Xiu reached Nach Valley, now scraped bare like a scar, and swept his gaze around the hollowed plain; Lucimia’s shadow had melted like mist at sunrise.

She’d run too fast, an arrow on the wind, and he couldn’t catch up.

He’d noticed the smoke barrier from the start, a gauze net over the land, but without any Authority Power he could only watch, fists striking water.

He tried to analyze the weave, tracing threads like a spider’s line; maybe Ment possessed soldiers outside and fed it, same for the Purification prison, with Purification Knights setting a Magic Array beyond.

Just as he’d guessed, Ment was still feeding the smoke screen, not just the Cross; Lucimia had it half right, two hands on one loom, yet her stride barely faltered.

So he harried Ment’s borrowed bodies along the fringe, severing puppet strings; he cut down the Knights laying the prison and bought her time like coins tossed into the tide.

Later, he saw his sister again at last, a black‑haired girl standing in the high air like a new moon, Devouring Authority swirling around her like an abyss wind.

He didn’t know why she wouldn’t return to the Town of Tranquility; he didn’t know Olivya’s exact plan, only that she was likely walking a compass set by another hand.

In the end he could only watch her leave Nach Valley and head for the next point, a migrating bird riding a ribbon of road with no thought of hearth.

He didn’t know Yuna existed, so the missing piece left his guesses fogged like a window in winter.

Yet he felt no grief; instead, a small lantern of comfort warmed his chest.

The Lancelot Family was born to fight the Dark Deity; the sister who once only played now shouldered a banner, and pride rose in him like sun on steel.

As that thought flared, the ground thudded behind him, a drumbeat rolling through the earth.

He turned and saw pursuers on demon steeds, hooves throwing up smoke like stormclouds, charging straight for him.

He set his hand on the hilt and breathed, a blade-cold calm rising. “Let’s clear some trouble for my sister.”

Steel flashed from the scabbard in a silver arc, and blood sprayed like crimson rain.

Lucimia felt a dry rasp in her throat; she drew a flask from her Storage Ring, and after two sips, the water skinned with ice like a windowpane.

“So cold? The farther north, the sharper the frost…” Her breath drifted white as she capped it.

She stowed the flask and returned to the problem of Elyssus, thoughts threading like a loom in the dark.

Royal Capital Luo held a Deceiver who’d built a Magic Array; if Lucimia chose to Devour that woman’s existence, the keystone would pull free and the arch would shift.

If her existence vanished, her deeds would un-exist; the energy she fed Elyssus would evaporate, and the dead would walk back into dawn.

Then Elyssus, starved of fuel, couldn’t break the seal; the floodgate would hold, or at least the breach would be delayed without that Royal Capital Deceiver.

But the butterfly effect would slam like a storm of wings; too much had happened, the timeline stretched long, and the tapestry would be rewoven.

If Elyssus never broke free, the octopus she’d caged in the Fuzzy Orb’s belly would slip back into the void like a deep-sea shadow.

The Disguise Power she’d Devoured would also un-exist; Elyssus would reclaim that Authority, and knowing her abilities and Reversion, he might rally with the Purification Deity for a counterstrike.

And Yuna wouldn’t return, because once her existence is Devoured, even history can’t chisel the name back into stone.

Without Disguise Power, who knows what price she’d pay to finish the operation in the Empire; the chessboard would scatter and reset.

Also, a changed history wouldn’t make her black out and wake in the Town of Tranquility; that loop came from Devouring that place’s existence before.

The world would keep turning, and so would she; the river would cut a new channel to reach the same sea.

Which means if she Devoured the Deceiver’s existence, she’d instantly lose Disguise Power, and the Elyssus in the Fuzzy Orb would vanish like smoke through fingers.

Since she’s in the Empire, she wouldn’t blink and reappear in the Town of Tranquility; her and Desty’s fall into the water might still happen, but by another turn of fate.

The fall, the arrival in the Empire, the chain that followed—those dominoes would topple along a different trail.

She might fail, or succeed by paying a toll at another bridge.

That’s history correction, a scribe crossing out lines and writing anew.

In short, the butterfly effect is too strong and wild, a gale you can’t leash.

The world would only swap out the Deceiver and Elyssus, forcing the rest to completion by other paths, a game rerouted with new moves.

So Devouring her existence carries heavy fallout; it might even feed Elyssus in the end, at least for now, like cutting weeds yet watering roots.

Besides, Devouring existence without absorbing energy costs energy; the bigger the butterfly storm, the deeper the drain of oil.

Compared to Yuna, the Deceiver in the Royal Capital sends a bigger wave across the pond.

That early plan to trim Elyssus’s energy by Devouring existences looks like a paper boat in a storm—ideal, not real.

Unless she Devours every Deceiver at the same moment; then Elyssus would be gutted, unable to rally, supply lines cut in one night.

But she’d have to find them one by one, across races—elves, beastkin, Bloodkin—chasing fireflies through three forests.

It’s too much trouble, an ant mountain too wide to kick flat.

Even if she could swallow them all at once, who knows what the Empire’s web would become when that thread is yanked.

She often leans on Disguise Power to break stalemates; without the mask in a crowded street, what then?

She didn’t dare picture it, a step into fog over a cliff’s edge.

So the best path is still to drain the Magic Array’s energy—or redirect that reservoir to aid Nirael against Ment—or simply have Nirael poison him.

By shaving the energy away, step by step, she can whittle Elyssus down, like Nirael chipping stone from Ment’s mountain.

With her target reset, the stone on her chest lightened; at least there’s a road, and now it’s only a matter of walking.

The Deceivers all trust that she’s Elyssus, so sabotage opens like a gate to a familiar guest.

If she chooses to absorb energy, she wants to test something—steal Elyssus’s Deception Authority too, and see what it becomes, what shifts.

But that’s later; right now the knife-point is the Cross in Erwei City. She can’t read Ment’s next move; after the Purification Deity fled, will it circle back to hunt with him?

If I were Ment, in this weather, what would I do? Lucimia’s thought sank like a stone tossed into a deep lake.