Slender fingers traced up Lucian’s chest, drifting over his throat and coming to rest against his face. He knew that touch. He’d know it anywhere.
But every point of contact felt cold. No warmth at all radiated from the body behind it.
Lucian reached up and pushed the fingers away from his face.
"That’s enough, Lumina."
There was no fear in his expression, only a deep, gnawing confusion about what exactly had been happening to him this whole time.
"Hmm, how strange. Weren’t you terrified enough of my footsteps earlier to bolt straight through that door?"
"So it was you. You’re the one who made that footstep sound."
Lumina didn’t answer. She’d moved to stand directly behind him now, her hand still resting on his shoulder.
"Can you not stand this close to me without touching me?"
"Ara ara, Lucian, why are you being so cold all of a sudden?"
He turned to face her fully.
"You still haven’t answered my question."
Lumina drew her hand back, then closed it around his shoulder again, leaning in close enough to murmur directly into his ear.
"You’d do better to focus on what’s in front of you right now."
In front of me?
Six steps below where he stood, something else was waiting.
A tall, gaunt figure without a face, draped in a black robe torn to shreds. Where its face should have been sat only a shattered piece of ancient mirror, cracked through the center. Its hands ended in long, blade-thin fingers of crystal, sharp enough to pass for knives.
"Hufff.. The worse"
Lucian, who hadn’t felt a shred of fear until this exact moment, felt something entirely different settle over him now.
He understood, instantly, that whatever stood before him was no ordinary creature, and the sound of its movement matched, exactly, the same sound that had chased him up that staircase earlier tonight. Which meant Lumina hadn’t been behind any of it, not the first time.
"Unlucky you, Lucian. Running straight into an evil spirit. Worse still, that one’s a Murk." Lumina straightened, stepping back and climbing a stair or two away from him as she said it.
Lucian stayed exactly where he was, frozen, locked eye to eye, or whatever passed for eyes, with the thing in front of him, though he couldn’t help but wonder why she was retreating instead of stepping in.
"Hey, why are you backing off? Isn’t purging evil spirits a Saintess’s job?"
"Don’t look away from it. Look up. It’s above you now."
Lucian, who’d let his attention drift toward her for just a second, snapped his gaze forward again.
"Above?"
CLING!—
A sharp, glasslike claw came slashing down at him, but pure reflex saved him, he caught the strike on the flat of the white sword already in his hand.
"Holy shit."
He hadn’t seen that coming, the Murk striking from midair, its whole body hovering weightlessly above him. He shifted his footing on the narrow stair, bracing himself to face it properly this time.
The creature circled overhead, hunting for an opening, until its attention suddenly locked onto something at Lucian’s chest, as though it had found exactly what it was looking for.
"You’d better watch yourself, Lucian. It’s about to go straight for your chest," Lumina called down lazily from above.
"My chest?"
Lucian pressed a hand to it and felt warmth radiating there, strange, out of place, as though something inside him was calling out to the creature directly.
CLING!—
"OI, give me a second to breathe, would you?!"
The blow came within inches of his face. A heartbeat slower and it would’ve split his chest wide open.
This fight felt nothing like the last one. This thing wasn’t just attacking, it was hunting, aiming for his life with clear, deliberate intent.
But how had a Murk even gotten inside the Sarnel estate, a place guarded this heavily? Creatures like this only surfaced in places thick with dark mana.
Unless someone had carried it in themselves.
Lucian kept fighting, throwing a suspicious glance up at Lumina between strikes, but she only shook her head.
"I know exactly what you’re thinking, Lucian. But it wasn’t me who brought this thing here."
Damn it, if not her, then who?
He managed to force the Murk back a step. Its raw power didn’t come close to the Thunder Boar he’d faced in the forest, but its speed, its unpredictable, darting movements, made it brutal to pin down.
"My poor Lucian. Why are you struggling so much against such a small, pitiful evil spirit?"
Lumina twirled a lock of her hair between her fingers, making no move whatsoever to help him, though her voice never stopped.
"If you’re already this overwhelmed by something this weak, you’ll pass out cold the moment you join me on real assignments. The things we hunt together are far, far stronger than this."
Within the Order of Lumielle, purging evil spirits was as much a Saintess’s duty, and any Bishop’s, as tending to the sick. But for Lucian, someone who’d never once faced a creature like this in his life, this fight felt less like a task and more like a direct sentence.
Another strike came in from the side, aimed once again, unmistakably, at his chest.
Damn it, why does this thing keep going for my chest? Did I eat something weird earlier or what?
He had, in fact, eaten plenty that qualified as strange tonight. But with Lumina standing right there, a different possibility surfaced in his mind, the memory of her forcing something down his throat back at the cathedral.
That has to be it.
"Hey, Lumina—!" Lucian shouted up at her, but she cut him off with total confidence.
"Use your sword’s power."
My sword’s power?
The white blade in his hand flared to life without him meaning to channel any mana into it at all, light spilling out along its edge.
The Murk recoiled the instant it caught sight of the glow, and Lucian didn’t waste the opening. His body moved on instinct, the motion fluid, almost practiced, as though he’d swung this exact sword a thousand times before.
"Aim for its head, Lucian, if you can’t call on holy mana yet."
Lucian raised the blade again, driving toward the Murk’s head, but the creature, terrified as it clearly was, still fought back, meeting his strike with a desperate swipe of its claws.
That was when Lucian understood: swinging blindly, force against force, wasn’t going to get him anywhere. But a strange tremor rippled through the crystal set into the sword, and something shifted through his entire body, a current of holy mana he’d never once felt in himself before.
He narrowed every ounce of focus he had and pushed that mana toward the blade.
To anyone watching, the sword would have looked wreathed in white fire, though it carried none of the heat a real flame would.
The Murk flinched back, already trying to flee.
But Lucian raised the sword high overhead again, the motion carrying the unmistakable promise of something about to be unleashed.
Lucian sheathed the sword and sank down onto the stairs, chest heaving, dragging in ragged breaths.
A soft breath of air brushed against his ear. Lumina’s face was suddenly close, close enough that he could feel her presence pressing right up against his neck.
"Good work," she said, right beside him.
"Cut it out, Lumina. What did you put in my mouth back there?"
But the moment the question left him, something about Lumina felt wrong.
"You... why can’t I hear your heartbeat?"
He reached out fast, catching her wrist before she could pull away, and what he found there stopped him cold. No pulse. No warmth. Nothing.
It was the exact same sensation he’d felt in Miyu’s hand earlier: cold, still, no heartbeat, no thread of mana running through it at all. Even the Murk he’d just fought had carried more sense of life than this.
"Relax. I’m not dead yet."
Lucian let go of her wrist at once, but Lumina only reached up and stroked his hair instead, smiling.
"I’m glad you’re worried about me."
He jerked his head away from her hand.
"Tell me where I am, Lumina. And tell me if all this is your doing too."
"hmm.. thought you’d ask how to get out of this domain first."
Lumina closed her hand around the one still holding his sword, but the instant her fingers made contact with the blade, her hand passed straight through it, as though she weren’t fully solid at all.
"Can you really not touch this sword?"
"Seems like you’ve already figured out you’re still trapped in your own past."
He looked around them again, taking in the space more carefully this time. It resembled the main estate, technically, and yet everything around him felt as though it carried its own separate pulse, its own life, as if the very ground he stood on hovered somewhere between real and not.
"This place is real enough, But only for you, Lucian."
"For me? What does that mean?"
Lumina lifted his hand toward the cracked crystal set into the sword’s hilt. The moment she did, the crystal responded, threads of golden light spilling out from it, weaving together in front of them until they formed the shape of a yellow door.
Lumina studied the door with an expression that suggested she’d already known exactly what she’d find.