"Found." That single word still clung to the back of Alva's ears. The face Liese had shown last night—drained of blood, expression erased from that profile—Alva found himself replaying it over and over on the walk back from the abandoned workshop. That fleeing silhouette. From the color of the cloak and the characteristic gait alone, Liese's reaction had been instantaneous. It was trained. That wasn't fear—it was the face of someone watching the worst-case scenario within her calculations crystallize into certainty. When Alva descended into the breakfast room of the Ash Furnace Inn, Milda Koef was wiping wooden cups in silence. A sixty-four-year-old widow, proprietor of this inn-cum-general store. The ashen-gray pattern of calcification disease on the back of her hand was present as always, but something about her this morning was different. The sound of dishes being set down—didn't come. Alva continued observing casually while tearing into his breakfast bread. Milda was wiping a cup in the corner of the shelf—no, pretending to wipe it. Her gaze kept escaping toward the window outside. The intervals weren't irregular. They were evenly spaced. She was checking something. Was someone standing outside, or was she monitoring something moving? *(The entire village has a different quality than last night.)* Alva took another bite of bread and looked out the window. No foot traffic. Greyghast's mornings were always quiet, but today's silence was a different kind. Not the silence of villagers rationing their words—but the silence of something waiting. He went outside. The cobblestones were wet. Mist must have fallen during the night; ash-silver particles suspended in moisture made the ground beneath his feet glow faintly. Alva started walking toward the village center, toward the plaza where the half-ruined assembly hall stood. That's when he saw a figure by the wall at the village's edge. A cloak pulled deep, melting into the stone wall. Silver hair blurred in the morning mist. Liese. The moment her gaze caught Alva, only her eyes moved. A signal: turn back. Alva stopped. He questioned with his eyes. Where? Liese's chin jerked slightly. Toward the back alley. Alva casually changed direction. He entered the back alley. Stone walls pressed close; the same dim passage as yesterday. One step, two steps in— Flap, flap. Flap, flap. Chickens. A flock of no fewer than ten was brazenly occupying the depths of the alley. They'd even gathered straw and built themselves a proper nest. Orange beaks all turned upward at Alva in unison. The same bunch he'd chased yesterday. Liese slipped in from behind. Seeing the flock, her eyebrows twitched—just barely. She waved her hand silently. Scatter, the gesture said. Not a single chicken moved. Red eyes watched Liese. She waved again, this time a bit more forcefully. The chickens tucked their wings and actually settled down. *(…Why now, you bastards.)* When Alva took a quiet step forward, one chicken at the edge of the flock hopped sideways—but immediately returned. Another showed interest in his shoelaces and waddled closer. That's when sound reached them from the plaza's direction. Even footsteps. Stone cobbles struck in perfect rhythm. A steady beat. Emotionless walking. The last trace of expression vanished from Liese's face. Alva looked at her over the chickens' heads. No escape route—the chickens were blocking it. Going around would take too long. The two exchanged a glance. The chickens calmly thrust their beaks into the straw. With resolve steeled, they had no choice but to return to the plaza. --- The figure standing in the plaza was none of Alva's assumptions. Lean and tall—easily one hundred eighty-two centimeters. A black cloak extended to his feet, white hair bound and flowing behind him. His gait matched those footsteps perfectly: even, emotionless. But what caught the eye most was the left eye socket. An ash-silver artificial eye—a rare mineral found only in the Greyghast region, used as a catalyst for alchemical incantations, a silver-gray ore—was set there. The artificial eye glowed quietly, barely perceptibly, in a pale blue. As Alva drew closer, the light intensity seemed to increase slightly—as if the artificial eye were measuring Alva's outline. The villagers had vanished into building shadows at some point. Only three remained in the plaza. *Helmut Sonder.* Alva confirmed the name in his mind. Current leader of the Ash Furnace Alliance—a secret society founded eighty years ago by a linguist expelled from the Royal Language Institute—a man who had once been the Institute's chief researcher before being expelled for forbidden research. And Liese's father. Helmut's gaze turned first to Liese. It wasn't the look of a father seeing his daughter. It was confirmation. Assessing position, assessing condition, judging priority as low, moving on. Less than a second. Liese's entire body stiffened minutely. Not from anger or sadness. A stiffness that came from being comprehended. Not ignored by her father—but deprioritized after being completely understood. That was far worse. The artificial eye turned toward Alva. "Please explain your actions at the abandoned workshop." The voice was low, composed. It carried no threat, yet it was threatening. Probably because it contained no emotion whatsoever. No anger, no surprise, no wariness. Just the tone of a machine organizing and processing information. Overly formal politeness created distance instead. "Your skill—the Mirror of Words (*Wortsspiegel*)—was classified as mimicry in the adventurer certification exam records." Alva listened silently. "However, yesterday's phenomenon at the abandoned workshop was different. Regarding the alchemical incantation marks on the villager's arm—residual traces of a concept-altering curse—you performed interference beyond simple mimicry. You grasped the semantic structure of the words and inverted it." *(…How did he know.)* Calculation ran through Alva's mind. The fleeing silhouette had been after yesterday morning's experiment. Which meant Ash Furnace Alliance members had been observing the abandoned workshop. From where? The collapsed walls of the workshop had multiple gaps. There were at least two points from which the interior was visible from outside. "The lowest evaluation in the exam and your interference with the villager's marks are separate phenomena." He stated it as fact. Not a question, but confirmation. "You yourself don't fully understand the complete scope of this skill." Alva tried to construct a rebuttal. He couldn't. Words stopped in his mouth. Because it was true. Alva himself hadn't grasped what the Mirror of Words could do or how far it extended. He'd received the lowest evaluation in the exam, and only at the abandoned workshop had he first managed to interfere with alchemical incantation structure. He didn't completely understand where that difference came from. Silence filled the plaza. Then—*clink, clink*—a small sound struck the cobblestones. A single chicken that had remained at the plaza's edge. That persistent pursuer. Tilting its head, it waddled right up to Helmut's feet and stopped. None of the three acknowledged it. In the pressure-laden silence, only the chicken's red eyes darted around. It subtly relativized the gravity of the moment. --- "I request your cooperation." Helmut continued. His vocal tone didn't change. "We're advancing the decryption of the Primal Language (*Ursprache*)—the root language said to inscribe the world's laws. Fragmentary records exist, but the semantic structure differs from both standard Old Laren and the alchemical incantation system. We've reached the limits of analysis." Primal Language. Alva turned the words over in his mind. "The Mirror of Words likely functions most deeply on the Primal Language. Standard incantations have fixed meaning. But the Primal Language has a fundamentally different structure—which is why your skill couldn't be evaluated within the current incantation system." He paused. "From that first night. I've been observing since the moment you unconsciously reacted to the alchemical incantation resonance near the abandoned workshop." Something cold crawled up Alva's spine. From the first night. From the day he arrived in Greyghast, he'd been watched. Not just the experiments at the abandoned workshop—but before that. *(…I've been under surveillance the whole time.)* While processing the weight of that fact, Alva's thoughts caught on something else. The words Helmut had spoken—"the Mirror of Words functions most deeply on," "the Primal Language has a fundamentally different structure"—the logical structure of those words had a shape he'd seen before. His father's notebook. On the yellowed page's edge, in familiar handwriting: *Words reflect meaning. A mirror changes its essence by how it reflects.* That single line pointed to the same ground as what Helmut was describing now. Rejection and resonance collided inside Alva. He couldn't trust this man. He treated villagers as tools. He'd designed the calcification disease. But—that logical structure of words was genuine. "Father," Liese opened her mouth. Her voice was sharp, but trembling. Something she was suppressing seeped from the edges of her voice. "What did you do to the people of this village? You know what the calcification disease is. Every time they speak, their bodies decay. Children are afraid to cry, afraid to laugh. You designed that curse and inflicted it on this village." Helmut looked at his daughter. Without changing expression, he said quietly: "Not a byproduct. Part of the design." Liese's words stopped in midair. It wasn't a rebuttal or denial. He'd admitted it—and in a way that accepted the barb directly. Her anger had nowhere to go. Liese's mouth opened once, then closed. No words came. Helmut didn't continue. He simply turned his artificial eye back to Alva. "You have until tomorrow's dawn to answer." It was then that Alva was staring intently at Helmut's artificial eye. He noticed the change immediately after. The light intensity of the artificial eye dimmed—just for an instant. A blink's duration. The pale blue glow weakened slightly, then returned. Helmut himself made no gesture. Whether he hadn't noticed or was ignoring it was unclear. *(He's exhausted.)* That recognition settled quietly inside Alva. Helmut turned on his heel. Even footsteps struck the cobblestones. As he left, without turning back, he spoke once more—directed only at Liese. "Your technique was precise." That was all. The footsteps receded from the cobblestones and eventually faded. The chicken at his feet tilted its head. --- At dusk, the air in the abandoned workshop was different from morning. The blue-white light of a magic lamp illuminated the wooden workbench. Liese stood before it, saying nothing for a long time. Alva sat at some distance, not pressing her. Outside, evening wind had begun to blow. Cold air carrying ash-silver particles flowed through the gaps in the collapsed walls. The magic lamp's light flickered slightly. Eventually Liese spoke. "He said 'precise,' didn't he." Alva nodded. "He wasn't praising his daughter's technique. He was just confirming the results of his own instruction." Liese herself verbalized the meaning of those words. Her voice was calm. But that calmness was—the flattened, worn-down quality of emotions crushed beneath. Alva listened to the quality of that sound. His Mirror of Words sense caught the inverted emotion within the structure of Liese's words. Something she'd wanted to take pride in, knowing she couldn't. Yet the confirmation that the technique was genuine cut like a blade. Alva understood the violence of pointing that out. He waited in silence. After a while, without turning, Liese asked: "What are you going to do?" Alva thought for a moment. Just a moment.