[Restriction!]
The translucent screen appeared before Sora's eyes, glowing faintly inside the fog.
At the same moment, the burning red light in his eyes, the mark of a vampire about to hunt, went out.
It was as if someone had crushed a candle between their fingers. The dark, blood-like glow rising from the depths of his pupils pulled back in a single breath. All that was left behind was the usual pale pink.
The screen hung in the air for a few more seconds, then vanished on its own.
Sora stared at the empty space where the screen had disappeared for a while.
This restriction didn't just stop his hands. It touched the intent itself directly. It could tear a feeling rising from his soul out by the roots before it ever turned into an action.
Getting past something like this wasn't going to be easy. Not for now, at least.
But he was still lucky in one way.
Whoever had created a magic contract that could snuff out killing intent could just as easily have manipulated his thoughts too.
He should at least thank the creator of this spell for not turning him straight into a slave devoted heart and soul to Elena.
Sora shrugged.
This wasn't something he could rack his brain over right now. He turned his eyes back toward where the sound had come from and kept walking.
The sound of sand being scraped
This time, it was much closer and much clearer. A dry, quick, rhythmic rustle. As if something were pushing through the sand with its claws, or maybe with its whole body. The sound lasted a few seconds, then suddenly stopped.
Sora stopped.
Right then, the fog stirred.
From far away, from every direction at once, a golden glimmer began to spread. The specks of dust floating in the air started to glow, as if someone had set all of them alight at the same time. Then they moved. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, they began to spin, to curl, to form whirlpools inside the fog.
A golden sandstorm.
The storm tore through the fog. The grains hit Sora's face, his arms, the fabric of his jacket, but they didn't hurt. Sora raised one arm in front of his eyes.
The storm passed just as it had come.
When Sora lowered his arm, his field of vision had widened again.
Now he could see more than just his chest and hands. He could see all of himself. His legs, his bare feet, the fine grains of sand gathered around his ankles. The little dunes a short way beyond him, the veils starting to slowly drift through the air again.
Sora turned his head and looked toward where he had left Elena.
(Author's note: While writing these lines, I realized I've been using words like bourgeoisie and aristocrat a lot. Let me explain in case anyone doesn't know. The common people: us, normal people. The bourgeoisie: the rich, merchants, and their children. The aristocrats: nobles, landowners, and in Sora's eyes, the politicians in this novel also belong to the aristocratic class.)
There was no one.
His field of vision seemed to have become endless, but there was only the sea of sand with its little dunes. Elena was nowhere to be seen. As if she had never been there at all.
"Something's off."
When Sora started looking carefully, he noticed that his own footprints disappeared after about ten meters, giving way to the endless desert.
Not being able to see his footprints definitely had nothing to do with his vision being limited.
So somehow, this fog showed his field of vision up to ten meters, and everything beyond that was nothing but a mirage or something like it.
What about the statue, then?
Sora raised his head again and looked at the statue. That giant figure wrapped in its cloth stood tall against the amber sky, as if the fog didn't matter to it at all. The light flowing along the blade of the sword, the yellow flame at the top of the hilt, everything could be made out down to the finest detail.
It was visible regardless of distance.
The fog didn't hide the statue, because the statue wasn't bound by the fog's rules. Like a spell. Or like a sign. A target placed before the eyes of whoever looked, wherever they stood.
The first time, while walking toward the statue with Elena, he hadn't turned around to look behind him. He had never noticed the tracks being erased. Since he had felt the line the girl left under his feet, he had never thought about how far that track went or where it disappeared.
He had been too careless.
For someone who had survived seven worlds (or at least tried to), it was an embarrassing lapse.
Sora put together the information he had. After the golden sandstorm, the fog remained, but his visibility rose to ten meters. The statue was always visible.
So when the dark fog dispersed, the world didn't actually become free of fog. A more transparent fog, one that could create mirages, took its place and decided what people would and wouldn't see.
He filed this away in a corner of his mind and kept walking toward where the sound had come from.
He didn't have to go far.
About ten meters from the source of the sound, something on the ground caught his eye.
There was a circular irregularity on the surface of the sand. Unlike the smooth sand around it, the grains here were slightly raised and churned together, scattered as if someone had plunged a scoop into the sand and then pulled it back out. Its diameter was close to a person's arm span.
Sora walked to the edge of the circle and bent down.
Sora plunged his hand into the middle of the circle. His fingers sank easily into the sand. Up to his wrist, then up to his elbow. He dug through the sand, pushed it left and right, searching for a hole or the mouth of a tunnel.
He found nothing.
The sand flowed through his fingers and instantly filled the spot he had dug. When he pulled his hand out, the pit he had made smoothed itself flat within a few seconds.
There was no tunnel.
The desert sand must have filled the hole right back in once that thing had passed. So whatever this creature was, it wasn't moving forward by digging through the sand. It was using the sand like seawater. Diving into it, swimming through it.
Sora brushed the sand off his hand.
For now, he decided to call it a sand swimmer.
He stood up and looked at the circle. Should he wait here? The sand swimmer might have gone off somewhere. Or it might be waiting right beneath him, a few meters deep, listening to him.
Then Elena came to mind.
The girl was probably sitting right where he had left her, with his shoes in her lap, looking at the statue. She had been able to see the statue ever since the fog pulled back. And by Sora's guess, she was barely holding herself back from running toward it.
If Sora took any longer, one of two things would happen. Either Elena would get up and come looking for him, or she would run out of patience and go to the statue alone, and from there to the next floor.
Sora took a step to go back.
Then he stopped.
Why?
Neither of these possibilities actually mattered to him.
If Elena came looking for him, nothing would change. The girl would come, sit down next to him, and most likely ask a few ridiculous questions here too.
And if Elena kept going on her own... Then Sora would have to move forward without knowing anything about this tower or its rules. But what Elena knew was information the aristocrats had already filtered and trimmed over and over. Information that someone had decided how much to teach the common people's children, with the real substance stripped out. Going by that information might even make him miss some of the tower's treasures.
Sora stood still for a while.
Then he gave up on choosing which was better for him.
He left the choice to fate.
In case that thing swimming in the sand had only gone into hiding, he would wait here. Maybe it would come back out. Maybe it wouldn't. If Elena came, she came. If she didn't, she didn't.
Sora sat down cross-legged on the sand inside the fog, at the edge of the circle.
After all, he wasn't about to die of ignorance on a floor where no one had died in thirty years.