No one knew how long she’d sat there, a stone in a slow river. At last, Lucimia stirred.

She lifted her hand with a tide’s hush, aiming at the window curtain.

Devouring...

A blot of shadow bloomed at the hem like ink in water. It spread, covered, then vanished. The curtain was gone, a leaf eaten by night.

Staring at the empty frame, Lucimia rubbed her temples, a dull drum behind her eyes. She rose, bare pale feet whispering on the floor, and went to the window like a moth to a lamp.

Her gaze swept the street, a hawk’s circle over fields. It settled on a drunk in the alley below.

He slumped like a broken scarecrow, bottle in hand. He tipped it now and then, letting fire trickle down his throat.

Lucimia eased the window open with a breath of frost. Air gathered in her palm, honed thin.

A Wind Blade shot out, arrow-straight for his skull. Whoosh.

At the same time, she whispered inward, a pebble dropped in a well. Devouring... death...

Then the strange scene unfolded, like thunder under clear sky.

The Wind Blade sliced through his head like tofu, clean and cold. He screamed, a gull over gray surf.

A shadow appeared from nothing, a shroud rising from midnight. It wrapped his head, then slipped away. His skull knit whole again, as if dawn erased a dream.

“Huh?” The drunk blinked, stunned, hand skimming his scalp like grass in wind. Nothing. The whole thing felt like a mirage in heat.

“That’s it. No more booze. I’m seeing things.” Panic chased him upright. He pitched the bottle and ran, a stray dog bolting from thunder.

Lucimia watched the result with a calm lake’s face.

“So… that’s how it works?” She glanced at her hand, feeling the current coil under skin.

Not just objects. It can devour… nouns? Concepts? Names like carved seals?

She tried again in silence, voice thin as smoke. Devouring, devouring Yuna’s existence...

No response. Still water.

Right. Can’t cheese it with a bug.

She deflated, sank back down, and leaned on the wall, eyes empty as winter fields.

She couldn’t think of a clean way to deal with Elyssus. So she stopped thinking, letting her mind drift like ash.

She drifted from morning to noon, a cloud nailed to the sky.

Her family noticed quickly, like birds going quiet before rain. In the morning, they knocked and thought she was asleep. The door was locked. They knocked again, heard nothing, and let her rest.

By noon she still hadn’t come out. Meal time came and went like a bell with no answer. That was wrong.

The knocking turned frantic, rain on a tin roof.

“Lucimia, are you inside? If you are, answer me, please.” Her mother’s voice trembled outside the door.

Lucimia stayed silent, her heart sunk deep as a stone.

“If this doesn’t work, I’ll use magic,” Alvis said, steady as a stake.

“Alright,” her mother answered, stepping back to clear space, breath held like a candle flame.

Magic gathered in Alvis’s hand, a blue ember about to fly. Before it launched, the lock clicked.

Click.

Lucimia turned the latch and pushed the door open, a night flower unfolding.

She rubbed her eyes, yawned a small fog, and said, “...Sorry. I overslept.”

In the end, to keep them from worrying, she stepped out into the light like a deer from brush.

“You scared me half to death.” Her mother patted her chest, then swept in and hugged Lucimia, tucking her head against a warm shore.

“Mmph…” Lucimia couldn’t find her voice under the tide.

Alvis let out a long breath, and the magic faded like dew.

They held on for a while, then let her go, as gently as lifting silk.

Head bowed, Lucimia braced for scolding, a storm she thought she’d earned. It never came. Only her mother’s hand, warm as spring wind, smoothed her hair.

“It’s alright. You’re alright.”

Lucimia looked up, startled, like a sparrow caught in sunlight.

“Huh? You’re not mad at me?”

“Mad? Why would I be?” Her mother looked even more surprised, then knelt and pinched Lucimia’s cheek, soft as a peach. “I barely have time to worry about you. Why would I scold you? You must be hungry. Your father and I cooked so many dishes. Come taste.”

“Uh…”

They took her by the hands, fingers like ribbons, and led her to the dining room.

She sat, and the table dazzled like a festival street. The spread was more delicate than anything she’d eaten before, a whole market of scents.

There were lamb rolls, roast suckling pig, baked snails, eel cakes, seafood rice, pan-seared scallops with foie gras, stewed potatoes, steaks with a charred crust, tuna salad—wave after wave.

“That’s… that’s a lot. We won’t finish it, right?” Lucimia’s eyes widened, lamps flaring on a dark river.

“Well, we got carried away,” her mother said, laughing like bells. “It’s fine. If we can’t finish, we’ll give some to your Uncle Vittor. Come on, try everything.”

She cut a square of steak, seared outside, blushing inside, and set it on Lucimia’s plate.

Something in that small gesture hit Lucimia like rain on parched earth. A memory rose like fog from a previous life.

No one had ever cared for her, not like this, not with warm hands and a seat kept warm.

Back in school, she’d fallen sick. She’d hidden in a corner and coughed, a little stove that no one tended. The classmate nearby told her to keep her distance.

She didn’t blame them. It made sense. Distance to protect the other. Nobody owed you care, she’d told herself, a leaf speaking to wind.

But then she’d seen another girl with the same cough. People circled her like lanterns. Her parents arrived with medicine, a small sun in a paper bag.

She’d thought of herself and felt a small cold hole, a winter pond in her chest.

Maybe she had no friends. So she tried.

“Can I play with you?” she’d asked, careful as stepping on thin ice.

“Sure,” they’d said. They didn’t mind that she was an orphan. They let her in, their smiles like open doors.

“Do you have a phone?” one asked.

“A phone… sorry, no…” the old Lucimia had murmured, head low like a wilted stem.

“Then… we can’t really play together…”

“Okay…”

She worked, saved, bought a phone. She came back, hope fluttering like a paper kite.

“We’re… playing PC games now,” they told her.

“Oh.”

She gave up. She felt foolish, wind-chasing. She stopped trying to make friends. She sank into the net’s glow instead. Even strangers online felt warm as tea.

Oh—speaking of friends, Yuna came to mind in this life, a lantern she didn’t expect.

“Lucimia? Lucimia?” Her parents’ voices tugged her back, gentle as a tide.

“Mm.” She lifted her head to them, the fog thinning.

“What is it? Why are you spacing out? Don’t you like it? Tell us what you want. We’ll make it,” her mother said, voice soft as rice steam.

“Yeah. Say the word,” Alvis added, broad as a mountain.

“I… I—”

“Eh? Why did it get dark outside?” her mother said first, eyes flicking to the window like swallows.

“Huh? Really. It was barely past noon. Is it going to rain?” Alvis frowned, a cloud across his brow.

Lucimia followed their gaze.

The far sky had gone leaden, a lid lowered over a pot. In the haze, a ball of black chaos hung, like a knot in the clouds.

She already knew.

Elyssus had started the summoning again, a wound reopening.

“Forget it. Don’t worry. If you don’t like the food, I’ll make something else,” her mother said, standing with a spring’s smile and turning for the kitchen.

“No.” Lucimia’s voice stopped her, a thread pulled taut.

Her mother paused and looked back, puzzled, like a deer in dappled light.

Lucimia looked at her. Then at Alvis. Two people who held her like roots hold soil.

She glanced at the window again, at the sky gone full ink.

Then she smiled, bright as a sudden sun after rain.

She grabbed her fork, speared the steak, and popped it in her mouth in one bold bite.

“Mmm. It’s so good,” she said around the mouthful, cheeks puffed like buns, laughter in her eyes.

Her mother snorted a laugh, a little splash. “Slow down, don’t choke.”

“Mm.” Lucimia nodded, took the juice from her father, and drank in one swallow, sweet as sunrise.

“Do you like it?” her mother asked.

“I do.” Lucimia licked her lip, still tasting the heat. “I hope we can keep eating together like this.”

“What are you saying? We eat together every day.”

“Mm.” Lucimia smiled, dabbed her mouth with a cloth, then turned to the window. The sky was black as inkstone now. Her face hardened, steel beneath silk.

“Elyssus… I will, I will—”

As she whispered, her eyes burst into white light, twin dawns on a night sea.

Reversion, begin—