Lusya and the others walked through the desolate, deathly silent halls of Levire Castle. They were entirely deserted, not a soul to be seen. Count Rebran must have had anyone who had collapsed here moved into a room like those she had already seen.

  “I’m not sure which is creepier, here or outside,” Ariya said as she looked around. “Either way, they’re both really creepy.”

  “I will endeavor to make our time here as brief as possible,” Lusya said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Sorry you had to come, Ariya,” Beldo said. “But I want to be here for this, so there would be no one to watch you outside.”

  Ariya frowned and shook her head. “I don’t wanna be outside anyway. I don’t wanna hide when I could watch Lusya do cool stuff. Besides, I’m safer with Lusya anyway.”

  “That is generally true,” Lusya said. “Since I do not know what will happen going forward, it is best that I did not leave you alone with someone I can only trust to act as your shield.”

  Beldo chuckled. “You’re not wrong.”

  “Given your existing knowledge of the situation, I also desire your presence,” Lusya said. “So, even if you were willing to fight, leaving Ariya with you would not be practical.”

  “Nice to feel appreciated.”

  “Do you know where we might find the count or the device responsible for the stagnant Malice?” she asked.

  “If he’s trying to be discreet, I’d imagine underground somewhere,” Beldo replied. “A dungeon or a cellar, maybe.”

  “That would make sense. Do you know where we might find such a thing?”

  He shook his head. “No, sorry. I don’t know the layout of the castle. We’re just going to have to comb the place looking for an entrance.”

  “Then let us begin. Stay vigilant for any signs of a hidden entrance as well. The count may not want it where anyone could stumble upon it.”

  “Right.”

  They scoured the first floor of the castle, checking every corner of every room. They did find both a cellar and a dungeon, but there was nothing remarkable about either. The former was filled with expensive wine as one might expect, while the latter was unoccupied at the moment. There was no evidence either had ever been used for anything other than their intended purposes.

  And so, they continued searching, until they reached the count’s study. Walking toward the wooden desk at the far end, Lusya paused as she stepped onto a large red carpet in the center of the room. She tapped her foot against the ground, took a step back and repeated the process, then stepped back onto the carpet and repeated once more.

  “What is it, Lusya?” Ariya asked. “What are we doing?”

  “The ground here is less solid than over there. There is likely a hidden door.”

  She stepped off the carpet and yanked it off, tossing it across the room. That indeed revealed a hidden door, though, for a split-second, Lusya thought she had been mistaken. The door was well-designed. Even without the rug, someone who wasn’t looking for a hidden door might not have thought anything of it. What looked like the seems could have just been the gaps between floor tiles, and there were no visible hinges. Quite a bit of work and ingenuity must have gone into designing it.

  “Great!” Beldo exclaimed. “Now we just need to figure out how to open it. The mechanism is probably in here somewhere. If we just push and pull at things, we might get lucky and—”

  Lusya stomped on the door, shattering stone and tile and sending it crumbling inward to tumble down the dark stone stairway beyond.

  “Or we can do that,” Beldo said.

  “I kind of would have liked looking for the way to open it,” Ariya said, grinning. “It would have felt like we were explorers, solving an ancient tomb’s puzzles to get to the treasure inside.” Smile widening, she looked up at Lusya. “But this way is faster, and we’ve gotta help everyone.” She paused. “Do you think we can come back and look for the right way after?”

  “Perhaps,” Lusya said. “It depends on the circumstances following Count Rebran’s defeat. If they permit it, I will allow a brief search of the study for the proper opening mechanism.”

  “Yay!”

  “Now, let us descend.”

  “I’ll take the lead,” Beldo said as be began walking down the stairs. He smirked. “That way I can at least be a shield.”

  “I appreciate that,” Lusya replied.

  They made their way down the stairs, winding around a central pillar, moving deeper and deeper underground. Although there were torches placed every few feet, the stairs were still mostly shrouded in shadow, the flickering flames providing only the bare minimum light necessary to safely traverse the steps. They continued walking for quite some time. It was difficult to gauge the exact distance they traveled, but Lusya was confident they were going quite a bit deeper than the cellar or the dungeon, at least a few dozen feet underground.

  Then, at last, they reached level ground again as they arrived at short passageway ending in a wooden door. Although the distribution of torches was similar to that of the stairway, they were much more effective in lighting the straight, unobstructed hall.

  While the stairs had been silent, Lusya could now hear a faint sound coming from behind the the door. It seemed to be somebody coughing. Count Rebran, she presumed. Perhaps this mist of Malice was affecting him as well.

  “Looks like this is it,” Beldo said. “Everybody ready?”

  “Yeah!” Ariya responded.

  “Indeed,” Lusya said.

  Beldo walked up to the door and pulled it open without issue. Lusya supposed Count Rebran saw little need to lock a door that was already so well-hidden.

  Beyond the door was a large, spacious room carved out of stone. The gray walls gently sloped to form a dome-shaped roof. While the walls were devoid of any decoration or adornment, there were a few furnishings scattered about. A few chairs, several bookshelves full to bursting, a couple tables, and a heavy wooden desk piled high with books and papers. The floor was also mostly plain stone, but a few rugs rested beneath the furnishings, and several loose sheets of paper were scattered about.

  And in the center of the room lay a massive version of the devices Lusya had encountered before. It was several times the size of the last ones, at least twenty feet tall and as wide as a small house at the base. A dark violet, almost pitch-black mass roiled within the glass orb resting atop the device. It almost seemed ready to burst free and shatter the orb at a moment’s notice.

  Count Rebran sat at the desk, scrawling on yet another piece of paper and muttering to himself, only occasionally stopping to cough into his hand. He didn’t even seem to notice Lusya and the others’ entrance.

  “Excuse us,” Beldo said before Lusya could take any action.

  Although, while she would likely have taken a more confrontational approach, she fundamentally would have done the same thing. While she knew from experience that destroying the device would resolve the immediate situation, she did want to question Count Rebran before harming him. She was curious about what exactly his devices were doing and what this phenomenon they caused was, and, in more practical terms, she wanted to know the locations of any other devices and if he had any other ongoing activities that might threaten Lusya’s mission. She was sure Beldo also wanted to convince Count Rebran to stop and let him live. Seeing as they needed to speak with him anyway, Lusya was willing to let Beldo try. If he succeeded, she had no objections to sparing Count Rebran, but she was more than ready to kill him if he refused to cooperate and cease his activities. Otherwise, they risked him resuming his experiments even if they destroyed all his devices.

  Count Rebran stood and turned to face them. His wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression spoke of surprise, as did the way he put a hand to his chest, but his movements were slow and sedate. It certainly seemed he was experiencing at least some symptoms of his exposure to the stagnant Malice.

  “You?” he exclaimed. “How did you get in here?”

  “We fought your guards and found your door,” Beldo said.

  Count Rebran frowned. “So, Roseko and Samdo are…?”

  “They are dead,” Lusya said. “I killed them.”

  “That’s a shame. I would have liked to bring them into the new world.”

  "There’s no new world the way you’re headed,” Beldo said. “Look at your town. Look at yourself.”

  Count Rebran coughed into his hand and gave a languid blink. “Those are just temporary setbacks. I know I can fix them. I just need time.”

  “You don’t have time,” Beldo replied. “Your people are going to die first. You are going to die first.”

  “I won’t let that happen.”

  “I believe that you’ll try not to,” Beldo said. “But you built that.” He gestured to the device. “You have to be smart enough to see that it’s too late. You need to shut that thing down, now.”

  Count Rebran snarled. “And what would you have me do? Give up? Do you understand what I’m trying to do here? I’m trying to save this world. Not for a few hundred years like the Sacred Knights. Permanently.”

  “Trust me, I know exactly what you’re trying to do. But this isn’t the way to do it. It doesn’t lead to salvation. Far from it.”

  Another coughing fit wracked the count before he managed to reply.

  “Nonsense,” he said. “My father dedicated his life to this work because he could see the potential in it. He wasn’t wrong. I am not wrong.”

  Beldo held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Your father was and you are very smart to figure out how to do this. But there’s more to it than he knew or you know. I understand you want to finish his life’s work. But, at this rate, you’re going to follow in his footsteps right to the very end.”

  “So be it, then. I will not throw away everything we have worked for.”

  “I do not believe this is working,” Lusya said.

  “Just give me a little more time,” Beldo said.

  “You did not seem receptive when he said that.”

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  Beldo chuckled. “Fair point. But please, just let me try a little more.”

  She nodded. “Very well.”

  He turned back to Count Rebran. “You don’t have to throw it away. Your goal of ending the cycle is laudable, and what you’ve learned here could still point you in the right direction. Just because this route was a failure, doesn’t mean you have to give up or let that failure be your legacy. You can still be the man who saved the world. And your father can still be the man who paved the way for you. But first, you need to turn this thing off and do the same with any others you’ve left out there in the world.”

  Count Rebran’s brow furrowed, his hands balled into tight fists. “No. I trust my father. I trust myself. This is the way forward. I will not be stopped by small-minded fools.” He turned back toward his desk in what seemed intended as an aggressive motion, but—with his movements slowed—became rather casual. By now, Lusya suspected he had no way of mitigating his symptoms. They simply weren’t as severe as the townsfolk due to the time he had spent away, not being exposed to the town’s thick mist. “Leave. I have no more interest in arguing with you.”

  “You are out of time,” Lusya said to Beldo. “I am going to destroy the device.”

  He frowned and was silent for a moment. At last, he nodded. “Go ahead. Don’t go directly for the glass, and be ready to defend after.”

  Lusya nodded.

  Count Rebran faced them once more. “What? Don’t you dare touch my device! You haven’t the slightest idea what you’re doing!”

  Lusya released Ariya’s hand and nudged her toward Beldo.

  “I will be back momentarily.”

  Ariya nodded and grabbed onto the hand Beldo offered. “Okay. Be safe, Lusya.”

  “I will.”

  Lusya dashed forward and leaped into the air. She threw a powerful kick into the device around halfway up its metal shaft. Metal crumpled and tore under the force of the blow, and the top of the device snapped off to fly at the opposing wall, where it hit with a loud crash, a web of cracks blossoming across the glass orb.

  Her senses screamed at her. She hadn’t sensed anything particularly important about the Malice in the orb before, but now it was a bright, blinding flame in the darkness. One that was about to turn into a raging inferno. She kicked off a motomancy foothold to get herself back to the ground and rushed to Beldo and Ariya.

  “I feel neither joy nor sorrow. I know neither hope nor despair. No matter how many times I speak such hollow lies, my empty heart wanders on. Lunera Asvixi.”

  The starry sky of her Full Release painted over the walls and ceiling, as any Full Release did when used indoors, even if, like Lusya’s, it extended well beyond the room’s bounds. The night sky actually served to brighten the room compared to the sparse torches, especially in the brief moments when the moon was full.

  As soon as her Full Release finished forming, she molded space around herself, Ariya, and Beldo, forming a bubble around them. Nothing from outside would be able to reach them. The glass orb burst, and the roiling darkness within rushed out, streams flying in every direction. She had never seen Malice move like that before.

  Rather than flee, Count Rebran turned back to his desk and began rifling through the papers stacked there, even as more and more streams of condensed Malice launched out from the shattered orb.

  “I can figure this out!” he shouted, seemingly more to himself than anyone else. “I can do this!”

  “Get over here, you idiot!” Beldo exclaimed. “You’ll die!”

  “No, it’s not too late! I can still fix this!”

  Beldo clicked his tongue and took a step toward the count.

  “You will not be able to move more than two feet away,” Lusya said. “And he will not be able to join us unless I open a hole in our protection. I will not do that.”

  “But—”

  “I will not jeopardize Ariya’s safety.”

  Lusya felt a tugging on her cloak and looked to see Ariya pulling on it, staring up with wide, pleading eyes.

  “Lusya,” she said, “you promised.”

  Lusya cocked her head and blinked, before turning back to Beldo. “If you think you can return safely with him, then go. Otherwise, it is not worth the risk.”

  “I’m sure I can,” he said.

  “Then go.” She opened a hole in the side of the bubble and gestured. “You can get out that way. That is also where I will open the way for you to return. I will not do so if it is not safe.”

  “Right. On it.”

  Beldo dashed out of the bubble, jumping over and ducking under streams of Malice as he made his way toward Count Rebran. The streams weren’t behaving like ordinary Malice, or even like the other stagnant Malice created by the count’s devices, even aside from their strange movement, maintaining their shapes as they rushed about rather than dispersing evenly. Lusya watched as one slammed into a bookshelf. When it dissipated, there was a hole where it had hit, the books and the shelf they had sat on destroyed. Normally, Malice itself had little capacity for destruction, nor had the stagnant Malice seemed to cause any damage outside of the illness it inflicted upon mortals. Strangely, the wall behind the shelf was unscathed, even though she was sure the stream had hit it after going through the shelf.

  Count Rebran was still rifling through his papers, haphazardly throwing them aside as he dismissed them. He continued to rave to himself about how he could fix the problem and how he just needed to check his notes right up until Beldo scooped him up in his arms.

  “Unhand me!” the count protested. “I know I can figure this out! I know I can end the cycle!”

  Rather than waste time replying, Beldo simply ran back to the space bubble. Lusya opened up the side for him to reenter with the count and shut it again the moment they were inside. The instant Beldo set the count down, the count ran back toward his desk with reckless abandon. He only stopped when he realized the curved space had taken him about a quarter around the bubble’s circumference rather than closer to his table.

  “Let me out of here,” he demanded. “I—”

  “You’re not going to fix this,” Beldo said. “We just need to wait it out.”

  A stream of Malice rushed right toward Lusya and the others, only to curve around them. Covered in a dark violet, almost black, dome, it was all but impossible to say what was happening outside their bubble of safety. Only that this condensed Malice was still running wild.

  If her protection faltered for an instant, they would be dead. Anyone would be. Mother, Father, the Hero of Balance. No one could survive. Lusya didn’t know how she knew that. In a word, it was instinct.

  Then, finally, the last of the Malice rushed over them, and Lusya’s vision was clear once more. It seemed that had truly been the last of it, not just that stream. There were no more streams or masses of darkness to be seen. There wasn’t much of anything to be seen. Most of what had once occupied the room was gone. The count’s papers, the carpets, even the door, though the knob and hinges remained.

  Anything not made of stone or metal had been destroyed. There was no debris, no ashes, not a trace. It was as if those things had never existed.

  “What…happened?” Count Rebran breathed.

  “Where did everything go?” Ariya asked.

  Beldo sighed in relief. “Looks like it’s over.” He nodded at Lusya. “Thanks. For saving us, and for letting me save him.”

  “No thanks are needed,” Lusya said. She cocked her head at him and blinked twice. “Now, I would also like to know what happened here. And I believe you know.”

  He gestured around at the newly barren room. “This is what happens when you force Malice to condense without allowing it to coalesce into a demon. It becomes what you saw. Anything that is or ever was alive is destroyed on contact. I call it anti-life.”

  “You have seen this before.” It was not a question.

  He nodded. “Never on this scale. It wasn’t just flattery when I said both Count Rebrans must have been smart to do what they did. But they’re not the first ones to try at all.”

  “So, if I had kept going…” Count Rebran muttered.

  “Eventually the Malice outside the device would have been dense enough to become anti-life too. If you just left this thing running, you might have ended up covering the entire planet with it. You’d end the world, and there would be no chance for recovery. Nothing could ever live here again. To fix it, you would need a way to get rid of the Malice. And the only way that happens right now is when it forms into demons.”

  “I see,” Lusya said. “The formation of demons slows the accumulation of Malice, preventing the formation of anti-life. And the Demon King provides a large-scale purge every few hundred years.”

  Beldo nodded. “More or less. Though I won’t claim to know if there’s any intelligent design behind it.”

  Count Rebran wobbled and fell to his knees. “So, everything my father and I worked for was for nothing?”

  “Not at all,” Beldo said. He knelt beside the count and patted his shoulder. “Like I said, I wasn’t just flattering you. You can take what you learned here and think of something better. And if you can’t finish it, you can pass it on, like your father did to you.”

  Count Rebran glanced at him, then looked around the room again and sighed. For a long moment, the count was silent.

  “I suppose,” he said at last, “I have no choice. Although, it’ll be harder, now that our notes are all gone.”

  “That is a situation of your own making,” Lusya said.

  He glared at her. “You destroyed the device.”

  “As Beldo explained, your device would have destroyed the world,” Lusya said. “We do not know how long that might have taken. Since you refused to heed the advice of someone more experienced in these matters than you and shut the device down, destroying it was necessary.”

  The count clicked his tongue and seemed about to retort before Beldo spoke up.

  “Before we start bickering, how about we get out of this room?” he said. “We should see how things are going up top. Besides, it’s even drearier down here than it was to start with now.”

  “I do not find the room ‘dreary,’” Lusya said. “But you are correct, we should assess the situation if it is safe to do so.”

  He nodded. “It should be. If you don’t see any anti-life here, then there is none. Some might have traveled up the stairs, but it hopefully should have dispersed enough to stop being anti-life by now.”

  “Then let us go.”

  Lusya dismissed her Full Release, leaving them standing in pitch black darkness. The anti-life had destroyed the fuel in all the lanterns and torches in the room. There was a brief moment of silence.

  “Lusya, it’s too dark,” Ariya said. “It’s scary.”

  “I will use my Full Release for lighting until we reach the top of the stairs,” Lusya replied. It seemed a bit excessive, not to mention a waste of energy, but it would get the job done, and there didn’t appear to be any reason she needed to conserve her strength. She didn’t sense anything dangerous. So, they returned to the surface by the light of its moon and stars, albeit slowly. Count Rebran’s symptoms, of course, had yet to abate, including his sluggish movements.

  Beldo appeared to have been right on both counts. The desk that had been in the study was gone, along with the door and several chunks of the bookshelves on either side of the room. However, there was no sign of the anti-life anymore. In fact, the mist of Malice was already thinner than it had been before, though it was still much thicker than it had been in either of the previous towns. Considering the level of accumulation, it would not surprise her if it took days to fully disperse.

  “Good, it looks like the worst has passed,” Beldo said. “We’re gonna have to wait a little while for this stuff to go away…” He waved his hand through the air, indicating the violet fog. “…but it should be all uphill from here.”

  Count Rebran hesitantly poked his head out of the door. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  “Safer than it was before, at least.”

  The count let out a sigh that turned into a coughing fit and finished climbing the stairs into the study proper. He looked around at the ruined room and stagnant Malice and grimaced. “This is awful…” His eyes widened. “You don’t think anyone got caught up in this, do you?”

  “It’s not impossible,” Beldo said. “But I doubt it. Most of the people in here are farther than it could travel, and it’s not like it seeks out people to kill.”

  “I am confused why you would object to people being harmed by your activities now,” Lusya said.

  Ariya nodded. “Yeah! This fog is already making everyone sick.”

  “That was supposed to be temporary,” Count Rebran said. “My goal was to find a way to get all the accumulated Malice inside the device. Once that was done, this mist would go away. Even a severe illness for a little while seemed a small price to pay for saving the world.”

  “Some of your townspeople have already died as a consequence of that illness,” Lusya replied.

  The count averted his gaze. “I didn’t realize…”

  “Even if you had succeeded, you would have ended up with a bunch of anti-life ready to rush out if anything broke or malfunctioned,” Beldo added. “Not exactly an ideal solution.”

  “Yes, that much is evident now.”

  “Well, anyway, let’s make sure that no one got hurt,” Beldo said. “Then you can start working on a formal apology before whatever you’re going to do next.”

  The count gulped. “A-And if I don’t?”

  “I’ll nag you until you do,” Beldo said. He shrugged. “I’m a pacifist, there’s not much more I can do.”

  Count Rebran blinked. “You’re…a demon pacifist?”

  Beldo grinned. “People’s reactions to that never get old. Now, come on.” He looked to Lusya. “Are you going to help? I know you’re probably itching to get going now that the situation’s been resolved.”

  That was true. Lusya had no desire to stay here longer than necessary. She glanced at Ariya, who looked back at her with the same pleading expression as when Beldo had wanted to save the count.

  “I will assist in confirming no one was harmed by the anti-life,” Lusya said. “After that, we are leaving, regardless of what you wish to do.”

  Ariya frowned. “But Lusya—”

  “No ‘buts,’” Lusya said. “We will not wait here for you to fall ill.”

  “But I’ll get better when the fog goes away.”

  “That is irrelevant. You being ill at all is unacceptable. This is not up for discussion. The only reason I am helping this much is because of our promise.”

  Ariya sighed. “Yes, Lusya.”

  “Good girl,” Lusya said.

  “Oh, but we can still figure out how to open this door, right?” Ariya asked.

  “We could simply have Count Rebran tell us,” Lusya said.

  The count cocked an eyebrow and shrugged. “I can tell you if you want. It’s not complicated.”

  “I wanna try to figure it out first,” Ariya said.

  Lusya considered their options for a moment. “I will allow a ten minute search for the mechanism after we have finished evaluating the castle’s situation. After that, we will ask and be on our way.”

  “I guess that’s fair,” Ariya said. “Thank you, Lusya.”

  Lusya nodded. “You are welcome.” With that settled, she turned her attention to Beldo. “Let us begin. I would like to finish as soon as possible.”

  He nodded. “Of course. First, we should comb the castle for any sign someone was hurt. There definitely shouldn’t have been enough anti-life left to swallow anyone whole, and even if there was, most people carry at least something that was never alive on them, so look out for any suspicious fallen articles. I’ll take the southern half of the castle with the count, and you and Ariya handle the northern half. Sound good?”

  “I have no objections.”

  “Great. And can I at least ask you to help anyone who’s hurt?”

  “I am no healer,” Lusya said, “but I will stabilize them if I am able. I will also inform you of anything else that needs attending to I find. I did not intend to leave the instant my half of the search was done, only when the task of confirming the nearby mortals’ safety as a whole was completed.”

  Beldo smiled. “I’m happy to hear that. In that case, let’s get started.”