Her voice lingered in the air like incense, light, fragrant, and unmistakably deliberate. The syllables of her final sentence drifted gently, and yet with a resonance that clung to the edges of Ludwig’s thoughts like moisture clinging to cold glass.
Ludwig didn’t respond right away. He let the silence stretch, not out of control, but calculation. His eyes remained fixed on her, unblinking, though his thoughts churned beneath the surface like murky water beneath clear ice. She was watching him too, but not in the way mortals often did. Her gaze wasn’t probing, it was patient, as if she already knew the answers and rely waited for him to arrive at them.
His fingers flexed slightly, an unconscious twitch born of carefulness, not need, as though reaching for the hilts of Oathcarver and Durandal. But of course, they weren’t there. The swords sat in plain sight, propped reverently beside a bookshelf, resting as though dosticated, like dogs trained to obey a different master now. The sight irritated him more than it should have. It wasn’t fear, it was displacent. A quiet violation of ownership.
He hated how silent it was here. No wind. No birds. No whistling kettle, no crackle from the hearth, not even the soft hiss of heat against water. The firelight flickered across the room with choreographed grace, casting long shadows that never seed to move. It should have been cozy, but it wasn’t. It was too still, like a painting of warmth rather than the thing itself.
Even Thomas and the Knight King, had gone quiet. Their ghostly presences lingered, yes, but no words ca. Just a shared tension. As if they, too, were weighing the balance of power in this place. Watching. Listening. Just as he was.
"I don’t suppose," Ludwig said at last, each word drawn with deliberate care, "that you’d like to explain what the hell that ans."
His voice did not echo. It felt swallowed almost before it left his mouth.
"Also," Ludwig added after a beat, shifting slightly in his seat, "it’s quite creepy that you know my na..."
Her reply ca with the smooth certainty of soone answering a question before it was asked. "I know more than just that," she said. "Though much of it... confounds still. That tallic bird, how does it soar without wings or wind? The towers, those impossibly tall monunts of glass and steel, how do they stand? Why don’t they crumble beneath the breath of the sky? None of it weaves mana. None of it feels alive. A forest of stone where your people live at... srizing"
She tilted her head, not in mockery but awe. "You co from a world that is so foreign... and so familiar. It is wonder without wonder. Power without reverence."
Ludwig’s grip tightened beneath the table, bones flexing against the cloth of his glove. "Quite rude," he muttered, "to spy through soone’s mories..."
The woman gave a soft exhale, a sound halfway between regret and inevitability. "I do apologize. It is not by will that I saw what you were. Nor what you beca. These things... reveal themselves to , as easily as mist curls around the breath of fla. And I understand your resentnt, truly I do. To be torn from one’s ho... to be toyed with by amateurs who play with dark arts like children playing with blades. To be remade into sothing that should neither live, nor breathe..."
Her voice didn’t change volu, but it deepened. Hardened. "And then to be further mutilated by a man who should never have dabbled in forces he does not fully grasp."
She let the words hang there, carefully asured. Not accusatory, not pitying. Simply... observant.
Ludwig’s mind flicked unbidden to those first seconds after arriving in Ikos. The pain. The panic. The smirking faces of the asshole mages who’d yanked him from his world with all the grace of children pulling apart a beetle. Then Van Dijk, brilliant and broken, threading mana through his dead body with the obsession of a painter working on a cursed canvas. The Nephilium circuit. His hollowed-out bones, the reshaped soul.
"I guess," Ludwig muttered, voice flat, "it wasn’t comfortable. But here we are. No use crying over spilled milk."
A mont passed.
She let out a laugh, again. "I believe you have a great task ahead of you, Ludwig Heart. One of trendous weight."
He exhaled through his nose, slowly. "You an the Usurpers."
"They are not sothing you can handle, not yet. Not at your level."
His eyes sharpened. "Then let’s not dance around the subject. If you know that much... what do you want from ?"
"I told you," she said, folding her hands lightly before her. "It’s the other way around."
"I’m pretty sure you’re the one who invited here..."
She chuckled then, gently. "My domain is not so crude. It does not summon like a conjurer calling spirits. This place, this mont, draws in those who are on the precipice of change. And you, right now, stand on that edge."
Ludwig blinked once. His gaze darkened slightly, unreadable. "Hard to believe."
"And your reasoning?"
He lifted one hand and made a slow, deliberate spin of his fingers. "Because no one calls you a witch if you’re known for helping people."
The woman laughed at that, not offended, not defensive. Her laughter was clear and soft, like a bell muffled behind velvet. "Indeed. No one rembers kindness, especially when it frightens them. And those who pass through my land? They forget. Once this mont passes, you will forget . You’ll think it a dream. A strange detour in a forest of fog. I exist only here, and only now."
Ludwig opened his mouth, then closed it again. A flicker of sothing, confusion, maybe? No. Recognition. His mind was catching up with her words, and they left a faint taste of ash on his tongue.
After a few seconds, he asked, "What kind of help are you offering?"
Her eyes softened, not kindly, but with focus. "For starters, I cannot return you to your world."
"I see..." he said, voice low.
"It isn’t for lack of power," she added, as though correcting a suspicion before it could form. "But you must rember, I am removed from ti and space. I cannot influence the external world. Even if I wished to, the barriers that separate us are... immutable."
"Which ans," Ludwig said slowly, "the help you’re offering... must be sothing achievable here. In your domain. Sothing personal."
"Indeed."
He clicked his tongue once, then leaned back in the chair. The wood creaked faintly.
"I see your hesitation," she said softly.
"No," Ludwig replied. "It’s not hesitation. More like... realization. Nothing in this world is free. Nothing. So when you tell I’m of no use to you, I find it hard to believe."
She gave another of her laughs, light, dry, unbothered. "I see. But worry not. It isn’t anything you wouldn’t already be doing."
His eyes narrowed. "What do you an?"
"Let’s just say," she murmured, brushing one bandaged hand against her teacup, "that along your quest... you will complete a task of mine."
Ludwig’s gaze flicked to the fireplace. "I can guess what it is."
"Oh?"
"The death of one of the Usurpers."
A pause.
"Quite the smart person you are," she said. "Indeed... a very troubleso one at that."
He gave a dry, hollow chuckle. "Wild guess. Envious Death?"
She stilled.
And her teacup ever so slightly, trembled in her grip. A single droplet of tea escaped the rim, falling onto the wood with no sound at all.
"That," she said, "is an incredible deduction. How did you figure it out?"
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