"Bold, to think you will have the opportunity," the thing that was not Sierra told him. Its voice was as flat and emotionless as its body language as it stood. "The death I offered you was a pleasant one, but if you wish to scream and rage against the dying, then so be it."

It came at him with a knife, silver flickering in the dim light as it slashed and thrust. If he were in his prime, it would not even be a fight. Sierra had been a high rank I, but her Aptitude had been half of his. He'd closed the gap in stats back before their ill-fated contest, and he'd only grown stronger in the years since.

But he was not in his prime. He was injured; quite severely, in fact. With the various attribute penalties, from his potion sickness to his internal damage, she almost certainly had the edge in raw power and speed.

Which meant he had to rely on experience.

The creature who wore her skin was not Sierra, but its moves were. Alarion had seen them before, a combo she'd thrown more than once during their sparring matches. He knew the kick that would come after and the strike at his leg that came after that. He punished her for them, a shoulder check to put her off balance, a slash across her arm with his newly drawn Echo.

This thing was drawing from his memories of her. It was safe to say that it could improvise, given the robust conversation they'd engaged in, but it was still limited by his perception. She was as strong as he recalled; she fought the way he knew she'd fight. Alarion could work with that.

"Give in. Be of me. Nothing in this world was ever meant to be. It is an imitation, a pale reflection of perfection. Of serenity. You can be so much more than you are now."

Alarion ignored the words. Perhaps in this moment of clarity, the thing was stating its truth, appealing to some primal instinct it thought he might share. He didn't care. If it were the last thing he did before succumbing to the miasma, he would kill this thing for what it had done.

[Ebb and Flow] activated alongside [Foresight] as he pressed his attack. While she might have the advantage in attributes, he had three classes' worth of skills, some of them powerful indeed. [Foresight], in particular, was almost a cheat against the infestation. Alarion knew Sierra's moves; he knew how she feinted, how she dodged. Combined with [Foresight], that knowledge was a deadly combination. At its lowest setting, the skill offered him four different versions of Sierra's future attacks, the higher number of duplicates perhaps owing to her temporarily higher stats, but his familiarity with her fighting style let him narrow that down even further.

He knew she favored her left side on the attack, so he could discount attacks coming from the right. He knew she liked to step back after a parry, so any signs of her going on the offensive were obviously wrong. With such an overwhelming advantage, it wasn't long before the inevitable happened. He issued a feint, one of his newer ones that this poor copy would not be familiar with, and she took the bait.

The ghost of her future stepped in, and his mace rushed to meet it. Bones cracked, and the ruin of the thing that had once been Sierra was sent spiraling into the boil's feeding pit.

Alarion felt no catharsis as he killed it, just a profound sadness. He'd lost something else here, and he did not know if he could get it back.

"You do not understand. Let me show you," the thing that was not Sierra said, her lips mere inches from his ear.

"Void Crush!" he channeled the spell on instinct, blowing apart its body as he whirled on the attack.

"How many times will you kill this poor little girl?"

It was standing behind him again, though further away this time. It looked like her, but its posture and expression were all wrong.

"I tried to show them, these Bones of Ashad. But they think too small, in too few dimensions. Your eyes can be opened. You can gaze upon the All," she said, pacing slowly toward him. "Rejoice. Be of me and know that companionship is fleeting and empty."

Alarion tightened his hand around his mace, ready to lash out with another attack. But cooler thoughts stayed his hand. He'd 'killed' her twice, why did he think doing so for a third time would make it stick?

It had control over this place, the ability to resurrect itself on a whim, and to move with impossible speed. It controlled this space, whether it was a dream, a nightmare, or a hallucination. If it could have killed him, it would have. There was no use fighting it; that wasn't the way out.

He saw the knife in her hand as she closed on him, but he ignored it. He turned inward, opening his mind to the surrounding mana with [Introverted Mana Sense].

As before, the mana was everywhere and in everything. Sierra was clothed in it, the knife in her hand drenched in it. He saw mana of every Affinity, a grand tapestry of magic whose scope he could not begin to grasp, let alone unravel. By all rights his MP should have been skyrocketing, surrounded as he was by so much magic, but the mana seemed to dissipate moments after it entered his body.

None of it was real; that much was obvious. The question was the mechanism. How had the boil done this? Was he trapped within a prison of his own mind, or had he been drawn into the core? Had its death throes drenched the area in some heavy illusion, or had it fabricated some pocket dimension similar to a dungeon? Each possibility demanded a different solution, some of which were directly at odds with one another. At best, he would waste his time. More likely, the wrong solution would sink him deeper into the trap, if not kill him outright.

He had to be sure, and for that, he needed more information. The boil would not be forthcoming, so Alarion would have to take it.

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<It is your fault, you know,> Atra whispered into his ear as Alarion sat cross-legged in the dirt. He felt the sun on his neck and caught a whiff of those same scents from earlier. Cinnamon and apples. Home. <You killed our father, our friends, and our neighbors. We ran because of what you did. And then you left us.>

Alarion felt his skin go hot, his hands tightening around the mace in his lap. He knew it was baiting him, that he couldn't harm it any more than it could hurt him. That it was trying to distract him long enough for the poison he was breathing in to do its work.

It nearly worked.

<But we can be together again. Unified in purpose. Let me show you where I go when I dream. Let me show you what life should be like.>

Her voice sounded older this time, not the budding adolescent he'd last known, but the full-fledged woman she would have grown into. Curiosity tugged at him, but he kept his eyes shut tight, afraid that he'd rage and attack the thing for wearing her skin. Or worse yet, that the sight would undo his resolve.

It continued to speak to him as he plumbed the depth of the boil's magic, searching for some imperfection, for some weakness he could exploit. Something that might give him a clue as to the nature of its ability. But trying to find that weakness was like searching for a specific shade of blue amidst an ocean.

"Perhaps I was wrong." This time the voice was masculine, self-satisfied, and imperious. It had been years since Dar Elzmir had died, but that arrogance would never perish. "I thought it was redemption you sought. But I could give you vengeance instead. Be of me, and I will make you my champion. You will walk in my name across the Gateway bridge, and you will burn that wretched city to the ground."

It wasn't reading deep into his mind, then. Whatever Alarion's hatred for Vitrian society, the idea of ruining their city had never so much as crossed his mind. In his darkest moments, he'd wanted vengeance, yes, but he'd lived in the ruins of Ashad-Mundi; he'd seen what war did to the meek and the vulnerable. For every Dar or Ruin, there was a Sierra or ZEKE, even Elena. Good people trapped by obligation in a system entirely outside their command.

The offer was without value, but that was not the boil's only flaw.

The imperfection was such a small thing, an error in the world around them that persisted as the boil shifted from one form to another. To Alarion's mana sight, it looked like a single loose thread, wholly unremarkable, save for what it represented. A vulnerability. An opportunity.

Alarion focused his sixth sense on the weakness and began to follow it through the tapestry.

The experience felt familiar. He had vague memories of a similar test, of tracing mana through a complicated maze while under duress. It had been during one of Valentina's challenges, no doubt, given his fuzzy recollection of the details. Though he could not remember her face, her lessons were invaluable as ever, as he systematically followed the line of magic.

Despite the sea of mismatched Affinities, it was all a single spell. The thread doubled back on itself a thousand times, shifting from earth to fire, from mind to enhancement. Each Affinity was artificial, a colorful wrapping stitched around the underlying magic to conceal its true nature. Void, dimension, mind, and illusion. In a flash of revelation, Alarion knew the spell and knew how to counteract it.

But he had to be sure. The boil had tricked his natural senses; he'd be foolish to believe that it could not deceive his [Introverted Mana Sense].

So he kept following the thread as it wound back and forth across his surroundings. He traced it through the now living form of Sierra as she pleaded for him to stop, and around the feet of Elena, as she blamed him for her death. It knew he was close, and it did not know how to stop him.

Then he reached the end, the terminus underlying its magic. It was an innocuous spot on the ground, no different from any other, but it was the point where Alarion's thread ended and a hundred more coalesced. More than magic, it was a point of sympathy and duality. To strengthen the spell, the boil had given it a weakness, a lynchpin that was easy to pull, but hard to find.

Skill Grade Up! Introverted Mana Sense (Uncommon) -> Unraveller's Sense (Rare).

Skill level increased. Unraveller's Sense is now Level 1. PER +10.

"Alarion." The thing had said his name half a hundred times, but never once with an unfamiliar voice. It had been his mother, his father, his friends, and his victims. But never a stranger.

So why now?

It should have been easy to ignore, but something about the tone stayed his hand. And against his better judgment, he opened his eyes.

He didn't know her. Not at first. She wore an elegant dress of white and gold, colors picked to match her pale hair and golden eyes. Gold bangles clinked at her wrists, and stylish heels clicked on the tile of the intimate study in which he knelt. She was smiling, a few wrinkles under her eyes suggesting her age, but that smile never reached those eyes.

"If you leave, you will never see me again," Valentina warned him.

He laughed. Not a bitter or angry sound as it might have expected, but the laugh of a man who had just heard the funniest joke imaginable.

The boil's serene expression fell away as it stared down at him, knowing its ploy had failed, but unwilling to give him the satisfaction of asking where it had failed. Alarion told it anyway.

"I did not even remember what she looked like," he told it. "Thank you."

Then, with a tug of willpower, he dismantled the spell.

The simulacrum of Valentina blew away, scattering like motes of dust before a storm. Her desk and the fireplace, the books and the shelves, all of it crumbled to nothing and plunged him into an empty space. The walls around him were blue-black like painted shadows, and Alarion felt a profound nostalgia. Its trump card had been a modification of [Void Trap], similar in kind to Elena's [Void Area] but more powerful and with an illusion element that concealed its casting.

He'd been almost certain, but he needed to be right. A stronger mage could have dispelled the trap, but Alarion had neither the time nor the skill. Instead, he relied on the spell's one main vulnerability.

He killed himself.

Alarion returned to reality with a gasp, the pain of his 'death' fresh in his mind. He was back in the cloister, standing over the boil's True Heart. It was cracked and nearly broken, but still very much alive. The tumor 'shell' had nearly healed in his absence, but nearly was not enough to save it from Alarion's wrath.

You have suffered minor psychic damage. HP -12.

The feeble psychic attack might have been laughable, had Alarion not felt so close to death. He reached for a potion, but thought better of it as he felt mana roiling within the True Heart. Instead, he lunged forward, throwing his entire body weight and the strength of both arms behind Echo as he drove the dagger into the fractured orb. The tip slid inside the crack and twisted as Alarion fell atop it. There was a sudden pop as leverage did what brute force had not, finally putting an end to the madness.

You have slain [True Heart – UCL 368] – Bonus experience earned for slaying an opponent above your UCL.

Would you like to loot [True Heart - UCL 368]?

Perverse mana flooded out of the ruined core, poisoning Alarion even further. He reached again for his last remaining potion, but his [Pig-Headed Resilience] caught up to him first.

New Condition! Internal Organ Damage – Critical.

[Survivor's Endurance] has taken effect. The secondary effect of [Survivor's Endurance] has taken effe-

Whatever else the System had to say, there was no one left to read it.

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