The beam of light held for three or four seconds, a spear of noon sun pinning her to the earth, and Lucimia forced her seasick body to rise.

When the light faded, Nat and Lev stood before her again, shapes stepping out of cleared fog.

Lucimia stared in silence, her gaze cold as hoarfrost on stone.

“Hahahahaha, didn’t see that coming, did you?” Nat’s grin twisted like warped metal. “Curious, right? You devoured us, so why are we still breathing?”

Face to the ground, she didn’t answer, her thoughts drifting like dark tide. She’d guessed it was Purification, but not the method.

“I can tell you.” Nat strolled up, fearless as a carrion crow, and squatted. “It’s the Purifying Light on us. We took our Lord’s Blessing long ago. Our lives sit inside this lantern. As long as the lantern’s flame doesn’t die, neither do we. The lantern is a tether, a wick tying us to the Lord.”

Lev stepped forward, voice flat as a stone tablet. “With Lord Ment’s death-substitution Authority Power, it doesn’t matter how you kill us. Kill us, and we return.”

Lucimia’s eyes pinned them like twin nails, cold sparks in a storm-dim room.

“Hey, don’t look at us like that,” Nat said, shrugging dust from his hands like chaff. “You’re the Dark Deity, aren’t you? You butchered all those civilians, didn’t you?”

She still held her tongue, a shut gate in winter wind. Nat grew bored and stood, clapping his hands like knocking dirt from a shovel.

“Tell you what. Try Reversion on us. I won’t stop you,” he said, turning with a lazy swing, like a cat toying with a mouse. “I can’t kill you anyway. Even if I did, Olivya would reclaim your Devouring Authority. Kill you, and there’s still your second brother. My Lord’s goal isn’t just your corpse. He’s aiming at Olivya, who’ll come to reclaim the Authority when you lose control. So we wait till the Purification Magic Array is fully primed, like filling a cistern before a drought.”

“Oh, right.” Nat pivoted back, smile bright as broken glass. “Those sky-piercing beams? They fed the Magic Array. A soldier dies, the Purifying Light sends the energy into the Array, and Lord Ment revives him. It’s a waterwheel, turning and turning. Which means you personally helped charge it. Hahaha.”

Lucimia stayed silent, a stone sinking in deep water.

Weakness pooled in her chest like cold rain, but the thought was clear as ice. Two Dark Deities against one, and on their own ground, a lair thick with traps—losing wasn’t strange.

But she refused to die like a leaf in gutter water. Was there truly no way out? Was the Purification Deity’s layout watertight, a sealed jar with no seam?

Her enemies felt seasoned in fighting Devouring, every trap set like a hunter’s snare at a beast’s throat.

She remembered a line from the books on Olivya’s altar, brittle pages like pressed leaves. Most wielders of the Devouring Authority died to the Purification Deity. That explained the blade-sharp experience she faced.

They were even letting her run—like opening the pen so the ox rushes into the chute.

And all she had left seemed to be fleeing with Reversion, trying for a flip of the board. But Reversion only reset the same position, draining her like an hourglass.

It was the classic trapped-beast war, a siege grinding like millstones.

They’d counted it all. She was led by the nose, a ring through a bull’s snout.

“Reversion,” Lucimia said at last, the word falling like a stone into a well. She chose it anyway.

“Yes, yes, that’s it, Reversion!” Nat lifted his arms like a priest at a bonfire, laughing. “Either gamble a comeback, or wait for the Array! Hahaha!”

White light flooded her vision, a winter sheet over the sun. Needles of pain stabbed her eyes. The world flipped like a boat in rough surf. Nausea rose, bile bitter as iron. Murmurs swelled at her ears like a hive of wasps. Her skull felt split by an unseen axe.

The torment dragged for ten slow heartbeats, a rope burning through her palms.

Then Lucimia opened her eyes.

Around her spread a water-blue world, wavering like silk in a river. Fish-type beasts circled like a living reef, and Desty swam nearby, changed into one as well.

The sight froze her, a deer by a forest path.

“Lucimia! I’m sorry!” Desty darted over, voice rippling like panicked waves. She knew what she’d done, and the apology tumbled out first.

“I’m sorry, Lucimia… it’s all my fault…” she kept saying, words bobbing like driftwood, but Lucimia made no ripple.

“W-what’s wrong? Lucimia? Say something.” Desty bumped her, a small fish nudging a drifting log.

“Something’s wrong,” Lucimia said, her voice wooden, a puppet’s string pulled.

“What?”

“Reversion.”

“Reversion… what about it?”

Lucimia looked at Desty, eyes empty as a moonless pond. “Reversion… at most can only return to here.”

“…?” Desty blinked, then glanced around, as if checking a map etched in water. “Is this when we got hit by the arrows and jumped in, then turned into fish?”

Lucimia nodded, slow as a falling leaf. “Yes. I meant… to go back a whole day.”

Desty fell silent, a cloud covering the sun. After a moment, she spoke softly. “Then… what do we do? And… I might be controlled at any time.”

Lucimia paused, thought grinding like ice floes, then said, “I could devour your Blessing. Then the Purification Deity can’t control you.”

“No.” Desty cut her off, the word sharp as a snapped twig.

Lucimia’s puzzled look surfaced like a fish breaking water, and Desty explained, breath quick as a sparrow’s. “If the Blessing ends up on you, then what? If you’re controlled, we’re done. Like you said, if we can see this loophole, don’t you think they can? They’ll have counters ready.”

Lucimia answered, hesitant rain tapping on stone. “No… my Devouring can seize it. If I swallow the Blessing, it slips free of Purification and belongs only to me…”

She lowered her head, thinking, shadows shifting like reeds in wind. “But… you might still be right…”

“Maybe Vosh laid Authority Power on it ahead of time, so I can’t take your Blessing. Or I can take it, but she left a hook, letting the Blessing stay under her control and bleed into me…”

“Damn it… is it seamless?”

Her skull throbbed, a drum under storm-hands. The Purification Deity felt more terrifying than Elyssus, a glacier where no path existed.

Elyssus crushed by raw strength, a mountain’s weight, yet in the game there was still a sliver of light.

The Purification Deity brought suffocation, a sealed room with no window. Every line she traced, every gate she tried, had been prepared.

Like a sky-wide net, threads invisible but everywhere.

With Elyssus, there had been ignorance and scorn on the other side, gaps left like missing tiles, and Lucimia had slipped through.

But the Purification Deity knew Devouring like a butcher knows bone. She’d fought it often, patched her snares, and neared perfection.

Desty said nothing, a quiet stone in the stream. She didn’t know what to do either.