Lucimia pulled her thoughts back to the Purification Deity, like a lantern tugged home by a night wind.

Everyone knew the sealed Dark Deities could only act through sacrifice and a Magic Array, like knives slid through ritual silk.

Even sealed, a Dark Deity’s Authority Power came clipped and caged. It struck only a patch of land, a narrow band, or the array’s caster, like rain confined to a single courtyard.

Right now, the Purification spread like frost. It lay over the smoke barrier, over every life here, over Lucimia’s Reversion, over Desty’s Blessing, a pale glaze on the valley.

So, follow the tracks in the snow. The caster who started the Magic Array should be Ment.

The key twig in that trail is Reversion.

A sealed Purification Deity couldn’t touch Lucimia’s Reversion out of thin air, couldn’t stop her Devouring the curse laid on it, like fingers failing to seize a ghost.

Only one way: Ment first lets the Purification Deity invade him. Purification enters Ment, then he casts the curse, and that ripple bends her Reversion, like dye poured upstream.

The principle is simple, like gears meshing. And that simplicity let Lucimia see a burr in the clockwork.

From Olivya’s books, she learned the Dark Deities weren’t friendly neighbors. Each stood for the One behind it, clawing for the world like hawks over carrion.

Whether those Ones were friendly or cruel was mist beyond the ridge. Maybe kind, maybe wicked; to them, both were games played with bone dice.

That’s not the hearth-fire. Here’s the hearth-fire: these chosen Dark Deities only cooperate to stop Olivya. If Olivya succeeds, it tips their scales, a tremor they won’t abide.

Once Olivya’s candle is snuffed, they go back to separate thrones, each a lone wolf under its own moon.

You get it?

Ment won’t work purely for the Purification Deity. He won’t let Purification seep into his core. After Olivya falls, one flick of Purification’s finger, and he’s a puppet dangling on cold strings.

He soloed control of one of the only two human great nations. His ambition’s a mountain, not a sand dune. He must keep a hidden blade.

What blade?

If Purification only invaded the barrier to keep Lucimia from Devouring it, that blade doesn’t cut Ment at all.

So what does Ment fear most?

Lucimia rose and lifted her chin, eyes fixed on the giant barrier draped over the valley like a cloud-loomed canopy.

One worry was Desty’s dense energy. It couldn’t crack the Purification barrier, yet it made the enemy flinch, like firelight in a wolf’s eyes.

Another: to guard against her Reversion-curse, to maintain the smoke barrier, Purification had to pass through Ment. Ment wouldn’t let it reach his source, like a lord barring his keep’s inner vault.

What’s his source? Beyond that smoke-wrapped body, what root lies buried?

The Cross that stores his energy.

The thought snapped into place like a bead on a thread.

Ment’s energy sits in the Cross. He uses it to lay arrays, to feed power like a spring into channels. It is his source, his seed stone.

He won’t let the Purification Deity invade the Cross to guard it. He fears a turncoat smile after the victory feast.

At most, he’d let Purification coat the Cross with a thin film, a skin of frost. That skin might foil Nirael’s poison, but it can’t stop Lucimia’s conceptual Devouring, the inside-out swallow.

Now she knew their anxiety. She knew why Desty’s rich energy made them tense, like storm scent before lightning.

Vosh fears Lucimia will Devour Ment’s energy. Pollution would still gnaw her, but once she cuts the feed, the barrier isn’t invincible. She could break free, then burn the stolen fire against them.

It sounds tangled, but it’s a simple abacus. Trapping Elyssus alone eats sixty percent of her energy. The Purification Deity understands ledgers better than she does.

If Lucimia tries to Devour the Cross, she’ll need thirty to forty percent. Given past burns and her valley spend, she’s short, like a runner breathless at the last hill.

There’s a wild card—Desty. If Lucimia absorbs Desty, that refill lets her Devour the Cross without losing control, like filling the reservoir before a floodgate push.

Then Ment loses the tug-of-war rope.

Only when Lucimia sits near empty does Ment have a winning hand.

That’s the fear’s nailhead. It’s also the only crack in the wall.

There’s a grim flip. If Ment truly kneels as Vosh’s dog and lets Purification invade his source, then Lucimia’s candle guttered. She’d wait for another life, another world, like a seed sleeping under snow.

So.

After all her circling, she returned to the starting stone—

Where is Ment’s Cross?

Without the Cross, all plans are smoke rings.

And before she Devours the Cross, she must Devour Desty. That’s a blade she can hardly lift.

She promised to save Desty. How could she tell her the only salvation is to swallow her, like a vow turned into ash?

Desty is her only friend beneath this sky. Yuna fell away because of her. Must Desty follow into the same dusk?

Any other way?

She bit her finger and thought, knuckles white, thoughts like sparrows hitting a closed window. Again and again, it came back to one gap, no other door.

Another hard choice stood like a cliff in fog.

Sacrifice Desty and live? Or honor bond and die together?

Lucimia drew a deep breath, cold as mountain air.

Reason said the best path is sacrificing Desty. Once she gains complete Temporal Authority, she can bring Desty and Yuna back, like stars retrieved from a river.

Emotionally… half of her still chose that first path. The other half clung to the second, a hand on a friend’s sleeve.

If she dies with Desty here, it’s unfair to Yuna. It breaks their pact, like a string cut on a kite.

She keeps their pact close as a talisman. It drives her steps and lights her faith, the ember under every plan.

So… choose to sacrifice Desty?

Lucimia sighed, a soft wind across embers.

Revert, then swallow her? No. Better to tell her first, even if the words taste like iron.

Her Fuzzy Orb stand-ins faded one by one, like candles pinched out. Nat and Lev would find her true body soon, boots echoing in the corridor of fate.

She had to choose Reversion.

White light flooded her vision like winter sun on snow. Her eyes felt dry and tight. Her eyeballs throbbed. The corners stung like salt.

Her sight was failing, dimming like twilight drawn over the valley.