Enoch remained silent.
He stared into Uriel’s blank white eyes, and they stared back into his erald pupils.
SHI!
Enoch regained control of his core, his spark glowing with brilliant light.
He nodded. "I see. I still don’t believe that’s the only reason, though."
He smirked. "Did you forget the use of my spark?"
He stared at him, grinning.
"All things can be defective," Uriel uttered, not an ounce of sha written across his thick-skinned face.
Enoch laughed, the tension in his shoulders easing.
BANG! BANG!
"I’m late!"
Ayah bolted down the stairs, wearing her usual body-wide, layered crimson robes, covering everything except her eyes.
In her wake, a beautiful floral scent followed, sweet and deep.
She waved them goodbye, then stord out of the house, rushing to the Emporium.
"...see you tonight!" Uriel waved back.
BANG!
The door slamd shut.
The two continued eating for a while, talking and discussing various topics before clearing the table and cleaning the scene.
Dishes were washed, trays put into the fridge, and the counters swept clean. A dozen minutes later, the windows closed and the chimney lit ablaze, they sat on the sofas.
Enoch sat on a single-seat sofa, one leg folded atop the other as he read from a thick book, while Uriel lay on a long sofa, head cushioned by thick pillows and covered by a heavy blanket.
"So," Enoch finally asked, gaze still focused on his book, "what happened?"
On his back, staring at the ceiling, Uriel reached out into the air and began playing with runes that spontaneously ford and collapsed with every push and pull of his mind.
For so reason, it was all becoming easier and easier, almost too simple.
"I learned spellcasting in my death trial. Then I blazed through most of what remained, the difficulty only scaling with the quantity of aether my opponents’ cores had."
"But the first wave beat up too badly, and my aether managent was horrible, so I exited the trial dry and empty, and almost dead. My coughing also began to flare up."
"I collapsed in an alleyway for a bit. Then soone called Lirik ca up to ."
Enoch looked up.
"Sohow, he forcefully pulled into a foreign dinsional space, without using any dinsional terminal or anything."
"You said Lirik?" Enoch asked slowly, closing his book and setting it down.
"Mm. Lirik. And the other one was Oris, Orion, Or-sothing—"
"Orin."
He nodded. "Yeah. I didn’t get a chance to gather anyone else’s nas, but it shouldn’t matter since they’re dead."
Uriel went on, explaining the sequence of his torture—how he’d used his spark to force Lirik to tell him more about himself, and how he’d escaped, pulling him into an illusion using that sa spark.
As Uriel had found out, emotions were only as powerful as the mories they were rooted in. Making Lirik recount his entire life had made him so vulnerable that his spark barely had to do anything else to pull him in and end it all.
"The strange weakness you felt at that ti is called soul exhaustion," Enoch stated coldly. "And it is supposed to be deadly."
"Never do that again. Not until you truly understand your spark. In fact, stop using it altogether until you understand how to activate it, how to stop it, and what its passive abilities are."
"Mind-attuned sparks are the sharpest of double-edged blades. They can consu you as fast as they consu others."
Uriel nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly.
"And then what happened?"
Uriel explained the rest—Ayah taking him in, waking up trapped by Thoryl, the reveal of the Sentinels, the mysterious duo who’d killed a guide, his death sentence, and all that followed.
He left out all parts related to the Supre Spirit.
"...I see."
Enoch caressed his chest.
As he did so, Lie Eaters began to fill the air, fusing into every single inch of the house and applying strange properties to it.
Uriel curiously observed it all.
"The reason I often can’t say anything, have to do things so suddenly, or simply don’t warn you of coming danger is not because I’m being mysterious."
"In part, it’s because too many people are constantly listening. But mainly, it’s because I literally cannot."
"Look."
Enoch moved his lips, but no sound ca out. In fact, Uriel couldn’t sense his emotions anymore. He couldn’t even—
Light of day and dark of night blended into one, Uriel’s consciousness flickering from eternal sleep to unbroken clarity in such a rapid loop that he lost all grasp of ti and reality.
"...huh? What happened?"
Enoch bitterly shook his head. He summoned a Lie Eater, which turned into a screen that replayed what had just happened.
The confused Uriel watched, his eyes rapidly widening.
"You see? There are chanisms of the universe literally stopping from saying anything, unless you too are a regressor."
The Lie Eater screen faded.
Uriel watched it with a faint sparkle in his eyes. ’Just how versatile are those things...’
"But I found a solution. One that can allow to say a few things."
All the Lie Eaters fused into the house shook and resonated, and in a blink, it was as if Ayah’s house had beco Enoch’s own personal dinsional space, all the aether within turning into his Natal aether.
Uriel frowned, the sensation incredibly uncomfortable, like a million worms crawling beneath his skin and an enraged hound constantly gnawing at his core.
"I can’t maintain this for long, so I’ll be quick."
His expression was pale.
"Who is the enemy?" Uriel asked instantly.
Enoch shook his head. "There is no enemy. Only a conflict of interest. Only different goals that clash against each other."
"The main danger still stands as the dungeon, and the state our world will be in when we return. It’s to the point where, if by the end of these two coming weeks we’re not both E-Rank First-Step Ascendants at the very least, we’ll most likely die."
"If it were up to , we’d speed through the ranks and leave as A-Rankers, or even as Second-Step Ascendants, but nothing is ever perfect."
He paused.
"But if you want an answer void of nuance," he said, "your enemies are two people."
"Salazar and Celeste."
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