The cavern stretched deeper, the blue crystals growing denser until the walls themselves seemed to breathe cold light. Every footfall sent faint echoes skittering across jagged facets; the air stayed thin, lifeless, mana-dead.
Stark glanced around, rubbing the back of his neck. "These things are actually kinda pretty, though. Like stars stuck in rock."
Fern walked closer to him than usual, clutching her cloak. "They may be pretty," she said quietly, "but they make me uneasy. It's too quiet here."
Frieren reached out without breaking stride and patted Fern's shoulder once—light, reassuring. "We'll be fine. Stark's here to protect us."
Stark blanched, eyes widening. "I—I hope there's nothing down here to protect you from…"
Frieren tilted her head, scanning the crystalline formations with detached interest. "This cavern doesn't seem well-suited for life. No moisture, no warmth, no mana flow. We're probably fine."
Stark wilted. "Probably isn't enough…" He perked up a second later, turning toward Percia who had fallen a step behind, gaze distant. "Hey—don't you know how to wield a rapier?"
Percia blinked, pulled back from whatever thought had held her. She met his hopeful expression. "I can't conjure my staff here. No rapier."
Stark's face fell. He stuttered. "R-right… but—you know how to use other weapons, yeah? A few?"
"A few," Percia replied evenly.
Stark rummaged in the side pocket of his pack and pulled out a hunting knife. The blade was longer than most—nearly a short sword in proportion—single-edged, thick-spined, with a simple stag-horn handle worn smooth from use. The steel had a faint patina of age but held a keen edge; practical, not ornate.
"I keep it for skinning animals," he said quickly. "It's not fancy, but… you can use it. Help me if something shows up."
Percia took the knife, turning it once in her hand. The craftsmanship was crude—market-made, uneven bevels, no maker's mark—but balanced well enough for utility. Stark shifted, mumbling, "It was cheap. Probably not great, but… better than nothing, right?"
Percia said nothing. She slipped the knife inside her cloak, near her left hip.
The inky wisp still lingered at the edge of her vision—never quite in focus, never quite gone.
They continued.
The path narrowed, then opened into a small chamber dominated by a shallow pool of perfectly still water. The surface reflected the blue crystals above like fractured night sky. Stark dropped to one knee beside it, exhausted from holding every muscle tense for too long.
Frieren crouched next to him and poked his cheek with one finger. "Relax a little. There's nothing in here but us." A beat. "Probably."
Stark whined. "You're doing that on purpose."
Frieren smiled—small, amused.
Percia remained standing. She stepped closer to the pool's edge and peered down. The water was unnaturally clear; nothing moved beneath it. Yet something waited. Not visible. Not audible. Just… there.
Stark looked up. "What're you doing?"
She hummed. "Nothing."
She turned and started toward the next corridor without another word.
Fern rose halfway. "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to investigate a few caverns ahead," Percia said over her shoulder. "Rest here."
Stark shot to his feet. "Whoa—separating? I don't like that idea."
Fern frowned, gaze flicking between Percia and the dark opening. "It's dangerous without mana."
Frieren watched silently, expression unreadable.
Percia kept walking. Stark called after her—"Hey, at least wait for us to—" but she didn't stop.
She could feel herself getting closer to it.
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Percia crossed cavern after cavern, boots scraping softly against crystalline floors that refracted her shadow into a dozen jagged copies. The blue glow never dimmed, only shifted—colder here, paler there, like the light itself was breathing. She had long since lost the straight path back to the pool chamber. The tunnels twisted, branched, doubled back on themselves in ways that mocked any map she might have tried to keep in her head.
Getting back would be difficult, she mused. Perhaps impossible without mana to mark the route. She felt no particular panic at the thought—only a quiet acceptance. She had time. She'd find them eventually.
A faint rumbling rolled through the stone beneath her feet, low and distant. A sudden breeze gusted past her face, carrying the damp, metallic scent of disturbed water.
Percia hummed once, soft and thoughtful.
The thing in the pool had awakened after all.
Good.
It would keep the others occupied—distract them, give them something tangible to fight or flee from. They would be fine.
Probably.
The word curved her lips into a small, private smile. The 'probably' echoed exactly the way Frieren would have said it—careless, almost amused, as though the uncertainty was just another mildly interesting detail in an otherwise uneventful afternoon.
She was still smiling faintly when she felt it.
She hadn't found it.
It had found her.
A pull in her gut—not the gentle, familiar summons of the world she had known for millennia, but something wrong. Invasive. Every instinct she possessed screamed at once: danger, wrongness, retreat. Darkness rushed in from the edges of her vision—not shadow, not absence of light, but absence of everything. It swallowed her whole.
She didn't fall. She simply… wasn't where she had been.
She could still hear Stark screaming—frantic, loud, unmistakable even through the veil. For once she thanked Stark's lung capacity. It gave her a direction in this directionless gray.
The in-between.
She had named it that eons ago, the first time something had pulled her into this gray, liminal space. Detached from the living world yet tethered to it—close enough that she could still hear, still see fragments of reality through thin, wavering veils, but unable to touch, to affect, to be affected in turn.
Nothing she did here mattered to the outside.
She had been here only once before, centuries past, when a wisp from the gate had dragged her in and tried to flee while she was trapped. Back then she had clawed her way out using raw spellwork—threads of mana she could still command even in this null place.
Now she had nothing.
No mana. No staff. Just the crude hunting knife in her cloak pocket and the knowledge that she was, for the first time in longer than she cared to count, truly helpless.
It was a good thing, then, that the wisp—this time—was confident of her weakness. For it to reach out and pull her here so openly meant it believed it held the upper hand.
'Well', she thought offhandedly, 'it did.'
She watched as the darkness before her thickened, coiled, took shape.
Limbs sprouted—long, too-jointed. Horns curved upward in a familiar crescent sweep. Pale, translucent flesh shimmered into existence, features trembling as though struggling to hold form. But the silhouette was unmistakable: the sweeping horn that curved like a scythe, the narrow shoulders, the too-long fingers.
"You still take that shape," Percia said quietly.
The figure smiled—lips trembling, edges blurring, but the expression was unmistakable.
"It's been a while, master," it whispered, voice layered and thin, like wind through cracked glass.
Percia tilted her head. "I'm not your master."
The wisp shrugged, shoulders rolling unnaturally. "You raised me."
She blinked slowly. "I don't like wiping things out once they've taken shape. You were a boy. Demon or not. Corrupted or not. You deserved a chance to live."
The translucent figure regarded her for a long moment, features flickering and condensing just enough.
If Frieren had been here, she would have tried to destroy him immediately.
Because the boy—no, the man—before her had once struck terror into all of humanity. He had been the one to order the systematic slaughter of elves. He had killed thousands upon thousands with those very hands that now hovered, half-formed, in front of her.
The Demon King.
He smiled—slow, almost gentle, though the edges of his mouth still blurred like smoke in wind.
"I'm not here to cause trouble," he said softly.
Percia's expression did not change. "The last time you said that, you started a war against humanity."
He shrugged, shoulders rolling in that too-fluid way that belonged to no living thing. "I was only trying to unify the races. Just as you once dreamt."
Percia went quiet.
The silence stretched, thin and heavy.
After a long beat she asked, "What do you want?"
Another shrug, casual as if they were discussing the weather. "I just wanted to see my dear master."
"I'm not your master."
He simply smiled wider, features trembling but unmistakable. Then, quieter: "A favor, then."
"No."
He sighed—soundless, theatrical. "Hear me out for one second."
"No."
He spoke anyway.
"There's a ruin nearby. Demons linger there—remnants of my old army. I want you to go and wipe them out."
Percia processed the words. Confusion flickered, faint but real. "What are you planning?"
He feigned innocence, tilting his head. "I simply want the best for humanity."
At her deadpan, unbelieving stare he laughed—low, fractured, echoing strangely in the in-between.
"My intentions are a secret," he said. "You told me once that secrets are what make living interesting, right?"
"You're not living."
He hummed, agreeing without argument.
Silence settled again.
Percia approached him slowly.
The figure stilled, surprised. "I thought you didn't want anything to do with me."
"I don't."
She stopped close enough that she could have reached out without stretching.
She did.
One hand rose, fingers brushing the translucent cheek—cool, insubstantial, yet somehow yielding beneath her touch. The figure froze, then leaned into the contact, a faint, almost wistful smile curving his flickering mouth.
"What brought this on?" he murmured.
In the next instant his form split.
The air shuddered.
He looked down.
A hunting knife—Stark's crude, market-bought blade—protruded from the core of the wisp, buried to the hilt where the heart would have been on a living thing.
He could feel himself dispersing, fading, the in-between fraying at the edges around them.
He looked back at her.
"Cruel," he whispered.
Percia caressed his face a moment longer, thumb tracing the line of a cheek that was no longer quite there.
"I learned it from you."
With that, the gray veil tore.
She was back.
Still in the same cavern. Blue crystals glowing cold and steady around her. The rumbling from earlier had died down; instead she felt a sudden, sharp spike of mana—distant but unmistakable. The others had found a way out. Or fought their way out.
Percia exhaled once, slow and controlled.
She turned toward the mana spike, walking steadily through the crystalline corridors, deep in thought.
Behind her, the faint echo of a fractured laugh lingered for just a second longer—then nothing.
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The corridor opened into a wider chamber where the blue crystals thinned enough to let natural daylight filter through a high crack in the ceiling. Fern and Frieren stood near a far tree. Stark crouched under it, panting, red hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. Fern's hands were clenched at her sides, staff held like a shield even though the monster had long since gone to dust behind them. Frieren looked calm as ever, brushing a stray strand of white hair from her face.
Percia stepped into the light.
For a long moment no one spoke.
Then Percia tilted her head slightly.
Fern's lips were pressed into a thin, furious line. She crossed her arms tightly, violet eyes flashing with anger. She didn't answer—just glared into the forest, shoulders rigid.
Stark's face crumpled. He looked away fast, rubbing the back of his neck. His usual earnest grin was gone; he looked smaller than he had any right to.
Percia exhaled softly through her nose and turned to Frieren.
"Everything went smoothly?"
Frieren nodded once. "Stark is good at running."
Stark mumbled under his breath, barely audible, "Would've ran faster if someone else carried Frieren…"
He shot Percia a half-hearted, tired glare—then flinched and looked away the instant her eyes met his.
Percia's expression softened a fraction.
"I apologize," she said quietly. "I got caught up with something."
Fern finally spoke, voice low and edged with anger. "A warning would have been nice. You knew that creature was underwater." It wasn't a question.
Percia met those lilac eyes. She saw the distrust there, the wariness, the quiet hurt beneath the fury. She didn't look away.
"I knew you could handle it," she said simply. "A warning would have woken it earlier. I'm sorry for leaving you."
Fern blinked, taken aback by the plain honesty. Her anger faltered; she looked down at the stone floor, fingers loosening around her staff, lips still pressed tight.
Stark shifted uncomfortably. "So… what were you doing anyway?"
Percia paused. "Attending to duties."
Stark blanched. "What duties?"
She didn't respond. Instead, she reached into her cloak and drew out the hunting knife to return it. She held it hilt-first toward him.
Except the blade—where it had struck the wisp—was gone. Corroded away, leaving only a blackened, pitted stump of metal that ended in a ragged, melted-looking edge.
Stark recoiled. "What the—?! What did you run into that did that?!"
Percia blinked once at the ruined knife, then looked up at him. "I apologize. I'll buy you a new one at the next town."
Frieren stepped forward without a word and took the knife from Percia's hand. She turned it slowly in the light, studying the corrosion with quiet intensity. She had seen this exact pattern only once before—not so long ago, on a battlefield soaked in demonic mana so thick it ate steel like rust in rain.
Impossible.
She lifted her gaze to Percia.
Percia felt the weight of her eyes. She didn't look down. She simply stood there, hands loose at her sides, letting Frieren look.
The silence stretched.
Fern glanced between them, then quietly stepped closer to Stark, who was still staring at the ruined blade like it might bite him.
Frieren finally spoke, voice soft and even.
"Do you want this blade back, Stark?"
Stark shook his head adamantly, "No, no, we should get rid of it. It feels... wrong. I don't want any bad luck from that thing."
With a hum, Frieren knelt down and opened her suitcase, tossing the knife inside, the motion small and absent-minded, as if she had simply pocketed a loose coin.
Stark's eyes widened. "You're… keeping it?"
"It's interesting," she said nonchalantly.
Stark stared at her. "...That's not the word I'd use."
Frieren turned away from him and glanced up at the sky. The light had shifted—late afternoon already, the sun beginning its slow descent.
"We should get moving," she said. "There's still daylight left. If we leave now, we can find a place for the night."
Stark made an attempt to stand. He collapsed back onto the rock with a dramatic groan.
"I can't move."
Fern blinked. "You're sitting."
"I'm sitting very painfully," Stark insisted. "My legs ran too much. They're on strike."
"Pfft—," The sound surprised even her. She quickly covered her mouth, but the tension that had tightened her shoulders since Percia returned loosened just a little.
Stark looked betrayed. "Fern! You're supposed to be on my side!"
Fern's lips twitched despite herself. "You're being dramatic."
"I'm injured!" Stark protested. "There's a difference!"
Percia felt her own lips twitch faintly as she watched them bicker. The tension that she hadn't realized was coiled inside her chest began to ebb away.
She could still feel it, though—Frieren's probing, questioning stare resting on her like quiet pressure.
Percia met her gaze for a brief second, then turned her eyes toward the path ahead.
They would talk about it eventually.