"The favor is offered," Marthas rumbled. His voice carried a strange, dual resonance, echoing from both his chest and the cold stones beneath their feet. "The debt owed by the Purifying Flame is called. Pierce the veil, Holy Sashara. Open the World’s eye upon this altar.”
Nick stood at the edge of the array, watching the ether warp above Rose’s chest. A golden thread, invisible to mundane eyes, materialized in the air, extending from his chest into the heavens.
It snapped with a sound like a broken lute string, sending white sparks drifting down onto the marble.
The transaction was accepted.
A crystalline chime vibrated through the undercroft, rattling the floor. A moment later, the space directly above Rose tore open, revealing an ever-shifting plane of energy beyond.
It resolved into a window of pale blue light, but calling it a mere window was a grotesque oversimplification.
Nick’s senses plunged into the tear, catching a fleeting, maddening glimpse of the System.
As he remembered, it was a multidimensional leviathan, a sprawling construct of both supreme artifice and untamed nature. A lattice of cold mathematics, woven seamlessly into the chaotic, bleeding roots of the earth and the fire of dying stars.
It was too vast to comprehend, a superstructure of logic and magic overlaid on reality so immense that contemplating the whole would shatter a mortal mind.
Several people gasped, though he couldn’t bring himself to care, so overwhelmed by the mere glimpse.
Nick gritted his teeth, forcing his perception to narrow. He discarded the infinite branches and focused solely on the single pane of blue light hovering above the girl.
"Hold her down," he ordered once he was no longer in danger of losing his mind.
Arthur stepped to the head of the slab, resting his calloused hands on his granddaughter’s shoulders. Rose stared up at the blue interface, her chest rising and falling in quick breaths, clearly trying not to panic.
At Nick’s glance, Rhea stood at the ready with her syringe and additional vials of stabilizing agent, in case they were needed.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that. Too much interference, however benign, would weaken the ritual.
Slowly, Nick uncorked his vial, and the Dragon's Ink inside hissed, reacting fiercely to the blue interface. He dipped two fingers into the sludge, which felt like plunging his hand into freezing mud and hummed with strange energies.
He leaned over Rose and began to paint, dragging his fingers across her collarbone, tracing the suppression runes he had designed. The ink did not linger on her skin for long, sinking into her pores and diving like parasitic worms in search of her mana channels.
Rose gasped, her back arching as a foreign power intruded upon her.
Her royal blood recognized an invader. Veins bulged along her neck and arms, glowing a furious gold beneath her pale skin. Mana surged to defend its host, attacking the alchemical lie.
After all, few threats to authority were as perilous as having one’s bloodline falsified.
Having expected as much, Nick painted a second rune over her sternum. The ink bubbled, pushed back by the sheer force of the [Scion] class. Sludge beaded on her skin, refusing to sink in, evaporating into foul-smelling black smoke.
"Stop rejecting the binding," Nick told her, even as he tracked the war beneath her skin. "The friction cannot take hold if you do.”
Rose let out a strangled cry, her hands clenching into tight fists. The conflicting magics were clearly hurting her, and for all that she tried to let go, to allow the lie to settle, he could see it was too little.
"Rhea," Nick commanded, stepping back to give the alchemist room. He would have preferred to avoid it, but delaying was even more dangerous than risking contamination.
He simply didn’t know enough about the land spirit that had granted the Golden Rule, and the longer they took, the more likely it was to react.
If that happened, it would all be for naught.
Rhea did not hesitate, tapping the side of the syringe to clear the air and leaning over Rose to find the golden vein along the side of the girl’s neck.
"This is the Blinding, Rose," Nick said, threading spiritual power into his voice to ensure she heard him even through the haze of pain. "Reject the gold. Accept the poison. Be Nobody.”
Rhea inserted the needle into the vein and depressed the plunger.
Rose screamed. It was a raw, tearing sound that echoed off the vaulted ceiling. Golden light flared blindingly beneath her skin, desperate to prevent the Dragon's Ink's catastrophic intrusion.
"Suppress it!" Nick shouted even as he guided more sludge into forming a rune. "Fight the healing!”
Rose thrashed, kicking wildly against the marble. Arthur clamped down harder, deathly pale as he watched his granddaughter suffer.
Seeing that she needed more help, Nick placed his hand on her forehead and sent a wave of spiritual mana through, light enough to avoid being seen as an intrusion, to bring up the proper memories.
Rose squeezed her eyes shut, but forced her mind away from the pain and the burning gold. Through his soulsight, Nick watched as she remembered the deep woods, the suffocating terror of the Ascended spring, and the realization that she was a speck of dust in a world of ancient, uncaring monsters. He saw her seize that terror and wrap it around her heart, commanding her mana to stand down.
The golden glow beneath her skin stuttered. It flickered, choked by the sludge, and began to dim.
"Her pulse is failing," Rhea reported clinically. She discarded the empty ink syringe and snatched a new vial of pale fluid. “Without resistance, the ink must have begun to eat at her.”
At his impatient grunt, she drove the second needle into Rose’s arm, flooding her system with the alchemical stabilizer.
Above them, the blue interface flashed. A beam of azure light fell over Rose’s thrashing form, interrogating her soul, searching for the truth of things.
Trusting Rhea to keep Rose stable for now, Nick stepped into the esoteric plane, letting his consciousness merge with the array drawn on the floor.
He saw the soul-scape unfolding in the ether. At the center of Rose’s being rested a crown of spun gold, blazing with pure authority. But the Dragon's Ink was creeping up the pedestal, wrapping the gold in suffocating vines.
The System’s scanning beam swept over the crown, confused by the friction, trying to burn away the shadows to verify the royal lineage.
Now was the time for the second Step, the Naming.
Rose’s will pushed back against the scan. She offered no resistance, no pride, and fed the System the narrative they’d settled on, about the mud and the terror of the deep woods. She claimed the name Nobody.
In the soul-scape, the metaphor took shape. Vines tightened around the crown, cracking the gold. The alchemical lie tore the royal symbol apart, twisting the conceptual metal, rusting it, and forging it downward until a dull, chipped iron sword rested on the pedestal.
The blue interface window flashed a warning red.
The System recognized a contradiction. The underlying foundation still carried the faint resonance of the World’s pact, yet reality itself and the soul’s projection insisted on a mundane truth.
Nick watched as the blue window began to hum, preparing to purge the anomaly—which meant erasing Rose from the slate.
That was where he came in. He brought himself under the red light of the interface and reached up, plunging his bare hands into the ethereal pane.
The magic burned like dry ice, trying to freeze his intent, but Nick pushed his authority into the stream.
He could not brute-force the System. Overpowering the multidimensional leviathan was impossible, even with the help of a God. Instead, he offered the machine a bargain of logic.
He conveyed the concept of Ephemerality.
He sent images of the shifting, of a snake shedding its skin, of a scab forming over a wound, of a coat of paint drying over old wood. He did his best to ensure the interface understood that this change was skin-deep, a temporary parameter, a seasonal mask that would eventually wash away.
The World accommodated the natural cycles of decay and masking; the System, built upon the World, must accept the same.
The interface shuddered, its red warning light pulsing once, twice, then slowly fading back to a calm, indifferent azure. Whatever protocol had been engaged was canceled.
Once he was sure he wouldn’t have to fight, Nick dragged his index finger across the window’s surface. He crossed out a line of text, then, below it, he pushed his intent into the blank space, carving the new parameter into the interface.
“[Adept Swordswoman]”, he wrote.
The System accepted the input. A final chime rang through the vault, signaling the Great Work's completion.
The window shattered into a thousand harmless, drifting sparks of blue light, which faded before they could touch the stone floor. The crimson light of Marthas’s tattoos receded, plunging the undercroft back into darkness.
Rose went limp on the marble slab.
Arthur released her shoulders, his hands shaking. He brushed a damp strand of hair from her sweat-slicked forehead. "Rose," the old man rasped. "Rose, open your eyes.”
Rhea checked the pulse at her neck, and her tense shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. “She’s stable. She just went through a lot.”
As if to confirm the diagnosis, Rose drew a slow, ragged breath. Her eyelids fluttered, revealing bloodshot eyes. Exhausted, she groaned and slowly pushed herself up onto her elbows.
“How do you feel?" Nick asked even as he retrieved the Stillness from the bench. He was within allied territory, but he felt much better with the artifact wrapped around him.
Godly attention was never a good thing to keep for too long, after all.
Instead of answering, Rose looked down at her hands. She flexed her fingers, testing, and once she was satisfied no more pain was coming, she reached for the magic that had always been there, the eager power that leaped to her command before she even fully formed the thought.
Yet this time, it didn’t come.
She gritted her teeth, forcing her will into her mana channels until a faint light bloomed around her hands. It was not brilliant gold but a dull blue.
Even from the outside, it felt thick and resistant, demanding effort and concentration just to maintain a simple expression. The World was no longer eager to serve her; she was now just another mortal fighting for a scrap of power, unused to such limitations.
Tears spilled over her lashes, tracing paths through the sweat on her cheeks. She wept, her sobs tearing through her chest, and Nick could sense her profound loss of the power she had surrendered and the crushing relief of survival.
Arthur pulled her into a tight embrace, burying his face in her shoulder and murmuring quiet words of comfort into her hair.
Nick watched them for a moment, then turned to Marthas, who was watching with a mild smile, looking unruffled despite having channeled a Goddess’ power.
He inclined his head, “My thanks.”
The giant waved him off. “As I said, it was merely a repayment of your favor.”
Some might have argued that saving Sashara’s Avatar should have earned him more than a one-time aid, but Nick just nodded, unwilling to discuss fairness when gods were involved. He turned to Rhea, who was carefully packing her empty syringes and remaining stabilizers into her padded satchel.
"You did well," he told her. “I don’t know if we could have done it without the draughts.”
She gave him a small smile. “You’re not the only one who's grown.”
He chuckled. Ain’t that the truth?