"Huh? What took so long this time?"
Vincent was mildly curious, then figured Klein had probably lingered above the Grey Fog for a moment after everyone else left.
He walked quickly toward the luminous staircase at the heart of the Grey Fog. The last time he'd come here, he'd spotted what looked like a Worm of Time trapped inside — but before he could make sense of it, he'd been forced out by a shortage of spirituality.
He didn't know if he'd see the creature again this time.
He stopped just short of the threshold — what looked like only a few metres away, yet felt as uncrossable as a chasm — and peered into the rolling fog, trying to catch a glimpse of that Worm.
His eyes strained until the shifting mist made them water. Nothing.
He hesitated for a beat, then decided to try his luck: "Hello? Anyone in there? Anyone home?"
"I know you're home. Come out if you've got the guts."
"Hellooo? Here I am. I come in peace."
Nothing. Just fog.
Vincent pressed two fingers to his forehead with a frown. Four weeks in a row now, he'd stayed behind after the Tarot Club.
First time — he'd felt something in the deepest part of the fog, something that seemed drawn specifically to him.
Second time — he wandered a few laps and found nothing.
Third time — he spotted the Worm of Time.
Fourth time, so far — nothing again.
But his gut kept telling him: the reason he could stay here at all had to have a reason. Maybe even a purpose. Why can't it just say so?
By Pathway logic, a Worm of Time should be splittable by someone who'd advanced to Thief-level demigod — but Vincent couldn't shake the feeling that anything in this Grey Fog would have to be at least a Sequence 1 Angel.
And the only two Sequence 1 Thieves were Amon and Pallez Zoroast. The third had been done in by Amon long ago.
Given Pallez's conduct in the original story, the odds were firmly against it being him.
Which left only Amon — but if Amon was already capable of slipping a Worm of Time in here, why hadn't he just taken over the place outright? Just because he didn't want the "destiny" that came with it — the responsibility — and deliberately left it for the next person with the right fate?
That doesn't add up.
If not Amon, then who?
The Old Schemer.
The previous Lord of Mysteries — the one who used to sit in this very position.
Was this Worm of Time something he'd left behind as a failsafe?
But how would anything that belonged to the former Lord of Mysteries end up trapped in his own Grey Fog?
Vincent felt his head spinning. The more he thought, the less the version of the LOTM world he was in resembled the one he remembered.
Sure, he himself was a butterfly — but no matter how much a butterfly's wings flapped, they couldn't reach into the past.
Unless…
A thought surfaced in his mind: "Unless I get hold of a Time-Turner from the Harry Potter world and travel back into the past?"
Okay, Time-Turners had a weaker ability system than the Beyonder world — but "time" was a concept nobody could fully call.
Sensing his spirituality running dry, Vincent shook his head and stepped off the Grey Fog, back into reality.
...
In a grand villa in the Queen's Borough.
Faced with Bernadette's unexpected arrival, "Nightingale of Despair" Panadia wore a wide smile on the surface — while internally, every alarm was blaring.
She knew better than anyone what had happened on the night of the failed ambush.
Three demigods — the Demoness Sect, the Psychology Alchemists, and the Loen royal family — one of them a full-blown Eternal Witch. Three against one.
The result: the Psychology Alchemist demigod was dead.
That kind of power is basically unrivalled below the Angel tier.
As the one who had orchestrated that ambush, Panadia was quietly terrified.
"So — are you lot actually going to push this cooperation forward or not?"
Bernadette looked at Panadia calmly. "The Psychology Alchemists' representative still hasn't shown up."
You killed him. He can't exactly show up now, can he? Panadia seethed inwardly, but kept her smile in place. "We tried to invite you a couple of days ago — but you were busy then. As for the Psychology Alchemists, something came up on their end as well."
Bernadette nodded. "Alright then. Forget them for now. Maybe it's time you introduced me to the other party."
She meant the Loen royal family.
Know what to play dumb about. Know what to make plain.
Panadia was in the middle of weighing her answer when a woman appeared without warning — dressed in a clean, plain white robe, luminously beautiful, with a fresh, almost ethereal quality. Panadia leapt to her feet immediately. "Lady Katrina."
"Mm."
The Eternal Witch gave a slight nod, looked over at Bernadette, and smiled easily. "Mr. A — care to take a walk?"
"Sure."
The two left the villa together and strolled side by side along the neat, clean paths of the Queen's Borough. On either side stood rows of pretty little villas, each with its own small garden at the gate — a world apart from the dockland slums of the East Borough.
"Mr. A."
Katrina paused half a beat. "Actually — I know the old Mr. A. I'm just not sure why, but the person inside changed overnight. And you're clearly smarter and more powerful than your predecessor."
Bernadette nodded, unbothered. "So?"
"So you're a much more worthwhile partner."
She smiled. "That night when you traded blows with those two demigods — it was quite something to watch. I'll be honest: I'm glad I didn't step in. If I had, you'd have made me look very, very bad."
Katrina only said she'd look bad — not that she'd lose — because an Eternal Witch was genuinely not easy to kill. As long as her Mirror self survived somewhere in the world, she could come back. But Katrina knew herself well enough to know: with that level of power on the other side, "embarrassing" was the kindest word for what would've happened.
Bernadette caught the subtext immediately. The emphasis was on didn't step in.
She'd thought the same privately. At the time Vincent was in control of the body. If this Eternal Witch had actually joined the fight, the outcome would have been genuinely dangerous.
"Why didn't you?"
Katrina's smile turned bright, almost girlish — nothing like someone who had lived thousands of years through untold husbands and children. "Because I want to work with you."
"We are working together, aren't we?"
"Right — your Aurora Order is cooperating with Panadia's Demoness Sect." She suddenly pressed a hand over her mouth, stifling a laugh. "Sorry, I couldn't help it. They haven't even finished negotiating the cooperation, and they already sent people to ambush you. That kind of partnership is… very interesting."
Bernadette hadn't expected her to be this blunt. She raised an eyebrow. "Then say what you mean, Witch."
"I want to cooperate with you — not as the Demoness Sect, but as…" She paused slightly. "…the Gnostic Society."
"From what I know, the Gnostic Society is a subdivision of the Demoness Sect."
Katrina shrugged. "On the surface, yes. But being a subdivision doesn't mean we're of one mind." She tilted her head. "You might not know this — the Gnostic Society is primarily made up of Beyonders from two Pathways: the Witch Pathway, and the Apprentice Pathway."
"The Apprentice contingent comes from the Tamara Family — or more precisely, the branch that broke away from it. That branch traces back to a marriage between the Tamara Family and the Abraham Family — their descendants. When the Abraham Family fell, they had nowhere else to go, and ended up joining the Gnostic Society."
Bernadette frowned slightly as she listened, working out what the woman actually meant.
"Now, the Tamara Family also has a portion that stuck with the Arbitrator Pathway, and they've maintained quiet ties with the splinter group over the years..."
Katrina waved a hand. "Forgive me, I'm rambling. What I mean is: when it comes to the Demoness Sect's plans in Backlund, the Tamara Family faction within the Gnostic Society is, frankly, not very interested."
"What they actually want is to use this moment to bite off a piece of the Loen royal family. So they've approached the Castilla Family, and opened a line of cooperation."
Bernadette immediately mapped out the logic. Even though King George III was angling to switch to the Black Emperor Pathway, the Augustus Family had walked the Arbitrator Pathway for centuries. That made them natural enemies of the Castilla Family and Tamara Family — who also held Sequence 1 of the Arbitrator Pathway.
Three families. Three Sequence 1 Arbitrators. A long-standing equilibrium, maintained because none of them could actually destroy the others.
Now, two of those families clearly didn't want to maintain it anymore. Or perhaps they'd sensed that the Augustus Family was scheming something — even if they couldn't guess the full picture of "George III is planning to ascend to the Black Emperor."
But centuries-old families had sharp noses for danger and opportunity alike.
The question remained: what was this Eternal Witch doing in the middle of all this?
To be continued…
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