Lana was locked in a dark, dry place.

Crusades were profitable businesses, and merchants of all kinds had come to Illyria, hoping to sell to the Herald of Light or his people. Lun had bought a forbidden moving cage and asked Lana to enter it. The low-quality item was much like a spatial ring, except it could hold living beings inside, was more expensive, and had much more limited space. It was used to keep high-value targets inside while making it harder for them to be rescued or escape, and unlike the high-quality items of such kind that were built to protect VIPs, it had no way for those inside to see what was happening on the outside.

She had been there for days already. The trick with spatial rings that the Patriarch— No, not her Patriarch anymore. Aaron. Aaron had taught her that spatial rings could be kept inside others, and living spaces were no different. They could both be kept inside spatial rings, and people in there could hold rings of their own. So, her food and water were stored in her own ring and she ate from there.

Lun had explained he wouldn't contact her until Aaron arrived, for fear of someone feeling her existence. He kept her cage in his ring at all times.

However, they hadn't foreseen an issue. Living spaces took air from the surroundings for the people inside. Spatial rings didn't hold any air though, thus the breathing air — Aaron called it oxygen — inside her cage was limited. The cage was big enough for two people, and as a One Star Qi Manipulator she could hold her air for long enough to survive for a couple of weeks, but it still worried her.

Then again, if Aaron didn't come for her within that time frame...

Aaron had promised that he would prioritize her unless he forewarned her that a specific situation required him to do otherwise. She trusted him more than she trusted herself, so his absence would probably mean he was dead.

Could she live without him in a world that had betrayed her time and time again? Yes, she probably could. But did she want it?

Aaron was her safe port. It was one thing if they broke up and she could still have him by her side as a Patriarch, but to know he was forever gone... She wasn't sure what she would do.

Maybe having her fate taken away from her again just by being in the cage wouldn't be so bad, after all.

As quickly as the thought came, her heart rebelled. Hells, no! Lana was done getting caged against her will! She had given herself to Aaron — well, not completely, they hadn't had time for that yet — but that had been on her own accord. She refused to let outside factors decide anything else for her. Even if she were blackmailed into something, she would still have a choice. Being locked with no way out was something else altogether.

She had tasted freedom, and as terrifying and weird as it had been, she knew it was for the best. Her days of submission to higher powers were long over.

Even the kind of submission Aaron demanded of his clan was different once you thought about it, for he made it clear what was happening, why it was happening, the aims of such submission, and the advantages of it. Being a Devout, however, had meant placing herself at the hand of the goddess with the belief that she knew better no matter what she did. Even the way she had betrayed and abandoned Lana was supposedly for the greater good, for she knew better.

The Ironblood clan did the opposite. The rules stated the clan might err, and any member might plead for restitution in those cases. It wasn't perfect, of course, for in some situations the Patriarch would be the culprit and the judge, but it was better than in many places. It was certainly better than with the goddess, whose motives you weren't to question no matter what.

The longer she tasted her freedom, the more aware of the Temple of Light's abuses she became. Aaron helped too. He was subtle and never spoke directly against it, but he pointed out how his clan did things differently from other clans, and the parallel to the Temple of Light was obvious.

So Lana liked her newfound freedom, which meant she hated it in the living space. It didn't help that she had only brought torches, no Light crystal, and torches consumed oxygen. She was fated to stay in the darkness for gods know how long.

The meditation Aaron had taught her had helped her keep her sanity. Not in the beginning, but as she found herself with nothing to do and no external stimulus of any kind, her loud thoughts subsided a little and she found herself more focused. Eventually, she started caring little about feeling Time Energy at all but used the meditation to just relax instead.

"Clear your mind of everything," she almost heard Aaron repeat to her. "If a thought comes, pay attention to it as if it were a temporary visitor. Don't get annoyed at it, and don't hold to it, just let it run its course and then let go of it when it leaves. You are detached from the mortal coil, you are a mind in a clear state of existence, you are not controlled by whatever your body tells you. You control yourself, every part of yourself, body, spirit, soul, mind, and heart. And in that control, you simply exist. Nothing can affect you. Just allow yourself to be."

What had felt like stupidity the first few times, now felt wonderful. Thoughts came, and she just istened detachedly. They went, and she stayed in a blank state of existence.

Time passed, and at first, she didn't know how much. Then she noticed she could feel the Qi inside her better. Focusing on it gave her some measure of time, but then she also stopped doing that. Why was she focusing on it? Why was she letting her existence be timed by the movement of something external to her? She was body, spirit, soul, mind, and heart — she was not Qi. She retracted her mind and returned to the void of just being.

Then she felt the tiny traces of Vital Energy inside her too. She wasn't a Vitamancer, so they were very limited in amount, only there to keep her alive. Aaron had said that Qi and Vital Energy were supposed to be one originally — together with many other energies — and that it was weird to see them divided. She couldn't notice anything of the kind, but she believed him.

The third energy she felt wasn't inside her, but outside, and it amazed her. There, in the absolute darkness around her, she felt a few tiny particles of Light Elemental Energy very spaced between each other, only a few dozen in the cage. Aaron had also taught her how all Laws existed everywhere, no matter how we perceived the material world. If a Law couldn't be found somewhere, you were either in an illusion or dead, for reality as she knew it couldn't exist without them.

She knew it was Light Elemental Energy instead of Light Holy Energy because it felt very different from what she was used to. Elemental Energy felt more... natural, somehow. The Light Holy Energy the goddess used to give her was more... intelligent, almost as if it had a will of its own.

Elemental Energy just was, with no judgment or wants of its own, almost like her own state. It followed Laws just like she followed some rules of the living — a beating heart, a functioning mind — to keep existing. But other than that, both of them wanted nothing.

She watched it for a while until she realized she was focusing on it too much. Then she also let go of it. Soon, she was back to just being.

So detached that she was, that she never even considered what would eventually come. Her own ambitions weren't part of her anymore, for they were ambitions toward things external to her, and she wasn't being affected by it anymore. Yet, she had an affinity to Time Energy, and eventually, she felt it.

There were particles of Time Energy everywhere around her.

The realization slapped her desires right back at her, and she was startled from her deep meditation. Her heart beat faster, her breathing sped up.

She had felt it! She had felt Time Energy in nature! And she had successfully meditated like a cultivator!

Lana knew she wouldn't relax enough to meditate again for hours yet, maybe even days, but a door to the future had just opened to her. She knew what to do now. Aaron had taught her a Qi cultivation method that she should only use once she felt Time Energy for three hours straight before waking up. Supposedly, that would be proof that she could stay in a meditative for long enough to cultivate his profound Qi technique without hurting herself.

She smiled and thanked Lun in her heart. The man didn't know it, but he had just made her almost as happy as when Aaron had kissed her for the first time.

"Repay kindness with kindness and enmity with enmity," Aaron had taught.

Since she wouldn't be able to meditate again any time soon, she wondered how she could repay the man once she was out. If she did leave, of course. She might still die asphyxiated, after all.

Lun felt anxious every single minute of the day. There were secrets one only learned at the right level, and he had learned on the Champion level that living spaces were forbidden for a good reason.

They were addicting and made the people inside crazier the longer they stayed there.

There was no man-made space that was perfect. Spatial rings couldn't hold living beings, while living spaces distorted reality. The merchant who sold it to Lun had been liberal in exhibiting his goods, knowing that they would sell fast despite their illegal status. It was just too tempting to own a living space, and he sold his inventory quickly, then ran away even faster.

Lun saw no alternative to putting Seccos in the moving cage though. She was just too beautiful. For all the Arcane Master's item hoarding, he had had no high-level item specialized in hiding one's appearance. The one he had given Seccos couldn't fool some of the more powerful identifying skills, and those powerful enough to have such skills stared openly at her.

Unfortunately, many of the powerful who had come for the crusade weren't used to the freedom that only being in a weak kingdom with a Four Star Monarch could provide. Once, a Five Star had tried to poach her in broad daylight, forcing him to expose his own level, which he hid with a better artifact provided by the Arcane Master. It would be too convenient to expect the Master to have any item for any situation, but Lun still felt frustrated that something as simple as lust had foiled their original plans.

He couldn't protect her by displaying his power, for that would call even more attention upon them. The city was under siege, and a Champion in there would be marked as a priority target for the enemy. He wouldn't care about it in usual times, but he was there to protect Seccos, and her safety would be jeopardized if people came for him. After all, those sent to reap his life would be ready for a Champion, beyond his means of dealing with.

Seeing the moving cage on display had been a great blessing. The Arcane Master had offered one to the herald as an alternative to having Lana run away with Lun, but the herald had said it was too dangerous. The cage would need to be kept in a spatial ring, but the herald claimed it could still be destroyed, and Lana would be killed together with it just like that. It was safer for her to get far from him whenever he was facing an opponent dangerous enough to justify sending her away in the first place.

But they also hadn't given the item to him. What if it meant he wasn't supposed to put her inside? The rules of the Ironblood clan were fair when you thought about them from a theoretical standpoint, but theory couldn't always be easily applied to reality. He had taken a calculated risk, but what if Ironblood saw it differently?

Lun wasn't ready to die for no reason. He had come to kill Mouth-Men and wouldn't care much about dying in battle against them, but getting killed by his boss was another matter altogether.

Outside the city, the troops of the emperor waited. They had promised substantial rewards for any Five Star cultivator or stronger that joined them. Betraying the crusade was punishable by death, but then again, endangering the herald's woman might be equally lethal.

Lun felt lost and had to swap shirts once again, as the one he was wearing had gotten drenched in sweat.