Lucid knelt beside the seal.
He reached out, his fingers hovering over the cold metal.
As he touched the surface, the lead grew translucent.
Beneath the seal, he saw a sprawling network of golden veins, identical to the ones he had seen in the abyss.
These veins were connected to a series of crystalline gears that were actively turning.
"The engine," Lucid muttered.
Alice's voice returned, now focused. "This is the heart of the town's economic circulation. These gears drive the distribution of Fate Essence to the surface. "
"If we jam the mechanism or redirect the flow, we stop the supply from this domain's stolen currency. We can starve their influence while we flood the lower markets with their natrual reserves."
Lucid looked at the girl. She stared at the gears with a look of ancient familiarity. The plan was clear.
By sabotaging this ancient centrel engine, they could effectively crash the domain's corrupt economic order and replace it with their own, all while standing in the silent, golden ruins of the past.
The girl stood amidst the silence of the courtyard, her presence small against the towering, forgotten architecture.
Lucid remained on his knees, his hands trembling slightly as he traced the intricate carvings on the lead seal.
The metal felt impossibly cold, vibrating with a low-frequency hum that resonated deep within his marrow.
It was all written in some foreign language as well. Ever since he had arrived in the Scattered Realms, much of the language had already been foreign to him.
Yet, through Alice's vision, he could read it.
Was that also the reason he was able to understand the people around him?
He didn't know.
"This is how they held the people," the girl said. Her voice was thin, echoing against the marble walls of the surrounding buildings.
"They did not just trade contracts. They traded the rhythm of the city. Every heartbeat of the economy was piped through these gears."
Lucid watched as the crystalline mechanism below rotated with a slow, grinding precision. The golden veins pulsed rhythmically, mirroring the heartbeat he had heard earlier in the golden abyss.
'Alice,' Lucid thought, his mental fatigue clashing with the cold clarity of the situation. 'If this is the central distribution point, we cannot simply destroy it.
If we shatter the gears, the entire town might collapse into the abyss with us.'
Alice's presence rippled within his mind, her tone shifting from the earlier outburst to a state of chilling, calculating intent.
'Do not be naive, my chosen. We do not destroy the heart. We perform a transplant. Observe the primary conduit on the left gear. It is a bypass valve. It is designed to bleed off excess essence when the nobility grows too fat on their profits.'
Lucid leaned closer. Beneath the translucent lead, he saw a lever composed of pale, etched silver. It was jammed in a locked position, holding the valve partially closed to ensure the gold stayed in the upper district.
'If we force that lever open,' Alice continued, 'we divert the entire flow of raw Fate Essence away from their vaults and directly into the secondary distribution channels the ones that lead to the lower slums and the upper districts.'
Lucid finished her thought.
"We will trigger an immediate surplus of vitality in the districts they deemed worthless."
Lucid stood up. His legs finally steadied beneath his weight. The small girl watched him. Her eyes reflected the violet light emanating from the heavy lead seal.
"Mercyros thinks he controls the supply," Lucid said. His voice was blunt and completely devoid of reverence. "He believes he is a god simply because he controls the flow."
He looked down at the massive crystalline mechanism rotating beneath the floor.
"But the nobles forgot a fundamental detail. The pipes run directly beneath their own feet. The very currency they hoard was stolen from the people below and redirected by Mercyros."
A heavy silence followed his words. The rhythmic hum of the machinery filled the void.
"The upper districts prey on the lower districts," Lucid observed aloud. "The lower districts prey on the slums. Everyone takes from someone beneath them. It is a pathetic chain of survival."
He reached into his pocket and retrieved the heavy metallic chain he had summoned earlier. The thick metal links were freezing cold. They pulsed with the residual power of his previous physical exertion. He wrapped the metal securely around the protruding silver lever.
"Alice, if I do this, there is no going back. The market will break by sunrise," Lucid noted.
'The market is a rotting corpse, Lucid,' Alice replied. Her voice held a sharp note of possessive pride. 'We are simply performing the necessary autopsy and turning the remains into fertilizer. Pull the lever and let them choke on their own greed.'
Lucid tightened his grip on the chain. He prepared to heave his body weight backward.
But then he stopped.
He looked over his shoulder at the little girl standing near the edge of the violet seal. She seemed fundamentally different.
Her wide eyes began to pulse with a bright golden luminescence. Her pale skin appeared instantly more vibrant, shedding the sickly pallor of the slums. A jagged crack manifested along the side of her face. The fissure did not bleed. It pulsated with a warm, flowing golden aura that pushed back the dark shadows of the courtyard. She observed him with a quiet, profound acknowledgment.
Lucid looked back and forth from the heavy gears to his metallic chain, and then finally back to her. He was about to release a massive, contained dam of raw Fate Essence. The resulting flood of energy would likely fill the entire subterranean space. He knew he would survive the deluge. He had survived being gutted, and he had survived drowning in a sinking wreckage before. He possessed a terrifying, unnatural resilience. But this small girl was fragile.
"Are you actually a ghost, or are you being held hostage by this monolith?" Lucid asked bluntly. "Come here. I can escort you back to the surface before I flood this place."
She smiled for a moment. It was a genuine expression. It was the absolute happiest, most radiant smile he had ever seen a human make.
Suddenly, a pair of massive wings manifested behind her shoulders. They were elegant and vibrant, blossoming outward like the petals of a massive flower catching the morning sun. The golden light bathed the entire marble chamber.
"I shed my mortal body a very long time ago," she stated. Her voice resonated with a strange, harmonic duality that vibrated against his ribs.
She tilted her head to the side.
"I have observed you in ways you did not realize," she continued. "I watched you help the elderly. I watched you buy bread for the starving. I watched you purchase fishing equipment and maintain the local trades. You kept this strained town running for long enough."
Lucid frowned. He tried to place the specific details she mentioned.
"But most importantly," the winged entity added, her smile softening, "you bought my town's lifeline."
Lucid opened his eyes wide in sudden recognition.
Her physical figure began to shift and stretch. She grew noticeably taller in a matter of seconds. Her ragged clothing shifted into familiar garments. A worn cap materialized on her head. A leather strap appeared over her shoulder, securing an invisible satchel. She wore dark black pants and a simple white shirt. A smattering of distinct freckles dotted her cheeks.
She was the exact same vendor girl he had encountered in the upper market. She was the one who had sold him that useless ring.
"Thank you, Lucid... The first clarity, The Witness They Failed to Erase."
She whispered. Her voice echoed softly across the ancient marble courtyard, carrying a profound weight.
She smiled one last time. Her solid form lost its physical cohesion entirely. She dissolved instantly into a thick cloud of glowing particles. The golden dust drifted through the damp air, resembling the lingering Fate Essence left behind after a powerful entity had been slain.
Lucid stood there in absolute silence for a long moment. He stared at the empty space where the divine vendor had just been standing. He lowered his arms, letting the heavy chain rest against the silver lever.
"Well," Lucid thought, staring at the drifting gold flakes. "That certainly explains why her prices were so terribly unreasonable." He said to himself shakily almost at the verge of tears.
'Your capacity to ruin a profoundly sacred moment with petty financial grievances is truly unmatched, my chosen,' Alice remarked softly in his mind. Her tone carried a deep, affectionate amusement, masking her inherent possessiveness.
'However, I do prefer it when you focus your attention entirely on me rather than lingering spirits. Now, if you are quite finished socializing with local deities, we have a corrupted economy to obliterate. Pull the lever, Lucid.'
Lucid planted his foot firmly against the marble floor. He inhaled, tasting the metallic tang of the air, and hauled back on the chain with all his physical strength.
The silver lever groaned. The ancient gears shrieked as they shifted against decades of stagnation. Dust, thick and gray, puffed out from the cracks in the floor as the mechanism finally yielded. With a resonant, bone-jarring thud, the lever snapped into the open position.
The ground beneath them lurched.