Town of Tranquility, guard barracks.

“Finally off duty. I’m dead tired.” Ritch kneaded his aching shoulders like grinding millstones and grumbled to Jeff at his side.

“Ha, rough day. Want a drink? My treat.” Jeff clapped Ritch’s shoulder, a friendly thump like a drumbeat.

“No, no. Thanks, Captain, but I’ve got plans tonight.”

“All good. Go handle it. We’ll drink next time.”

“Sure, no problem.”

Ritch waved, slipped away like a sparrow leaving the eaves, and walked out of the barracks.

Ah—almost forgot. Who’s Ritch?

He’s the vice-captain who, in earlier cycles, worked with Lucimia to resolve the Cole problem, and in the first cycle spotted Aunt Julie’s abnormal corpse.

He wore short green hair and had soft, clean-cut features like a fresh leaf after rain.

Ritch left the barracks, hit the tavern for a bottle, and wandered the street sipping, amber liquor washing down like sunset over cobblestones.

“Not bad.”

He drank like any ordinary man, praised the brew, then drifted into a narrow alley, a fish slipping into shadowed water.

A chill draft licked his back like winter breath. He turned on instinct. Nothing moved—only brick and dusk. He shrugged and kept walking deeper.

After a while, the bottle ran dry. He flicked it aside with a careless toss, like a pebble into a pond.

Bang.

Glass burst across the ground like scattered ice.

Ritch glanced at the shards, then a shape flickered at the edge of his vision like a moth near a lantern.

“Hm?” He turned. A petite girl stood behind him, delicate as a river reed.

He narrowed his eyes and took her in. Long black hair flowed down like midnight silk—the mark of the Lancelot Family.

He realized the girl was the Lancelot heiress, Lucimia.

He scratched his head, wore an awkward smile like a crooked mask. “Hahaha, my mistake, Lady of the Lancelot Family. Sorry about that. I’ll sweep the glass.”

Lucimia said nothing. Her face was still as frost over a winter lake.

Seeing no response, Ritch bent to pick up shards. The instant he stepped, the cobbles burst. Stone spikes speared up like thorns from a trapped beast. Ritch twisted fast, head tilted; the spikes skimmed his cheek and halted, a line of fangs before him.

More spikes shot up under his arms and between his legs, a cage of stone that held him without blood.

“Uh—” he began, and the next moment Frost seized his calves. Ice climbed his legs like a river freezing under moonlight.

“Come on…” He licked dry lips, put on a strained grin, and spoke to Lucimia. “So the Lancelot young lady knows magic. Impressive. But I just tossed trash. That’s not worth this, right?”

Lucimia didn’t answer. An ice blade gathered in her hand like a crescent of winter. She flickered, ghost-quick, and appeared behind him, pressing the blade to the heart beneath his back.

Panic flooded him like a broken dam. He raised his hands to surrender and babbled, “Wait, wait, I was wrong, I was wrong. I’m sorry. I’ll never litter again.”

Lucimia tilted her head, studying his profile, eyes cool as starlight on snow.

“You’re a Deceiver, a follower of Elyssus,” she said, dropping the words like stones into a still well.

“Deceiver? What are you talking about? I don’t know what that is. You’ve got the wrong guy.” Ritch’s face went blank, innocence painted like fresh chalk.

“Heh.” Lucimia chuckled, two soft notes like a chime in fog. “Don’t talk. I’ll speak.”

“In the first cycle, you, Cole, the Blue Ringed Octopus, and that witness built a trap. You tried to lure me into a pit.”

“I don’t know what you mean… Who’s Cole?”

Lucimia ignored him, her voice steady as a drumbeat.

“At first, I thought Cole, the Blue Ringed Octopus, and the witness ran the con. Then I looked again, and the pattern broke like cracked ice. If you hadn’t noticed Aunt Julie’s abnormal wound, how could their story steer me into suspicion and line me up for the trap? I doubted you only because you saw the flaw and Cole insisted there was a problem—so the tension formed like a pulled bowstring. But if you hadn’t seen any flaw, I wouldn’t have doubted at all. Their plan would’ve drowned like a stone tossed into deep water. So you must have been in the script, playing your part.”

“Otherwise it makes no sense. The logic doesn’t stand. You were running a double act—no, a four-person play.”

“What are you even saying? When did I set a trap for you?” Ritch dropped the formal tone, panic fraying his words like torn cloth.

Lucimia pressed the ice blade closer, cold biting like early frost. She kept speaking.

“You, Ritch, are Elyssus’s most important follower. I’m right, aren’t I? Something like a priest.”

“I really don’t understand. You’ve got the wrong person. Jeff can vouch for me. I didn’t do anything.”

Lucimia didn’t bother with his dodges. Her words moved like a river cutting stone.

“Elyssus hid you well, kept your trail buried—except in the first cycle.”

“In that cycle, you slipped. Elyssus feared I’d suspect you. So when we went to kill Cole and break the Magic Array, you personally slew the octopus, raising my trust like smoke after incense.”

“Later, I used Reversion. I chose to break the Magic Array early. My magic has a special effect: whatever it destroys gets swept from history like footprints under a tide. Including objects.”

“I learned it in the first cycle. In my first fight with the Blue Ringed Octopus, that old bookstore got smashed to dust. Later, it stood rebuilt as if night had sown new brick by dawn. At first, I thought some earth mage had worked a miracle overnight. Then I checked. There’s no earth-element master in town. Only Alvis could do that, and Alvis never mentioned a ruined house when we spoke.”

“So I confirmed it: objects my magic destroys are erased. By the same rule, when I broke the arrays in the Town of Tranquility, they should’ve been erased too. But—”

Lucimia paused, a breath held like a drawn blade, then went on.

“But in the last cycle, the summoning ritual still ignited.”

“I’ve confirmed it. Elyssus can falsify a Magic Array’s progress. That explains why its descents come faster, like storms closing in. But the world has many arrays. They can’t all share the same pace. One of them is the quickest. Clearly, that’s the one in the Town of Tranquility.”

Lucimia’s face sank, her eyes cold as winter rivers fixed on Ritch.

“That pendant on you isn’t a Purification pendant, is it? It’s a misdirection pendant from Elyssus. You faked the array’s erasure, then slipped from sight like smoke. Across my later Reversions, you kept rebuilding. You converted the sacrificial array into a summoning array. With a sacrifice array as foundation, a summoning array lays down like bricks on packed clay. You pushed progress again and again. And right now, you’re about to push it further, aren’t you?”

Lucimia’s gaze pressed him like snowfall under a silent sky.

Ritch kept the look of a lamb, wide-eyed and clean.

“I really don’t know what you mean. It sounds scary, sure, but it’s not me. I’m a good citizen, through and through.” He grasped at lines like straws. “Besides, you have no evidence, right? It’s all your guesswork. Jeff can give me an alibi. How can you be sure I’m a Deceiver?”

“Evidence? Haha.”

Lucimia’s laugh cut sharp, like sleet on tin. She blinked, earnest with a playful glint, and spoke with airy pride.

“Ritch, I don’t need evidence. I’m a Dark Deity. Do Dark Deities need reasons or proof? Obviously not. I only need to sink this ice blade into your heart, and I’ll know at once. If you die, I’ll burn you more paper offerings next year. If—”

She drove her right hand. The ice blade speared Ritch’s heart like winter lightning.

In the same instant, black mist roared from Ritch like a storm cloud. The shock shattered stone spikes and Frost, and hurled Lucimia back, her boots skidding for yards like a leaf on ice.

Calm returned first, then motion. Lucimia steadied herself and rose, spine straight like a drawn bow. “Heh. Looks like I guessed right.”

Ritch stood wreathed in black fog, eyes crimson like coals, and the pierced heart had knit whole like water closing over a stone.

“Lucimia…” The low, familiar voice rolled out of Ritch’s mouth like thunder over cliffs.

Lucimia knew him at once. Ritch was possessed—Elyssus sat in his skin, saving him from being swallowed from existence by her Devouring.

Elyssus turned its head. Those red eyes fixed on her like twin embers.

“Lucimia… What do you intend? Even if you kill Ritch, so what? I admit his death is a hassle, but I’ve set my board across the world like a net in deep sea. When every Magic Array finishes, the energy lost to Ritch’s death will be paid back. It just delays me a few days. Your Devouring Authority Power doesn’t work on me. So what can you use to stop me?”

The weight in its voice thudded like drums. A normal mind would ache under it, a migraine blooming like storm-pressure. Lucimia’s face stayed smooth as calm water.

Not only calm—she smiled. She lifted one finger like a lone star.

“One turn.” She raised her chin and stared it down with proud light. “One turn left, Elyssus. I’ve checkmated you. Your end is failure.”

“Hmph. Bluff.” Elyssus didn’t buy it, but it feared sudden shifts like dark currents. It surged a mass of black mist and hurled it at her like a tidal wave.

Lucimia vanished inside the fog. The world went pitch-black. Even her hand before her face was swallowed like a candle snuffed out.

Elyssus’s voice drifted from nowhere, a whisper in a cave. “Lucimia, your Reversion needs light, doesn’t it? Without light, you can’t revert, right? Now, can you revert?”

Lucimia frowned, scanning a circle of darkness, and saw nothing—only a night without stars.

She tried to trigger Reversion. As expected, nothing answered; the switch clicked like a dry match.

“Ha ha ha, can’t trigger it, can you?” Elyssus laughed, wild as crows over a battlefield. “Stay here. When I descend by the arrays and can use Authority Power without limit, I’ll come back and deal with you properly.”

She didn’t panic. Ease settled first, a still pond under wind. “Who told you I can’t trigger it?”

“Hmm?” Elyssus’s doubt rippled like a disturbed mirror.

Lucimia drew two slow breaths, steady as incense smoke. “Little Fuzzy Orb.”

Her black pupils changed. A pale orange ring lit the rim like dawn edging night.

Then white light flooded in like sunrise breaking a storm.

“What?!” Elyssus’s shock snapped like a twig in frost.

“Heh. I’ll tell you. I shifted my sight onto my Evil Entity, that’s all.” Her voice was calm, a silver blade under moonlight. “You really think I wouldn’t foresee you using darkness to cage me?”

“Good, good, Lucimia. I don’t believe you truly have a way!” Elyssus’s tone churned like thunderheads. “I want to see what you use to end every Magic Array and every follower!”

Fine then. Watch the sky, Elyssus—I’ll give you a thunderclap of a surprise, unless…

Lucimia paused on purpose, let the hook gleam, then spoke on—

Unless your followers keep the Magic Array sleeping, its sigils like frost under glass.

If you dare descend through that Array, I’ll snuff you like a lamp in wind.

Elyssus, next cycle, I won’t stop your followers from lighting it. Do you dare light it?

Lucimia dropped a line wrapped in fog, impossible to grasp.

What? Let it start—she even dares him, like tossing a torch into dry grass.

Unease pricked his heart like a cold thorn.

His face went storm-dark as he met Lucimia’s moon-bright, confident smile.

White light surged like a winter tide and swallowed all.

The final Reversion opened, a silent door swinging on unseen hinges.