“Something’s off…”

Yekase couldn’t see what, exactly, Punk Jack had done.

Arcadia’s citizens roamed the city as phantoms, but they were only shapes poured from memory. Their souls, like Shen Shanshan’s father’s, dissolved together in the city’s field of Soul Power.

What Punk Jack had done, it seemed, was jack himself into that field and borrow the traits of a soul.

To tamper with the soul’s essence… that steps around Infinite Power and drops straight into the roots of the occult. To crack it, you’d need the right Runic Words.

But everything Yekase knew of runes came from Alicia Alicia. She’d sidestepped the soul on purpose or by habit—and now none of it would help.

Every attack slid off him—anything not fueled by Infinite Power just passed through. Anything with Infinite Power got spread thin across the city’s whole Soul Power field. A no‑win board.

Yekase glanced toward Lu Yao and Vala. Their side was going smoothly. If Punk Jack hadn’t crashed the table, that fight would already be over.

The hardest part with Vala wasn’t breaking her guard. It was stopping her from turning into lines of Sorcery and slipping away.

These people, seriously.

If only one or two soul‑savvy heavy hitters could show up right now—

Get real. This was the empty Arctic.

This wasn’t some cheesy superhero show. No grizzled powerhouse would stroll out from the street, everyone instinctively murmuring his name, and he’d raise a hand, turn into a giant of light, and help Yekase pop Punk Jack like a blister… Life isn’t that kind.

…Isn’t it?

Yekase toyed with Punk Jack like humoring a kid, flicking glances at the cliffs surrounding Arcadia, half hoping a surprise guest would crest the rim.

She didn’t know why, but the feeling pressed hard and hot.

Something big was coming—she could only pray the “big” one counted as a friend.

…

……

—Explosion.

A brutal explosion.

Harrison stood dead center in the blast, swallowed by fire and smoke.

Inside her barrier, Dorothy stared that way and sank to her knees, empty.

A comrade who’d been speaking, who’d been running himself ragged, just died in a spiteful ambush… like a sudden laser slicing across a ship’s bridge, vaporizing the crew—absurd and cruel.

Punk Jack’s laugh rang in her ears, but she had no strength left for anger. She’d imagined teammates dying mid‑mission a hundred times. Now that it had happened, she realized, with a jolt, she wasn’t ready at all.

Then the dust began to thin.

“—?!”

A figure still stood in the center of the street.

His wide‑brimmed hat was gone, flung who knows where, and a perilously receding hairline burned in the sun.

“Harrison?! You lived through that? On your own?”

Did he have an ace tucked away?

But Harrison’s face was a mess of tears and snot. He wobbled like a reed in a storm, almost pitching over.

“I—I… I…”

Dorothy checked Punk Jack’s line—he’d landed one sneak attack, but Yekase wouldn’t allow a second. She swung onto Xiaodan and bolted for Harrison, planning to heave him onto the lion and get out.

She reached for him—

Her hand went straight through.

“…Huh?”

Harrison shivered, then cried out in sudden clarity, “So I… died in the explosion already!”

“Ehh—?!”

That little explosion in the house, the one the Giant‑Slayer rigged… he died then? Since that moment, had the three of them never touched him? It… kind of checked out.

His body was still buried in the rubble. Nobody had dug it out.

“I died, and then my soul entered Arcadia’s Soul Power field…!”

“???”

So he’d become one of the old bound shades lingering here? That—

“…is possible.”

Harrison shook his head hard, squared himself, and wiped his face clean.

“I get it now. It’s because my people and I share the same wish—to see Arcadia through this, to return to Europe’s sky. Even across five hundred years, our hearts never drifted apart!”

“Old man…”

“We’re going. To the palace ruins!”

“…Go!”

Harrison might be a ghost, but a psychic’s construct was pure energy and could still grab him. Dorothy had Xiaodan clamp his collar and tore off toward the palace.

That was where Arcadia’s leaders had lived.

From the ruins you could guess a 15th‑century city‑state’s scale, and they’d seen its magic and tech, too. Every sign pointed to a golden age. But governance and culture—the soft legacy—had been scrubbed by a Reverse Meme, leaving no trace.

If there was a palace, it was likely a monarchy.

So why did the Exogenous smash the palace?

Ask the Exogenous expert Yekase and you’d learn they couldn’t parse “leaders.” They liked big metal masses or Infinite Power reserves. Ten years ago, their first landing was at an ordinary university—its new lab had just stocked heavy metals.

So a landing ship slamming into the palace wasn’t “deterrence.” They didn’t even have a word for that.

The most likely answer: the rulers had stashed something there that drew Exogenous interest.

Like a cache of high‑purity precious metals—or, given those anti‑magic mechs, maybe a Royal Institute of some kind.

Not that the two of them knew any of this.

Before the fog incident, Harrison would’ve charged in for treasure. Now it was different. A drifter near fifty, alone for years, suddenly had a homeland, compatriots, family… though they were only wandering, blurred shades, the old dead of a bygone day.

And now he’d joined them.

He didn’t know if Arcadia would vanish like foam at sunrise once the Shadow Realm War withdrew.

It didn’t matter.

A warm voice was calling through the resonance of Soul Power, bidding him come to the palace ruins and meet it.

He groped for a word that felt strange on his tongue.

“Mother.”

“It’s blocked… straw!”

Dorothy summoned a planted scarecrow and cast with it, trying to shatter the pillars. The stone shunned magic by nature; her spells barely nicked it.

“My proud magic does nothing…!”

Harrison pointed at a triangular gap. “Arcadian anti‑magic stone. Magic won’t touch it. There’s a hole. We crawl.”

“I’m an elegant mage, a one‑in‑ten‑thousand esper. You want me to crawl a ‘dog hole’?”

“How else you planning to get through?”

“…”

Dorothy looked up at the pillar tops, down at the dog hole, left and right for a better door. Finding none, she flopped down in deep sorrow.

This was called bending with the wind.

They squeezed through. Inside lay a vast, dusky hollow. She snapped her fingers; the scarecrow popped a Dancing Light, salvaging a sliver of her mage aura.

Even ruined, you could feel how grand the palace had been. On the intricate dome, colors of fresco and lines of relief still breathed. Monolithic pillars ran beyond the light into black, holding up the chamber—half had fallen, the roof had slumped, and thin light leaked through its cracks.

At the center sat seven stone chairs circling a space, and those seven crouched around a lavish throne.

They’d expected stone. Up close, the throne was mechanical. With an ear to it, you could hear gears moving within. Centuries after Arcadia’s fall, it still worked.

“Teacher would get this, but she’s still fighting…” Dorothy muttered. She stepped out from behind the throne and found Harrison already planted on it like a king.

“Hey! That how an explorer treats artifacts?!”

“I don’t know why. I just really wanted to sit…”

He jumped up. Before his butt cleared the seat, a beam lanced from the top of the backrest and splashed onto a rare intact wall.

A projection.

A middle‑aged man in a gold‑embroidered robe, a crown of leaves on his brow, flickered into an image blurrier than an old MS console.

Hello, those who come after. I am Arcadia’s seventeenth Speaker.

He spoke a medieval German tongue. Their omniglot translator turned it to modern French they could follow, his voice still deep and ringing.

Since this magic recording can play, then Arcadia has met its end, hasn’t it.

“…”

“This…”

Dorothy and Harrison traded a shocked look and said nothing.

Since the star fell, harassment by the Christians has grown ever more frequent. Our city is beset within and without, stretched thin. I knew this day would come. I do not fear my flesh perishing. I fear for one hundred thousand souls, so blameless… Enough. Saying more only feeds grief.

Those who come after, there is a hidden way beneath the throne. At its end sleeps Arcadia’s founding essence. Take it. In time, we Arcadians will be slandered by the Christians as demons and the like. If you care, pass down the true history, and I can rest.

As he spoke, someone barged in behind him.

…So you recorded this off the cuff in your room, huh?

The intruder saluted. Report, Speaker. The Skybridge is complete!

Good, good! The candidate?

By vote of the citizens, a common man of Third Street—Jones. The delegates say his flatbreads are the best in the city.

Jones!

Harrison sprang up.

“So the reason I was the only survivor… is that my dad cooked well?”

Dorothy almost choked holding back a laugh. Isn’t that kind of great? Your people were optimistic.

Ha! Then proceed.

The Speaker laughed, accepted it without a blink, and waved the messenger out.

I must have made you laugh, traveler. All right, go. Take the treasure that’s yours.

He stepped forward to stop the recording, then paused as if remembering.

If by chance you come from the era beyond the Skybridge, and you’ve met our last compatriot—that newborn of the Jones family… How did he grow up? What kind of man did he become?

Or if you are that child, can you answer me?

“—!!”

The Speaker shook his head at himself.

Perhaps that’s too fanciful.

No matter what, stranger, traveler, adventurer—

May you be happy. May you be clean.

May you know no hunger or cold. May you come to understand the world.

The recording ended. Only ruin, and dead stillness, remained in the palace.