Reality shifted.

  Bel found herself in the midst of Dirk and Percival, both diligently preparing Rudolf for extra. Suddenly, an uling shiver danced down her spine. She turo her panions, somewhat forted to see that they also looked as though they'd just swallowed a live grenade.

  “Holy shit, I felt that in my gut,” Dirk excimed. Though he wasly versed in the whole Force or Vision business, he was, after all, the universe’s best world-ending oor. “Did the fabric of reality just bend, or is my lunch making a eback?”

  “Miss Bel, what just transpired?” Percival asked, his brow furrowing. As a Force user, he could sehe disturbance more distinctly than Dirk but found himself perplexed. This was unfamiliar for him. Shod dread might as well have been his middle this point.

  Bel shrugged, a picture of calm amidst the chaos. “I’m not sure… I check it out? It vanished so fast.”

  Both Percival and Dirk nodded, a tacit agreement that her curiosity was undoubtedly less dangerous than whatever this new mystery was.

  Climbing the dungeon’s staircase, Bel was sure that it was Vision. She reached the dungeorand the two guards standing nearby when she overheard a versation—

  “Let me try it again. Man, just humor me.”

  “I said you’re not ready. That was too dangerous. You have no sense of fear, so you’re even more dangerous than Yvain in a rampage!”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “You do that again and you are sleeping outside.”

  “But I maed Vision just now, didn’t I? I did it, right?”

  “Whatever that was, you are banned. Ma a fireball like a normal person!”

  “Well, clearly I was trying to!”

  “That was a bck hole!”

  “No, it wasn’t. You’re exaggerating. That was just… an unobservable boundary.”

  Bel saw the pair arguing as they walked toward her. She immediately knew what that was. “gratutions!”

  Burn and Man turned her way. Burn beamed like a child on sugar, while Man wore a face of utter disbelief. Her gratutory remark broke their quarrel, prompting Man’s weary scoff and Burn’s quiet chuckle.

  “I o sit down,” Man decred, reag out to Bel. Bel eagerly held her hand, ing her arm around Man as she giggled softly.

  “Your Holiness, you both are so cool,” she whispered.

  Man immediately shook her head. “No. Nu-uh.”

  “I’m going t to Isaiah,” Burn decred, striding behind them. “Also, Vd.”

  “See?” Maured to Burn’s coess, turning to Bel, who was still giggling, shaking her head like one would at a stubborn toddler. “That’s not cool; that’s dht dangerous.”

  “e on, Man, I just learned Hollow Purple,” Bured.

  Man halted, shooting him a gre sharper than her wit, but saw him dramatically pg a hand on his ow, his smile as bright as that time she told him she loved him back.

  “God loves me too,” Burn procimed dramatically. “Throughout heaven—”

  “Caliburn!” she interjected, uo suppress her smile even as she shook her head. “God’s tired of your shit.”

  “Father and Lord Isaiah will definitely be proud,” Bel chimed in, the siy somehow extinguishing Burn’s grin like a wet b.

  “I don’t want them to be proud; I want to make them feel like trash,” Burn shot back.

  Bel snorted, and Man’s lips twitched.

  But sidering Burn’s history with Soulnaught Syndrome, he thought it would affect his Vision magic. Apparently, once cured, he could ect to his soul without much effort.

  There might be another reason why. When his soul was forcibly wrenched from him to pay for that wretched loop, he ironically gaihe ability to locate his soul more easily.

  Yes, the agony of his soul being shredded by Soulnaught Syndrome in his childhood was nothing pared to that horrific severan the name of the time curse. But hey, what didn’t kill you made you stronger.

  “I really ’t try it again?” Burn, now calmer, asked again.

  Man sighed. “Not in the middle of the pace. Caliburn, this is not Force where you trol it sciously. Vision is trolled using your emotional awareness.”

  “I get it. I o develop fear,” the man sneered.

  The truth was, Burn knew Man was right. He didn’t expect his Vision awakening to be so dangerous either, and to familiarize himself with it, he might o go to a secluded pce where no one’s around to harm.

  The moon, for example.

  He had sent his father’s regalia to the World Tree, and the outsiders wouldn’t bother him for a while. Now it was time to take over Inkia with Yvain. About this newfound dangerous strength, he definitely needed a tête-à-tête with it, in a more ptive venue.

  But for now…

  The duhey entered had a certain ambiance, if one could call it that. It was not the damp, moldy kind of pce that g to the skin or filled the lungs with the st of rot. No, this dungeon was different.

  Dark, yes. Sinister, certainly. But dry as bone and, oddly enough, a bit cozy if one happeo be on the right side of the bars.

  It smelled of old dust and well-worn stohe kind of pce where interrogators could put their feet up between sessions of squeezing information from the unfortunate souls who found themselves ed to the wall.

  Rudolf Blitzen, the Junior Fleet Admiral, hung limply in his bonds, his head lolling as if it had fotten how to hold itself up. His half-naked form itiful sight—though, to be fair, it wasn't the worst he had looked that day.

  His pants had been removed some time ago after a rather unfortunate bout of self-soiling. Modesty had left the room with his dignity, leaving him ed in nothing but his shirt, his legs exposed to the chill air of the dungeon.

  His unscious form was still, save for the faint rise and fall of his chest. Foam collected at the ers of his mouth, the product of some wild, fevered illusion in which he’d been decapitated—a mistaken impression he had yet to shake.

  Percival and Dirk had been waiting, their patieill intact. They had prepared everythiiculously, down to the st drop of water to spsh in Rudolf’s face wheime came.

  This dungeoe its ominous atmosphere, was a well-oiled mae for breaking men, and they inteo enjoy every sed of it.

  When they finally arrived, Burn had hidden away all his giddiness over Vision maiouro Bel for a bit and sneered. “I don’t know what you showed him, but it seems he’s having a hard time regaining sciousness.”

  “My illusion is always so real that his brain feels paihough your bde didn’t graze him, Your Majesty,” Bel said.

  “But I felt it too. It felt like I was actually slig someone’s he density, the skin, the bohe flesh…” Burn said.

  “I am fttered,” Bel smiled. One of the reasons she was still here rather than following Vd back to the Elven Kingdom to deliver the corrupted regalia was because Man reended her to help them trick the outsiders.

  “Smoke and Mirror,” Bel said. “That’s my Vision specialty.”

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