Alicia was sitting in a dimly lit room.
The room was small, with only a faint gas lamp hanging in the corner, casting a flickering, orange halo.
The air was filled with the scent of so ancient spice—ambergris, myrrh, and sothing else she couldn't na.
She sat cross-legged on a gray mat in the center of the floor, her platinum-blonde hair trailing behind her like a sleeping silver snake.
ditation.
Instructor Margaret said this was her mandatory daily howork.
"You need to anchor yourself, Alicia," the Instructor's voice echoed in her mory. "The erosion from the Path of the Moon will gradually make you unable to distinguish illusion from reality. ditation helps you establish a stable cognitive baseline."
A cognitive baseline.
Alicia closed her eyes, trying hard to settle her thoughts.
She should focus on her breath, feel the temperature change of the air entering her lungs, feel the regular rhythm of her heartbeat, feel—
...Is there pudding in the cafeteria today?
Her eyelids twitched slightly.
No, no, this is a distracting thought.
She needed to eliminate distracting thoughts.
Margaret had said that when ditating, one shouldn't think about anything else.
The mind should be like a calm lake surface, without any ripples.
A lake surface.
A calm lake surface...
...What would happen if I threw a stone into the lake?
The stone would sink.
Then ripples would spread across the water.
The ripples would spread out circle by circle until they reached the shore.
If the lake was big enough, the ripples would spread for a very, very long ti.
What if the lake was infinitely large?
Would the ripples spread forever?
Or would they disappear at so point?
Alicia thought this was a very interesting question.
Then she realized she had drifted off again.
Oh no...
Alicia sighed inwardly.
She had been sitting here for over ten minutes, but the actual ti spent ditating might only be...
Three minutes?
Maybe five minutes?
No, it should be less.
Two minutes?
A minute and a half?
This won't do.
But the problem was, she didn't actually know how to ditate.
Margaret said to make her mind like a calm lake surface, not thinking about anything.
But isn't 'thinking about nothing' a thought in itself?
When you are trying hard to 'think about nothing,' you are actually thinking, 'I must think about nothing.'
In that case, you are still thinking about sothing.
Therefore, 'thinking about nothing' is impossible to achieve.
It's a paradox.
Alicia felt she had discovered sothing profound and couldn't help but want to tell Margaret.
But she also felt that Margaret would probably just ruffle her hair and say, 'You're daydreaming again.'
She actually really liked having her head ruffled.
Margaret's palm was very warm, and the pressure was just right—not too light, not too heavy—making her feel very comfortable.
No.
She drifted off again.
Alicia gave up trying to focus.
No one was watching her anyway, right?
Margaret was teaching the new classmates, Sebastian was supervising Frederick and Reinhardt's training, and the others... she didn't know what the others were doing.
So, relaxing a little shouldn't matter.
She exerted a slight force, and a ball of silvery-white light condensed in her palm. The light pulsed gently, like a tiny star held in her hand.
This is fun.
Alicia looked at the ball of light, and her thoughts began to drift away again.
What if she turned this light into a ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) cat?
A small, fluffy silver kitten that would curl up on her lap to sleep.
Like that new classmate.
She could give it a na. What should she call it?
Moonlight? Too common.
Galaxy? Sounds like the na of a river.
Stardust? Seems a bit pretentious.
Little Silver? No, no, Margaret said to use nas starting with 'Little' less often.
How about... Frost Sugar?
This na is quite nice.
Frost Sugar.
A little silver kitten nad Frost Sugar.
Alicia nodded in satisfaction, then let the light in her palm change shape.
The sphere beca an oval, the oval slowly elongated, and then four legs and a tail sprouted out.
A tiny silver kitten appeared in her palm, its tail swaying gently.
"ow."
She provided the sound herself.
The silver kitten circled once in her palm, then jumped onto the floor, took a few light steps, and looked back at her.
Alicia tilted her head, watching it, her eyes shining.
So cute.
Even though this cat was sothing she created herself, she still found it very cute when she saw it.
Why was that?
She knew clearly that it was fake, an illusion, a phantom she condensed using the power of the Path of the Moon, yet she still found it cute.
Perhaps cuteness has nothing to do with reality.
Whether sothing is cute or not depends on whether it looks cute, not whether it is real or not.
So, if a truly ugly thing and a falsely cute thing were placed together, which one would people prefer?
This was another interesting question.
Besides, how could sothing she created not be considered real?
She created Frost Sugar, she saw Frost Sugar, and she felt the soft fur of Frost Sugar rubbing against her.
Or perhaps—
She raised her head, her purple eyes gazing at a certain point in the void.
—Is this room I see now real?
Perhaps this room is also so kind of illusion.
Maybe she was still in so nightmare and hadn't woken up.
Perhaps the entire world was just a larger dream, and she was rely a shadow within that dream.
The silver kitten circled around her again and again.
Alicia looked at it and suddenly felt a bit sleepy.
The room was warm, and the scent of spices made one drowsy.
Maybe taking a short nap wouldn't hurt?
ditation and sleep are essentially both ways to rest the brain; they should be similar things...
But just then—
Why is it a bit cold?
Alicia blinked.
The room that had been warm just a mont ago suddenly felt a little cold.
And it wasn't just a normal cold, but...
She looked down at her own arm.
Tiny goosebumps were rising on her skin.
Strange.
This ditation room had no windows and no ventilation shafts.
The temperature should have been constant.
Then.
She saw a snowflake.
A small, hexagonal snowflake was drifting down from above her head.
It landed lightly on the tip of her nose, bringing a slight, cool touch, and then lted into a drop of icy water.
Alicia slowly ford a question mark in her mind.
...?
She looked up.
More snowflakes were falling.
Not one or two, but hundreds, thousands of them.
They materialized out of thin air from the ceiling, as if soone had torn open a rift to winter in the roof.
The wind also arrived.
A biting, bone-chilling wind rushed in from all directions, whipping her platinum-blonde hair wildly behind her.
The fla of the gas lamp flickered violently a few tis, and then—it went out.
But darkness did not descend.
In its place was a pale, sowhat dazzling light.
It was the light of snow.
Boundless white reflecting so unseen light source.
Alicia stood up.
What was beneath her feet was no longer the gray ditation mat.
In its place was—snow.
Snow less than ankle-deep, ice-cold and biting, was rapidly deepening.
The walls of the room had disappeared.
The ceiling had disappeared.
That gas lamp had disappeared.
She was standing on an endless snowfield.
Wind and snow howled, visibility less than ten paces.
The world beyond ten paces had beco a chaotic white, like a canvas sared with white paint by so giant.
Gunshots echoed from the distance.
Muffled gunshots, suppressed by the wind and snow, sounded as if they ca from another world.
Bang. Bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang.
Then ca the sound of an explosion.
Boom—!!
The earth trembled.
Snowflakes scattered wildly in the shockwave.
Alicia blinked, and ford another question mark in her mind.
...??
What is going on?
She looked down at herself.
Thankfully, she was still herself.
Platinum-blonde hair, gray cloak, the academy's female uniform.
The little silver cat, Frost Sugar, was curled up by her feet, its fur completely bristled, emitting tiny, uneasy whines.
"Don't be afraid."
Alicia squatted down and gently stroked Frost Sugar's head.
"I don't know what's happening either."
She straightened up, her purple eyes looking into the depths of the blizzard.
In that chaotic white, a black shadow flickered in and out of view.
It was a tower.
A massive, inky-black tower.
It stood tall amidst the wind and snow, its body half-hidden by the howling blizzard, only its vague outline visible.
But even just the outline was enough to make one feel its presence.
That oppressive, suffocating sense of presence.
Like a black bone spur piercing the sky.
Like a tombstone that would never fall.
Lightning circled the spire, emitting a dull roar.
Alicia tilted her head.
"...A Tower."
She murmured softly.
This was her first ti entering soone else's void realm.
Margaret had said that every void realm was different.
The void realm of the Path of the Moon was silver mist and endless reflections; the void realm of the Path of the Chariot was a furnace of steel and flas.
And the void realm of the Path of the Tower...
Is it like this?
A battlefield in a blizzard.
A black tower standing forever in the storm.
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