“Up… Wake up." A faint light shone through the glass screen door of a residence Loki contemplated, a place he probably once knew. Sitting up, he remembered being booted towards a devilish beverage wine cart with such a powerful aroma that could really knock anyone unconscious with just an improper whiff of it.

“Wake up.” A woman's somber voice quivered around the room. “Hello?” Loki exclaimed. “What am I doing here?” The cheer shouts of solitude echoed off from the walls. “I'm desperately looking for my sister. Two half-ass horses took he-” When he moved about, he experienced a brief ringing pain at the crown of his skull. “Wake up.”

“Lady, I'm already up!” He encountered a bubble barrier after tracking the unknown rhythmic thumping steps coming out in the hall. When he awoke, the atmosphere was freezing, but Loki could now see his breath. “I'm imprisoned by such a basic spell.” A notion struck him. He rummaged in his satchel and grabbed a little compact mirror with a crescent moon in the middle. When he knocked on it, a lifelike hologram of his beloved raccoon appeared before his eyes.

“Bitz! I'm so delighted to see you. Look, I'm in a bind right now; could you kindly do me a favor and show me your collar for a second?” The raccoon did not cooperate as he tilted his head, glaring at Loki in the compact mirror that contained the morning star. When he heard his voice, the raccoon quickly delivered the other half of the compact mirror to Lucie.

“Would there be something wrong? You can't be out of energy right now, can you?” The man on the opposite side of the mirror is Lucifer Lawrence, his leader and one of the pure breed offspring of the vampire grand members of the royal family. Unlike the dimwit protagonist Loki, he is respected by everybody and is never addressed by his first name.

When Loki was officially introduced to Lucifer, he was only a child, he was persisting on calling him Lucie rather than Lawrence, just as everybody else should have. When Lawrence or Loki’s father were not present to suppress the violence, the other vampires physically expressed to Loki to mend his mistakes.

Lawrence removed his reading specs, running his middle finger and thumb across the bridge of his nose. He commanded Loki to visit his mansion after the meeting with the wolf family was over. Immediately hanging up the holographic phone call, abandoning Loki alone in nothingness.

“More often than not, I want to wander in your thoughts,” Loki huffed as he stripped away the dusty sear curtain off the window, allowing light to shine through with tiny dust particles caught slowly drifting around in the air.

He could see where he was since there was a considerable amount of light pouring in. “It's a living room?” Sneezing his guts up from his lungs, he swatted the surrounding air. “A dusty living room.” He began to gaze about, using his newly acquired used jacket as a masked filter.

Everything was presented in black and white. The books, the couch, and even the walls, all the way to the edge of the creaky floorboards he stepped on. Except for him and a painting protruding from a diluted grey tablecloth draped over the canvas.

As he reached out one of his hands to uncover the painting, a squall of wind with the rumbling from the walls violently began to shake around him. Something didn't want to unveil the artwork, but it just piqued his interest as to what might be underneath it. The room grew angrier as he approached, but the moment his hand gripped the material, everything seemed to come to a standstill.

Something rushed into his thoughts, as if time wasn't being kind. The realization has just now hit him. He wasn't in human territory right now. Everything is currently considered a potential trap. He slowly lifted the tablecloth, hoping not to be directly affected by what was beneath.

It wasn’t anything he expected to see, he didn’t sense anything sinister emanating from the painted canvas. It was just a normal object featuring a lady covered in vibrant hues. Yet there was something familiar about her. The top half of her face was painted over, the more he focused on it, the more it pained the crown of his skull.

He snatched his phone and took some pictures of the canvas to look at later when his discomfort is lifted. “It's a nuisance to implement a bubble barrier spell!” Clap, clap, clap. He accumulated a clapping sound with both of his hands. This basic spell is notable for how much it echoes and shakes only in the interior within one bubble. From a different part of the room, he repeated the procedure. Clap, clap, clap.

Exactly what he was speculating during the first set of claps. He was located outside the bubble barrier spell, not inside of it. As he walked back to the hall entryway, he formed a little casting spell of the water symbol between each of his hands. Adopting a prayer gesture, he planted both hands flat on the bubble and slowly opened them, making sure the nails of his thumb remained overlapped with one another.

He inserted his nose through the triangular gap opening between his palms, sniffing the opposite side first. It had a familiar odor to him. “Wake up.” That strange voice from before was at it again. Loki pressed his ear between his hands, not comprehending the voice was coming from behind him.