Luciel sat in silence for a moment, trying to process everything that had just happened.
'Boreas…'
Then, it clicked for him.
'GFC on one side, Heerser on the other. Bambi sure knows how to pick her friends.'
Franne's invitation to Boreas hadn't been just formality; it was where she worked. One of Heerser's five Arks, and she spoke about it like it was her backyard.
Luciel had a feeling his awakening had set everything off course. He wasn't being arrogant; it was just facts. Coincidences or not, his life as a proper human had officially started.
"Alright, you two. Here's the plan when we arrive in Narae."
Belynda fixed her choker with a stern look.
"We register Luciel first, get his Resonator identification, and wait for Joanne's instruction."
She switched her gaze to Bambi.
"Next, we have to renew your contract since it expired six months ago. Can't have those Heerser auditors on our backs. They're like hawks."
Bambi's eyes narrowed, her lips pressed thin. She opened her mouth, then closed her again. Shortly after, her eyes snapped open.
"How much money are we talking about here? Incentives? Relic bonuses?"
Belynda opened her mouth to respond, but a sharp chime cut through the room. The floating screen flickered, and a muffled voice crackled through the comms.
[Captain, this is Glenn speaking. DTC clearance has been confirmed. Gleipnir is ready for departure on your order.]
She tapped the screen.
"Timeframe?"
[An hour, Captain.]
"We depart in ten. Run a pre-flight diagnostic on the main engine and Genesium Drive."
[Copy that.]
Listening in, Luciel felt a surge of excitement. This would be his first time dimension-jumping.
'No—scratch that. Today has been full of firsts.'
He still couldn't fully comprehend everything that had happened since the first dream. It was too surreal, a break from the monotony of his life. He was no longer a stray scraping for food and killing to stay alive; no longer someone who only waited for the next day to come.
Luciel was sick of that life. He wanted to leave the past behind and move on — except for the journey with Bambi, of course. But there had been dark days there too.
He sighed and turned to Bambi, who was looking at him, too.
Then she turned to Belynda.
"We'll get some rest."
"Sure. You know where the quarters are."
Bambi nodded and beckoned for him to follow her.
"Let's go."
Luciel pushed himself up and nodded to Belynda. When she nodded back, he turned and quickly followed Bambi out of the office.
She slowed to match his pace, then turned to look at him.
"I'm glad you're okay."
Luciel blinked, unused to her softness and sincerity. Then again, she thought he had died twice, so he understood where it came from. He expected her to be back to her usual self in a couple of days.
Soon enough, they arrived at one of the quarters and jumped on the beds immediately.
The quarter's bed was surprisingly comfortable even though it was a bunk bed, and the room was large enough to accommodate a sizable group.
The room's layout felt cozier than the ship's sleek, unforgiving steel coating. The walls were the same dark steel found throughout the ship, though slightly warmer in shade. The same dim blue conduits traced along the ceiling's frame, casting a low, steady glow, but in the context of a bedroom instead of a med bay, they lent the space a quiet intimacy absent from the corridors outside.
A desk sat against the wall opposite the bed, and beneath it sat a mini fridge stocked with water bottles.
'The captain gets alcohol but the crew gets water?'
It just went to show that if you were the top dog, you could do anything and no one would bat an eye. But Luciel could also see the pragmatism of it. If his subordinates fought the Discordants while drunk, probation would be the least of their problems.
And unfortunately, there were no windows. His only entertainment was listening to the faint hum of the ship's engines and the occasional vibration beneath the metal floor.
Below him, Bambi was sound asleep. He'd taken the top bunk because she said she didn't like climbing up and down the stairs, but he knew the real reason.
That reason? He hated the bottom bunk — traumatized even.
It was a long story. But to summarize, during the journey, he and Bambi had once stayed in a rundown inn. He felt uneasy the moment the owner said the price was 2 EK per person per night. It was extremely cheap, even by Outlands' business standards.
But because of a special circumstance, they didn't have any other choice. As they climbed the stairs of the two-floor inn, Luciel grew even more dubious — each step creaked so loudly it could've woken every guest on the floor, not that they had any. He believed they were the only guests that day, or the only ones in a long while, for that matter.
Just when he thought it couldn't get worse, Bambi opened the door to their room, and it genuinely looked like a haunted house — no, even haunted houses had seen better days.
The wallpaper — if it could still be called that, peeled off in a long, curling strips, exposing damp wood beneath. A single oil lamp sat crooked on a nightstand. The bottom bunk sagged in the middle, and the top bunk wasn't much better; the frame groaned the moment he touched it.
And to top it all off, a faint smell of something sour clung to everything like it was protecting the place.
Luciel, accustomed to the Outlands' filth, didn't mind. As long as he could get a good night's sleep, one place was no different from the next. However, even that was ruined.
He took the bottom bunk, while Bambi occupied the top one. An hour into their slumber, Luciel heard a series of slow, drawn-out creaks above his head. At first, he was none the wiser, attributing them to the bed's poor build. But then, the creaks sharpened into a groan. He could hear the splintered wood. At the last second, he swiftly rolled off the bed, and the top bunk caved in right where his chest had been.
After that fateful day, he swore to never sleep in a bunk bed again — at least not the bottom one or those that were made of wood. It was one of those irrational fears he couldn't believe he had.
This bunk bed, fortunately, was reinforced with metal, so he had nothing to worry about.
'I sure fucking hope so.'
Luciel stared at the ceiling, his mind blank. He recalled the moment when fire burned him from inside out while the pressure from fractured reality crushed him. He thought it was a miracle, even explaining to Bambi he didn't know what he had done.
She gave a few possible theories, but the one that made the most sense was the flame itself. He summoned the runes before his eyes, searched for his Soul Verse, and checked its description again.
[Divine Fire]
[Your flame is the origin of life, the beginning of fire. It brings both salvation and ruin, depending on which path you choose.]
Bambi mentioned that, as a Resonator, the learning curve was something not everyone could conquer. It was enlightenment after enlightenment, where Resonators had to understand themselves, their soul, and their Stanza. And it wasn't limited to that. A wild imagination was needed as well, because you never really knew what your next step would be. You had to create your own path and write your own Stanza.
Her point circled back to these runes. Having the textbook was one thing, but understanding the material was another. When he looked at the words salvation and ruin, a pair of contradictions, he had two possible explanations.
The first leaned toward the abstract: the flame could save him from his miserable life, or it could lead him down a darker path. Power was salvation, but it could also corrupt him, and it all depended on how he used it.
The second leaned toward application: the flame could destroy everything, and at the same time, it could bring warmth to people and himself. In prehistoric times, fire was the main source of heat. Without it, humans would have gone extinct.
Luciel believed fire's original purpose was to protect people, until it became a weapon used to burn them. This also coincided with the first Symphony's description.
He quickly fix his gaze toward the Soul Chorus' description.
Soul Chorus: Symphony No. 1 — [Scarlet]
[The first awakening of the divine fire. When your God bled for the first time, mortals saw a scarlet hue streak across the skies. Some called it an omen, others called it a blessing. With every prayer, the clock ticked down toward the same Scarlet, the one who adored mortals the most.]
'There.'
The one who adored mortals the most.
It all made perfect sense — the flame possessed both destructive and restorative qualities. He had come back from death twice to tell the tales. He was certain of this conclusion.