Professor Hiram withdrew her hand and gave a slight nod to the anxious Villanelle, who was waiting nearby. “The Suppression Collar has been activated. You may take him back.”
Ignis tilted his head to examine the silver metal ring around his neck. Other than feeling slightly cold, there was nothing unusual about it.
“Thank you, Professor,” Villanelle replied in a low voice, pursing her lips to suppress the surge of pity in her heart.
“Since the review is over, leave quickly,” Professor Hiram said calmly in a businesslike tone. “Another professor needs to use this Observation Room in one hour.”
Villanelle placed Ignis back into the carrying basket and covered it with the fleece cloth. After bowing once more to the three evaluators in the Observation Room, she turned and left with somewhat hurried steps.
‘Finally… I passed.’
‘Now, I don’t need to worry about the Magical Creatures Class anymore. Although the collar stays with him, at least the little guy can leave the Twilight Tower occasionally and breathe fresh air.’
‘A way to kill two birds with one stone.’
Although there was still a faint sense of worry in her heart, it had been diluted significantly. She felt mostly the lighthearted joy that came after a heavy burden was lifted.
***
The journey back seemed much shorter than the journey there.
The lingering sunset of the evening was like embers falling from the kingdom of God, melting the clouds on the horizon into gold. The light was reflected in Ignis’s pupils inside the basket.
Pushing open the heavy doors of the Twilight Tower, sunlight slanted in through the windows, leaving mottled shadows on the floor. The air smelled of old books and stone, but it was more comforting than ever.
“We’re home,” Villanelle said in a relaxed tone. She lifted the cover of the basket and met those molten-gold eyes. “We have the Magical Creatures Class tomorrow. There will be many people, and it will be quite crowded… When the time comes, you must follow me closely. Do not run off, do you understand?”
Ignis nodded.
He knew there would always be some ill-intentioned people looking for trouble.
As the sun sank, the bright moon rose.
The night gradually deepened. In the bedroom on the second floor of the Twilight Tower, Villanelle rubbed her tired eyes and put down her quill.
It was late; time to sleep.
After a simple wash, she climbed into bed, pulled up the corners of the quilt, and closed her eyes.
“Goodnight,” she murmured, turning toward the fireplace. Her voice was heavy with sleepiness, and she soon began to breathe steadily and evenly.
The high-intensity research and the special training that had lasted for one week had consumed too much of Villanelle’s energy. Now that the problem was solved, fatigue rushed over her like a tide.
Crouched in his little nest, Ignis soon drifted into a dream as well.
At first, there was only a void of pitch-black darkness.
Then, the texture of the darkness began to change. It was no longer a simple formlessness, but had transformed into a sort of viscous, writhing substrate.
A few scattered spots of light exploded and danced across this substrate without warning before returning to silence.
Ignis watched this quietly, without emotional fluctuation or thought, like an unfeeling camera.
Suddenly, a strange sensation arose.
He felt as if he were being “torn open.”
It was not a physical tearing, but rather as if he himself were being peeled away from a much larger, more chaotic existence — forced into a distinct separation.
It was like… an infant being forced to separate while under the gaze of its mother.
Ignis felt pain.
Something gently brushed over the wound where he had been torn, slightly easing his pain while injecting another sensation — a sense of “grounded” existence.
He heard some sounds.
The sounds seemed to come from underwater, crossing through layers of formless barriers and obstructions. Finally, they converged near his ear — if he had one — into a long sigh and a few blurred words:
“Love… them…”
Ignis felt his brain was exceptionally sluggish, as if it were operating in thick mud.
The descent continued.
This time, he saw something different. The black void disappeared, replaced by a broken and messy “land.”
Countless landmasses were scattered irregularly like an asteroid belt. Black light and purple light intertwined, devouring each other like two giant pythons locked in a death struggle. In the very center of the battlefield, there was a figure so small it was almost invisible.
Ignis could not see the figure’s appearance clearly.
It simply stood there, motionless, enduring wave after wave of counterattacks and impacts from the black light.
In the next second, the scene shattered, and he was still falling.
Passing through a Black Ocean overflowing with despair and fear, passing through an Iron-grey Rock Layer composed of wails and groans, Ignis finally landed at the deepest depths.
It was not empty here.
Countless newly born, twisted thoughts floated here. Hunger and slaughter coexisted, while lust and tyranny intertwined, along with other things Ignis could not identify.
They were sighing and wailing, and ominous auras enveloped him one after another.
An invisible force was pushing them, like a waterfall on a high cliff, driving them toward the eternal darkness below.
Ignis took everything in numbness, without any thoughts, as if he did not exist.
Following the direction in which the countless thoughts were falling, he saw that in the deepest part of the endless darkness below, an eye had opened at some point.
It was not the eye of a living creature.
It seemed… merely a Space Rift that held no emotion. It simply gazed silently at everything happening above, as it had for a thousand years.
Through this “eye,” Ignis saw bizarre scenes flashing rapidly before him:
Prosperous and brilliant civilizations were destroyed in the fires of war; kindred souls harmed one another in misunderstanding and betrayal; newborn babies cried in hunger; dying lives trembled before the final moment arrived…
The endless pain belonging to beings with wisdom and emotional memories flowed like an unceasing river, converging here into the giant eye below.
Every bit of pain that entered seemed to make the surrounding darkness a bit more solid.
Occasionally, a few rays of warm light would flash momentarily within the waterfall of pain — tenacity, courage, protection… and more. These lights fell into the depths, briefly illuminating certain areas.
The eye moved imperceptibly because of this, but that was all.
The image distorted again, the giant eye vanished, and the surroundings returned to the void.
Vague silhouettes swayed before him.
Although he could not see the other person’s face or even their outline clearly, Ignis still had a faint feeling that the figure was watching him.
This time, the words he heard were a bit clearer:
“…Never regret…”
Ignis snapped his eyes open and sat up in his nest.
The moonlight was still spread coldly across the floor, and the ashes in the fireplace had long since cooled. Not far from him, he could hear Villanelle’s faint snoring.
The coldness of the collar on his neck reminded him at every moment that this was reality.
‘What was that? A dream?’
There were no specific images or coherent plots, just some fragmented scenes stitched together, like the meaningless dreams he had as a child in his previous life.
But Ignis would not simply dismiss what had just happened as a dream.
The sensation had been far too real.
‘Could it be a memory?’
‘No, that can’t be right. I never saw so much messy stuff in the Little Black Room.’
‘“Love them… never regret?”’ Ignis pondered the words he had heard in the dream.
What kind of person was that? What did “them,” whom he or she loved, refer to?
He closed his eyes again, but the bizarre dream from before did not reappear. Only the whisper of “love them” continued to echo faintly.
‘Forget it, I should sleep first. I can’t worry about that much.’
He still had the Magical Creatures Class tomorrow morning.