The mont the glass door slid open, sothing in snapped shut.
The air felt heavier, my body frozen in place as Bishop Vale stepped into the room.
Not Gregor Vale. Not the Guild Master of Redknot.
A Bishop of the Red Chalice Cult.
The truth sat in my mind like a sickness, crawling through the gaps in my mories, threading together the pieces I hadn't even realized were missing. The experints. The whispers. The feeling of being reshaped into sothing I had never agreed to be.
I could still hear the voices from my past, fragnted and distorted, buried under layers of ti and fear.
"She's adapting."
"Increase the dosage—no, don't stop, she can take it."
"A failure? No. A prototype. A foundation for sothing greater."
I clenched my fists, nails biting into my skin.
Bishop Vale took another step forward, casual, unhurried. He was savoring this.
"You have no idea what you are, do you?" he murmured. "No matter. It's in you. You are ours. You always have been."
I glared at him, even as my heart pounded, even as every part of scread to run, to fight. "I don't belong to you."
His expression didn't change. He just sighed, as if I had disappointed him, as if I was a child throwing a tantrum. Then he lifted his hand and tapped at the sleek device in his grip.
And my world stopped.
A screen blinked to life, displaying crisp, high-resolution images. A small, familiar house. A quiet neighborhood. People I knew.
My family.
Not my real family—I never had one of those. But the people who had taken in. The ones who had made sure I had food, shelter, a ho. The ones who had cared.
They had nothing to do with this. They didn't even know who I really was.
And yet, they were on that screen.
Bishop Vale tilted his head, watching carefully. "Do I have your attention now?"
My hands shook. I forced them to steady.
He didn't need an answer. He already knew.
"If you refuse," he continued, voice smooth and casual, as if he was discussing sothing as simple as dinner plans, "I will erase them. Every single one of them. And not just their lives. Their records, their existence. It will be as if they never were."
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to rip that smug, self-satisfied look off his face.
I wanted to not feel so helpless.
But I wasn't stupid.
He had power. Connections. If he said he could make them disappear, he could.
I swallowed hard, forcing the words out. "I understand."
It felt like choking on glass.
Bishop Vale smiled. "Good girl."
I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached.
He stepped forward, placing his hand against the scanner near the door. A soft chi sounded, and the security system disengaged.
A sharp hiss. A rush of cool, sterile air.
The glass barrier between us slid away, and suddenly, there was nothing separating from him.
I wanted to move. I needed to move. But my body was locked in place, my breathing shallow, my mind spinning through every possible way out—
None of them worked.
Bishop Vale took another step forward, and then—
Reality shattered.
The air twisted. A ripple spread through the space around us, distorting the world as if soone had slashed through existence itself.
Sothing else was here.
A presence.
Fast. Inescapable.
A gleam of steel.
A sword, cutting through the air in a blur—
Bishop Vale turned, eyes widening, hand already moving—
Too slow.
The blade struck.
"I can't believe you would—"
The voice was sharp, laced with sothing between disbelief and fury. A red-haired woman stood near the shattered remains of the glass barrier, her sword still humming with raw energy.
Carrie Milton.
I knew her. The Vice Guild Master of Redknot. A skilled swordsman—good enough that, with the elent of surprise, her blade had struck true.
The enclosed space trembled as astral energy collided, a violent storm shredding through everything around us. The sheer force of it sent flying backward. I hit the wall hard, the impact rattling my bones.
I bit my lip, the sharp taste of blood grounding . I can't just sit here.
"Activate," I muttered.
And it did.
The power I hated, the thing they had forced into . The thing I never wanted.
But the thing I had to live with.
Black ink blood across my skin, ancient letters twisting and shifting, binding , forcing my body past its limits. My mana rank surged. My veins burned. Blood rose in my throat, and I choked on it, coughing it out in a thick, crimson splatter against the pristine white floor.
I looked up, vision swimming. Two Ascendant-rankers clashed before , a battle too fast, too brutal for my mind to fully process. Carrie's sword slashed, her movents sharp and precise, but Bishop Vale was no ordinary opponent. They moved like forces of nature, tearing through the space between them with raw power.
I tried to push myself up—
"Don't step in."
The voice was calm, yet firm. I turned my head, still gasping for air.
A woman stood near , her brows furrowed in sothing dangerously close to concern.
The woman from Ouroboros.
She had been there in the café. She had saved before.
"We're too weak to intervene in that fight," Kali said simply.
"Then what—" I swallowed, still tasting blood. "What should we do?"
Kali's gaze flickered past , and I followed it.
My stomach dropped.
Figures were descending into the room—cloaked figures, moving with unsettling coordination. Too many. Too fast.
Not Redknot mbers.
Cultists.
"Survive," Kali said.
And before I could process what that ant, she moved.
Her hand touched my shoulder, and sothing dark uncoiled from within her—a living shadow that swallowed whole.
I felt the world tilt. My stomach lurched.
"Wa—!"
And then the bubble popped, and I fell.
I hit the floor hard, barely catching myself. My breath was ragged, my limbs trembling from the sudden displacent.
I was still inside the guild building. Sowhere.
A slow clap echoed from the shadows.
"Look who's here," a voice purred.
I turned sharply.
A woman stepped forward, her presence suffocating in the dim light. She wasn't wearing Redknot's colors. She didn't need to. The air around her was wrong.
I barely had ti to react before sothing snapped around .
Chains.
Cold, heavy, unyielding. They coiled around my body with unnatural precision, locking in place before I could even attempt to resist.
I struggled, but it was useless. My body was already in bad shape, and even at my best, I wouldn't have been able to overpower her.
'Priest,' I realized, panic twisting inside .
Cultists had different roles. Fighters, assassins, spellcasters. Priests were among the worst of them. They didn't just use power—they enforced it.
"Did the Bishop not make himself clear?" the woman sighed, tilting her head. "Resistance ans your family dies."
Her voice was sickly sweet, like poisoned honey.
I clenched my jaw, refusing to speak.
She humd, amused. "Ah. I see. You still think this is a bluff."
A flick of her wrist, and a hologram materialized in the air.
The image flickered to life, and my stomach dropped.
My foster family.
They were here. In Redmond.
I couldn't breathe.
"We invited them for a little surprise," the woman said, her voice practically dripping with delight. "And your stupid foster parents fell for it, too. So trusting. So eager to see their dear daughter."
My body froze.
I had assud—no, hoped—that they were safe, far away, untouched by this nightmare.
But they weren't.
They were here.
And they had no idea what was coming.
The woman leaned closer, smiling. "Now," she cooed, "tell , which one are you fine with dying first?"
She giggled, her eyes gleaming. "Your foster mother? Your foster father? Maybe one of your little siblings? Tell , tell !"
The chains tightened around .
I couldn't move.
I couldn't breathe.
And for the first ti since this nightmare had started, I felt sothing raw, sothing primal clawing at the edges of my mind.
Not fear.
Not despair.
Sothing worse.
The loss of being.
The unraveling of everything that made .
Sothing worse than death, sothing that left nothing behind—not even the right to exist.
I couldn't lose them.
Because if I did, I would lose myself.
"Because losing them ans losing what it ans to be yourself, right?"
The voice didn't belong to .
It whispered the thought at the exact sa mont it ford in my mind, curling around it like a shadow that had been waiting there all along.
The woman—Millia, I realized distantly—stiffened. Her smug amusent evaporated, her body snapping into motion, twisting to see the source of the voice—
And froze.
A blade rested against her throat.
Cold. Steady. Perfectly placed.
"Let your guard down, Millia," a boy's voice said, light and teasing, like he was mildly disappointed in her.
I knew that voice.
I had heard it before.
I forced my head to turn, my breath still tight in my lungs.
There he was.
Arthur Nightingale.
The sa boy who had tried to recruit into Ouroboros before.
Smiling. Like this was all a ga he had already won.
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