Mage did not answer immediately.
The forest did not feel wrong at first.
That was the problem.
Mist drifted low between the trees, thin enough to see through, thick enough to soften edges. Light filtered down in pale shafts, breaking against leaves that barely stirred. The ground was damp but not treacherous, the air cool but not cold. It was the kind of place travelers imagined when they thought of safety—quiet, distant, untouched.
He did not trust it.
The distortion was there, faint but persistent, like a breath held just behind the world. It no longer pressed against him the way the Sins did when they announced themselves. Instead, it lingered, subtle and intimate, brushing against the edges of his awareness rather than striking at the center.
As if it wanted to be noticed.
He moved forward anyway.
Boots sank softly into loam. The forest accepted his presence too easily. No startled birds. No fleeing animals. Even insects were absent, the usual background hum of life reduced to nothing.
Stillness, perfected.
Then he felt it.
Not danger.
Attention.
A presence settled over him like a gaze sliding across skin—measuring, curious, unhurried. It did not feel hostile. It did not feel urgent. If anything, it felt… inviting.
His hand drifted closer to where a blade could be called, fingers brushing empty air.
"You're early," a voice said.
He stopped.
The voice came from ahead, slightly to the left. Calm. Familiar.
Too familiar.
A figure stood between the trees where moments ago there had been nothing. A man in muted robes, dark hair pulled back, posture relaxed but precise. A staff rested against his shoulder, its crystal dim and fractured.
Mage.
The same Mage who had died weeks ago.
The same one whose body had been burned to prevent exactly this.
His breath did not change. His stance did not shift. Only his eyes narrowed slightly, focus sharpening like a drawn string.
"You shouldn't be here," he said.
Mage smiled.
It was wrong—not exaggerated, not twisted, but misplaced. The expression sat on his face like a memory copied imperfectly.
"Neither should you," Mage replied. "Yet here we are."
The distortion thickened.
Not around Mage.
Around him.
The forest responded subtly. Trees leaned just a fraction closer. The mist curled inward, drawing attention not outward but down, into sensation, into awareness of breath and pulse and warmth.
Mage stepped closer.
"You've been carrying too much," he said gently. "Cards. Burdens. Expectations that were never meant for you."
Illusion, his instincts whispered.
Not just visual.
Conceptual.
He felt it probing—not his strength, but his resolve. Testing the places where exhaustion had settled. Where memory blurred into regret. Where the road had stretched too long without rest.
"I watched you die," he said flatly.
Mage inclined his head. "Did you?"
The question landed heavier than it should have.
For an instant—just an instant—the forest shifted. The trees blurred at the edges. The mist thickened, turning pearlescent, almost warm. The ground beneath his feet felt less solid, as though certainty itself were being softened.
A presence stirred behind Mage.
Not seen.
Felt.
Something vast, patient, coiled just outside perception—content to let the illusion speak first.
Lust did not rush.
She never would.
Mage raised a hand, palm open, nonthreatening. Runes flickered faintly along his sleeve—spells he recognized, spells he had countered before, spells that should not exist anymore.
"You don't have to fight here," Mage said. "You don't have to bleed. You don't have to keep walking forward just because you think the road demands it."
The words slipped past armor he hadn't realized was thin.
His chest tightened—not in fear, but in recognition.
That was when he felt it.
The box at his side grew heavier.
Not physically.
Meaningfully.
The 8th card stirred in silence, not awakening, not answering—only watching. As if it recognized the shape of the lie before he consciously did. As if it knew this battle would not be decided by strength, but by sight.
He did not reach for it.
Not yet.
Instead, he met Mage's eyes.
"You're already dead," he said. "Which means you're not the one talking."
Mage's smile widened just slightly.
Behind him, the mist parted.
And something unseen leaned closer, eager to be wanted.
Instead, he stepped aside.
The forest opened with him—trees bending just enough to allow passage, mist pulling back like a curtain drawn by invisible hands. Beyond him lay a narrow path that had not been there before, its surface smooth, unmarred by roots or stones, leading deeper into the woods where the light grew warmer rather than dimmer.
An invitation.
"You always were perceptive," Mage said at last. "But perception alone doesn't free you from desire."
The word settled into the air like pollen.
Desire.
Not hunger.
Not greed.
Not rage.
Something quieter. More dangerous.
The distortion bloomed—not outward, but inward. It pressed against memory, against sensation, against the parts of him that remembered comfort and warmth and hands that did not flinch when touched.
He took one step back.
The ground behind him was suddenly uneven, tangled with roots that snagged at his heel. The forest no longer welcomed retreat.
Illusion, he reminded himself again.
But illusion did not mean harmless.
Mage began to walk the new path, not looking back, confident he would be followed. With each step, the world subtly changed. The air grew warmer. The scent of damp earth was replaced by something softer—lavender, smoke, old parchment. The kind of smell that clung to rooms where people stayed too long and thought too much.
"You carry sins that aren't yours," Mage continued, voice echoing gently through the trees. "You bleed for towns that bury you. You fight monsters so humans don't have to admit they exist."
He stopped and turned.
"Don't you ever want to be wanted for something other than survival?"
The question struck deeper than any blade could.
The forest responded.
Figures appeared at the edge of his vision—indistinct at first, then sharper. People he recognized. Faces from villages he had passed through. The woman who had brought him soup. The child who had left the charm. Others whose names he had never learned.
They did not look afraid.
They smiled.
Not reverently. Not worshipfully.
Affectionately.
"You don't have to be alone," one of them said.
"You don't have to keep proving yourself," another added.
Their voices overlapped, gentle and reassuring, weaving together into something dangerously close to truth.
His breath slowed—not because he relaxed, but because his body was reacting to stimuli it remembered how to crave. Warmth spread through his chest, through his limbs, dulling the edges of vigilance.
This was her domain.
Lust did not demand.
She persuaded.
Mage watched him closely now, eyes bright with interest. "She's curious about you," he said. "You're different. You resist without denying. You endure without breaking."
The mist behind Mage thickened, gathering into shape—not fully formed, not yet. A silhouette took shape within it, feminine and vast, her outline shifting as though the forest itself could not agree on what she looked like.
"She wonders," Mage continued softly, "what you would choose… if you were allowed to choose at all."
The presence brushed against him again—closer this time. Not touching skin, but sensation itself. Heat without fire. Pressure without weight. The unmistakable sense of being seen not as a weapon, not as a threat—
—but as something desirable.
His knees threatened to weaken.
That was when the memories came.
Not the false ones.
The real ones.
Cold stone floors.
Chains biting into flesh.
The sound of soil falling against a coffin lid.
Hands that only reached for him when they were afraid.
He clenched his fist.
The illusions flickered.
"Enough," he said quietly.
Mage tilted his head. "Still pretending you're immune?"
"No," he replied. "I'm pretending you're convincing."
The air shuddered.
The figures around him wavered, smiles stretching unnaturally before dissolving into mist. The warmth recoiled slightly, displeased.
For the first time, something else slipped into Mage's expression.
Annoyance.
"You see through faces," Mage said. "But can you see through want?"
The ground beneath them warped, the forest dissolving into something else entirely.
A chamber took shape around them—circular, endless, lined with floating sigils and threads of light that pulsed like veins. This was no forest.
This was a workshop.
A mage's domain.
Runes ignited across the air, layered illusions folding into one another like pages in a book. Each one pressed at a different angle—loneliness, exhaustion, longing, relief. Not one overwhelming force, but a thousand gentle cuts.
Lust was learning him.
He felt the box at his side thrum.
The 8th card responded—not eagerly, not violently—but with recognition. This was a battlefield it understood. A place where will and identity mattered more than raw strength.
He reached for it at last.
Not to activate.
Not yet.
Just to acknowledge its presence.
The moment his fingers brushed the box, the chamber trembled.
Mage's eyes widened.
"Oh," he murmured. "So that's what you're hiding."
The silhouette behind him sharpened, mist drawing tighter, more defined. A woman's outline emerged—tall, elegant, impossibly composed. Her face remained obscured, but her attention was unmistakable now.
Focused.
Interested.
Amused.
Lust had stopped testing.
She had begun to play.
And somewhere deep within him, the Archer card stirred—silent, patient, waiting for the moment when illusion would no longer be enough.
The spellscape tightened.
Not because power increased—but because intent sharpened.
The world around him finalized its shape, snapping into a perfected lie. Stone beneath his feet smoothed into marble veined with glowing sigils. Pillars rose where trees had stood seconds ago, each inscribed with looping thaumaturgical equations that fed into one another endlessly.
A Temple of Contracts.
A Witch's Workshop.
The mage stood at its center, staff grounded, robes untouched by the wind that now spiraled unnaturally through the hall. His presence anchored the illusion so completely that the mind wanted to accept him as real.
That was the danger.
The boy advanced anyway.
The first spell was spoken in Divine Words.
No chant. No buildup.
The air shattered.
Mana compressed into a spear of pure authority and struck before distance could exist. He twisted aside on instinct alone, the blast tearing a trench through the floor where his heart had been a moment earlier. The marble screamed as if alive.
Chains erupted next—runic, elegant, absolute.
They did not seek to bind his body.
They sought to bind his identity.
A contract forming mid-combat.
"Submit," the mage said calmly. "And the pain ends."
The voice was perfect.
Too perfect.
His foot slid back. He raised his arm—
—and steel answered.
A sword formed in his grip, rough and utilitarian, its existence justified not by spellcraft but by certainty. The chains struck it and shattered, unable to reconcile with something that should not exist under the workshop's rules.
Lust watched.
Not from one place.
From everywhere.
Her laughter echoed through the pillars, warm and intimate, threaded directly into his thoughts.
"Do you feel it?" she asked. "How carefully this world is made? I shaped it for you. A guide. A teacher. Someone to trust."
Another volley of spells descended—blades of light, curse-laced fire, sigils that rewrote gravity mid-fall. He moved through them without thought, body responding to angles and timings he had never trained for.
Because he remembered.
Not learning.
Doing.
The mage stepped forward, staff glowing as a command seal flared into existence—
—and for the first time, the boy saw it.
The shadow.
The mage's feet did not disturb the floor.
His reflection lagged half a second behind.
A lie maintaining itself through excess detail.
"Enough," Lust whispered.
The world shifted.
Suddenly the temple was gone.
The village stood in its place—burned, screaming, familiar. Faces turned toward him in accusation. Chains reappeared on his wrists, heavier than iron, forged from guilt rather than metal.
"You always leave," Lust said softly. "You always survive. Let someone else carry you this time."
His knees buckled.
For a heartbeat—
Only a heartbeat—
Then his hand brushed the box at his side.
Solid.
Real.
Waiting.
He exhaled.
And opened it.
The 8th Card slid into his palm.
Installation did not explode outward.
It collapsed inward.
His spine locked as time folded through him like a blade drawn slowly from a wound. His breath deepened, slowed, recalibrated. Muscles tightened, not with strength—but with knowledge. The weight of countless battles settled into his posture.
Steel sang in his blood.
His hair lost its warmth, pale strands threading through brown as though years had passed in seconds. His skin took on the tone of sun and ash, marked by battles that had not yet happened—but would.
The illusion faltered.
The mage staggered.
Cracks spiderwebbed across his form, light bleeding through seams that should not exist. His staff dissolved first, unraveling into meaningless mana.
Lust froze.
"No," she said.
The mage looked down at his hands.
And smiled.
Then he shattered.
Not slain.
Unmade.
The illusion peeled away completely, dispersing into harmless motes that evaporated before touching the ground. The workshop destabilized instantly, sigils collapsing without their false anchor.
Silence fell.
Lust finally manifested fully.
Beautiful. Terrible. Perfectly composed.
"You noticed too early," she said, voice tight now. "He was never meant to last beyond the installation."
The Archer-installed boy raised his hand.
A new blade formed—broader, balanced, meant for killing spells as much as bodies.
"I know," he replied calmly. "That's why you used him."
Her eyes darkened.
"You think this changes anything?"
The ground screamed as he stepped forward, mana bending around him not as a command—but as recognition.
"No," he said.
"It changes me."
Lust began to cast.
And for the first time since claiming the Caster card, she felt nervous.
Lust moved first.
Not with haste—
with confidence.
A circle of runes unfolded beneath her bare feet, layered and recursive, each sigil feeding mana into the next until the air itself bowed. High-Speed Divine Words spilled from her lips like a lover's whisper, soft enough to be mistaken for intimacy.
The world obeyed.
Space inverted.
The distance between them collapsed to nothing, then stretched impossibly long in the same instant. Gravity twisted sideways. The ground beneath him turned slick, reflective—no, not stone—
Water.
A sea without horizon.
He felt it immediately.
The pull.
Not physical.
Emotional.
Warmth crept into his chest, threading through old scars and half-healed memories. Faces surfaced unbidden—people who had smiled at him before fearing him. Hands that had touched his arm in gratitude, then withdrawn.
"You're tired," Lust said gently, now standing close enough that he could smell incense and salt on her skin. "You've earned rest."
The sea surged.
From beneath the surface rose illusions given mass—figures shaped like women, like memories, like comfort. They reached for him, fingers brushing his sleeves, his wrists, his shoulders. Each touch carried mana designed not to restrain—
—but to invite.
He did not retreat.
Steel answered his will.
Twin blades formed in his hands, imperfect but lethal, their existence tearing holes through the illusionary physics of the sea. He moved—not away from the grasping figures, but through them.
Each strike dispelled a body into mist.
But the mist whispered.
"You could stop."
"You don't have to carry it alone."
"Let someone want you."
His teeth clenched.
Lust raised her hand.
A bounded field snapped into place—complex, ancient, layered with contracts meant to rewrite allegiance. Symbols crawled across his skin like ghostly tattoos, seeking purchase.
"Submit," she commanded, Divine Words sharpening into authority. "And I will give you purpose without pain."
He felt it then.
The attempt.
Not to control his body—
—but to own his choice.
The Archer card burned.
Not hot.
Clear.
His stance shifted, feet planting against an angle of reality only he seemed to perceive. His mind sharpened, battlefield calculations unfolding automatically—range, mana flow, spell vectors, escape routes.
This was not borrowed power.
This was remembered inevitability.
A blade shattered in his hand—
and reformed mid-swing into another.
Projection without chant.
Without hesitation.
He cut through the bounded field like it was paper.
Lust recoiled for the first time, expression twisting—not in pain, but in offense.
"You reject me?" she hissed. "After everything I offered?"
He leveled a blade at her, eyes steady, distant.
"You didn't offer choice," he said. "You offered escape."
The sea boiled.
Lust screamed an incantation, unleashing a storm of curses—hexes that ate mana, spells that targeted the soul directly, sigils designed to rot conviction itself.
He ran into them.
Each step precise.
Each breath measured.
Curses shattered against projected steel, detonating harmlessly as he cut them apart before they could finish forming. A spear of light grazed his shoulder—burning deep—but he did not slow.
Distance vanished.
Lust's eyes widened.
Too late.
He drove a blade through her shoulder—not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to interrupt. Her spell collapsed mid-structure, backlash ripping through her workshop illusion.
She staggered back, clutching the wound, blood shimmering like liquid mana.
She laughed.
Low. Shaken.
"Oh," she said breathlessly. "So this is what you become."
The sea dissolved.
Reality slammed back into place.
Trees. Dirt. Broken sigils bleeding into nothing.
Lust stepped away, retreating not in fear—but calculation.
"This isn't over," she said, voice steady once more. "Desire always finds its way back."
He did not pursue.
Not yet.
Because this—
This was only the beginning of the fight.
And both of them knew it.
The forest could no longer decide what it was.
Trees warped into marble pillars mid-trunk, bark hardening into stone veined with glowing sigils. Roots twisted into ritual circles etched into the earth itself, each one pulsing with mana that did not belong to the land. The sky fractured into layered horizons, stars bleeding through daylight as Lust's bounded fields overlapped and crushed reality together.
She hovered above it all.
Not floating—enthroned.
Arcane arrays rotated behind her like celestial machinery, each one inscribed with spells refined beyond mortal casting. Medea's sorcery, unrestrained by restraint or mercy. Leylines bent toward her, forced into obedience.
"You resist beautifully," Lust said, her voice layered, doubled, echoed by illusions standing where she was not. "Most break long before this."
The boy stood below, coat torn, blood drying along his arm where a curse had burned through flesh. His breath was steady, but heavier now. Grey threaded further through his hair, stark against what remained of its brown. His skin carried the dull bronze of someone who had endured years of battle in moments.
He lifted his head.
"You talk too much," he said.
A hundred LUSTS moved at once.
Spells descended like judgment—anti-unit curses, spatial disassembly, mental overwrite formulas meant to erase identity itself. The air screamed as magic stacked upon magic, collapsing inward toward him.
He traced.
Not defensively.
Decisively.
Twin blades formed in his hands—Kanshou and Bakuya—but he did not advance. Instead, he turned, planted his feet, and hurled them outward.
The blades split.
Not physically—conceptually.
Their paths fractured into mirrored arcs, ricocheting through the air, striking sigils, severing spell foundations, collapsing arrays before they could fully manifest. Lust recoiled as her magic unraveled mid-cast.
"You're interfering with the formulas—!"
"I know," he said.
Because he had already lived this fight.
Not here.
Not now.
But someday.
The ground beneath him cracked as he leapt forward, crossing distance that should not have been crossable. Lust threw up barriers—layered, recursive, designed to redirect attacks into endless loops.
He broke through the first.
Then the second.
The third stopped him—space folding, impact dispersing.
Lust smiled again. "You can't reach me."
He skidded back, boots carving trenches through corrupted soil.
Slowly, he exhaled.
And changed tactics.
The world tightened.
Mana flowed inward—not explosively, but with terrifying focus. His posture shifted. His grip changed. His stance aligned with something older than this era.
He raised his right hand.
A bow formed.
Not decorative.
Not divine.
Functional. Scarred. Real.
Lust's expression finally changed.
Recognition.
"No… that's—"
He traced again.
This time, the strain hit immediately.
His muscles screamed. His vision blurred at the edges. More grey bled through his hair as the projection took shape—vast, heavy, wrong for a body that was not yet meant to wield it.
A spiral of broken steel manifested.
Caladbolg.
Incomplete.
Unreleased.
Just existing strained the world around it.
The forest warped violently, space bending away from the weapon like fear given form. Lust threw every defensive spell she had left into existence—barriers, mirrors, displacement fields, illusions stacked atop illusions.
"You don't understand what you're aiming," she shouted. "That weapon will tear you apart before it—!"
He drew the bowstring.
The arrow screamed in protest as it formed, reality resisting its shape.
"I understand," he said quietly. "That's why I won't miss."
The release did not happen yet.
This was not the end.
The arrow remained drawn, trembling, compressing mana beyond what the world wanted to allow. The ground collapsed inward beneath his feet as the force built, veins of light splitting the earth.
Lust retreated rapidly, teleporting backward, illusions scattering in panic.
For the first time—
She was afraid.
The arrowhead burned brighter, spiraling, unstable.
The boy's arms shook.
Blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
But he did not lower the bow.
"Run," he told her.
She vanished in a cascade of spells, tearing a path through space itself to escape.
The arrow did not fire.
Silence crashed down instead—heavy, deafening.
The boy dropped to one knee, bow dissolving into motes of light. His breathing came ragged now, the toll undeniable. He clenched his fist, grounding himself.
Caladbolg was ready.
And next time—
He would let it fly.
Silence did not last.
It never did.
The forest screamed as space tore itself open again, not gently this time, not with illusion or misdirection. Reality split like cloth ripped by impatient hands, and Lust returned through the wound she had carved—no longer composed, no longer playful.
Furious.
Mana flooded the clearing in waves so dense the air bent visibly, colors bleeding into one another as if the world were being painted over by her will. The remnants of her illusions shattered and reformed, not as deception now, but as weapons—phantom chains, mirrored blades, false horizons meant to confuse distance and direction alike.
She descended to the ground at last.
Bare feet touched the cracked earth, and where she stepped, the soil blackened, etched with sigils that crawled outward like living things. Her expression had lost its amusement entirely, replaced by something sharp and naked.
"You forced my hand," she said, voice trembling with restrained violence. "Do you have any idea how many futures you just severed?"
The boy pushed himself to his feet.
His legs shook. His vision swam. Every breath scraped his lungs like broken glass. The strain from holding Caladbolg unfinished still echoed through his body, a deep, structural ache that no amount of will could ignore.
Grey now streaked heavily through his hair, especially at the temples. His skin bore a deeper tan than before, roughened, aged as though years of sun and battle had been forced into him all at once. He looked seventeen in form—but far older in presence.
"I didn't come to save futures," he said. "I came to end you."
Lust raised her hand.
The world answered.
A bounded field snapped into place—vast, absolute. The forest vanished, replaced by a cathedral of marble and obsidian, pillars rising endlessly into darkness. Arcane circles layered the floor, ceiling, walls—every surface a spell, every spell feeding another.
Medea's domain.
Inside it, she was absolute.
"Here," Lust said softly, spreading her arms, "I am untouchable."
The boy closed his eyes.
And stepped forward anyway.
The moment he crossed the threshold, pain detonated through him. Curses latched onto his nerves, his bones, his mind—spells designed not to kill, but to break, to unravel identity piece by piece until nothing remained but obedience.
He screamed.
Not in fear.
In defiance.
He traced.
Swords burst into existence around him—dozens at once—each one intercepting a curse, anchoring his consciousness to something solid. The weapons shattered under the strain, but they bought him moments. Moments were all he needed.
Lust snarled and advanced, weaving spells faster now, abandoning elegance for brutality. Bolts of pure mana slammed into him, throwing him across the marble floor. He crashed, skidded, rose again.
Again.
Again.
"Stay down!" she screamed, hurling chains of light that wrapped around his limbs, dragging him to his knees. "Why won't you just accept it?! I can give you everything you want!"
He laughed.
Blood ran freely from his mouth now, dripping onto the glowing floor.
"You don't understand," he said hoarsely. "I stopped wanting things a long time ago."
His hand lifted.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Mana gathered—not explosively, not wildly—but with terrifying precision. The air warped inward, pressure collapsing toward a single point as something vast began to take shape.
Lust's eyes widened.
"No—don't—!"
Too late.
The bow formed again in his grasp, heavier this time, more complete. The limbs creaked under the strain of existence itself resisting them. Veins of light crawled up his arm, burning, searing, carving their presence into flesh and bone.
Caladbolg manifested fully.
Not a weapon.
A declaration.
The spiral arrow took shape, massive and unstable, its very form rejecting the constraints of reality. The cathedral trembled, cracks spiderwebbing across marble pillars as the bounded field strained to contain what was being born inside it.
Lust threw everything she had left at him.
Layers of barriers. Anti-projectile fields. Spatial inversions meant to turn the arrow back on its wielder.
None of it held.
Because Caladbolg was not meant to be stopped.
The boy drew the string back.
Every muscle in his body screamed. Bones cracked audibly. His vision dimmed, the edges of the world collapsing into white noise. He felt something give deep inside—something that would never fully heal.
He smiled anyway.
"This is the end," he said.
And released.
The arrow did not fly.
It unfolded.
Space twisted violently around it, spiraling inward as the projectile tore through layers of reality like paper. Barriers shattered instantly, reduced to fragments of light. The cathedral collapsed, walls and pillars disintegrating as the bounded field was annihilated from the inside out.
Lust screamed—not in pain at first, but in disbelief.
"No—NO—!"
The spiral consumed her.
There was no explosion.
There was erasure.
The ground beneath them imploded, forming a vast crater as the released energy carved a scar into the land that would never fade. The arrow continued onward, vanishing into the horizon, the sky itself warped in its wake.
Silence followed.
Heavy.
Final.
The boy collapsed.
He lay at the center of the ruined earth, chest barely rising, limbs unresponsive. Smoke drifted lazily upward from cracked soil and melted stone. Where Lust had stood, there was nothing—no body, no ash, no lingering mana.
Just absence.
After a long time—minutes, maybe longer—he stirred.
With immense effort, he rolled onto his side and coughed, blood staining the ground. His hair was now streaked heavily with grey, almost half of it pale beneath the dirt and sweat. His skin looked weathered, worn by a life compressed into too few years.
He reached for the box at his side with shaking fingers.
Opened it.
The Caster card lay inside now.
Cold.
Silent.
Sealed.
He closed the box and pressed it to his chest, breathing shallowly.
Another Sin had fallen.
And the cost was undeniable.
When he finally stood, he did so slowly, leaning on nothing but sheer will. The land around him was ruined, permanently scarred by the battle—trees uprooted, earth glassed and twisted, the very air carrying a lingering pressure that would unsettle anyone who passed through for generations to come.
He turned away from the crater.
Did not look back.
Because he knew now.
This road would not end with victory.
Only with endurance.
And somewhere ahead, the remaining Sins were watching—
—and learning.