Twilight flowed like a tide from the Imperial Palace atop Mount Paladin, slowly washing down and swallowing the final rays of the setting sun.
The shadows of the mountain range grew incredibly long, blanketing the layered gardens and buildings on the slopes before finally merging into the Academy complex at the foot of the mountain, where the first lights were beginning to flicker on.
Ignis lay on the table by the window, gazing down at the scenery outside the Twilight Tower.
The Academy at the base of the mountain looked like a field of glowing Star-Moon Sunflowers growing at the bottom of a valley. The winding mountain road connecting the Imperial Palace and the Academy resembled a dim, grayish-white ribbon.
Villanelle had already changed into a set of dirt-resistant gray clothes, covered by an Academy uniform cloak. Her silver hair was meticulously combed back and secured with a single handmade wooden hairpin.
She walked to the table and gently stroked Ignis’s head.
“I’m going to the Academy for a bit. I might be back late,” Villanelle said softly, her ice-blue eyes reflecting the darkening sky outside. “Stay home and be good. Don’t go running off everywhere, okay?”
Ignis nodded to show he understood and nuzzled against her hand.
After finishing her instructions, Villanelle turned and left the room. Soon, the sound of her receding footsteps faded away.
Silence returned to the room, leaving only the crackling of the logs in the fireplace.
‘She’s gone.’
Ignis felt a bit restless. He couldn’t say why, but perhaps it was the Dragon Race’s instinct for an approaching storm.
Over the past few days, these moments of unease and irritability had become increasingly frequent.
On days when there was no Magical Creatures Class, Villanelle would leave the Tower alone to go to the Academy. He always felt a sense of worry, and this time was no exception.
Ignis stared blankly at the deepening night.
He didn’t know how much time had passed before he realized something and snapped out of his daze.
Could he enter the Abyssal Critical State again? Perhaps he could see Villanelle from within that eerie space.
With the intent to try, Ignis retreated to a corner of the room and closed his eyes. He shut out the orderly and divine aura of the Imperial Palace and concentrated fully on recalling the details of that night —
Immediately, there was movement in his surroundings.
He began to “sink.”
When he opened his eyes, the colors and sounds of the world were rapidly stripped away from his perception, and another dimension slowly unfolded before him.
Having had several prior experiences, he could “see” much more clearly this time. Various colors of emotion flowed within the Twilight Tower, but overall, the Tower itself was mostly a thick, inescapable gray, like an old blood clot.
Ignis tried to move his point of observation.
Since this “space” existed, he should be able to move around in it rather than just acting as a fixed camera. He had played that role long enough when he first transmigrated.
His body followed his command.
Ignis felt as though the physical laws that normally bound him in the real world had lost their effect. He could easily step through the air to reach high places with no footing, or sink through the transparent floor to enter the space corresponding to the first floor of the Twilight Tower.
It was almost… like he had opened Spectator Mode.
Ignis looked up at the position where he had entered the Abyssal Critical State.
His physical body was still there, motionless, as if his soul had left his body.
‘How strange… I’m watching myself standing in the corner of the room,’ Ignis couldn’t help but think.
He continued moving forward, passing through the walls and floating into the open space outside the Twilight Tower.
Before him, the Imperial Palace buildings radiated countless blinding and pressurized lines of bright gold. They crisscrossed to form an invisible, inescapable net.
Ignis squinted.
He couldn’t see the situation inside the Imperial Palace clearly.
The Twilight Tower was transparent to him, but the other palaces and towers outside it seemed to be blocked by a thick barrier. He could only see a few stray flows of emotion escaping from the interiors.
He couldn’t see through the upper levels, let alone the potential Abyssal Fissure mentioned in Alicia’s diary.
‘Is it because of the Imperial Palace’s protection array?’
However, that wasn’t his primary goal. The urgent matter now was finding Villanelle, and Ignis wasn’t sure how long he could maintain this state.
Adjusting his position to move in front of the Tower’s main gate, Ignis followed that incredibly familiar scent and gave chase.
The scenery of the mountain road was absent from his vision; there were only flowing colors belonging to emotions.
Along the way, he saw splashes of deep brown exhaustion, hurried dark blue, and the occasional flash of bright, excited orange. At a junction leading toward a magnificent grand hall, he caught a few wisps of viscous dark red, mixed with the rusty scent of calculation.
Everything around him felt exceptionally fresh. The world presented itself to him in a completely different form.
Gradually, the Academy area appeared before him, and a clamorous sea of emotions surged toward him.
Youth, restlessness, desire, ambition, anxiety, and joy — all sorts of mixed colors churned incessantly, nearly overwhelming his senses.
Ignis froze in place. It took him a long while to finish processing the information bombarding his senses, but he still couldn’t pinpoint Villanelle’s exact location. He could only vaguely feel that her “anchor” was moving steadily through this chaotic sea of color.
A faint headache began to throb in his physical body back in reality.
He knew his mental strength was being depleted, but since he had already come this far, how could he not look a little longer?
Ignis’s gaze finally touched upon the massive architectural silhouette at the center of the Academy.
He perceived an even more complex aura.
The primary tones were large patches of anxious orange caused by busyness and a pale gray of physical exhaustion. But atop this seemingly normal background, there were dark, sunken stains that constantly seeped with cold malice.
They were like spots of mold scattered across a white cloth.
Several clusters of black stains were perched throughout the main Tower, radiating a dark pleasure that anticipated chaos. One cluster was wrapped around a nearby building, leaking a cold desire for destruction. The densest cluster seemed to seep out from beneath a building, carrying a distorted, almost fanatical focus.
At the intersection with the golden lines on the ground that symbolized Order, the color of the stains was so dark it almost seemed to drip like ink.
‘This… this is…’
Ignis’s molten-gold eyes widened.
He finally knew where his sense of unease had come from.
There were things in those places. Whether they were people or something else, it wasn’t a good sign.
He couldn’t help but turn his head to look back at the phantom image of the Imperial Palace on the mountain behind him.
Under the Emperor’s very feet, such trouble could occur? Had even the Imperial Guard failed to notice, allowing a mastermind to tamper with the Academy?
He wanted to stay a little longer and observe more details of those black spots, but the headache returned, far more intense than before.
Ignis knew he couldn’t wait any longer. His mental strength had been severely drained during this trip.
‘I have to get back quickly…’
The moment that thought surfaced, he felt his body drop violently. In the next second, the cold sensation of the floor reached him through his seated legs, followed immediately by a sharp pain in his brain.
“Hiss…” Ignis let out a pained cry. He clutched his head and rolled on the ground, seeing stars as his vision went dark at the edges.
He fought to stay conscious, refusing to pass out.
No one knew how long he would be out if he fell, and it would be disastrous if Villanelle saw him like this. Not only would she worry for nothing, but he would also have to find a way to make up an excuse.
It took a long time for him to slowly calm down, though his brain was still throbbing.
The mental exhaustion from this long-distance reconnaissance seemed even more severe than the time in the basement.
Fortunately, he hadn’t come away empty-handed.
Ignis struggled to hop onto the table and moved to the window, looking down at the brilliant yet murky lights at the foot of the mountain.
Villanelle was there, working right next to that malice.