By day, Haviskali was a busy town, scorched by the light of the red sun — hard, distinct, and somewhat oppressive. At night, however, the rules changed. The Eternal Light kept up the illumination, but the absence of the Sun overhead created a bizarre dichotomy, making it feel colder than it was. If not for the pubs and eateries and nightclubs, it’d have painted a grim picture that made people apprehensive about going out.

And then there were nights like this one, where the sky was covered with purplish fog, blurring and obscuring everything. High-rise buildings became ghostly, looming silhouettes. Streets seemed to grow more narrow in the fog, every thoroughfare becoming a lonely, dangerous highway. The cafeterias were closed, the pubs and diners sealed and locked, with the common folk already retreated into the safety of their homes by sundown, save the foolhardy and the desperate. Even the watchers weren’t out tonight, unwilling to face the foreboding, misty silence.

This was a night of the mysterious and the strange.

People like us, Lukas thought, standing upon the empty Otamba Bridge, overlooking the town below. They were supposed to head for the Zwaray Keep tonight, but Tanya had some errands to take care of, so he had opted to take a tour of the town by himself.

An icy breeze slipped across the metallic construct, brushing against his fog-wetted cheek like an exhaled frosty breath.

“How did I know I’d find you here?” asked an amused, feminine voice.

“Maybe because we had our date here two days ago, and you knew I’d miss you?”

Tanya chuckled and stepped up next to him. Lukas studied her profile. Her hair, normally restrained in a messy bun or ponytail, now hung free over her back, her golden curls emitting a soft, ethereal luminescence that was every bit eerie as it was beautiful. At the same time, it was a farsay from the feral-looking thing she had been in the anomaly, lean and hyperalert, her eyes trying to watch the entire world at once.

“You look… different,” He said. “Don’t tell me a visit to the salon was the errand you mentioned.”

Tanya arched an eyebrow. “It was, actually. Who knows how many days we’re gonna be stuck in this new shithole. At least I’m going in style.”

Lukas snorted.

She grinned briefly. “There’s also… something about the fog. It beckons me. Makes me feel… less taut. Unrestrained.” At his look, she quickly added, “not like the Frost, but you get what I mean.”

He did. Her eyes had gained a slight icy sheen, reminding him of the Frost Queen that tried to kill him before Inanna’s timely intervention.

Even now, Inanna’s spell holds her back.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Her voice carried over the fog. “Very few people can stomach this fog. Most stay indoors, and those that don’t, they fear the things that come during it.”

There was a strange confidence in her tone that Lukas certainly didn’t share.

“What things?”

“Wraiths. Nameless things. Shades left behind by curses. The kind of thing the Empire tells you don’t exist.”

Lukas felt a shudder go down his spine. He had dealt with some pretty nasty shit ever since he had been dropped in this world, and his episode with Solana’s ilk definitely topped the list of mind-bending events. He could live with siphoning other monsters and allowing them to possess him. He could stare down predators and angry goddesses and pretty much everyone else. But there was something utterly violating about that initial attempt at possession— that one moment when his body had ceased to be his own, and his mind trapped in an infinite hollowness still gave him nightmares.

It was why, despite how much he smiled at Solana or how comfortable he became in her presence, he never allowed himself to forget that he was dealing with a demon.

“Lukas?”

“Uh,” He began, “... those are real?”

That worked. He had always stayed firm on his ‘apparent’ lack of knowledge about yokai. It drove Olfric crazy.

“As real as you and me,” she said. “Most people are afraid of them. You should see how bad it becomes during the Black Moon. People literally lock themselves indoors for the entire month, fearing something would catch them, devour their soul, and steal their skin for their own.”

That… was a surprisingly accurate description for Solana. She had described herself as a skin walker, or as the native term went — a yosuzume. An indescribable, soul-twisting, skin-stealing parasite that wore the flesh of a young, black-haired girl in her twenties.

Even thinking about it made his insides churn.

“How does that help? I mean—”

“We have a system called Kanso, a science that employs storage and redirection of Eternal Light in specific directions to cast a spiritual barrier around one’s home. The stone walls absorb the power throughout the year and channel the energy when such a situation presents itself.”

“But there isn’t a Black Moon around.”

“No, but there are nights like tonight, when the Barrier between worlds is weaker than usual. It’s what causes the fog to pass in through.”

“Something tells me the svartalfars didn’t choose tonight on a whim.”

Tanya eyed him. “Very perceptive. The weaker the barrier, the less energy is required to open a Well to the borderland. Svartalfars are all about efficiency.”

“Speaking of efficiency, what happened to our third member?”

Tanya snorted. “He changed his mind. Olfric won’t join in with this one. He needs a water-type before he can enter non-aquatic environments. Besides, all transport ceased by sundown, and he won’t get out in the fog.”

“No transport, huh? Guess this stuff really freaked people out.” He glanced up at the dark sky, the fog moving around like a living thing. Maybe it even was, for all he knew.

“You know,” He chuckled, strangely nostalgic. “Back in my world, I made a living writing fictional tales about apocalyptic ends of the world. It's—”

He paused at her stupefied expression.

“... What?”

“... Why would you willingly author tales that inspire dread in others?”

Lukas wondered what Tanya would think of Koontz or Stephen King. “There’s a saying back in my world. Nothing sells like dread. Maybe it's the adrenaline rush, or about exploring the dark side, or… the appeal of shadows. People love it. It’s…” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “It’s like this fog. People fear it, and so it creates rumors and myths. And from them come stories.”

“Weird.” Tanya made a sour face. “I thought you were a student of diplomacy.”

“I was,” He said. “This wasn’t my profession, per se. This was just something I did to pay my bills while I was finishing my education. But then other stuff happened, and I found myself inside that underground cave.”

“And you desire to be a bard of such abominations?”

Lukas felt amused at the tautness in her tone.

“Uh, I wouldn’t mind doing it. It’d be a delightful retreat from the constant excitement.”

Tanya’s frown had devolved into an open scowl. “I can feel you speaking the truth, yet I find it hard to believe. You have potential like few have tasted, yet you speak of an ordinary — no, a ludicrously pedestrian life of being no one. It makes me wonder whether you’re able to lie perfectly or are simply deluded enough to believe in your own.”

"Maybe neither. Maybe both." The rush of pleasure he felt at Tanya's irritated glare made him realize why Inanna enjoyed doing this so much. Being irritatingly cryptic was an art, one that you got better at with age.

She studied him like a hawk.

“So, err… no transport. How are we going to get to the Keep?”

“I don’t know about us, but I could obviously fly my way over.” She gave him her best condescending leer. “You’d need to chase after me, I suppose. All that lifeforce should get you sprinting at decent speed.”

Lukas smiled. “I might have had a breakthrough in that.”

“At running?”

Lukas smiled but said nothing else. Instead, he focussed inward. There had been more than one reason behind his private town-tour, and this was it.

His body warmed up, and the lifeforce rose within. Having allowed himself several moments of ‘possession’ by Hreidmar's instincts had been a weird experience, but it had left him with enough echoes to let him replicate the steps with somewhat ease. What he was trying to achieve felt similar to Shatterpoint Intuition when he had used it for the first time while in control, except that his mind was too diverted with Tanya’s icy avatar trying to end him. But now that he could observe every step under the discerning watch of Tachypsychia, it felt so different.

Unlike with the thoggua, his perception didn’t completely shatter, only to be replaced by trajectories and strings. Instead, a layer of what could only be ‘anti-friction’ formed around him, isolating him from the world around, except for his feet, to get him the solidarity with the ground and not lose his balance. The actual difference between his previous attempt at flying, and Hreidmar’s technique, was that his technique was clumsy and too energy-exhaustive, while Hreidmar required a bare fraction of that.

Lukas watched the rock chips on the floor. Unmoving. Completely uncaring about what was about to happen. Taunting him. Daring him.

“Well?” Tanya asked impatiently.

Lukas bent down, winked at her, and jumped.

With a soft whoosh, he shot upward at the velvety night sky. The wind sandblasted against his face, but the force behind it was missing. That, or the layer of ‘anti-friction’, was deflecting it away, reducing them to hollow flaps that kissed his face. Before he knew it, the ground and Tanya had gotten lost amidst the purple swirls. He felt the inexorable call of gravity from beneath, and only pushed harder, instinctively thrusting out lifeforce. The effect changed his course slightly, but not enough. Instead of falling downward, he was going down in a parabolic dive.

Holy fucking crap—

Panicking, Lukas pushed out more lifeforce, haphazardly trying to balance himself. Trying to weave motion mid-air was too horrifying to think about, and attempting Innate Gravity Control mid-dive would break him in half. He mindlessly tried to grab at the empty air, relentlessly forcing himself upward, only for his efforts to be rendered hollow before the mighty gravitational pull.

Then he noticed it.

Like a ship’s mast, the peak of one of the bridge’s pillars stood out in the darkness. Pushing out everything he could muster, Lukas desperately lunged in mid-air and thrust his hand out, hoping to make up for the difference.

It didn’t.

But something else did.

The Blob shot out of his sleeves, extending out as a thick, metallic arm, and wrapped its ‘fingers’ around it. Lukas swung through, landing and running all the way upward to the pillar’s length until he was safely on its peak, clinging against the tip. It’s job done, the Blob retracted, content to stay as an undershirt right then.

Damn it! He thought. I panicked. I should’ve—

“That,” came Tanya’s voice from behind him, “was a most unusual attempt at flight.”

Lukas whirled around and found her floating in the air, right behind him. Unlike his own clumsy feat, Tanya was perfectly steady, her technique levitating her at this height with just as ease as it did a few feet above the ground. This was aeromancy, the real thing, honed through painstaking diligence. First Solana with her terramancy, then Hreidmar with his gravity, and now Tanya — really, if someone was trying to teach him about the importance of proper training, he or she wasn’t being subtle about it.

At all.

Lukas let out a disappointed groan. “Didn’t work like I expected.”

“I’d have been surprised if it did.” She flashed him a grin. “At one point, I thought maybe you had actually copied Hreidmar’s technique, you know, like it happened at the anomaly.”

Lukas did his best not to gape at her. How — at the anomaly? Did that mean they already suspected he could—

“... Yeah,” she said sheepishly, oblivious to his inner turmoil. “I knew that was a bit too fanciful. It was a good attempt for a first-timer, though. That said,” She gave him a scrutinizing look, “I have to wonder how you did it. That wasn’t Aeromancy, I think.”

It took every bit of Tachypsychia to bring himself back to composure. With an almost but not quite exaggerated sigh, he shook his head. “Another lifeforce experiment.”

“Shooting yourself up into the air with lifeforce.” Tanya snorted. “Un-fucking believable.”

Lukas grinned back. “It’s like a rocket.”

She blinked. “What’s that?”

“A rocket? Uh, that’s a vehicle, kind of like the jixin. We used them to travel to outside space and maybe explore other planets.”

“You mean worlds.”

Lukas opened his mouth and closed it. Finally, he consented. “Yes. Maybe. I mean, I’m not sure. This entire realm thing is very confusing. Up until my arrival, I had absolutely no clue what these things were.”

Tanya looked like she wanted to argue, but then she looked down abruptly. “I see. Zuken was right then.”

“....?”

“He mentioned a few things about you. Things from your private discussion.” Her lips pursed in annoyance, “Like how people in your world didn’t have any soul capacity, and how you never had anything to do with lifeforce or mana before coming to our world.”

Lukas blinked. “So he believed me after all.”

Her annoyance doubled. “He’s confused. Hanging between belief and skepticism. As am I. It certainly explains your obvious lack of knowledge about the things we take for granted. About leveling up. About skills, and so on. That said, I’m also inclined to agree with Zuken that your skill growth is too fast, too impossible for someone that’s only started learning while being in this anomaly.”

Lukas shrugged. “I know. Overachieving is in my blood. Sometimes I just can’t help it.”

She rolled her eyes. “What makes me skeptical is you learnt and grown so much so quickly, and yet your education feels… superficial.”

Yep. She’s perceptive alright.

“My teacher was the sort of parent who thinks you need to find things out for yourself.”

Tanya blinked. “Those are real?”

He grunted. “But yeah, there’s a ton of things I need to know. I’m hoping my deal with Banksi will help on that front.”

And to be frank, this was an example of exactly that happening. Though Banksi choosing to tell Tanya about his secrets right after his own actions at the Zwaray Keep felt a little too coincidental. No, Zuken had him in the lab during the entire time he was ‘dead’. He had plenty of opportunities to inform her about his powers before she and Olfric taught him.

So no, this was a well-planned setup. Zuken hadn’t informed Tanya to help her teach Lukas better. He had done so intending to sow seeds of mistrust, selling the idea that Lukas was keeping secrets from her but not from Zuken, making her question her own association with him.

And no, he wasn’t mad at Zuken for doing that, the same way as he wouldn’t be mad at a dog for barking at the mailman. It was what they did.

But Zuken had made a move. And that was fine. He could amp the ante as well.

“But I’m surprised,” He went on, “I thought you already knew this. You yourself told me that Banksi studied me when I was… asleep. And you were there right before my chat with him. I thought he’d have told you before I got to know you and Olfric would teach me stuff.”

Tanya grimaced. “Unfortunately, he didn’t. But hey, maybe we can make this mission educational for you. There’s only like a hundred and thirty-seven things you need to know if you’re gonna survive it.”

“I’m all ears.” Lukas grinned back.

“Good.” She tucked a single hair behind her ear as she came closer. “We have a few hours until we’ve to report, so here’s lesson number one for you. If you suck at something, get your shit together and keep trying until you get it right.”

Lukas suspected he would not like what followed.

“It means if you want to fly so bad, then fucking fly! Face your fears.”

“Err—”

Tanya’s expression was serene. Kind of like a tigress, content to watch her prey ram itself against a wall.

“Jump.” That was all she said.

“You realize I barely—”

“I said, jump!”

She thrust her palm out. And before Lukas knew it, a wave of wind slammed against him, throwing him off, as he fell off, plummeting towards the ground, which didn’t look soft at all.