“Well, with this, we’re even.” Velvet said, waving him off.

  Oh well, it wasn’t like he opposed loitering for a while longer, but if both Velvet and Frenese were so adamant about kicking him out, he wasn’t going to make a fuss.

  Velvet wanted some calm and freedom, and, with every Arhontissian mage on the Mergifari searching for him, and, as long as he remained there, that soon would end . Whatever spell Cardomos had used to hide the pocket dimension, it no longer could be modified without him, and so, its effects were stagnating.

  An unmoving, unchanging spell, no longer misleading the tracking ones with different tricks would eventually get countered, and, with enough people searching, they were bound to eventually find the needle in the haystack.

  So it was fine for him, really. Plus, he’d been long enough without bothering Igern, Creftalia and company. Surely they missed him.

  “Don’t leave.”

  The voice in his head, now back from Velvet, spoke before he acted on his decision, making him fall silent.

  “He is coming.” It continued, its words rushed. “I’ll go into hiding until that mutt settles on the unfortunate vessel. Recharge the pocket dimension’s seal, and make Velvet modify it. Her third, seventh and twenty fourth suggestions for the new seal would suffice. Ignore the others, that head will figure them out.”

  “Don’t get out until I’m back.”

  “Which one was mutt again?” The only time his companion had retreated was when Lothrigern got inside his mind, and no other time. Not even in the goddess Arhontissa’s presence.

  But Lothigern was grasshopper, not mutt.

  It did not answer, certifying the fact that he had left Dianthus to deal with the rest on his own… and with Velvet, who was looking at him without blinking.

  It is what it is. He thought, meeting Velvet’s gaze. “I’ve been thinking, and… you don’t really have that much experience in mage combats, don’t you?”

  …

  Back on the Mergifari, inside a dinner hall that one could call classic but simple, with a combination of marble pillars with decorations used on modern manors, yet lacking any indicator that mages lived there, three people were having a feast in silence.

  A silence broken by the scraping noise of the rolling wheels of a serving trolley, pushed from behind by a servant.

  A servant, humanoid at first glance, dressed in maid clothes, with a body following the average human proportions down to the last detail. Not a single hair was out of place, nor was any finger longer, shorter, thinner or thicker than it should be. And yet…

  The maid’s skin, clothes, eyes, hair… everything down to her last fingernail was completely white. Paper white. Folded paper white.

  An origami maid.

  She pushed the trolley towards the opposite end of the rectangular wooden table, the only empty side, opposite of the one presiding over it. On top of it, a silver tray, wide enough to contain the full roasted pig inside it, revealed once the maid lifted the heavy cloche effortlessly.

  Then she prepared two plates, setting them aside before taking the whole tray, lifting it, and putting it in front of one of the mages seated at the table. Not the one at the end of it, but of the one at the side.

  Right on top of several, similar, empty trays. Not even the paper maid risked removing them from Cheron, who started digging in while the maid was setting the food down, crunching and munching at the meat, spilling juices.

  And yet, none of those drops reached the ground, nor the table.

  Once Cheron was busy with her food, the maid served the remaining plates, first the mage in front of Cheron, an old man with a long, white beard. Hasdrubal the All-Knowing. She put the plate between the instruments and utensils he had arranged around his zone of the table.

  Metronomes, orbs of different materials, sizes and colors, a scrying hand mirror, the previous plate full with barely eaten, cold food… The maid had no other choice than to nudge some of the things away, making way for the new, steaming plate. She did not take the other, as if sending a message.

  And then, she finally served the one at the end of the table, at the position usually reserved for the one presiding over it.

  Even though the one sitting there felt more like shackled to the seat.

  Because he wasn’t there for being the most important mage in the room, no. The reason he was there was because it had the shortest side. Charon had her side filled with trays, and… really, the furthest she was away from him, the better. And Hasdrubal had his side filled with trinkets. Of the three, only he didn’t have anything extra on the table.

  So, when the maid served his plate, it did so easily, removing the empty one.

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  And Agorn Krischa had no other choice than to look at the plate with a hardly hidden dread.

  As someone used to snack on little bits of food throughout the day, having his meals switched to the three per day format was already bad. Now, adding his companions to that… every single bite was like swallowing a bag of dry flour.

  But leaving that aside for now, there should be a reason why a novice mage like him, previously an ally of the Idirian mages, was currently in Mergifari company. And it was quite a simple one, in fact.

  After the absolute fiasco that was the Opening, with tens of novice mages dying because a Devil got loose, the Tarius were held responsible.

  He didn’t know all the details, since it was mostly a private deal between them and the Mergifari, but one of the things they had to give away were all their novice mages… of which he was the only option, since the others had died after summoning the Devil Frenese.

  The only reason he didn’t end up as another number more in the dead list, was because, after following the Tarius instructions to take down the knowledge mage Irsen Kartal had hired, the novice Velvet Consestella Dobastro, she found him and hospitalized him. Violently.

  So, he had missed all of it by being bedridden. His position might have ended up being the last in the list because of that, but he was alive. The only one of his group… ex-group that could say so.

  Agorn wouldn’t say they were friends, since he barely knew them, but he didn’t dislike them.

  And, looking down at the roasted pig meat…

  “If you don’t want it, push it here.” A high pitched voice said.

  Cheron’s.

  “Do they taste the same?” He blurted without thinking. “Human and pig?” Agorn realized a bit too late what he had just said, flinching to meet Cheron’s creeping grin, her silver and golden teeth glistening.

  “Don’t be silly! I don’t cook or season human meat!” She raised her hands… well, the long sleeves covering those, not a single thread of cloth dirtied by food, despite not using any sort of utensils. “Now, push it over. Now, now.”

  Agorn did as told, not hungry in the least and more so of meat, using the fork to slide the dish closer to Cheron, to the disappointment of the maid.

  For a being made of folded paper, she’s too expressive… He didn’t have time to do anything about that, since suddenly, the whole room went dark.

  Not even a few hours had passed since the whole space almost crumbled down, only stopping because the Director stepped up, that another different thing was starting.

  Agorn turned his face towards Hasdrubal, gauging his reaction. He was the most knowable mage in the room, after all!

  Hasdrubal had lifted his head, eyes fixated on the window, as his pupil contracted, expanded and multiplied, thin vertical lines crossing the whole of his eye, an imitation of the flipping of pages of a book, fast, and then faster and fast-

  “If you keep looking, your brain juices are gonna spill doooown your ears,” Cheron said, not having stopped eating from a moment. “And I’ll lick them aaaall way up.” Something cracked inside her mouth, as she slurped at something.

  The pig’s brains or marrow? He didn’t look, switching his gaze to also look at the window.

  Outside, the moon had come out, blocking the sun.

  An eclipse? There wasn’t any coming, plenty of mages kept track of that. And yet, there it was, up in the sky.

  A ring of light, uncalled for.

  Agorn hadn’t seen many eclipses during his life, not really caring for them, but this one, appearing right after the collapse… Despite his lack of knowledge, he didn’t trust it to be a normal eclipse.

  His suspicions soon got answered, as one of Hasdrubal’s orbs shattered, and then another, and another, sacrificed as an outlet to pay the price of observing that which shouldn’t be seen.

  Something Agorn knew from being born in a mage family.

  Since he didn’t try to analyze beyond the eclipse, it didn’t affect him. But, not watching below the superficial didn’t exempt him from seeing what went on the surface, as the ring of light coming from the sun wrapped around the moon, starting to ignite it.

  The fire tendrils embraced the moon like snakes, spiraling around the circle, slowly erasing everything in their path.

  Something like that shouldn’t be possible, since the distance between them was over a hundred million kilometers. If the sun approached that much, forget the moon, all of the world would be set ablaze!

  … That would be a way to fix the Permafrost problem, now that he thought about it. One that would kill all of them in the process.

  And yet, that was what was happening. Like an ember dropped on top of a stack of papers, a black, burnt hole progressively grew where the moon hung.

  And, unlike the collapse of space, nothing could be done this time, not even by the Director. They just watched as the moon was consumed, leaving a pitch black, hollow hole up in the sky.

  Even when nothing else was left to burn from the moon, the light of the day didn’t come.

  The only noises inside the hall were now the crunches of Cheron eating the glass that had fallen on top of the pig’s meat, followed by the paper maid walking back with a broom.

  …

  It was coming.

  The moon was gone, and the unending night had come.

  He had forgotten that he could cry. Red, sticky tears fell from his eyes nonstop, the curtain trembling under the grasp of his white, pale, dead hand.

  It was coming.

  The moon was gone, and the unending night had come.

  For eight hundred forty six years he’d been waiting. Eight hundred forty six years since he had been aware of what he was, and of who was the original responsible of it. The only one with the power to change it.

  Hunt me. The hollow moon said as he looked at it. Vanquish me.

  Only then will I recognize you. It finished, while his own crimson eyes never left the one in the artificial night.

  “O Lord,” He whispered against the window. No reflection came from it, nor did his words leave any fog in the glass. “There’s nothing else I can feel aside from gratitude for giving me this opportunity.” Despite not having any need for air, he sighed, tuning around to meet another one of them.

  Pale skin, white hair, red eyes. Like him, those were filled with bloody tears, her too sharing the joy of existing long enough to participate in the Night Hunt.

  “Warn everyon- No, everyone is aware now. Contact Scheille, we need to see if the Mergifari has clues about where the Hallowed will awake.”