“Hanan? Is she okay?” said Veric.

“What’s the situation?” said Luka.

“How dangerous is it?” said Roxana.

These guys.

“She’s with three members of the Order, and she’s unconscious,” I said. “It looks like they’re resting right now, and possibly guarding her. Not sure if they captured her or if she’s with them willingly.”

“You don’t think she’s a traitor, do you?” Veric asked. “She was wounded in the initial attack, you know.”

I’d done worse to keep up a facade. “Let’s just keep the possibility open. Either way, she’s bound to have information, so let’s do our best to secure her.”

“Now?” Roxana asked. “Shouldn’t we observe a little first?”

Normally, I would have agreed. Unfortunately… “The visual disaster is less than a day away, and we don’t know how long it will take for them to expose anything useful when they’re just resting in camp like that.” Plus, the longer we waited, the worse my curse was going to get. “Time is ticking.”

“That’s true, but if you want to maintain a good condition, you’ll need to rest eventually,” Veric said. “Maybe now would be a good opportunity.”

“It’s better to rest with all the cards in our hands, rather than the enemy’s,” Luka said. It was a sentiment I deeply approved of. He looked at me. “Do you have a plan in mind?”

Fighting everyone would have been simple. The tricky part of this was securing Hanan in a way that accounted for her possibly being an ally or an enemy.

I asked Roxana, “Do you have a way to put people to sleep?”

She twirled a strand of lavender hair around her finger. “I can relax their body and soothe their spirits. It’s not exactly the same, but it has a decent sedative effect.”

“Good enough,” I said, and outlined my proposed plan.

I wanted one team to lure people away from the camp; one team to secure Hanan. Roxana had to be on the latter to both heal Hanan and keep her unconscious. Luka was the best choice to accompany her and carry out any necessary ambushes, because Veric was more of an endurance fighter and I was in bad condition.

That left Veric and I as the bait, but Veric was too high-profile of a target. If she appeared, and Hanan was the Order’s ally, what would happen if they went all-out to catch her? So I should be the one to lure people away from camp. Once we were far enough away, Veric could take over the fight while I ran away.

It took some arguing, but they eventually accepted my plan.

Between Veric’s sense for nearby bodies of water and my catalogue of perspectives, we roughly mapped out the nearby caverns. Then we split into our teams.

Luka gestured for Roxana to follow him down a narrow passageway obscured by a thick curtain of hanging moss. Meanwhile, Veric and I went down the cavern to a wider tunnel, stepping carefully through the thin layer of water running over the rocks.

According to Roxana, I only had a few minutes before the healing blessing she gave me ran out. I used [Caller] to cut the back of my forearm and smear some blood on myself, and I scooped up some mud to mess up my appearance as well.

“How do I look?” I said.

“Like you’ve just been through hell,” said Veric. She handed me the golden dagger. “Be careful.”

I took off Jules’ sunglasses, but my vision remained dark. I guess I was fully blind now. “Here, keep these safe for me. I don’t want them to break. If I call for help, come quick.”

Then I headed down the tunnel on my own.

Once I exited Veric’s range of vision, I had to carefully feel my way forward. However, it was only a short distance before I entered the next human perspective’s field of vision.

Up ahead, the tunnel widened into the small cavern where the Order members were resting. Water trickled down from narrow veins in the wall to gather in a deep pool that occupied half of the cavern. The rippling water reflected the light of nearby glowing flowers, sending it dancing across the stone walls.

Beneath the pool, hidden by darkness, was a narrow underwater passage. That was the route Luka and Roxana would use to ambush the camp and secure Hanan. My job was to give them an opening.

I slowly limped forward into the Order’s sight, putting on a haggard expression and leaning on the rocky walls for support. I clutched the golden dagger in my free hand, holding it near my stained dress shirt so it would stand out against the mud.

The Order members looked up at the sound of my strained breathing and rustling clothes. As if noticing their movement, I looked up and met their eyes. I froze in place. Then I turned and ran back the way I came.

One of the Order members leaped up and chased me immediately. The second hesitated, gestured for the third member to stay and guard Hanan, and ran after us. The third watched everyone run off for a while, before they finally moved back to sit next to Hanan.

Good. The dagger meant that they’d definitely pursue me, but my supposedly injured state meant they wouldn’t take me too seriously as a threat. This way, I could lure them away without risking them disturbing Hanan. After all, if she turned out to be a collaborator and they woke her up, wouldn’t that be terrible for us?

Now it was up to Luka to make the final strike.

Thanks to the Order members chasing me, I could see where to put my feet as I ran. However, Roxana’s blessing was fading. Despite the short distance, my lungs were already starting to burn. Every step sent a painful jolt up my spine.

The first pursuer unsheathed a plain sword that ignited with green aura. He pointed it at my back and swung.

I ducked as I leaped forward, dodging inches beneath the green crescent aura that swept past my head, and I rolled through the shallow water down the sloping rock. With a kick of my foot, I launched back into running position and burst around the bend, into the open cavern where we’d first made our plan. I veered towards the wide river that flowed across the cavern floor.

Just as the two Order members stepped foot into the cavern, Veric dropped down from above and ambushed them from behind, striking with her dragon phantom’s claws.

The swordsman barely managed to block in time, but her blow knocked him off his feet, sending him rolling to the water’s edge. However, before she could press the advantage, a sudden flurry of daggers made of orange aura forced her to leap back. It was the second pursuer. As Veric retreated, she took the opportunity to throw a barrage of daggers at me as well.

I dodged, letting them fly past me, but the daggers’ paths curved mid-air. Too late, I noticed the thin wires attached to their handles, glimmering with a faint orange aura. They tightened around me like a snare.

Hastily, I summoned my own aura to reinforce my body, but the wires still cut through skin and muscle like tofu.

Son of a bitch. That hurt!

“Acacius!” Veric rushed towards me, but the swordsman, now recovered, blocked her way. He brandished his aura-enforced sword.

“Get the blade!” he snapped. In response, the dagger-thrower yanked on the wires, dragging my body across the ground and a scream out of my throat. I scrabbled to cut the wires, but my arms were pinned to my sides, and my aura wasn’t enough to cut through hers. The golden dagger in my hand bounced right off.

I couldn’t win with aura. Veric was currently trading blows with the swordsman and couldn’t come help me. If things continued as they were, I was practically a sitting duck.

So I let go of the aura force frame and reached for another.

The ribbons of the sacrificial flow frame brushed past my fingers. I grabbed on, injecting as much power as I could, and my senses came alive.

I felt the motion of the wind, the displacement of air around each moving body, and most powerful of all, the flow of the water beside me.

As the sacrificial flow frame became clearer in my senses, the Order members’ auras sputtered out. The swordsman’s attack lost its reach halfway through an attack. The wires binding me lost their orange sheen. Veric sprang forward, grabbing her opponent’s now unprotected sword and snapping it between her phantom claws.

The dagger-thrower cursed, hauling me closer with the wires. It really felt like she was going to cut straight to the bone. She pulled a dagger out from her waist, raising it above my chest.

Time for another desperate gambit.

“Veric!” I yelled, not sure if it was a cry for help or a warning.

I sent sparks of power out from my hands. Wind roared towards the river as the ribbons I controlled abruptly veered its way. My wind-flow ribbons boomeranged around the water-ribbon flows and curved back towards my hand…

Pulling the flow of the river with them.

The water rose out of its riverbed, a great snake rearing its head, bucking wildly out of control.

“What the fuck?” said the dagger-thrower.

It crashed over the bank and swept us all away.

For a moment, everyone’s vision was covered with white-water currents. I was slammed against a stone column so hard my head rang.

A strong force hit the taut wires still pulling on me, digging into my wounds. I cried out. The wires snapped. Veric reached out and grabbed me by the shirt, and with a few quick slashes of her claws, she cut the wires off me completely.

“Stay back, and stay safe,” she shouted over the roar of the water, shoving me towards the riverbank.

Then, swift as an eel, she dove into the chaotic currents.

Without someone looking at me, I could only rely on the sacrificial flow frame to read my surroundings. I swam for the surface and nudged the nearby ribbons to push me towards the riverbank. Then I felt around for a rock formation and held on for dear life.

Once I was safely anchored, I focused back on the flow ribbons around me. The water was subsiding back into the riverbed. I located Veric’s underwater fight via her perspective and sent energy to the water-flow ribbons near her, manipulating them to hinder her opponents’ movements.

Compared to the elegant net barrier that the Order had set up, my manipulations were barely anything. However, it served its purpose. The swordsman and dagger-thrower were unable to use their aura abilities, and in the dim and frothy water, they struggled to see well. Veric swam in the water better than a fish. Her dragon phantom grew in size; its tail nearly doubled in length, and its claws and teeth sharpened. In the water, every wound she received instantly healed. She easily outmaneuvered them, positioning herself above them to keep them from swimming to the surface and escaping the water.

In short order, she beat the Order members down to the riverbed and killed them.

For a moment, she just watched their bodies float away into the darkness.

Then she emerged from the river and hurried to where I was lying on the bank. Which was good, because I needed the help.

I propped myself up so I wouldn’t look so corpse-like lying on the ground like that, but I couldn’t do much about the deep cuts oozing blood all over my clothes. “You finished up,” I said, deliberately light. “Why didn’t you salvage the bodies? They might have had something useful.”

“Forget about that, you’re bleeding out.” She took the golden dagger from my weak grasp and scooped me up in a princess carry that jostled all my wounds. I groaned. “Where’s Roxana?”

“Back at the Order’s camp… Luka finished off the last enemy just now.”

Veric nodded and sprinted down the tunnel. Every step sent a fresh jolt of pain through my injuries. If Roxana couldn’t fix me up, I was kind of screwed.

“Veric. The sunglasses?”

“Now’s not the time!”

“Just tell me.” I forced myself to raise my arm, patting Veric’s shoulder before slowly feeling for the collar of her coat. “Where are your pockets?”

Veric cursed. “Just keep your eyes shut if you want to hide it from Roxana so much!”

Right. With so much blood on my dress shirt, it wouldn’t be strange for me to keep my eyes closed. I sighed and let my hand fall away.

When we got to the camp, Luka was wiping down his sword with the last Order member’s cloak, and Roxana was holding her glowing hands over Hanan’s forehead with a frown.

Veric made a beeline for her and laid me next to Hanan. “Roxana, help, quickly.”

Roxana opened her eyes and gasped. She moved over to my side, placing her hands over my chest, and a blue glow spread over my body. The pain subsided, and my wounds began to knit together. A groan of relief escaped my mouth without conscious input.

“You’re in terrible state,” she said. “What happened to you?”

“Acacius played bait a little too well,” Veric said tightly. She pulled the sunglasses out from her inner coat pocket, placing them carefully over my face. “I told you we should have done it together.”

“Isn’t it pretty good to only have one casualty so far?” I mumbled.

Veric pursed her lips but didn’t argue with me. She turned to Roxana. “How are things over here?”

“I tried to keep Hanan sedated, like we discussed. I was able to release the tension from her body and help her relax physically… But I couldn’t reach her mind.”

“What? Why not?”

“I don’t know. Some of the Dragon’s blessings can’t take hold of her. It’s like her soul is missing.”

I frowned. “Don’t tell me that one of the Order members used some soul-stealing technique on her, and we’ve screwed her over by killing them.”

“Um, maybe her soul will come back on its own,” Veric said weakly.

No need to be overly optimistic. Got it.

“Any clues on why the Order kept her with them?”

“I’m not sure,” said Roxana. “What about you, Luka?”

Luka, having finished cleaning his sword, was now fiddling with the compass. He silently paced around the campsite, then came to a stop next to us and waved the compass from side to side.

The needle was pointing towards Hanan.

Luka thought for a moment, crouched down, and unbuttoned Hanan’s vest. Veric sucked in a breath as black energy gathered around his hand. “Luka?”

Under his hand, the inside of Hanan’s vest rippled. A pocket materialized out of shadow, holding a small leather-bound booklet within. Luka took it out and flipped through it, revealing page after page of carefully encased cards.

He pulled one out and showed us the picture at the top.

Professor Raoul, dressed in an unfamiliar set of green and gold robes, smiled out at us. Though he was bathed in bright light, it couldn’t banish the darkness that lingered at the edges of the card, or the upright black swords stabbed into the ground around him.

Beneath his portrait, the card read:

RAOUL SATTARI ∙ CRUCIBLE OF KATSOULI

SKILL ∙ [Lotus of the Betrayed]
◾◾◾◾◾◾◾◾◾◾ ◾◾◾◾◾◾◾◾◾◾

TALENT ∙ [Broken Faith, Unbroken Love]
◾◾◾◾◾◾◾◾◾◾ ◾◾◾◾◾◾◾◾◾◾

Judging by the ensuing silence, this was pretty bad.

“Who’s the owner of the card deck?” Veric said finally.

“I don’t know.”

“The border is glowing,” Roxana noted. “Our professor must be sealed inside. Contract cards are formed between two willing parties, so the deck owner must be someone he trusts. It doesn’t seem like he knew Hanan before this trip, though.”

Or Professor Raoul could be a good actor. “Could he have been tricked or coerced into forming the contract?” I asked.

Roxana nodded. “Once the contract is formed, there exist some sinister methods to forcibly seal a summon into the card. I don’t think he would have formed the contract lightly.”

“So how do we unseal him?”

“It can only be done by the possessor of the contract.”

Everyone looked at the unconscious, soulless Hanan.

“Let’s look through the rest of the deck first,” I said.

However, the other cards were either blank, or else the information and pictures were all blacked out.

“These blank cards are empty contract slots,” said Roxana. “As for the black cards… I think they’ve been obscured by the power of the Secret-Keeper. The deck owner must have paid a visit to one of their temples.”

“Why wouldn’t Professor Raoul’s card be included in the secret, then?” I said.

“Maybe his contract wasn’t established at the time, or his card didn’t fully meet the conditions.”

And we didn’t have any known priests of the Secret-Keeper around to help with that. Just great.

Now that Roxana had finished healing me, it didn’t hurt at all to lift my arm and rub a hand over my face.

Maybe it was time to take a step back and evaluate the bigger picture.

“Roxana. You’re knowledgeable about the world. Why do you think the Order is even doing this in the first place? You said they believe in the proper stewardship of knowledge. Even if they have a grudge against the Broken Kaleidoscope, why target all of us at Nithemoore?”

“Well… Just consider what would happen if the Order’s attack succeeds. Nithemoore represents the future elites of Iyiria. The next generation of nobles and officials die here, and the Broken Kaleidoscope’s branch is gutted. Any possible traitor survives to control the narrative of what happened inside the Fantasm World. I don’t know who they’ll blame, but Iyiria and the Broken Kaleidoscope will both want resources and reparations, so it’s the perfect time for a traitor to turn them against each other.”

“Then is the Order targeting the Broken Kaleidoscope, or Iyiria?”

“The Broken Kaleidoscope could lose Iyiria’s political protection in Fulsgate, as well as funding for research into KP-04. That would leave it vulnerable to assimilation from the Lemirian Empire. If a military conflict occurs, it would be a good time for the Order to steal information and take control. But if they’re targeting Iyiria…”

Roxana twisted her hands.

“First, they could cut off Iyiria’s diplomatic ties with the Broken Kaleidoscope, which means they lose access to Fulsgate as a trading hub and method of transport, and they lose access to all of the Broken Kaleidoscope’s other avenues of research, too. Not to mention, losing this generation of Nithemoore students will be a great blow; Professor Raoul an important national asset, after all, and there are at least four scions from the Six Noble Families here.”

Based on the Fellowship of the Silver Wing’s members, that would be Acacius, Nastaran, Xander, and Mehran, right?

“Last, but most importantly, by assassinating Veric here, if they create a weapon to kill the Great Dragon and manage to carry out an assassination… Iyiria will completely fall apart.”

This went way beyond just two birds with one stone. “And they would want that because…?”

Roxana sighed.

“Isn’t it obviously because of the Great Dragon’s hoard?”

Crap. What the hell was that?

“Do you think they’ve allied with human extremists?” Veric said in a low voice.

“I don’t know, but… They would certainly have common goals.”

I didn’t understand everything, but it was enough to know that the Order had many reasons for wanting to target Nithemoore here.

What would have happened if I didn’t give a warning at the beginning?

The Order would’ve been free to execute their ambush exactly as planned. Who knew how many students would have perished. Then they could have picked off Veric and tortured her to death however they pleased, and without Veric’s blessings, it would have been difficult for everyone to survive the flooding caverns.

Now that I thought about it, it was scary how well prepared they had come.

“The Order might also just want to take control of KP-04 itself,” Roxana said. “Of all the worlds that the Broken Kaleidoscope researches, there’s a reason they named themselves after the kaleidoscope perspective frame. In their eyes, it has the most potential.”

“No wonder they put so much preparation into this,” Veric said quietly. “Will we… even be able to make it out?”

For a while, no one said anything.

I didn’t feel great either, but something had to be done before morale could fall too low.

“Since we’ve found both Professor Raoul and Hanan, let’s take a short rest,” I said. “We’ll need to keep our energy up to make it through this.”

“What’s the plan after this?” Luka said.

I shrugged half-heartedly. “Kill as many members of the Order as we can before the fourth day arrives?”

Otherwise, once the “visual disaster” struck, we’d have too many hidden threats pointing at our backs.

“The visual disaster arrives around two o’clock of the fourth day. We have about sixteen hours until then,” Luka estimated. “It’s enough time for us to take turns resting. Two at a time, one and a half hours each.”

“I can keep watch for the first shift,” said Veric. “Acacius, Luka, why don’t you get some rest first?”

Luka nodded his assent and leaned against the cave wall, propping his sword up within a moment’s grasp. He closed his eyes easily. How enviable.

However, I declined.

“I should stay alert in case one of those ‘eyes’ appears again.”

“The rest of us will feel it if it comes too close, too. Besides, it’s fine even if you sleep. I can sense a lot through the water.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know if I can relax enough to fall asleep, anyways.”

She hesitated before asking, “How about letting Roxana help with that?”

I… really didn’t want to.

However, it was true that I was running on fumes. As much as Roxana’s blessings had helped, the tension of the last half day had taken a serious toll. The longer I pushed myself, the more likely I was to make a mistake.

“Will I still be able to wake up on my own?”

“Yes. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to wake you if anything happens too.”

Luka cracked open one eye to look at me. The threads shimmered in his vision.

“And you’ll definitely be the one to keep watch?” I said. In terms of personality and motivation, she was the only one I felt I could fully trust.

“I will.”

“Even if nothing happens, you have to wake me up within an hour and a half.”

“Alright.”

It wasn’t enough to put me at ease, but probably nothing was.

“I’ll entrust myself to you, then,” I said, because I wanted to tie her down with the obligation to protect me while I was vulnerable.

Veric was a good person, but it was her misfortune to be entangled with someone like me.

“Don’t worry. I’ll definitely keep you safe,” she said. “Roxana?”

For whatever reason, Roxana didn’t have a smart remark to make. She just lay a hand on my forehead and murmured a soft prayer.

The anxiety and tension drained out of me, and in its place, exhaustion hit me like a ton of bricks.

Ah, wait.

As long as I was sleeping, I should check…

…

…

…

[Your title, {Bound Prophet of the Single Path}, has been invoked.]

Chapter 27 Chapter 29