When they emerged from the stone corridor of the abandoned building, the words Lysander had left behind still lingered in the air. "Both of you were mistaken." The words fell—not as a question, not as condemnation, but simply as a stone falls. Aldric Ironheart did not answer. There was no need to answer. The silence of one who had carried a burden alone for thirty years, and the regret of one who had spent half his life in forbidden curse research, quietly touched within that single phrase. The walls of Saint Clairvol appeared through the morning mist. Inside those walls lay Clairvol Castle. Beneath the castle lay a sealed door. Beyond the door, a spiral descended. At the bottom of the spiral lay the source of the void ivy—in other words, the exit of Castian's consciousness, which Aldric had sealed thirty years ago into the imperfect vessel of his own body. The five walked in silence. Kael Brightblade kept his grip on the rope of his pack, watching his master's back. The short hair mixed with white swayed slightly in the morning breeze. Kael had not yet fully digested the words the old man had spoken before the campfire that night. Yet his feet moved. His legs naturally carried him forward, following his master. Mira Shadowstep walked while checking the weight distribution of her pack. The left side was heavier. The holy sword Geveltus lay wrapped in cloth, sleeping deep within her pack. She remembered the moment it had been drawn from the ruins last night, the blade gleaming as it caught the light. Not a speck of rust. Despite having hung on the wall of the blacksmith's shop in the mountain village of Horn for twenty years. As they passed through the inner gate of the city walls, a guard narrowed his eyes at Lysander's face. When Lysander withdrew a piece of parchment from his pocket, the guard glanced at it once and stepped aside. He did not question the contents of the document. In Saint Clairvol, where the function of the Regent's Council had long since been lost in substance, any document with proper form would usually pass—just as Mira had said it would. The stone stairs descending into the depths of Clairvol Castle were hidden in the eastern wing of the royal palace. As they descended the stairs, the quality of the air changed. Moisture, and the smell of something rotted. But that was not all—a sensation as though time itself had become viscous. It resembled the air of the time-scarred mountain path they had felt at the southern foot of the Volga Outpost. The sealed door was made of thick iron, its surface bearing the traces of ancient sealing magic. The remnants of the seal that Aldric himself had applied thirty years ago were now half-melted and warped. Thin black lines crawled across the iron surface—traces of the void ivy pressing outward from within. The five stood before the door. Aldric began to open his mouth. The words came close to his throat—that he should go alone. The rejection of burdening others with a problem he had carried for thirty years still smoldered within the old man. "I understand what you're about to say next, Master." Kael spoke first. "The night we first met at the ruined fortress, you told me: stand on your own two feet. Come here by your own strength." Aldric turned. Kael's amber eyes met the old man's gaze directly. The faint hesitation he had always held toward his master was gone now. "I return those words to you now, Master. We will go. We won't let you go alone." The old knight said nothing. He searched for words but found none. Kael's words reflected Aldric's own words back to him in a mirror—the precision of that structure made the old man swallow his objection. Mira withdrew a cloth bundle from her pack. Carefully, but without saying "take it," she held it out to Aldric. "Take it." That was all. Aldric received the hilt through the cloth. His left hand confirmed the shape of the sword through the fabric. In that instant, beneath the sleeve of his left arm, a gray pattern flickered once—the trace carved by the deterioration of the sealing magic glowed faintly and vanished. Lysander took up the bundle of spell papers and began to carefully unfold them. At that moment, one sheet slipped from his hand and fell to the floor without any wind to carry it. A small sound—*pasa*—echoed through the stone corridor. Lysander froze. Elena placed her hand over her mouth. Mira stepped back half a pace. Everyone was frozen when Kael crouched down, silently picked up the paper, and handed it back to Lysander. "...Thank you." Lysander accepted it quietly. He adjusted the position of his glasses. His hand trembled slightly. Kael said nothing. Mira added nothing. Aldric did not turn around. Standing just before a place where lives hung in the balance, the hands of a fifty-four-year-old sage who had devoted half his life to forbidden curse research were shaking—no one blamed him for it. There was no need to blame him. The sealed door opened with a heavy sound. The five stepped down into the depths. —— The spiral staircase was dark. When Lysander lit the spiritual essence—the fundamental basis of magic in this world, manipulated by drawing in and controlling microscopic particles from the atmosphere—in his hand, the walls rose into view. The stone walls were older than expected, with the traces of sealing magic from thirty years ago and the traces of even older construction overlapping in complex patterns. Lysander began to activate the sealing spell. The forbidden curse mark that appeared black on the back of his left hand increased its glow ever so slightly. In the next instant, an anomaly ran through the stone wall. Black-gray light crawled out from the joints of the wall. Not light, but light-shaped decay—the void ivy, sensing the activation of the spell, began to become visible. Where the ivy touched the stone, change occurred silently. Fresh stone aged a hundred years in an instant before their eyes. The surface cracked, peeled, fell as sand. Living time was being stolen. "Let us hurry to the second layer. Before the density of the ivy increases." The five descended. At the second layer, one section of the staircase was gone. The stepping stones had been completely consumed, leaving a gap of several meters of darkness below. There was no way down. Mira read the situation in a second. She drew rope from her pack and fixed it to the stone pillar above. The knot was triple-bound. Then Mira herself jumped first—kicking off the edge of the collapse, using the opposite wall as a foothold to cross to the other side in an instant. The sound of her landing was surprisingly small. It was the precision of a body that had survived seventeen years as a shadow-walker. She pulled the rope taut and secured it, then guided the remaining four across. When they brought Lysander across, Kael held the rope on the near side while Elena supported him from behind. When the old man's feet touched the far side, Lysander simply said, "...I'm grateful." When they entered the third layer, Lysander's pace faltered. The consumption of spiritual essence came suddenly. For one bearing a forbidden curse mark to continuously activate sealing spells imposed a burden equivalent to a normal mage maintaining two incantations simultaneously—Lysander himself had explained this. As the spell wavered, Castian's consciousness began to scatter. The void ivy on the stone wall expanded slightly. Elena moved. The spiritual essence conversion technique taught at the Lunar Temple—the art of converting spiritual essence into life force—Elena began to channel directly into Lysander's body. The priestess's hand touched his arm. The flowing life force steadied the wavering spell. The void ivy subsided once more. But Elena's right hand was near the stone wall. A tendril of ivy crawling from the wall grazed Elena's right wrist. Whether it touched or merely brushed—at that boundary, the skin on the back of her right hand began to transform for just an instant. Kael noticed. "Elena's hand!" The voice came first, the body followed. He pulled Elena's right hand away from the stone wall. Their hands overlapped for a moment—and then Kael held Elena's wrist, cradling it. The influence of the ivy stopped. The back of her right hand slowly returned to its natural color. "I'm all right." Elena said it. Her voice was calm. Unhurried. "This time, I noticed first." Kael said it with a hint of embarrassment. Elena's eyes narrowed slightly—an expression that could have been a smile or surprise. Their hands parted. There was nothing more. There needed to be nothing more. That single beat was quietly placed between them. The final descent to the fourth layer had a collapsing ceiling. Stone beams leaned at angles, ready to fall at any moment. The five could not pass through simultaneously. "Mira and I will support it. Please get the Master through first with Lysander and Elena." Before Kael finished speaking, Mira had already positioned her shoulder beneath a beam. Kael took the opposite side. The two bore the weight. The stone's heaviness came down on their shoulders—heavier than expected. Kael's face twisted slightly. Aldric stood at the entrance to the fourth layer. It was dark. A darkness with no visible bottom opened before the old knight. "Don't die." Mira spoke from behind, short and commanding. It was not a plea or a request. Simply a voice stating fact. Aldric did not turn. He nodded once. And descended into the darkness. —— At the center of the fourth layer, the stone walls had vanished. Or rather—the walls existed. But they reflected something else. Thirty years ago. The final night of the Void Annihilation War. In the deepest chamber of the Forbidden Tower, the moment Aldric had enacted the seal was carved into the stone walls. Not an image dwelling in stone—Castian's consciousness was reconstructing this space. That consciousness was making the past manifest as the stone's memory. Aldric did not stop. He walked slowly toward the center. A voice came. "Thirty years." Castian's consciousness manifested with human speech. Not a voice, not vibrations in the air—it resonated directly within the mind. The remnant of one who had served as the court's chief mage, conducting affairs of state and manipulating his own time through forbidden curses, still knew language. "Thirty years, I was within you. A prison. You yourself were the prison, old man." There was hatred. But not hatred alone. The exhaustion of long confinement lay at the bottom of that voice—the loneliness that the original human, Tion Castian, had possessed a hundred twenty years ago—it had settled there. Aldric placed the holy sword Geveltus, still wrapped in cloth, on the ground. He did not draw it. He did not grip it. Holding the hilt through the cloth, he laid it horizontally on the stone. The choice not to draw the sword—it was there as the logical endpoint of thirty years of walking to reach this place, quiet and inevitable. The old knight opened his mouth. He called a name. One. Two. Three. The names of knights lost in the Void Annihilation War, Aldric counted them as he had the habit of doing while gazing at the moon—one by one, he called them here as well. Not for condemnation. Not for heroic tales. Only the weight of regret and the will toward forgiveness were woven into each name. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred. More than that. The old man did not drop a single name among the eight hundred and more dead knights. It was an act he had repeated every night for thirty years. Castian's consciousness grew quiet. "...What is your intention?" "I have been doing the same thing all along." Aldric answered, his tone measured and brief. "Calling names. That was all I could do. Yet I continued. Including yours—Tion Castian." Silence fell. Castian's consciousness wavered. The image of the final battle reflected on the stone walls distorted slightly. The remnant of e