Mirac's breath stopped.
Carmen's words echoed like the strike of a sword in the silence, cutting through the last thread of trust he had left.
His hand trembled slightly, his nails digging into his palm, creating reddish grooves.
"N-No, it's not possible…!" Mirac stammered, taking a step back, as if trying to escape the weight of that truth.
His legs wavered, ready to buckle not only under the weight of exhaustion, but also from the brutal blow of that revelation, which seemed to want to overwhelm and break him.
But soon after, he regained his balance.
"Y-You…"
His voice became sharper, poisoned with contempt:
"You… You betrayed me… You condemned me to this hell!"
Carmen's gaze remained impassive, but her fingers tightened around the torch handle with such force that the wood creaked, threatening to splinter.
"It's not that simple, young Prince…" she tried to say, her tone calm yet heavy with an underlying tension. "If you allow me to explain-"
"Explain?!" Mirac moved suddenly towards the door, slamming his bloody hand against the bars.
The metal resonated with a grim clang.
It was as if that revelation had recharged him with new energy—one last, desperate surge from the depths of his being to fuel the rage that now boiled uncontrollably inside him.
"There's nothing to explain!" Mirac exclaimed. "You made sure they locked me up here! That they hated me! That they wanted me dead!"
Each word was like a lash, an unforgiving blow.
"And now you have the nerve to show up here? To 'save me,' you said?! Do you really think I can still trust you?! Do you really think I'll believe what you say to justify what you've done?! Forget it!"
The bars vibrated again, their metallic lament mixing with the crackling of the torch.
Carmen remained unmoved by Mirac's fury, but the dancing light revealed a barely perceptible contraction in her eyelids.
A flicker of pain.
Or perhaps, of regret…
"Believe me, young Prince," she whispered, her voice lower but unshakable, "if I had had another choice, I would never have-"
"CHOICE?!" Mirac interrupted her again, his bloodied fingers squeezing the bars like claws. "I don't know how you found out about my Chaotic nature, but one thing I'm pretty sure of: you could've kept quiet! You wanted the money? You could've blackmailed me! You wanted my life? You could've tried to kill me! But tell me… why do all this?! What's the point of ruining my life?!"
A long sigh escaped her lips. The torchlight caressed her features, casting shadows in her eyes.
"You're terribly mistaken, young Prince. I understand that, at first glance, revealing your secret to your family might seem like a despicable act towards you. But it's not like that! You might not believe me, but my duty is to protect you at any cost, regardless of what you are. And indeed, everything I've done so far… has been solely to fulfill this duty."
Mirac gritted his teeth, his chest rising and falling with broken breaths.
Instinct screamed at him to keep inveighing, to let himself be consumed by anger.
But instead, he turned abruptly, clenching his fist.
"Enough! I don't want to hear your bullshit anymore," he said, stepping away from the door. "You're just a hypocrite, nothing more."
He didn't even give her time to respond before shouting, with all the rage still burning in his chest:
"AND NOW BE GONE! I don't ever want to see you again…"
The air thickened, became sticky, as if time itself had petrified around that request.
But the red-haired servant didn't move. She didn't obey the order to leave.
She stood still, her feet firmly planted on the ground, the silence stretching between them like a heavy veil.
After a moment of reflection, Carmen spoke again, her voice low but filled with an intensity that allowed no interruption:
"Young Prince… You, like the rest of the world, are aware of the existence of the so-called Seven Magical Frequency Readers: the only instruments capable of determining whether a person is Chaotic or not. But they are such large and imposing machines that they cannot be transported by the Purifiers. And for this very reason, all prototypes are located in the Sacred Region, immobile, where they were built. But have you ever wondered how many of the people summoned for the test turned out to be non-Chaotic? And how many of them returned alive to their homes after the examination?"
She paused dramatically, letting her words linger for a moment in the heavy air of the cell, before answering her own question:
"Well, I'll tell you: zero!"
Mirac continued to ignore her, heading for the dark corner of the cell.
But Carmen's voice followed him, growing even sharper:
"And now tell me… doesn't all of this raise any suspicion in you? Why is it that the newspapers never report on the 'Chaotics' who are executed? And why are the only Seven Magical Frequency Readers in the world located in the Sacred Region? From which, by the way, no one has ever returned alive after the test to tell what happens there…"
Mirac stopped abruptly.
"So what?" he asked, his voice tense. "What are you trying to say?"
Carmen took a deep breath before answering:
"It's very simple, young Prince… The Seven Magical Frequency Readers do not exist. They have never actually existed!"
"What?!" Mirac spun around, staring at her in disbelief. "What are you saying?"
Carmen kept her gaze steady, without blinking.
"Unfortunately, it's the truth. They're just a conventional invention of the Sacred Region to instill fear among the Chaotics hidden within the population."
Mirac couldn't believe Carmen's words.
Not only because he lacked trust in her, but also because the very idea that it could actually be true was too vast and overwhelming to process all at once.
"So… you're telling me that the Purifiers and the Sacred Region never actually had any means or tools to recognize whether someone is Chaotic or not?"
"Exactly," Carmen replied, her voice calm but filled with a gravity that left no room for rebuttal. "Or at least, that's what I would have told you five days ago…"
Mirac furrowed his brow, confused.
"Hmm? What do you mean?"
Carmen responded immediately:
"It hasn't been publicly announced yet, not even to the governments of other kingdoms. Practically no one knows about it because it's still a state secret. But the Kingdom of Luxendar has just finished developing a new technology…"
She paused for a second, letting the silence charge her next words with tension:
"A new invention by Andra Nucci, this time capable of truly distinguishing the magical nature of the Syntonies!"
Mirac's eyes widened, speechless.
His mind raced, trying to process the enormity of what he had just heard.
"So," Carmen continued, without waiting for Mirac to say anything, "if before the Purifiers only relied on reports and suspicions falling on a particular person, without having a real tool to detect magical frequency, things will soon change drastically! As you can imagine, once this technology is released publicly, all hell will break loose! The Chaotics, who have been hiding among ordinary people so far, will soon be exposed one by one by the Purifiers. The latter, in fact, with the new and authentic Magical Frequency Reader—small in size and easy to carry around—will begin a true global hunt! But this time, they will be able to instantly identify who possesses an Anomalous Syntony or not, without fearing to strike an innocent. And, of course, all of this concerns you too! If anyone were to ever use this tool on you in the future, you would be instantly discovered for what you are: a Chaotic! And as you well know, not even with the absolute power of a sovereign could you escape a public execution."
Mirac remained silent for a long time after those words, feeling Carmen's cold tone crystallize the air between them.
'Huh, th-this is absurd!' thought the prisoner, clenching his jaw. 'So before, the world government was just pretending to have a tool for reading magical frequencies, but now they actually have it?! Yeah, right, sure! Does she really think I'll believe her? After everything she's done to me?'
However, Mirac didn't want to prolong the conversation unnecessarily and decided to pretend to be convinced in order to understand where Carmen was going with this speech.
"Alright…" Mirac finally said, his voice low but filled with tension. "I don't know how you found out about the existence of the new magical frequency reading tool, since you yourself called it a state secret… But let's assume for now that what you just said is true. Then what? If that were the only problem—that there's a risk I might be discovered in the future because of this device—you could have simply warned me in secret with an anonymous letter. Instead, you chose to send it to my family, revealing to them that I am a Chaotic. So, do you want to explain to me once and for all why the hell you did it?!"
Carmen sighed, the flame of the torch in her hand flickering slightly at her breath.
"I just wanted… to open your eyes, young Prince…"
"Open my eyes?!" Mirac roared, his voice echoing against the bare walls. "What the hell are you talking about?!"
Carmen huffed, her patience hanging by a thread.
"Oh, come on, do you really not understand?!" she snapped.
Her voice grew harsher, charged with an emotion that had been suppressed for too long.
"I'm talking about your family, your life at court, and everything that surrounded you!" she exclaimed. "Without me, you'd still be living in a lie, under the illusion that you could lead a normal life! But you are a Chaotic! And as such, you will never have a normal life! You must give up the crown and the false hope of becoming the future sovereign… because that is not the right choice for you."
Mirac opened his mouth to argue—to say "And what do you know about what's best for me?!"—but Carmen gave him no chance:
"Everything a person owns in this world is nothing more than something fleeting, something that can disappear in an instant, the moment they die or become a Chaotic. Family, the affection it offers, and life itself are all subject to this harsh reality. It's only natural, then, that to protect themselves, the family of a Chaotic might react with hostility and act against the one who threatens to drag them into the abyss. Because, after all, this is the true nature of humanity, young Prince: sacrificing others for one's own survival."
She paused for a moment, her eyes gleaming with a dark and relentless emotion.
"No one wants to admit it, because we're too busy trying to appear good and magnanimous in the eyes of others. But in truth, we are constantly driven by deep selfishness, both in our small daily actions and, above all, when it comes to survival. And in this world, those who fail to accept this wretched part of themselves all meet the same fate, young Prince: they break, they weep as they submit to fate's decree, and they surrender to its cruel sentences, ending up like a miserable stray dog locked in a cage…"
With a sudden movement, Carmen grasped the bars of the porthole once again, gripping them so tightly that the torch flames illuminating the door trembled.
The flickering light heightened the tension of that cold, silent night.
"And now tell me, young Prince…" she whispered, her voice now low but searing. "Is this what you want to do with your life?!"
Mirac didn't know what to say.
His expression, once twisted with rage, softened into boundless uncertainty.
His gaze slowly dropped to the ground.
"Y-You can't understand…" he began, his voice reduced to a broken whisper, which gradually strengthened. "You can't understand what I'm feeling! Seeing my own family hate me for something I never chose… it's nothing short of horrible!"
The shadows of the cell seemed to close in around him, eager to devour any lingering shred of hope.
"All I ever wanted was to live a normal life…"
A shiver ran down his spine, and sadness threatened to overwhelm him with tears.
But then, with a deep breath, he pushed away the sobs that were about to come.
He straightened his back and his posture, and his voice became more resolute:
"But fortunately, I can still fix this!"
Mirac lifted his gaze.
His eyelids, still damp, betrayed an unyielding determination.
"A person can break their Syntony if their harmonization with the element drops to zero, right? And if we assume this also applies to Anomalous Syntonies, then sooner or later, it could happen to me too!"
His voice was now steady, polished by certainty.
His hand rested on his chest, over the spot where his heart beat—fast and stubborn.
"So, all I have to do is stay here until the hatred I feel for what I am in Syntony with breaks the magical bond. That way, I will finally be free once and for all from what has branded me as a Chaotic!"
Carmen remained silent for a few seconds.
"It won't work," she simply said. "By now, you should have figured it out for yourself: an Anomalous Syntony doesn't follow the same rules as an Elemental one."
Indeed, Mirac had hated Math from the very first day he had acquired a Syntony with it.
And yet, it had remained a part of him. Even now, at the lowest and most wretched point of his existence.
Even with all the hatred he had harbored over the years, it had never shown the slightest sign of detaching from him.
So, inevitably, he had begun to resign himself to the idea that breaking his Anomalous Syntony was impossible.
But now, more than ever, one single thought roared in his mind:
"It will work!" Mirac clenched his fist. "It has to work!"
Carmen sighed.
"You are truly stubborn, young Prince. But what strikes me even more is your naivety. This obstinacy of yours, which you like to paint as noble determination, is nothing more than a mere hope that the world will bend to your will and welcome you with mercy. You cling to the idea that perhaps, by some miracle, everything can go back to how it once was, as if the past were a safe haven waiting for you with open arms. But let me tell you something…"
Carmen's face suddenly hardened, her features carved into a cold, distant mask—an expression Mirac had never seen before, not even when his servant had faced Klark in battle.
"Nothing will ever go back to the way it was."
Carmen's words fell like a verdict—cold and final, slicing through the air with the precision of a guillotine.
"Even if, by some absurd chance, you managed to break your Anomalous Syntony—assuming that's even possible for a Chaotic—do you really think this would solve everything? That staying for life in some corner, cursing yourself, consumed by remorse and self-pity, would be enough? I'm sorry to tell you, but that's not how it works. The truth, young Prince, the one you refuse to face, is that from the exact moment you discovered you were a Chaotic, you should have turned your back on everything. Abandon every dream, every ambition, every bond. Flee far away, disappear into the shadows, and never be seen again. Instead, you stayed, fully aware that your very presence in the castle was a constant risk to the lives of your family. And if you'll allow me to be brutal—because someone has to be—your staying, knowing all this, was an act of astonishing arrogance, almost childish. A selfish act that reveals how little, deep down, you've ever truly cared for those you claim to love."
Mirac stood frozen, silent, his breath held as if the weight of Carmen's words had crushed him against the cold stones of the cell.
The woman with red hair stared at him, relentless, her eyes gleaming with a sharp light, something Mirac couldn't quite decipher.
"Not going to say anything?" she asked, tilting her head slightly, her voice dropping into a sharp whisper. "No brilliant retort, no attempt to justify yourself? Or perhaps, finally, you're starting to realize that there are no words to defend what you've done… or rather, what you didn't have the courage to do."
Mirac opened his mouth, but quickly shut it again, his lips trembling.
What could he possibly say?
There was nothing he could retort, nothing that didn't ring hollow or fragile against the raw truth Carmen had hurled at him.
'Why…?' Mirac wondered, with a faint, trembling inner voice, as his fingers, which had been clenched into a fist until that moment, slowly relaxed. 'Now that I think about it… why did I never consider the idea of disappearing? Of leaving, far away from everything and everyone? I could have taken refuge in some remote place, in a forgotten corner of the world, and lived in peace. In this way, not only would I have avoided this disaster, but I would have also spared myself the constant risk of someone discovering me and reporting me, thus protecting my family's lives. But then… why didn't I do it? What stopped me? What held me back? What prevented me from making the best decision for everyone?'
Then, like a shadow slowly emerging from the darkness, a disturbing thought took shape in his mind, seeping through the cracks in his consciousness:
'Is it possible… that she's right? That it's always been my own selfishness holding me back? A hidden, subtle desire in the depths of my mind to not want to abandon a life opposite to the one I had before—comfortable, filled with luxury and privilege?'
Mirac lowered his gaze, his heart tightening.
Something inside him cracked, a silent but devastating sound.
But before Mirac could dig deeper into that abyss of uncertainties, Carmen interrupted the flow of his thoughts. Her hands clenched tightly around the iron bars separating them, her knuckles white from the pressure.
"Staying here is completely pointless, and deep down, you know it too," she said, her tone firm, almost accusatory. "But do you really want to pretend everything is okay? Do you really want to throw away your whole life, everything you are and everything you've achieved, for a family that didn't hesitate for a second to turn against you and try to kill you?"
A heavy silence, charged with tension, fell between them.
"I-I… I don't know…" Mirac stammered.
"Yes, you do!" Carmen shot back, raising her voice. "Stop lying to yourselves! Stop trying to escape from who you really are! Throw away this pointless mask you insist on wearing, and act to achieve what you truly want!"
"What I truly want?" he repeated, almost lost.
"Exactly!" she insisted, her eyes blazing. "Why have you always trained with a sword? Why have you kept your Anomalous Syntony a secret all this time? Why have you never given up or thrown in the towel, even in the face of a formidable enemy like Klark?"
Mirac lowered his gaze, his hand trembling slightly.
"Because…" he hesitated for a second, but then continued, "Because… I wanted to protect everything I had… until the very end…"
"Yeah, I think so too," Carmen said, for a moment almost softening her tone. "The role of Prince, your prosperous wealth, your family… But now that you've lost all of that, what else is there left to protect?"
Mirac felt a shiver run up his spine as Carmen's words hit him like sharp blades.
The weight of his choices, the past that tormented him, and the uncertain future ahead became unbearable.
But deep down, beneath the fear and pain, a thought began to take root.
A distant memory emerged, slow and inevitable, from the depths of his subconscious…
A simple, undeniable truth.
"My life…" the boy finally whispered, his voice broken but filled with an old determination.
His life…
This was what Mirac had promised to protect from the day he discovered he was a Chaotic…
And it was also the same day Vector had sworn he would do anything to protect his second chance!
Carmen stared at him, her eyes narrowed into piercing slits.
"Protecting your life…" she whispered, then raised her voice, "And tell me: do you think you can do that by staying in this cell?"
"…" Mirac didn't answer.
"Then?" Carmen pressed, her tone sharp as a blade.
"N-No…" Mirac murmured finally.
"Good," she concluded, her voice firm. "If that's the case, you only have two options left…"
Carmen released her grip from the bars and raised her hand, fingers clenched except for one, which remained fully extended.
"The first is to stay here and die," she announced, her voice calm but cutting.
"Die?" Mirac asked. "But I can't-"
Carmen didn't give him time to finish:
"I assume your family believes you possess a Divine Blessing granted by Mother Nature, don't they?"
Mirac remained silent. A slight nod of his head was his only response, his eyes lowered, lost in a tangle of thoughts.
"Just as I thought," Carmen continued, with a tone that left no room for doubt. "But in reality, if you survived the deadly poison, it wasn't due to a Divine Blessing; it was solely because I used a powerful regenerative potion in the same dish they carefully poisoned that late afternoon, while I wasn't in the kitchen and no one was paying particular attention. That's what truly saved you from the poison."
"What?!" Mirac stood stunned. His voice trembled, unable to hide his shock.
"You heard me right," Carmen confirmed, impassive. "There's no Divine Blessing protecting you. And since no one is going to bother bringing you even a crust of bread, if you stay here, locked within these walls, you will surely starve to death sooner or later…"
Mirac was speechless, the words caught in his throat like stones.
His gaze wandered, unable to find any grip, as the silence grew heavier around him.
When he had woken up in the cell, he had easily been convinced by his family's words, embracing up until that point the idea that he truly possessed a Divine Blessing.
But now, after what Carmen had just revealed, the explanation for how he had survived the poison made much more sense, clearer and more solid.
After all, for what unfathomable reason would a Deity ever grant such a privilege to a Chaotic like him?
However, all this amounted to a single, bitter truth: Mirac was not truly "immortal" as he had thought.
In the end, he was as fragile and vulnerable as anyone else.
And staying locked in that cell, hoping to someday break his Anomalous Syntony, led to only one inevitable outcome: a miserable death.
Yet, despite the grim and unsettling implications of that discovery, Mirac remained unmoved, rooted to the ground.
He swallowed the lump in his throat not to relieve the dryness in his mouth, but to forcibly reclaim that confident demeanor that once belonged to him.
"The second option?" Mirac asked, his voice a rasp in the dark.
"It's very simple," Carmen said, raising another finger. "Leave here, abandon your life as a Prince, and come with me."
"Where?"
Carmen hesitated, her eyes barely narrowing as the two fingers curled inward, as though holding back a secret.
"I… I can't tell you yet…"
Mirac furrowed his brow, perplexed.
"And should I trust you?" he retorted, a spark of defiance in his gaze.
"No," she answered curtly. "I've already told you: the choice is entirely yours."
Mirac remained silent for a few seconds, lost in thought.
On one hand, this woman had betrayed him, condemned him to lose everything…
But on the other hand, had she really done it… for his own good?
The doubt weighed on him like a boulder.
As Mirac reflected, Carmen bent down and, with quick and sure movements, rummaged through the black backpack she had placed on the ground to her right when she had arrived.
Among the items inside, she pulled out a small vial, thin and delicate, containing a glowing green liquid.
She stood up fluidly and skillfully slid it through the bars, extending it towards the prisoner, urging him to take it.
"In any case, whether you decide to stay here or not, please, take this," she said, her voice calm but firm. "It's a Mana Restoration potion. After drinking it, your body will feel strong and energized again, and hunger and thirst will nearly vanish."
Mirac stood still, his gaze fixed on the vial swinging between her fingers.
A whirlwind of emotions squeezed his chest: anger, fear, distrust, and something else he couldn't quite define.
He felt trapped, not only by the cell, but by the weight of that decision.
"Carmen…" he began. "I'll be honest: I really don't understand you! I don't know what you're thinking, what your true intentions are, or why you're so determined to help me. Frankly, I don't even know if I should trust you, or believe everything you've told me so far… However!"
He took a step forward, then another, moving closer to the door. His shadow stretched out across the dirty floor, flickering in the dim light.
"However," he continued, his voice barely cracking, "despite all this… despite the mess you've put me in with your actions… despite the chaos you've thrown at me with your words… there's a part of me that can't ignore you. A part that wants to believe you're right. The same part of me that didn't despair when I found out I had an Anomalous Syntony… that I was a Chaotic… and that I was destined for a hard life. In fact: I was ready to stand against the whole world and do anything to protect my life!"
Mirac lifted his gaze, a sudden fire lighting up his pupils.
"But only now… I think I'm really ready to do it…"
Carmen stared at him, her face impassive, but in her eyes, a flash of satisfaction flickered, a shadow that vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
"So…?" she said, her voice flat but with a note of hidden anticipation beneath the surface.
Mirac gritted his teeth, his heart pounding in his chest.
He took the vial from Carmen's hands, their fingers briefly brushing through the bars.
The prisoner stared at the vial for a long moment, which sparkled like a fragment of hope in the dim light.
He held it in his hands for a moment, weighing it, as if assessing not only the contents, but the weight of the choice he was about to make.
His fingers trembled slightly as he gripped the cold glass, the liquid inside seeming to pulse with life of its own.
Without saying anything else, he brought the vial to his lips.
The taste was sharp, a mix of bitter herbs and something sweet, but he swallowed it in one quick gulp.
A sudden warmth spread through his chest, traveling down his arm, to his legs, as if his body were awakening from a long stupor.
With a decisive movement, he threw the vial to the ground: the glass shattered against the stones with a sharp sound, the fragments sparkling for a moment before disappearing into the shadows.
"Good," said the woman with red hair. "Now, we just need to find a way to get you out of here. Unfortunately, I came unprepared because I didn't expect them to place Fire Runes on the door. But if you give me a little time, I can go to the storage room and quickly get the right equipment to dig a breach in the cell walls and-"
"Carmen," Mirac interrupted her, his voice now steadier, almost authoritative. "Take a few steps back."
She watched him, raising an eyebrow slightly, but obeyed without protest, stepping back a few meters. 'What is he planning to do?'
Mirac took a deep breath, his heart pounding in his chest, a mix of adrenaline and uncertainty coursing through his veins.
He placed his hand on the wooden surface of the door, the rough contact under his palm giving him a strange sense of stability.
What he was about to do, he had never done before.
It had never crossed his mind to try something like this, and so he didn't even know if it would work.
In the worst case, both Carmen and Mirac would die instantly, reduced to ashes by the explosion triggered by the activation of the Fire Runes that protected the cell.
Yet, despite the weight of fear tightening his chest, Mirac did not hesitate.
He could no longer afford to hesitate.
From that moment on, to survive in the world that rejected Chaotics like him, he would have to trust his instincts blindly.
But not only that: he would also have to rely on the only resource that could help him achieve his goal of survival!
'I think it's time… to try trusting you… Math…' he thought, as his heartbeat quickened, and his expression grew more intense. 'My life is in your hands now! Please, don't let me down…'
Mirac took another breath.
He closed his eyes for a moment, letting his thoughts condense into a few simple words:
'Multiply by zero…'