After Anjelo confirmed Dori was healthy and could hop around, his manner thawed like ice under spring sun. He dragged over a rickety wooden chair for Lucimia and gestured for her to sit.

Seeing the chair totter like an old stump in wind, a tremor of worry rippled through Lucimia like rain across a pond.

If she just sat, would the legs snap like brittle twigs?

Probably not… right?

She lowered herself with care, like setting a cup on thin ice.

The legs held, only swaying like reeds in a stream.

Anjelo pulled a wooden chair for himself and sat, wings folded like a resting bird.

Silence settled between them like mist in a valley.

Then he said, “First, thank you.” “You cured Dori, and you helped me see my path.” “People who help for its own sake are rare.”

“No need to thank me…” Guilt pricked Lucimia like a thorn in silk.

To her, it had been a trade, a shadowed bargain like coins under a sleeve.

She didn’t say that, and Desty kept quiet too, like a candle with no wind.

Thinking of that, Lucimia asked, “Can I say a few words to Shebelle?”

“Of course, just wait a moment.” Anjelo agreed, his smile curving like a crescent moon on a calm night.

He added, “It feels wrong to offer nothing. I heard you want to go home?”

“Hmm?” Suspicion narrowed Lucimia’s eyes like a cat in dusk. “Yes. Why?”

“Sorry, I’m not prying into where it is,” Anjelo said, pushing his glasses so they flashed like frost.

“If you want to leave, go straight from here until you reach a heaven-reaching giant tree.”

“Turn left, keep going, and you’ll arrive at Jaha Town.”

“Jaha Town has a harbor. A big ship there, like a wooden whale, will carry you away if you pay.”

Lucimia listened closely, attention pinned like thread to a needle.

Oh, he wanted to help her leave, a clean path like stepping stones across a stream.

She understood, yet a curl of reluctance hung like smoke.

“Thanks for the kindness, but I can fly, so I don’t need that,” she said, her voice steady like a level blade. “I do need one thing: do you have a map of the Bannubi Empire?”

At “I can fly,” Anjelo paused like a clock that missed a beat.

His gaze on Lucimia deepened into reverence, a temple hush like incense rising.

In the next breath his face hardened like stone. “I have a map, but I need to say this: a Flight Spell won’t get you out.”

“Eh? Why?” Surprise fluttered across Lucimia’s face like a sparrow breaking from a branch.

A Flight Spell can’t get you out? The sky is so vast—a blue sea like forever—how could it be sealed?

“Because of the plague.”

“Plague?”

“Yes.” Anjelo nodded and licked his dry lips, cracked like summer clay.

“When the plague broke, the Empire’s high command wasn’t foolish.”

“They sealed the outbreak zone fast, a lid on a boiling pot.”

“People inside wouldn’t wait to die. They scrambled to climb the seal, like ants over a rim, trying to flee the sickness.”

“And the other places got infected,” Lucimia said, the words cold as dew on steel.

“They did.” Anjelo sighed, a hollow wind through reeds. “Jaha Town caught it that way.”

“Then the high command tightened the seal.”

“Earth mages walled it in like a dam, and soldiers patrolled the edges like circling hawks.”

“Ordinary folk couldn’t cross anymore.”

“But Jaha Town is a port, prosperous as a lantern-lit quay, with plenty of mages.”

“Two mages who knew the Flight Spell took heavy coin and flew people over the high walls, like cranes bearing baskets.”

“The high command found out.”

“They sent a mage who laid invisible lightning across the whole sky, a spiderweb of thunder you can’t see.”

“Anyone who flies dies in an instant, like a moth in flame.”

“He also set sensing magic. If anyone uses a Flight Spell, the sky drops a bolt like a judge’s hammer.”

Lucimia listened and nodded, thoughts flowing like dark water.

“But the sky’s so big. That mage covered it all?” she asked, doubt curling like fog.

“All of it.” Anjelo’s certainty was granite. “He’s a Ninth Rank Mage, one of only two in the Empire, a mountain of power.”

“And it’s not just the sky. To stop swimmers, they set an electric net along the edges. Touch it and you die, like a fish in a wire trap.”

“I see…” Fear slid down Lucimia’s spine like cold rain.

A Ninth Rank? She had never seen one, only heard echoes like drums in distant hills.

To lay a ban across the heavens and sense any Flight Spell—such power was a tiger’s shadow over grass.

And an electric net under the water—teeth of thunder along the banks.

Terrifying.

Lucimia had floated in by river, a leaf carried from upstream to downstream, soft as drift.

By that, the net must have gone up after she reached near here, or she’d never have drifted through.

But one question still tugged like a hook. “If Jaha Town’s sealed too, why can that ship leave? Isn’t there an electric net in the river?”

“Ah, that,” Anjelo said, tapping his forefinger on the table, small beats like rain on wood.

“The net’s set upstream.”

“Downstream has none, because downstream leaves the Empire and opens into the sea, a wide salt road like a mirror.”

“They likely can’t set it there, so they didn’t.”

“But at the harbor mouth, there’s still a net, a gate of sparks.”

“Also, that ship is an outside merchant vessel.”

“They want to leave, and the Empire doesn’t block them, maybe thinking anything beyond isn’t their burden, like clouds past the border.”

“It’s those inside who insist on going out.”

“The merchant ship sails in roughly five days, five grains of sand sliding through a glass. If you plan to leave, hurry.”

“I see…” Lucimia sank into thought, her mind a deep lake.

Could she Devour that electric net with her Devouring Authority, swallow the crackle like smoke?

No. It’s called a “net,” but that’s only a label, a paper mask on lightning.

To use a layer of energy to absorb it cleanly, she needed the net’s magic name, the true glyph like a key.

Tch. If the fight against Elyssus didn’t demand so much energy, like a furnace with no rest, it’d be easier.

Unless there were Elyssus’s followers here, with a Magic Array set up like ants building mounds.

If she erased them fast, pressure would drop like a storm breaking, and maybe she could Devour a “net” by its name alone.

So she had to contact Elyssus’s followers first, threads drawn like a spider to its prey.

Then deal with the Time Ability User, a knot in the weave like a snag.

And last, leave, a final step like crossing a gate.

No problem. That would be the plan, ink pressed like a seal.

Plan set, Lucimia rose from the chair, a reed straightening after wind.

“Thank you for the information.”

Anjelo stood too, movements clean as a blade drawn. “Don’t mention it. I’ll call Shebelle now, so you two can talk.”

“Mm.”

“Me too, me too! I want to talk to my sister!” Dori shot up his hand, a sprout reaching for sun.

“You can, but you can’t go out yet. You’ll have to speak through the door, like voices through a screen.”

“Okay…” The word dropped like a pebble into a bucket.

Lucimia glanced at the boy, a soft look like moon on water.

He felt her gaze and turned his face aside, shy as a peach blush.

After bidding the boy farewell, Lucimia, Desty, and Anjelo stepped out of the wooden hut, breath loosening like ropes cut.

They drew the outside air again, but a rotten stench floated there, swamp-sour like a drowned marsh.

Inside had been stifling, a lid on a pot; outside was fetid, a sour wind in nettles.

Sigh. She wanted to leave quickly, a bird longing for an open sky.

Anjelo went to fetch Shebelle, leaving Lucimia and Desty waiting in place, two figures like stones beside a path.

Lucimia poked Desty’s cheek, a playful touch like a dragonfly to water.

“Why poke me?” the red-haired girl cooed, her voice a ribbon in air.

“Nothing much. I wanted to ask if you’ll come with me.”

“You heard it—this place is sealed, a lid on a jar, and if you insist on staying, you might never get back.”

“And the air here is full of virus, a gray dust like ash.”

She held back the other line: without my Authority Power, you might get sick, like a candle in draft.

She only pressed the word “virus,” letting it thud like a drum.

“Mm…” Desty hesitated, a reed bending in wind.

“The main thing is, we still don’t know why this plague broke out.”

“If we can find the cause, that would be best, and we can send the findings to the Church, a letter like a dove.”