The church dome sat silent, empty as a cold bell under stone sky.

The attic above the dome was closed to visitors, a cramped ribcage packed with dusty odds and ends like sleeping bones. Crates, a half-painted landscape, lame-legged chairs, a stone carving, and iron pipes strewn like fallen branches.

Lu Yao had thought the masked man would return to the crime scene, like a wolf circling its den, to check who swapped the explosives. She’d assumed wrong; a cadre of the Sinister Organization would be schooled in counter-surveillance like smoke vanishing in wind. She did, however, find the firework launcher gleaming like a toy cannon.

And scrawled in graffiti paint along its side lay a heap of numbers like constellations scratched on tin.

[475369 23478956 4789 4789 4789632 7 47852963 4789632 472359 4789 47268].

“What is… this?” Her voice fell like a pebble into a well.

Phone numbers? No, the pattern was too chaotic, like ants marching in broken lines.

A code, then? Whoever left the launcher—a third party declaring war on Shadow Realm War—had time to play, like a cat drawing circles in dust.

Below the planks, Ling Yi and War Sovereigns Curse still fought, their clash thudding up like thunder under floorboards. Lu Yao didn’t know where Yekase had gone; if she did, she’d drag her here to crack the cipher like ice.

She knew Yekase acted unreliable in calm weather, yet never wasted a breath when storms hit, because every second could be a human heartbeat snuffed like a candle. Maybe a hidden hand had stalled her, maybe she was battling elsewhere, but slacking off was a bird she never chased.

So it had to be Lu Yao, a lone reed in the wind.

If this code sat here, it likely hid intel a third party left for them, a lantern in fog, and it had to be solved fast.

But the truth slid cold; riddles weren’t her strong suit, like fish trying to climb trees.

Jiang Bailu was a mechanic and probably no help with ciphers, and Lu Yao couldn’t stomach asking that woman, pride standing like a wall.

“Eleven segments, sixty digits… 4789… shows up three times.” Her breath tapped like rain on glass.

Among the sixty digits, two through nine all appeared, like stones of varied size, but with uneven frequency. Treat spaces as segment breaks; groups ranged from four to eight digits, and there was a solitary 7 like a lone sparrow.

Naturally, the lever should be 4789. It appears three times; in English frequency, it’d feel like the letter E, the common wave in a sea.

Eight-digit blocks also appeared thrice, each holding one of 2–9, like beads in a row, with 1 missing, yet arranged differently like shuffled cards.

Segments beginning with 47 showed up nine times; only one segment broke that rule, like a crack in pottery.

So the eight-digit block not starting with 47—23478956—was a special stone second only to 4789. It breaks clean into 234, 789, and 56, three pebbles in a stream.

“No… I’m missing something.” Frustration pricked like nettles.

Missing what?

Two through nine are here; so the absent one is 1, a ghost digit in mist.

Ignore that odd single 7 for now; what happens if you insert 1 into the other ten segments, like a keystone in an arch?

Think backward: if 1 is hidden because every segment places 1 in the same spot, then the nine 47 segments didn’t hide together because of that lone 23 start. So that 1 should sit before 47 and before 23, a door before a path.

147, 123…

The pattern looked familiar, like a grid beneath rice paper.

“Horizontal and vertical? Lamp tubes in rows? Map A–G to numbers… No, 8 and 9 won’t match.” Her brow cooled like shadow.

Traffic light tubes top out at seven; to hold nine you need another frame, a nine-grid like window panes.

147, 5, 369.

On a nine-grid… that’s the letter H sketched with rails.

123, 4789, 56—E, traced like three steps.

147, 89—L, a pillar and a short stroke.

147, 89, 63, 2—O, a loop around breath.

“Answer is ‘Hello, world’.” The phrase dropped like a coin in a dry fountain.

No victory jingle played; the dome stayed dark and hushed, with only the battle below humming like a buried hive.

The programmer’s catchphrase held no content, like a banner with no map; it served as the next riddle itself, a doorway painted on a wall.

Same craft as the first “TOT,” a twin hand at work, brushstrokes repeating like ripples.

This person used “God is dead” to point them to the round plaza, where the masked man howled his crime and choked on it, then guessed someone would check the launcher, leaving “Hello, world” for a second meeting, a second bell.

What did they want, truly, a fisherman with hidden nets?

Whether Shadow Realm War or they found the second code probably didn’t matter, a river that reaches the sea anyway.

TOT used an image to mark a place; this time the letters are all uppercase, austere as carved stone.

Lu Yao’s gaze settled on that single 7, a nail in wood.

She had treated it like a comma, like a pause; if the phrase still hid a meaning, the 7 would be its ember.

What’s special about 7? In mysticism it carries weight like a mountain; Yekase would start there, cutting symbols like herbs. But…

This graffitist treats words as pictures, like seeing TOT as two T-junctions with a round plaza between, a map sketched from above. So the 7 should be read as an image, not a numeral, a stroke on a grid.

Place only a 7 in the same nine-grid, leaving others as before, a lone pebble in the lower field.

Bottom-left—like the corner of a rice field.

Lu Yao slipped through the window and stepped on Peace Walker’s wing, powering up like a comet, climbing to her earlier height with wind tearing her sleeves.

If Soville City were a nine-grid, treat the round plaza as the center, the twin T-lines as the top bar, then look to the bottom-left, the shadowed quadrant—

It was still the church, solemn as a cliff.

Was the person hiding in the church, unmoved as a boulder, while Ling Yi and War Sovereigns Curse brawled from street to nave, and while Lu Yao stormed the dome and rummaged like a fox?

Where would he hide, a reed among stones?

Her mind, long soaked in Omega Ray and stubborn as iron, jolted with a bolt named “intuition,” likely stirred by the Flash Energy tool she’d just used, a lightning flash across ink.

He would hide inside

a picture, a door painted on silk.

Peace Walker’s wing kissed the church roof again like a gull landing; Lu Yao dropped into the dome attic and walked to the object like a pilgrim to an altar.

A wooden frame, taller than a person, standing in the corner like a quiet sentinel.

A half-painted landscape, a window halfway to another sky.

A cliffside cabin faced a waterfall like a small boat facing a storm; the rest was blank, untouched white like snowfields.

Lu Yao lifted her hand toward the canvas and spoke the password, her voice a thin thread.

White light flashed like a blade; in the next breath, the attic held no one, empty as a hollow reed.

…

Cold droplets on her face woke Lu Yao like morning frost.

She opened her eyes to a white sky vast enough to stun, a blank scroll stretching forever.

No clouds, no birds, no sun or moon; the empty expanse crushed depth and distance, pressing her chest like a falling wall.

“…Heh.” A dry chuckle, brittle as dry leaves.

She pushed herself up from the grass like a swimmer breaking the surface.

She stood on a lawn, with her ears clogged by a pervasive roar that hid like wind in reeds. Ahead, a waterfall stitched heaven to earth beyond a nearby cliff, a silver rope beating air. A small wooden cabin crouched before the falls, tiny as a matchbox before a river.

The droplets striking her skin had flown from that direction, spray like scattered pearls.

Cliff, waterfall, cabin—three strokes on rice paper.

She had entered the painted world, a journey through silk.

“So the mind-based path really is…” Awe leaked like warm smoke.

She had no choice; she climbed to her feet and walked toward the cabin, each step like a bead on a string.

The path took longer than expected, stretching like ribbon; she reached a drafty brown-black door at last, wood breathing cold.

Lu Yao calmed her breath, then lifted her knuckles to knock, steady as a metronome; the door swung open at the first tap, like a willow bow loosening.

Inside stood a painting, solemn as an altar piece.

A beautiful woman inclined her head, right hand on a child’s shoulder; to her left sat a young man and a baby, with a lush, deep cave behind like a forested throat.

It looked famous, a name like a bell she didn’t know.

She couldn’t help it; the orphanage had been her cradle, and art lessons were distant stars.

Lu Yao instinctively took it as the third riddle left by the mystery artist, a trail of crumbs. Then the gentle woman in the painting lifted her head and smiled at her, warm as lamplight.

“—?!” Her heart jumped like a fish.

The painting was a magical construct; when Lu Yao moved two steps left, the woman turned right, and when she went right, the woman turned left, always facing her like a sunflower tracking light, smile unwavering.

Lu Yao walked behind the canvas, checking the spine like a carpenter.

“See? It doesn’t affect her.” “We finally have an atheist.” Whispering voices fluttered in the cabin, moths around a wick.

“Who’s there?” Lu Yao called, sharp as a bell, and looked up where the sound perched—an opened panel in the ceiling, a hatch like a mouth. Four small heads peered out and grinned, like sparrows at the eaves.

In the church attic’s painting’s cabin attic, a hall of mirrors.

“It’s been so long since a guest came—” Their voices chimed like spoons.

Four little girls hopped down one by one, landing like dandelion seeds, and circled Lu Yao, skirts brushing her like soft grass. She felt the trap of extroverts spring like a net, a primal twitch, but kept her cool.

The leader, the oldest-looking, saluted playfully like a tiny soldier and introduced herself. “Finding this place suits you—We are the ‘Painters’.”

They hemmed her in, warm and noisy as kittens, and Lu Yao forced a calm tone. “You left the alley graffiti and swapped the explosives for fireworks, like chalk for stars? Why do all this? Your opponent is the Sinister Organization; this is too dangerous for children.”

“We’re not children,” the leader corrected, words crisp as chalk.

“Even the Church can’t find us! Watching them rage and circle the paintings makes my belly hurt from laughing,” chirped the second and third girls, hand in hand like twin vines. “You’re an atheist too, right? You get it.”

“The small-fry priests’ scandals with altar boys got exposed,” the smallest girl sang, wicked as a cat.

“I am an atheist,” Lu Yao said, cautious as a fox, “but how do you know me? Why ‘suits you’? Why that tone?”

Since coming to Europe, she’d stayed in the City of Ivalice, tuning Peace Walker like a craftsman in a forge, and her hero’s fame wasn’t much, a candle under a bowl. Why did these girls act like they’d known her forever, like swallows returning?

The leader blinked, surprised, like a firefly.

“Huh? Aren’t you Luciferin de Finchy?”

…

“I’m not!” Her denial snapped like a whip.