He rubbed his face again, and when he looked back at me, the grin had faded—just a little.
What was left behind was curiosity. And something like worry.
"…You really aren't going to explain how you figured it out, are you?"
"Nope."
"I'm guessing it's not in any public archive?"
"Not unless someone buried it there with a curse and a hundred locks."
Rei leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees. "She's not lying. I've cross-referenced every known elemental discipline. Gravity's not on the list. At least not the usable kind."
"So what," Eldric asked, gesturing vaguely at me, "you just tripped over a forgotten law of reality and decided to become its champion?"
I shrugged. "More like I was born with it. And I made it work."
He stared at me again. Long enough that I wondered if he'd push harder. Ask where I found it, who taught me, what I was connected to.
But he didn't.
Because he didn't know what to ask.
He thought "gravity magic" was the big reveal.
The truth—the Chorus, Metatron, everything else buried under my skin—that stayed quiet.
Just like always.
Eldric leaned back on his hands with a tired sigh. "Well. As long as you don't start floating mid-sentence or reverse time, I guess we're fine."
"Time manipulation's a separate category," I said automatically.
Asmodeus sat up halfway. "Wait, you're kidding—"
"Joking," I added quickly. "Mostly."
He threw his hands in the air. "See? This is why I never trust anyone who knows how to modify spells. It always leads to dimension-breaking nonsense."
"I didn't break anything," I said, then glanced at the cave wall. "…Yet."
Rei shot me a sideways look. "That's not comforting."
"Didn't mean it to be."
A brief silence followed—comfortable, if only for a moment.
Then Eldric's tone shifted again. Low. Even.
"You could've told me, you know," he said. "Back then."
I looked at him. He wasn't accusing. Just… tired.
"I know."
"You were always the one running ahead. We were just trying to keep up." He sighed.
"No," I said. "You guys were always ahead. All the time. I had no gravity magic mentor, just my dad and uncle's teacher. Who made my life a living hell."
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His silence said more than words could.
Asmodeus slowly sat up, propping his chin on his fist.
"…You mean Calamitas?" he said, brows raising.
I gave him a flat look. "Yes dumbass, what other Calamitas is there?"
"Shut up Chi. I'm training under her now." Asmodeus said with a dramatic shudder. "She made me spar a wind elemental and said 'figure it out' while it tried to unskin me. Pretty sure I still have trauma from the way she screamed at my footwork."
I just stared at him. Not blinking.
"Asmodeus."
"Yeah?" He replied.
"That was not hell." I said flatly
He blinked. "What—"
"You had a couple sessions and walked away with a bruise and a life lesson." I said with slight frustration.
"Okay, but it was intense—"
"I trained with her for years," I said, and my voice was sharper than I meant it to be. "Every mistake was pain. Every day was silence unless I failed, and when I failed, it wasn't yelling—it was dismissal. Like I didn't even deserve to be in the same room as real mages. And when I got it right?" I gave a short, cold laugh. "I got more training. No praise. No rest."
The silence that followed was full and heavy.
Asmodeus, to his credit, didn't try to joke it off. He just looked at me, guilt flickering across his face.
"…Okay," he said finally. "That's… fair."
Eldric didn't speak. But the crease in his brow deepened.
I looked between them both. My voice dropped, quieter now.
"I didn't hide this from you guys because I didn't trust you. I just…"
I looked at my hands. "I didn't want you to look at me and see that."
Neither of them replied right away.
Then Eldric stood with a quiet grunt and reached for the lantern's dimming light.
"I don't," he said simply.
Asmodeus glanced at me again. "Still doesn't make lightning boot camp sound easier, you know."
I rolled my eyes. "Az, shut up."
"Copy that."
He flopped back down with a grunt, pulling his coat up to his chin.
Rei watched him for a moment, then quietly stood. "I'll take first watch. Someone needs to make sure no one gets slime-dropped in their sleep."
Asmodeus flopped back down. "If I die, bury me in something dramatic."
"You'll sleep through your own funeral," Rei muttered as she passed him.
She paused by my shoulder, her hand brushing my arm just lightly before she moved toward the cave entrance.
Eldric stayed seated beside me.
Neither of us spoke for a while.
Eventually, he said, "Whatever this gravity magic is… you're still you, right?"
I looked at him. "That depends."
"On?"
"On whether you start calling me 'Your Gravity-ness.'"
He gave a dry snort. "Not a chance."
"Then yeah," I said. "I'm still me."
"Good."
He shifted to his feet, rolling out his shoulders. "Get some rest. I'll wake you for the third shift."
"Right."
As he walked back toward the soldiers, his voice floated back over his shoulder. "And Chiori?"
"Yeah?"
"If you do figure out how to bend time… don't tell me."
I smirked. "Noted."
The fire had faded to embers.
I should've been asleep.
But even with the adrenaline gone, my body hadn't settled. Mana still buzzed under my skin like static before a storm, quiet but ever-present.
Rei sat at the mouth of the cave, one leg tucked under the other, her eyes fixed on the open dark beyond the perimeter glyphs. Her coat was still damp near the hem, and the soft violet sheen from the sigils made her look half-carved out of dusk.
I slipped closer without a word.
She didn't look at me, but I knew she heard me coming.
"You should be resting," she said.
"You're not."
"I'm not the one who tossed us through the air like a weaponized comet," she murmured.
A beat passed.
I sat down beside her.
The silence wasn't heavy this time. Just there. Familiar. Lived-in.
The kind that only comes from someone who already knows your damage and doesn't need you to say it out loud.
Rei broke it.
"That spell you used," she said, eyes still fixed on the storm beyond the glyphs. "The movement one."
I said nothing.
"I recognized the structure. It was Volt Step." Her tone was calm, but the edge beneath it was unmistakable. "Asmodeus' signature technique. Lightning-aligned. From The book of Thunder, its final-verse."
Still, I didn't speak.
"You shouldn't have been able to cast it," she continued. "Not even a modified version. Not without studying it. Not without months of training, elemental alignment, mana pattern sync—none of which you had."
She turned toward me finally, brows slightly furrowed. "So how the hell did you do it?"
I opened my mouth.
Paused.
Closed it again.
"…I don't know," I said, and for once, I meant it. "I heard it. I felt it. Like the world whispered back and told me how."
Rei stared at me for a moment.
Then slowly leaned back, exhaling through her nose. "You're not supposed to be able to improvise that kind of spell on the fly. Especially not one that was never meant for your element."
"I didn't think. I just… reacted."
She shook her head slightly, muttering something under her breath.
"Do you think I stole it?" I asked.
"No," she said immediately. "That's not how this feels. You didn't hijack his spell." She looked back toward the cave mouth. "You rewrote it."
I didn't have an answer.
Because I didn't have an explanation.
Not one I could give her.
And not one she—or anyone—was ready to hear.
About Metatron, the voice in my head.
My Ultimate Skill.
Rei didn't press.
She didn't need to.
"…That's terrifying," she said finally, half to herself. "And kind of impressive."
I smiled faintly. "You're not mad?"
She looked at me, expression unreadable for a moment.
Then: "I'm not mad."
A pause.
"I'm… trying to figure out how the hell you pulled it off. That's all."
I didn't answer. Because I didn't know either.
She exhaled through her nose. "You know my magic type is Ranged with the Element being Ice. I spend weeks mapping spell vectors and cooldown windows to make them behave. Writing them in my grimoire."
Then she looked at me.
"And you just rewrote a lightning spell like gravity was asking you nicely."
I looked down. "It wasn't nice."
"Good," she muttered. "I'd be even more concerned if it was."
She shook her head slowly, gaze flicking back toward the glyph-lit dark. "There are rules. Limits. And you just—bypassed them. That shouldn't be possible."
"It wasn't," I said quietly. "But it still happened."
Another pause. Her voice came lower. "Just… be careful, Chiori. Power like that? It doesn't come free."
"I know."
She stood, brushing her coat sleeves off lightly. "I'll finish the watch. Get some rest."
I nodded.
She paused again at the edge of the firelight, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. "You're still not telling me everything."
"I can't. I can also say the same to you…Lilith." I replied.
"…I know."
Then she turned back toward the mouth of the cave.
And I let the silence take over.
She turned back toward the mouth of the cave.
And I let the silence take over.
I didn't lie down right away.
The air inside the ruin was warmer than it should've been—heavy with the residue of mana and rain. Outside, the slimefall hadn't let up. I could still hear it, just beyond the stone—wet slaps and squelching thuds that made the earth sound alive in the worst possible way. Something dropped nearby with a thick, slapping noise, like jelly hitting a tarp.
No one flinched anymore.
We were used to it now.
I shifted closer to the wall, not quite ready to sleep. Asmodeus had bundled himself up like a defeated laundry pile. Eldric was on the far end, one arm over his chest, his sword still within reach even in sleep. His men were silent shadows behind him, breathing shallow, armor faintly hissing from half-scrubbed acid burns.
I stared at the ceiling.
The cave breathed around us.
Not literally—but the air moved strangely. Like pressure built and released at intervals too subtle to name. My magic felt sluggish near the stone, like it didn't want to rise. Like it was being watched.
[Monitoring…]
The voice bloomed in my skull. Low, gentle. Familiar.
[Residual anomaly detected: Subsurface vibration. Intent unclear. Probability of magical residual: 78%.]
Metatron.
I didn't respond—not out loud, and not in thought.
Just the whisper of his presence was enough to raise the fine hairs on my arms.
[No immediate threat.]
I glanced at Rei. She hadn't moved—still near the perimeter glyphs, one hand loosely resting on her staff. Her posture was relaxed, but not unguarded. And even from here, I could tell she was listening.
She'd heard it too.
A low shift—like a muscle twitch deep in the earth. Not loud. Not sharp. Just wrong.
Old magic clung to these walls like soot—smeared and burned-in, stripped of language but not weight.
The slime rain was still falling. The cave was still breathing.
And something beneath us had begun to stir.
The cave faded.
Not all at once.
First the firelight dimmed. Then the sound of rain muffled. The stone beneath my back softened—not in texture, but in pressure. Like gravity turned sideways. Like the ground had let go.
I blinked.
But when I opened my eyes, the cave was gone.
I stood in a field of endless dark.
Not shadow. Not void. Just… absence. Soft, like silk and bone and breath. A place that wasn't, but still knew I was there.
Then the voice came.
["Stability achieved."]
It didn't echo. It didn't vibrate in my chest like mana usually did.
It arrived.
Like a thought that had waited for me to think it.
"Metatron," I said quietly.
["Yes. You are safe. Temporarily."]
I glanced around. There was no horizon. No light source. But I could see—only what I needed to. Only what I focused on.
"Where am I?"
["Drift-layer. Between waking and weight. A tether point. You are within yourself, but not alone."]
My pulse didn't quicken. It couldn't. Not here. This space was too still for panic.
"…You modified Asmodeus' spell."
["Correct."]
"Without asking."
["You would have found a way to utilize it regardless. I optimized for survivability. You succeeded."]
"That's not the point."
["Clarify."]
I shook my head. "You don't get to just… do things to me."
There was a pause. Not of time, but of space. Like Metatron was parsing not just my words, but what I meant behind them.
Then:
["I am your Chorus. I do not command. I respond. I adapt because you dared to speak it."]
The dream-space flexed faintly, like my thoughts moved the air.
I swallowed. "So that spell… Crescent Drift… that was mine?"
["It is yours. Born of your weight. Shaped by your instincts."]
My hands clenched.
"It felt too perfect."
["Because it was waiting."]
A ripple ran across the field. Not a tremor—more like a pulse. A heartbeat in the dark.
["You ask what others cannot. You hear where others refuse."]
I didn't speak. I didn't need to.
He already knew.
["You are not broken, Chiori. You are unbound."]
Something rose from the darkness in front of me—like ink blooming in water. Slowly, gently, a shape unfolded.
A mirror.
Not glass. Not smooth.
It shimmered like rippling oil. And it didn't reflect me. It reflected… potential.
A version of myself I hadn't become yet.
Too many tails. Eyes like falling stars. A gravity I couldn't control.
"I don't want to lose myself."
["Then don't."]
I looked away.
["I am not here to consume you. I am here to anchor you. And through you… to awaken."]
My throat went dry.
"What are you really?"
Another pause.
Then, softly—
["I am the last memory of a dragon who fell in silence."]
My heart skipped.
["And you are my echo."]
And then the mirror began to fade.
Not shatter. Not vanish. Just… dissolve. Like it had never truly been there—only a concept I had borrowed for a moment.
The dark pressed in again. Not heavy. Not cruel.
Just final.
["You will not remember this clearly."]
"I know," I whispered.
But I would feel it. I already did. Like a second heartbeat. Like weight behind my breath.
The silence swallowed everything.
And then—
Rain.
The familiar, wet splatter of slime against stone.
The faint hiss of magic-reactive glyphs repelling organic matter.
My eyes opened.
The cave's dim orange glow greeted me—just the dying embers of our fire, flickering against the walls like breath. The shape of the ruin remained the same, but something felt different. Not around me. Inside me.
My limbs were steady, but I didn't move right away.
Across the fire, Asmodeus was still curled up in his dramatic half-cape nest. Lilith now slept beside her staff, one arm across her chest, face half-shrouded in the hood of her coat.
Eldric sat near the entrance.
He wasn't trying to look awake—he was awake. Quiet, alert, but clearly deep in thought. His sword rested across his knees, and the edge of his coat steamed faintly from a recent reapplication of protective mana.
He noticed me stir, and turned just slightly.
"You're up early," he murmured.
"Couldn't sleep," I replied.
He gave a soft snort, more air than amusement. "Join the club."
I pushed myself up and crossed the space slowly, sitting across from him near the edge of the protective glyph field. The rain was still falling outside. Slimes still hit the stone like raw meat dropped from the sky. Nothing had changed.
But I had.
"You alright?" he asked, keeping his voice low.
I nodded. "Yeah."
He studied me for a moment—eyes narrowed, but not accusing.
"I've known you long enough to know when you're lying," he said. "You've got a tell."
I raised an eyebrow. "Do I?"
"You go really still. Too still. Like your body's trying not to let the truth leak out."
I gave a weak smile. "Maybe you know me too well."
"Not well enough," he replied quietly.
We sat there for a while, just listening to the sound of slime rain hitting the world outside.
Eventually, Eldric spoke again. "We'll be moving deeper soon. I don't like the feel of this place. I'd rather get through it fast than let it sink its claws in."
"Agreed."
He looked at me again, more carefully this time. "Whatever you saw—whatever you felt—you're still good to move?"
I hesitated.
Then nodded. "I'm ready."
He didn't question it.
Just nodded once in return. "Alright then."
He glanced out at the rain. "I miss normal rain."
"Normal rain doesn't try to chew through armor." I scoffed.
"Exactly." He replied.
We shared the silence again—no longer awkward. Just worn. Familiar.