance… mixed with a strange, unfamiliar warmth.
For a single moment, the wind around her stirred without command.
Then it settled.
Aiz turned away silently, her steps soundless against the stone.
But in her chest, something continued to move.
Not conflict.
Resolve.

Finn continued assigning until he reached the group on the far right.
“Southeast route — Bete’s spearhead. High-mobility unit. Objective: smash through, map, hold key crossroads.” He pointed with his spear. “Bete, Raul, Aki, Rakta, Hermes Familia, Ryuu—”
He stopped.
Ryuu’s name was not on the list.
Finn frowned, just a little, then let it pass. Paperwork mistakes happened. As long as they had the strength.
“—and additional scouts,” he amended smoothly. “You’ll be our fastest blade. Don’t break.”
From somewhere in the Beastmen line, Bete’s voice floated lazily: “Tch. Don’t tell me what to do, shorty.”
Loki cackled.

2. Bete’s Line – And a Ghost in Green
Closer to the gate, Bete rolled his shoulders, ears flat, tail lashing with impatient irritation.
The southeast formation already split itself into two assault columns:
Front column – Bete, Raul, Aki, the stronger front-liners.
Second column – Hermes Familia, support fighters, runners to carry messages back.
Raul paced along the second line with a checklist, counting heads. “Okay, front column: Bete, Rakta, Aki, (…names…), count looks good. Second: Hermes team, three archers, one dagger unit, one—”
He hesitated.
Someone in a green cloak shifted slightly in the second row.
Raul blinked. “Uh… you are…?”
The hood tilted up just enough to reveal a familiar sharp profile, emerald eyes half-lidded, expression like carved ice softened by something tired.
“I’m only a waitress,” she said. “Passing through.”
Raul nearly choked. “M-Miss Ryuu?!”
Bete’s ear twitched. He turned just enough to see the cloaked elf slide fully into line, cloak hem brushing the dusty stones.
“The hell are you doing here, forest stalker?” he growled. “Thought you retired to pouring beers and glaring at drunk idiots.”
Ryuu’s gaze met his, calm and utterly unbothered. “This is an Evilus nest. I was asked to help exterminate pests once. Consider this continuing the job.”
Hermes, standing just behind her with his arms crossed, wore his usual faintly amused smile. Asfi stood at his side, expression politely blank but eyes sharp.
“Asfi?” Raul hissed under his breath. “Is she really…?”
Asfi adjusted her glasses. “The Guild was informed that we’d have an additional ‘independent asset’ familiar with certain Evilus members. She’s cleared.”
Bete snorted. “Independent asset my ass. Just don’t slow us down, waitress.”
“If you are faster, I won’t see you long enough to be annoyed,” Ryuu answered, tone perfectly flat.
A few of the Hermes kids snickered quietly.
Raul leaned slightly toward her as he passed. “You really don’t have to do this, you know. Finn’s plan—”
Ryuu’s fingers flexed once under the cloak, just enough for the leather of her glove to creak.
“Someone like Jura can’t be left in a maze built for cowards,” she said softly. “I won’t stay on the surface while he hides.”
Raul blinked. “Jura…?”
Before he could ask more, Finn’s young runners jogged down the line, calling:
“First columns ready! Stand by on my signal! Second columns follow thirty seconds behind!”
The gate ahead rumbled as the first stone mechanisms began to move. The mouth was opening.
Ryuu lowered her hood. The light caught the Astrea Familia emblem still hidden on the inside of her cloak, pressed over her heart.
I’ll find you, she thought. This time, there won’t be a crowd in the way.

3. Asfi’s Whisper – The Hook
The night before, in a quiet back alley near the Hostess of Fertility, Asfi had pressed something small and folded into Ryuu’s hand.
“You understand this isn’t official Guild intel,” Asfi had said. “Hermes didn’t want you going at all.”
“So you overruled your own god?” Ryuu asked.
“No.” Asfi’s lips tightened. “I simply know what happens when information is buried. People like you walk blind. More people die.”
The note had been concise. Asfi didn’t waste ink.
Jura Halmer – Ikelos remnant.
Sighted during Xenos incident.
Confirmed: responsible for Astrea Familia incident.
Tendency: retreat over confrontation.
Current status: believed to be hiding in Knossos, attached to Evilus clean-up cells, likely southeast sector, uses secret paths others don’t know.
There had been one last line, added in smaller handwriting.
If you chase him, you will be alone.
Ryuu had folded the note once more and let the candle burn it to ash.
Now, as southeast column two prepared to move, she felt the faintest ghost of that heat at her fingertips.
‘Alone’ was fine. She had walked alone before.
She just wasn’t going to be late this time.

4. Descent – Three Paths Diverge
Finn raised his spear again. The street fell fully silent.
“Loki Familia!” he called. “And all who fight with us today!”
Every head tilted up.
“This is not the end,” Finn said. “This is the knife that finds the heart. Don’t die where no one can reach you. Don’t die for nothing. We’re going to drag this thing into the light if we have to rip the Dungeon open.”
Loki whistled, grinning fiercely. “You heard him! Make Mama proud, kids!”
“MOVE!”
The command cracked across Daedalus Street like thunder.
Northeast group surged first, flowing into one entrance.
Southwest group peeled off to the left, heading for another submerged gate.
Southeast group — Bete’s spearhead — sprinted straight ahead, toward the main, jagged gate yawning in the warped house front.
“Front column— with me!” Bete barked, going from lazy slouch to lethal motion in an instant. “Second, don’t trip over your own tails!”
He launched forward. Beastmen followed, the stone under their boots shuddering with the force of their charge.
Seconds later, Raul shouted, “SECOND COLUMN, GO! GO!”
Ryuu moved with them, cloak barely stirring, steps almost soundless as she darted into the opened throat of Knossos.
The light dimmed—not like a natural descent, but as if the walls swallowed it. The air changed, thick with dust and old curses. The twisting stone corridors of Daedalus’ labyrinth accepted them like a host greeting guests it meant to poison.
Bete’s group tore ahead, shredding the first wave of ambush monsters, ripping through triggered traps with practiced efficiency. Behind, the second column followed, Hermes’ people marking walls, Raul shouting directions, Ryuu’s gaze sweeping every shadow, every side passage.
The further they went, the more wrong the geometry became. Hallways looped back into themselves, staircases doubled at angles that should have been impossible.
Knossos remembered them.
Now it was waiting to see what they’d do differently.
They’d cleared three choke points when it happened.
The group rounded a corner into a wider intersection — four branching corridors, two of them plugged with collapsed stone, one warded by a ugly Evilus sigil, the last dimly lit by flickering lamps.
“Forward,” Bete snapped, nostrils flaring. “I smell rats that way.”
He and the front runners plunged down the lit corridor.
Second column slowed to re-mark the intersection. Hermes gestured to one of his children to scratch another symbol into the wall.
Ryuu hung back for half a heartbeat, letting the noise of the group surge a few steps ahead. Her eyes narrowed, scanning the other passages instead.
A faint movement.
Not along the main path — along the wall itself.
A stone panel, almost imperceptibly different, was easing itself shut. Through the narrowing crack, Ryuu glimpsed a hunched shape in a tattered cloak, white hair, the gleam of cruel eyes that seemed to scan for pursuers and find only shadows.
Her body remembered him long before her mind caught up.
That back. That gait. That way of looking over his shoulder without slowing…
The man turned his head just a fraction and, for an instant, Ryuu saw his profile cleanly.
Her heart stopped.
“Jura,” she breathed.
The panel clicked into place.
“—Ryuu?” Raul called from up ahead. “You coming?”
Her lungs burned. Sound thinned. For a moment she saw another street, another pursuit, her familia falling one by one into a trap bathed in lamp-light and fire.
If I stay, he slips away again. If I call out, he’ll never use that passage twice.
Asfi’s warning line ran through her mind: If you chase him, you will be alone.
Good.
Ryuu spun on her heel.
“Continue without me,” she said, already moving toward the sealed panel.
Raul stared. “W-Wait, what?! Miss Ryuu, you can’t just—”
Bete glanced back with a scowl. “Oi! Where the hell do you think you’re—”
“I’ll rejoin the formation later,” Ryuu cut in, voice like snapped ice. “There’s a snake using passages you don’t have on your maps. If I let him slip again, more than this operation will pay for it.”
Hermes’ eyes narrowed slightly. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. From where he was standing he saw everything.
So you found him, he thought. Faster than I expected.
Out loud, he only said, lightly, “We are on a schedule, Miss Elf.”
“Then don’t wait for me,” Ryuu replied. “Finn can decide whether to scold me after I cut off a head he’s been chasing for years.”
She placed her palm on the misaligned stone.
The wall was subtle — Daedalus’ work. The edges of the hidden door hummed with a faint, wrong magic. Other adventurers might have missed it.
Ryuu had spent years memorizing exits.
She pressed, twisted, shifted. The panel resisted… then gave with a grinding hiss, opening just enough for a slim elf to slip through.
“Ryuu!” Raul called again, voice tight. “It’s not in the plan!”
She looked back once, green eyes calm and utterly resolved.
“Neither was what happened to Astrea Familia,” she said softly. “Tell Finn I apologize.”
Then she slid through and let the stone grind shut behind her.
Silence swallowed her. The muffled noise of Bete’s group dulled to a heartbeat through the rock.
Alone now, Ryuu Lion stood in a narrow, dust-choked passage that sloped downward at a cruel angle, lit only by sickly light crystals hammered into the stone.
She touched the handle of her wooden sword, inhaled once, and started to run.
“Jura Halmer,” she whispered. “This time… I will not lose your trail.”
She didn’t know yet that his path would drag her all the way to the 18th Floor, to a cavern drenched in blood and broken stone, to a monster born from a curse and a wish.
For now, there was only the narrow passage, the pull of old grief, and the sound of her own footsteps, echoing further and further from the safety of any plan.

Chapter Text

⚔️ Chapter 50 — The Dungeon Opens Its Throat

(Bell POV – Floors 1 to 20)

The Dungeon breathed.

Bell always felt it the moment he crossed the threshold — that low, unseen inhale beneath the stone, like the world itself waiting to swallow him whole. The great doors of Babel yawned open, and the familiar cold rushed over his skin.

But today… it felt different.

Not darker.

Not heavier.

Sharper.

“Formation looks good,” Liliruca called, clipboard already in hand even as they stood at the entrance. “Front: Bell, Aisha. Mid: Welf and Chigusa. Rear: Mikoto, Haruhime. Cassandra, stay where I can see you.”

Cassandra nodded stiffly, fingers twisting in the hem of her robe.

Welf adjusted his sword at his side. “You’d think after all this time, the Dungeon would get tired of trying to eat us.”

Aisha laughed. “Oh, it never gets tired. That’s the romance of it.”

Bell swallowed.

He rolled his shoulders once, feeling the familiar weight of Hestia Knife at his hip. His heartbeat hadn’t slowed since morning. Not fear. Not excitement.

Something in between.

They stepped inside.

🜂 Floors 1–5 — Too Easy

The first wave hit them fast.

Goblins. Two. Then four. Then a clustered pack of eight pouring from a fractured wall.

Bell moved without thinking.

Not charging.

Not hesitating.

He stepped through the fight.

His feet followed angles Alise had drilled into him — shallow pivots, never squared. His blade flashed once, twice, three clean arcs. The monsters fell before their bodies had time to scream.

Aisha’s twin blades tore through the stragglers.

Welf whistled. “That was fast.”

Bell blinked. “It… was?”

Chigusa finished off a limping goblin and looked at him in open awe. “You didn’t even overextend.”

Lili’s pen scratched rapidly. “Timing improved. No wasted stamina. Good.”

Bell didn’t answer. Because only he knew what he’d felt.

Not effort.

Flow.

And for a terrifying second, Alise’s voice echoed in his head:

> Don’t rush the world, Bell. Make it chase you for once.

💭 Inner Thought — Alise’s Shadow

As they descended, Bell caught himself doing it again.

Checking corners before Lili called it. Adjusting breath before Aisha even shifted. Waiting half a heartbeat before striking — and landing cleaner because of it.

This wasn’t just training.

This was her living inside his habits.

He should’ve felt proud.

Instead, he felt… observed.

🜄 Floors 6–10 — The Party Notices

A swarm of War Shadows burst from the ceiling.

Bell stepped forward.

Aisha reached out. “Rabbit—!”

Too late.

He vanished from where he stood.

Not with raw speed.

With timing.

He reappeared behind the lead Shadow in a tight spiral step Alise had beaten into his legs until he stopped tripping over it. His blade struck upward through its spine.

The rest collapsed under coordinated fire.

The Dungeon fell silent.

Aisha stared at him. Slowly. Carefully.

“That wasn’t your style before,” she said.

Bell wiped his blade. “I… changed some things.”

Welf folded his arms. “You fight like you’re listening to someone who isn’t here.”

That hit too close.

Lili cleared her throat. “As long as it keeps him alive, I don’t care who’s whispering in his ear.”

Cassandra hadn’t taken her eyes off Bell since the shadows fell.

“She’s still watching,” she murmured.

Bell stiffened. “Who?”

Cassandra shook her head hard. “I—I don’t know. Just—be careful, Bell.”

---

🜃 Floors 11–15 — The Dungeon Pushes Back

The monsters grew thicker. Denser. Minotaurs began to appear.

Bell faced one head-on.

The beast charged.

He did not.

He shifted, slid past its horns, and cut muscle before it could fully turn.

The Minotaur collapsed in a stunned heap.

Bell exhaled slowly.

His hands were steady.

Too steady.

Aisha stepped beside him, voice low and dangerous. “You’re fighting like someone who expects to walk out of hell.”

Bell looked at his reflection in the blade.

“For the first time,” he said quietly, “I think I do.”

🜔 Floors 16–20 — The Weight Returns

The warmth of the 18th Floor brushed past them like a ghost they weren’t allowed to stop for.

Bell felt it tug at him.

Xenos.

Knossos.

Aisha noticed his gaze lingering. “That world again?”

Bell nodded. “It’s all connected now. I can feel it.”

Haruhime’s voice trembled. “Then doesn’t that mean…”

“Yes,” Mikoto said softly.

“This expedition is walking alongside another war.”

Silence followed them downward.

By the time they neared the 20s, the Dungeon no longer felt quiet.

It felt alert.

💔 Bell’s Private Fear (Unspoken)

Bell realized it then.

If Alise truly walked this world again…

Then the world didn’t need him to catch up anymore.

It needed him not to fall behind.

That terrified him more than any monster ever could.

They paused at the edge of the lower descent.

Lili raised her hand. “Five-minute rest. Eat. Drink. Check wounds.”

Bell sat on a stone outcrop, flexing his fingers.

They were trembling now.

Only now.

Welf nudged him with a waterskin. “You’re thinking too loud again.”

Bell took the water. “Welf… if someone you thought was gone changed everything about how you fight—would you thank them?”

Welf

snorted. “I’d probably swear at them first.”

Bell smiled faintly.

Then, quieter:

“I think I’d follow them anywhere.”

And far above them — unknown to him — fire and wind were already tearing open Knossos.

Chapter Text

Chapter 50 - Pages That Shine

1. Hestia Familia - The Night Before

"Al~riiiiight! Line up, children!"

Hestia clapped her hands and spun once in the middle of the living room, hair and oversized sleeves swishing. The tiny hearth behind her glowed warm orange, pushing back the chill of the coming expedition.

Bell stood at attention automatically.

Haruhime sat seiza on a cushion.

Mikoto knelt even straighter.

Lili crossed her arms like a tiny general.

Welf leaned against the wall, trying to pretend he wasn't secretly excited.

Cassandra stared at the ceiling, pale and haunted. Daphne nudged her with a sigh.

"Why does this feel like an execution...?" Cassandra whispered.

"Because you keep having ominous dreams about paper," Daphne shot back.

Hestia planted her hands on her hips. Her divine blood was already humming with anticipation; tomorrow she would carve new stories onto their backs.

"Five days until the expedition," she declared. "We check where you all stand now so I can brag about you forever later. First up-"

Her finger shot forward.

"Bell!"

"Y-Yes!" Bell jumped.

Lili groaned. "Of course it's him first."

"Obvious," Welf muttered. "He's the mascot."

Haruhime smiled softly. "Bell-sama is the flame at the center, after all."

Bell's cheeks reddened, but he obediently turned around and pulled up his shirt, exposing the Falna etched into his back-Hestia's blue crystal script, faintly gleaming.

Hestia knelt over him, fingers hovering an inch above the blessing.

For a moment, the room went quiet. Only the crackle of the fire remained.

Her smile softened. "You've really been through a lot lately, huh?"

Bell swallowed.

Images surged up unbidden:

The Peluda's roar splitting the sky.
The poisonous miasma eating at Mikoto's lungs.
Welf's sword shattering in his hands.
Haruhime's voice cracking mid-chant.
Ryu throwing herself forward.
Alise screaming her name.
Astraea's flower warm in his pocket as he ran.

His hands tightened around the sofa's edge.

"I... did my best," he said quietly.

Hestia's expression turned a little sad, a little proud. "Yes. You did."

Divine blood stirred. Blue script flared under her fingertips.

"『Status Update』."

Light flowed.

2. Bell Cranel - Level 4

Bell felt it-the familiar, overwhelming rush of numbers moving somewhere he couldn't see. Like someone was rearranging the stars just under his skin.

Hestia's eyes widened.

"...You really don't know how to slow down, do you?" she whispered.

He turned his head slightly. "Goddess?"

Her lips curved into a grin.

"Congratulations, Bell. You made it."

He blinked. "Made...?"

"Level Four."

The room exploded.

"What?!" Lili shrieked.

"Seriously?!" Welf's jaw dropped.

Haruhime clapped her hands over her mouth, eyes filling with tears.

Mikoto bowed so fast she almost headbutted the floor. "As expected of Bell-dono!"

Cassandra whimpered. "Oh no... the future is accelerating."

"Hey, don't make it sound like an omen," Daphne groaned.

Bell just stared.

Level Four.

His legs trembled. Not from fear, but from the weight of the word.

He remembered being that trembling boy on the first floor, running from a Minotaur.

He remembered wanting to be a hero but being too weak to stand his ground.

Now...

"C-Can I... see?" he stammered.

Hestia laughed and slapped the paper down on the table in front of him.

"Feast your eyes, my hero."

【Status - Bell Cranel】
Affiliation: Hestia Familia
Level: 4

Strength: I → B (779)
Endurance: I → B (732)
Dexterity: H → A (803)
Agility: H → A (828)
Magic: H → C (512)

Development Abilities

Argonaut

Hunter

Perseverance (F) NEW - Greatly increases resistance against fear, poison, and despair when protecting allies.

Skills

Liaris Freese - Rapid growth through emotional stimulus.

Hero's Resolve (I) - When defending a chosen person, all parameters temporarily rise. Effect strengthens with mutual trust.

Bell's heart pounded as he read.

Hero's... Resolve?

He remembered the Peluda's jaws closing around them. The poison creeping up his throat. His legs refusing to move until he thought of Haruhime's hands shaking, of Welf biting back a scream, of Alise's lantern trembling.

He'd moved then.

Even though everything hurt. Even though he wanted to collapse.

Perseverance.

Resolve.

"Bell-sama..." Haruhime whispered, voice trembling with awe. "This... is you."

He swallowed hard.

"It's because everyone was there," he said. "If I were alone, I would have fallen. Over and over."

Hestia smirked and flicked his forehead lightly.

"Don't be stupid. That stubbornness is all you."

Bell laughed weakly as the others crowded around, poking his stats, arguing about which letter was more impressive.

For a moment, the fear of the upcoming expedition receded.
The numbers didn't feel like power.

They felt like proof that none of it had been meaningless.

3. Haruhime - Foxfire Pages

"Next!" Hestia sang. "Haruhime!"

"Y-Yes!" Haruhime jolted, tails fluffing out in panic. "I-I am ready..."

She knelt where Bell had been, kimono sleeves folded neatly, golden hair spilling over bare shoulders as she exposed the Falna.

Hestia's playful expression gentled again.

"You really scared me that day," the goddess murmured. "Trying to chant through poison..."

Haruhime flinched. "I should have been stronger-"

"You were strong," Bell said firmly, before he could stop himself.

Haruhime's breath caught.

Flashes:

Her voice shaking as she forced the chant out anyway.
Bell's fingers, icy, gripping her sleeve.
The world tilting as the Peluda's roar ripped through the clearing.
Praying that, just this once, her power would be enough.

"『Status Update』," Hestia whispered.

Green-gold light pulsed.

【Status - Sanjouno Haruhime】
Affiliation: Hestia Familia
Level: 1

Strength: I (118)
Endurance: I (122)
Dexterity: I (131)
Agility: I (129)
Magic: F → E (287)

Development Abilities

Mage

Skills

Uchide no Kozuchi (Level Boost) - Temporarily raises a selected ally's Level.
Addendum: Chant stability increased when target is in mortal danger. Duration slightly extended with selfless intent.

Reverent Heart (F) NEW - When protecting cherished people, Magic power increases and spell misfire chance is reduced.

Haruhime stared at the paper.

"My... heart...?"

Her fingers trembled over the words.

She remembered the moment she'd almost fled. The urge to run, to curl into herself and vanish. To not watch Bell suffer.

She had stayed.

"You didn't just give him power," Hestia said softly. "You stayed beside him. That's what the excelia remembers."

Bell smiled across the table. "I... always feel calmer when you're chanting, Haruhime."

Her cheeks burned scarlet.

"I-I shall strive... to be worthy of this blessing," she whispered, eyes bright with unshed tears.

"Good girl," Hestia said, ruffling her hair gently.

"Welf!" Hestia called.

"Yeah, yeah." He pushed off the wall, rolling his shoulders. "Let's get this over with before Bell's head gets any bigger."

Bell made an indignant noise. Lili snorted.

Welf sat, tugged his shirt off, and leaned forward.

Hestia traced the faded outline of the Falna with her gaze-the pattern warped where old burns and scars crossed it. Marks of a craftsman who insisted on standing on the front line.

"Your sword broke," she said quietly.

Welf's jaw clenched. "Yeah."

He saw it again:

The blade he had poured his pride into.
The Crozzo fire he had sworn to bend his way.
Snapping against the Peluda's scales like brittle glass.

He'd felt useless for a moment. Like the curse had finally caught up.

"I'll make a better one," he muttered.

Hestia smiled. "You already started to. 『Status Update』."

Red light flickered.

【Status - Welf Crozzo】
Affiliation: Hestia Familia
Level: 2

Strength: G → F (312)
Endurance: F (289)
Dexterity: F → E (351)
Agility: G (245)
Magic: H (98)

Development Abilities

Blacksmith

Forge-Soul (F) NEW - Weapon durability and performance increase when wielded to protect comrades. Compatible items may inherit traces of Welf's will.

Skills

Crozzo's Flame - Allows the creation of magic swords without consuming the user's Magic.

Welf whistled low.

"Forge-Soul, huh..."

He thought of Bell holding onto a broken handle and still trying to swing. Of Haruhime wrapping her arms around it like it was something precious instead of scrap. Of Mikoto apologizing to the blade as if it were a comrade.

"Guess I don't make them alone anymore," he said.

Bell grinned. "We'll swing them properly, I promise."

"You'd better," Welf grunted, but there was a faint, pleased flush on his cheeks.

Mikoto, Lili, Cassandra, Daphne - Glimpses

The updates rolled on.

Mikoto's turn-she bowed with almost painful formality, recalling the poison clawing through her veins, the shame of collapsing, the fierce relief of waking up to see everyone alive.

Her Endurance and Agility had both risen sharply. A new Scout (G) development ability glowed on her sheet-reflecting every risk she took to leap forward and draw enemy attention.

"I-I must not waste this again," she vowed, fist to her chest.

"Maybe also rest sometimes?" Bell offered.

"Rest is for the dead," she replied solemnly.

"Please don't say things like that!" Haruhime cried.

Lili's status showed a subtle but meaningful shift: Dexterity and Agility creeping upward, and a new, small development ability-Tactician (H).

She stared at it much longer than she meant to.

"Tactician, huh," Daphne said, peeking over her shoulder. "Looks like the excelia recognizes bossy goblins."

"I am not bossy," Lili snapped, hugging the paper against her chest. "I am efficient."

But when no one was looking, she smiled.

Cassandra's status had barely changed numerically, but the Falna script around her skill shimmered with faint, ominous light.

Prophetic Dream - clarity marginally increased after direct confrontation with future.

"...I don't like that phrasing," she said in a hollow tone.

"It'll be fine," Daphne insisted, thumping her back. Her own sheet boasted an Endurance and Strength bump from standing firm in front of the Peluda.

"You say that now," Cassandra whispered. "Until the sky bleeds tulips."

Everyone chose to ignore that.

By the time Hestia rolled up the last sheet, the table was a chaos of papers, ink, snacks, and half-argued strategy.

The goddess looked over them all, warmth centered in her chest.

They're growing, she thought. Not just stronger. More themselves.

"Five days," she said aloud. "In five days, you'll step into the Dungeon together as the heroes you're becoming."

Bell met her eyes, then glanced down at his sheet again.

Somewhere in the numbers and letters, he could almost see the faces of the people who had brought him this far.

He folded the paper carefully.

"I won't waste any of it," he whispered.

6. Astraea Familia - Wine and Fear

On the other side of Orario, night deepened over a quiet street.

A small, rented house glowed from within-warm lamplight spilling out through thin curtains. The emblem above the door had been carved by hand: a simple, stylized scale and star.

Astraea Familia.

Ryu Lion stood frozen just outside the door, holding a bottle of wine like a bomb.⁹

Her fingers were white-knuckled around the neck.

"This was a terrible idea," she muttered.

Beside her, Alise snorted. "You were the one who suggested bringing a gift."

"I suggested tea," Ryu hissed. "You said, 'Let's get the one that made Astraea's cheeks pink last time.'"

Alise's eyes sparkled with mischief. "And was I wrong?"

Ryu's ears burned.

The last time they had shared this wine with their goddess, the night had been filled with laughter and half-drunk confessions... just before the world fell apart.

Now, the same bottle felt like walking back into a memory she wasn't sure she deserved.

Alise reached over and gently pried the glass from her fingers.

"Hey," she said softly. "We're here. She's here. And we're not the same as back then."

Ryu swallowed hard.

"I am... afraid," she admitted, voice small.

Alise smiled, gentle and sad. "Me too."

She knocked.

"Come in," Astraea's clear voice called from inside.

The door opened.

Their goddess sat at the low table, long hair loose around her shoulders, a single candle burning between neatly stacked parchments. The room smelled faintly of ink and fresh bread.

For a heartbeat, Ryu saw another place-the old home, crowded with familiar faces, hands reaching for cups, voices overlapping-

Then the vision faded. Only the three of them remained.

"Welcome home," Astraea said.

Ryu's chest tightened.

Alise laughed a little too loudly, holding up the bottle.

"We, uh, brought a peace offering?"

Astraea's eyes twinkled. "If this is about the last time you drank and then tried to duel the sky, I forgive you."

"That was a perfectly reasonable duel," Alise protested.

Ryu covered her face with both hands. "Goddess, please erase that memory..."

Astraea smiled. "No. It's precious."

The goddess's gaze softened, taking them both in-the new lines at the corners of Ryu's eyes, the steady flame in Alise's.

"You came for updates," she said quietly.

The lightness in the room settled.

"Yes," Ryu whispered.

"And because," Astraea added, "you want to see whether the pages say you have truly changed."

Alise exhaled. "...You always see right through us."

"I am justice," Astraea said with a small, self-deprecating smile. "And your goddess. Sit. Let me witness what you've become."

7. Alise - Lantern's Oath

Alise went first.

"Of course," Ryu mumbled. "She always throws me in front of the dragon."

"You fought the Peluda, I think you'll survive," Alise said, flashing a grin she didn't quite feel.

She sat and turned, exposing her back.

Astraea's fingers hovered above the Falna-no, not just a mark, but a story written in starlight. The script pulsed faintly, responding to her touch.

"There was a time," the goddess murmured, "when your letters were bright but shallow. All surface, all bravado."

"I was very cool, you mean," Alise said.

"You were very loud," Astraea corrected.

Alise chuckled, then closed her eyes.

Memories rose:

Her first meeting with Bell, the boy who looked at her like she was a real hero.
The journal warming in her hands as she pressed it into his.
The way his name had etched itself into her Skill.
The horror of her own power overflowing, tearing his armor apart.
His whispered, pained smile: I'm glad it was you, Alise-san.
Lantern's Echo blazing out of control in the Peluda's shadow.
Ryu's hand catching hers.
Holding on.

Astraea inhaled softly.

"『Status Update』."

Red-gold light shimmered, like a lantern flame seen through tears.

【Status - Alise Lovell】
Affiliation: Astraea Familia
Level: 5

Strength: B → A (821)
Endurance: B (788)
Dexterity: A (834)
Agility: S → SS (982)
Magic: SS → SSS (1,003)

Development Abilities

Argo

Abnormal Resistance

Leader

Skills

Crimson Star - Lantern's Echo (EX)
When fighting alongside chosen allies, synchronizes magic, tempo and intent. Power increases with mutual trust, but risks catastrophic overflow.
Addendum: "Kindled Vow" - Overflow is reduced when acting to protect, not punish. Excess power redirects into defensive barriers around allies.

Justice's Rally (B) - Inspires allies within range, raising morale and slightly increasing parameters for a short duration.

Alise opened her eyes slowly as Astraea set the sheet before her.

"Kindled... Vow," she murmured.

She remembered standing over Bell's collapsed body, hands shaking, terrified she'd become a monster by trying to be a shield.

"Goddess..." Her voice cracked. "Is this-"

"You have learned," Astraea said quietly, "that justice without mercy is cruelty. The Falna simply reflects that choice."

Alise swallowed the lump in her throat.

"So now," Astraea continued, "when you raise your lantern, it no longer burns only the guilty. It also shelters the innocent."

Ryu exhaled softly behind her. Alise looked down at the numbers, then smiled-a small, trembling thing.

"I won't misuse it again," she whispered.

"I trust you," Astraea replied.

8. Ryu - The Wind That Survived

"Your turn," Alise said, spinning around on her cushion. "C'mon, Lion, let's see it."

Ryu's stomach twisted.

She sat in front of Astraea with the stiff poise of a knight about to be sentenced.

Her back felt suddenly too bare.

"What are you afraid of?" Astraea asked gently.

Ryu stared at the floor.

"That I do not deserve to move forward," she said.

Silence.

Images tried to claw up from the depths:

The burning of the old home.
Her familia's bodies in the fire.
The rage that had consumed her afterward.
The years as Gale Wind, drenched in blood.
Bell's hand reaching out.
Syr's quiet patience.
Alise's laugh.
The sound of her own heart, still beating despite everything.

"You stood in front of death again," Astraea said softly. "For others this time. Not to punish. To protect."

Ryu's throat tightened. "I still... hesitate. I still doubt."

"As you should." Astraea's fingertips brushed faintly over the Falna. "Doubt is the weight that keeps justice from swinging too wildly.『Status Update』."

The script blazed emerald.

Ryu gasped, feeling the surge like a storm catching her body, wind filling sails she hadn't known were raised.

【Status - Ryu Lion】
Affiliation: Astraea Familia
Level: 4 → 5

Strength: B → A (808)
Endurance: B → A (795)
Dexterity: A → A (842)
Agility: S → SS (973)
Magic: A → S (901)

Development Abilities

Hunter

Abnormal Resistance

Guardian (F) NEW - When defending comrades or innocents, defense and reaction speed increase.

Skills

Ariel - Controls wind for enhanced movement and attacks.
Addendum: Can now partially shield allies within close range.

Luminous Wind - Astraea's Mercy (A) - Focused, high-speed wind attacks.
Adjusted phrase: Less collateral damage when acting out of protection, more power when striking to end suffering.

Ryu stared at the paper.

"Level... five," she whispered.

The words felt wrong in her mouth. Too large. Too bright.

"I am not- I don't-" Her vision blurred. "I killed so many-"

Astraea reached forward and took her hand.

"You atoned," the goddess said, voice firm but aching. "You learned. You grieved. You chose to live. Justice is not a ledger of kills, Ryu. It is how you bear the weight of them."

Ryu's shoulders shook.

"I am... afraid," she admitted again.

"Good," Astraea said. "Never stop being afraid of your own power. That fear is what keeps you kind."

Alise slid in close, wrapping an arm around her.

"Welcome back to the front, partner," she murmured.

Ryu let out a shaky breath that might have been a laugh, might have been a sob.

"...Yes," she whispered. "I will stand beside you. This time... without running away from myself."

The candle flame flickered, casting three shadows against the wall-goddess, knight, and lantern-bearer.

For the first time in a long time, they all faced forward.

10. Loki Familia - Eyes on the Rising Flame

Elsewhere in Orario, chaos of a different flavor ruled.

"Oi, line up, ya mutts!"

Loki's voice carried through the main hall of the Twilight Manor, where members of the Loki Familia shuffled, grumbled, and-occasionally-obeyed.

Aiz Wallenstein stood quietly at the edge of the room, watching.

When her turn came, she moved forward without changing expression, unfastened her armor, and sat.

Riveria updated her Falna with practiced motions, lips pressing together thoughtfully as the numbers rearranged.

"Your parameters are steadily improving," the elf said. "As expected."

Aiz glanced at the page.

Strength: SS. Agility: SSS. Magic: S.
Tiny increases. Enough to matter. Not enough to feel like change.

Her eyes lingered for a moment on a different part of the script-barely visible, like a scar.

"Desire for Strength."

She thought of Bell Cranel, standing shaky-legged against monsters that should have crushed him. Of Alise's wild, blazing magic. Of Ryu moving like a green streak through the battlefield.

Of the way Bell had moved in front of the Peluda, despite knowing how weak he still was compared to them.

He had been afraid.

And he had done it anyway.

He's growing again, she realized.

Something stirred in her chest-a tangle of admiration, curiosity, and a quiet, frustrating ache.

"I want to train with him again," she said suddenly.

Riveria blinked. "With Bell Cranel?"

Aiz nodded.

Loki, who had been pretending not to eavesdrop, grinned.

"Oh ho~? Our little sword princess has a rival now?"

Aiz tilted her head. "...He's just fast."

"Mm-hmm," Loki sing-songed, unconvinced.

Across the room, Lefiya's ears turned scarlet.

Lefiya's own update reflected sharp growth in Magic and Dexterity, a new refinement on her casting speed. She traced the letters with trembling fingers.

I have to keep up, she thought. With Aiz-san... and with that fox-girl... and with everyone.

Bete grunted at his sheet, frown deep as he took in the bump in Strength and Agility.

"Tch. Numbers," he muttered. "Brat's are probably skyrocketing again."

But his teeth clenched as he remembered Bell's back during the fight, the way the kid had refused to fall.

Don't die, he thought grudgingly. You're not allowed to die until I decide you're strong enough.

He crumpled his paper a little too tightly.

Loki watched them all, lips curling.

Orario, she thought.
You're starting to simmer again.

11. Astraea - A Goddess's Quiet

Later that night, Astraea sat alone at her table, the stack of updated status sheets before her.

Alise's page.
Ryu's.

She laid them out in a fan and ran her fingers over the ink, feeling the echo of divinity humming in response.

"Justice," she whispered, "is not the strength to punish."

The candle flickered.

"It is the courage to protect what is fragile... even knowing you may fail."

Through the network of Falna threads stretching unseen across Orario, she felt them:

Hestia's bright, stubborn little flame, wrapped around a boy who refused to stop moving forward.

Loki's chaotic, sharp-edged blaze, orbiting around a girl who chased strength like chasing the horizon.

Her own lanterns-once nearly snuffed out, now burning again. Bent and cracked, perhaps. But burning.

In the distance, the Dungeon pulsed-a vast, sleeping heart under the city.

"Five days," Astraea murmured. "And my children will walk into your depths again."

She closed her eyes.

"Please," she prayed-not to the heavens above, but to the stubborn, wayward world itself. "Let them come back with more stories, not less."

The candle's flame straightened, steady and unwavering.

12. Orario - The Night of Pages

Across the city, under the same cold stars, papers glowed briefly as divine ink dried.

On Hestia's table, Bell carefully folded his sheet and tucked it away like something sacred. Haruhime traced the words "Reverent Heart" as if memorizing them. Welf stared at "Forge-Soul" and quietly envisioned a new blade.

At the Astraea home, Alise and Ryu sat shoulder to shoulder, comparing numbers and laughing weakly at each other's attempts to downplay them.

In the Twilight Manor, Aiz looked at her modest increases and thought, I will catch up to him. Lefiya looked at hers and thought, I will not be left behind. Bete pretended not to care and thought, Don't die, rabbit.

All of them, in their own corners of Orario, read the same silent message written between the lines of their Falna:

You have grown.
You can still grow more.
The story is not over.

Five days remained until the expedition.

The Dungeon waited.

And above it all, unseen, the city's invisible web of blessings thrummed like strings on the verge of a new song.

Pages had been written.
Hearts had been tested.

The next chapter of their legend was ready to begin.