"What?"
The word slipped through Levi's lips like a sharp protest, nothing like he intended.
This was yet another jolt of surprise flowing through his already fraying nerves. He'd been certain the System was the source of his newly rising torment
But Lyra had just shattered that certainty.
"You're telling me it's not the System?" he asked, his voice low but strained like a rope on the verge of snapping. "Then what the hell is it?"
Lyra tilted her head, almost like she was listening to something far beyond the silence between them. Her eyes clouded—not with ignorance, but with something uncertainty.
"I know you're about to ask," she said softly, her voice almost a whisper wrapped in resignation. "But even I don't know what it is. I can't name it... but I can feel it. It's powerful, and that's what they're after."
"Wait—wait, wait..." Levi raised a hand like a referee calling time, eyes shut tight as he tried to catch his scattered thoughts. The air felt thinner all of a sudden. He opened his eyes slowly. "First of all—who are they?"
Lyra's lips parted, and she lifted a finger as if the answer was right there—on the tip of her tongue. But then her hand fell back to her side, and her eyes lowered.
"Honestly... I don't know," she admitted.
"They've never shown themselves. Not enough to be tracked. I don't have enough information to even guess who—or what—they really are."
Levi exhaled sharply, the breath escaping him like a deflating balloon. His mind was currently like a tornado of thoughts.
This couldn't be real. There were too many missing pieces, too many broken shards pretending to be shapes.
Was Lyra even telling the truth? Or was this just another carefully crafted story meant to pull him deeper into whatever game he'd been dragged into?
For all he knew, he could even be walking straight into the arms of the enemy, thinking he was being saved.
That assumption slid into place a little too easily.
It explained everything.
The way Lyra had found him in the nick of time, how she had known—exactly—where to be and when. How could she have sensed his danger, felt his presence across dimensions?
Unless… she was the one who had laid the trap in the first place.
A silent tsunami of suspicion flooded Levi's thoughts, and as he eyed her, the doubt began to etch itself onto his face. It was subtle, but there.
And Lyra noticed.
She wasn't blind. The shift in his gaze. The way his body tensed, ever so slightly. She had seen enough to accurately predict the direction in which Levi's thoughts were flowing, and she couldn't afford such an error from him.
"Think about it," she said suddenly, her voice cutting through the silence like a spark in the dark.
Levi blinked, snapped out of his thoughts by the sound of Lyra's voice.
"From what Emilia told me," she continued, "you use commands from this System thing to perform your moves. Right?"
She stepped closer, just enough to make her presence felt.
"But after the first time… you don't need the commands anymore. You don't even see them." She tilted her head. "So then Levi… how do you use those moves after that?"
He didn't respond immediately. The question felt... off. Too pointed. Too focused on something he hadn't thought to question himself.
He had simply just been flowing with whatever he got from it. He definitely posed questions to a lot of things, but none of them went in that direction.
He stared past her, eyes narrowing. He really had never considered it. Not once.
The System introduced the move. He used it. Then... it became second nature. No prompts. No guidance. Just instinct. Think about it like he had always known it.
"Levi—"
"I just think about it..." he said at last, quietly. "I just think about it and it all falls into place."
That was Levi's answer. And the moment the words left his mouth, his expression shifted—just a little. His brows came down, the faintest crease of realization forming on his forehead.
Upon giving Lyra an answer to her query, something immediately fell into place.
He had never really bothered to dive deep into the mechanics of spells, never felt the need to.
Most of what he knew came from brief explanations—half-conversations shared with Kyle or Violet during quiet moments between chaos. But one thing had stuck with him.
In Astrovia, spells weren't just energy or incantations—they had names.
Names that mattered more than one would think.
These labels weren't just for show like in movies, or categorization, but because those names acted as anchors. Triggers. A mental mechanism, like the way hearing the word table instantly conjures an image of it in the mind.
The same way saying the name of a spell brought forth its image—and not just the image, but the blueprint. The steps and cinyi. The precise instructions needed to execute it.
It was a form of muscle memory. Repetition built familiarity. Familiarity bred instinct.
Over time, the spell no longer needed to be spoken aloud. The name became internalized, buried so deeply in the subconscious that the body moved before the mind finished processing.
It just knew. Like breathing, no one tells you how to inhale and exhale it.
"Do you understand what this means, Levi?" Lyra asked.
"The system… it's—"
"It's teaching me," Levi said, finishing the thought before she could. His voice was low, but clear.
His assertion was followed by more ticked boxes and new questions, but he refused to air them out at the moment.
Lyra blinked, then gave a small nod. "Yeah," she murmured. "It's a lot, I know…"
She looked up at the sky, the clouds reflecting in her eyes like scattered memories, moving gently as they searched for their owners.
"I mean, I can imagine—going out hunting with a cool power, thinking you're the main character or something, and then it ends up this way…" She exhaled, letting out a tired breath. "I'd be pissed."
Then she turned back to Levi, her voice sharpening again. "But if you don't take this seriously, Kyle, Violet… any other friends you make along the line—their fates won't be different from—"
"Where do I start?" Levi cut in.
"Huh?"
"I said…" He looked at her, not blinking. "Where do I start?"
For a second, Lyra just stared. Then she shook her head and chuckled, hands on her hips.
"You really have a talent for interrupting people, don't you?"
***
The cavern had rough walls stretching endlessly, its interior dark like an abyss. The air was filled with an invisible force, something more than just a tense silence. An oppressive presence that seemed to breathe along with the shadows.
At the center of it all, a boy sat atop a swirling cloud of darkness, with his legs crossed, and his posture utterly relaxed.
Curling around him are wispy clouds, like living tendrils. They flickered with each second passing, shifting as though responding to his very breath.
Then, the shadows in the cave changed.
Figures, elongated and materialized from the depths of the cave. Their silhouettes stretching unnaturally as they stepped into, blue glow that barely lit up the space.
The boy did not move, only tilting his head slightly as he let out a slow, measured exhale. "Kai... You're late."