Kaiser said nothing at first. His mind turned the words over like stones in his palm, weighing their shape, their weight, their edges. Such power… it was absurd in its implications.

If Bosch could paint a cat and it would walk the world, what else could he give life to? A volcano erupting, would the destruction remain after the forty-eight hours expired? Would the dead stay dead? Could he paint a famine, a plague, a city swallowed by the earth?

On a battlefield, where you have mere moments to respond to a threat on your life, this might be no more than a trick. But away from the clash of armies, in the quiet places where power truly shifted… it was something else entirely.

The purple-haired man was Maximilian. Kaiser didn't need to doubt it. Every move the man had made, every shadow he had cast, pointed here, to this village, to whatever "seed" he had spoken of before.

And if Kaiser's guess was correct, the sunset Bosch painted over and over was more than indulgence. With so much Sol concentrated in that endless light, even Kaiser could not see where the real flow went. Maximilian was funneling it, somewhere, into that "seed." The name alone suggested it was meant to grow, into what, Kaiser could only imagine, though the word "useful" came to mind far too easily.

Yes. That was the only logical conclusion.

Two questions lingered. First: the location of Bosch's "most valuable treasure." Second: where in the hell was that ocean he claimed to paint for his wife.

He decided the second could rot for now. He really did not care about some old painters love life, nor about a simple ocean. Kaiser's gaze sharpened, and he finally broke the silence. "The man you met, he is a friend of mine. Max. He wouldn't stop telling me about your treasure."

Bosch's brows rose, then, to Kaiser's surprise, the old man's face split into the grin of a boy hearing about a buried chest of gold. Without a word, he raised one gnarled hand and snapped his fingers.

The air shifted... No, the entire hallway shifted.

The endless rows of seascapes on either side blurred into streaks of blue and white. The floor beneath them seemed to slide away, carrying them forward without a single step. Frames and canvases rushed past in dizzying succession, each one catching the light for only the blink of an eye before vanishing behind them.

The sensation was not quite like flying, but not quite like falling eather. It was more as if the space between them and the hallway's end was being swallowed in great, greedy gulps.

Aria swore under her breath, one hand shooting out to grip Kaiser's shoulder. "HoPeS—stop—" She squeezed her eyes shut, swaying with the disorienting rush.

Kaiser didn't flinch, though his eyes tracked the endless parade of paintings hurtling by. "Open your eyes, Aria. You'll miss this."

"I'll miss my stomach," she muttered, but did as told, if only to keep him in sight.

The motion built until the ocean scenes were no longer distinguishable as paintings at all, just waves of color breaking and reforming around them.

Then, as abruptly as it began, it stopped. The floor solidified beneath their feet, the rush of movement vanished, and they stood before the end of the hallway.

The rush of motion died, leaving them in a silence so still it felt staged. Kaiser's gaze swept the new space, taking in three things all at once.

First, the paintings. Still hung in neat rows on both sides, still of the same endless sea, but the sea itself had changed. No longer blue, no longer the clean vastness he'd seen before. It was green. A deep, almost oppressive green, thick as a forest canopy crushed down into liquid form. From a distance, it could have been treetops smothering the waves, but up close… it was suffocating.

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Second, the window. Gigantic, nearly spanning the entire far wall, it opened not to the room outside, but to the sea itself. The same green sea from the paintings stretched into infinity. It was night here, yet no moon reflected on its surface. Instead, the water seemed to breathe—slow, rhythmic expansions and contractions where waves should have been. Each swell and dip felt deliberate, as if the sea were a living thing resting just beyond reach.

Third… was the wrongness. A pressure in the chest. A subtle pull at the edges of thought. This was not a place built for people to stand and look. But it wasn't just the breathing sea that brought that feeling.

Above the great window, framed in the same gilded wood as the seascapes, hung a single painting that did not belong. The colors were richer, darker, heavy with shadows and wine-red light. At its center stood a man who was tall, unnervingly perfect in proportion, dressed in white finery embroidered with curling gold filigree. A fur-lined mantle of black trailed from his shoulders, and one arm was encased in an ornate, predatory gauntlet of gold.

Surrounding him were women. Dozens of them. Each one was breathtaking in her own way—skin like polished stone, hair in shades of fire, gold, and midnight—but there was something uniform in their eyes. A hunger. Not the playful kind, but the kind that stripped all pretense of restraint. Their bodies leaned toward him, adorned in silks that barely clung, every curve and line designed to seduce.

And the man in the center… he didn't smile. He didn't reach for any of them. He only stood, gaze fixed outward, meeting the viewer's eyes in a way that felt purposeful, as though the painting itself was aware of who was looking at it.

Kaiser was still holding the half-finished painting Bosch had abandoned earlier. He had been about to speak when Bosch's voice cut in, full of quiet pride, almost triumphant.

"Only this way," Bosch said, gesturing toward the breathing green expanse, "Only by keeping it fixed, can she remain pure… alive."

Kaiser turned to him slowly. "Tell me, Bosch," he said evenly, "What color is the sea in front of us?"

Beside him, Aria finally tore her eyes from the window. She blinked hard, then frowned, as if trying to answer herself before Bosch could. The maid stood to one side, utterly motionless, her face unreadable.

Bosch's brows pinched faintly, and his tone shifted, as though he found the question beneath them. "Blue," he said without hesitation. "As it has always been. The sea is blue. That is its nature."

Kaiser's eyes stayed on him, measuring the man's expression, the certainty in his voice. Then, without breaking his stare, he lifted the half-finished painting. "And this? Describe it for me."

Bosch's gaze flicked down, and for the second time, he looked faintly offended, less at the request than at the implication. "It is a beautiful white cat. The details are not yet complete, but beauty is beauty, finished or not."

Something in Kaiser's expression shifted, just slightly, but enough that Aria noticed.

Aria tore her gaze from the sea just long enough to glance at Bosch, and instantly wished she hadn't. His face was calm, almost content, as if everything before them was perfectly ordinary.

"You don't see it..." she said, not a question, her voice tight.

Bosch's brow lifted faintly. "See what?"

Aria blinked at him, disbelief flickering across her face. "The sea is green. Not blue. Green like—like moss choking a pond. And you…" She gestured loosely to the half-finished painting Kaiser still held. "You're looking straight at that thing and telling me it's a white cat? Are you joking?"

Bosch's lips pressed together, mildly offended. "It is a beautiful white cat."

Aria let out a breath that was almost a laugh, but it had no humor in it. "Alright," she muttered, "So we're dealing with someone who can't see they have been painting creepy cat monsters, and..." She shifted her weight, her eyes sliding briefly to Masamia, who was still carying her master. "And you've got a… monster for a maid. No offense."

Masamia's head tilted slowly, like a bird regarding something it couldn't decide was prey or simply irrelevant. She said nothing.

"Right. Great," Aria murmured, looking between them both. "This is fine. Totally fine. Not creepy at all."

Kaiser's voice cut through Aria's muttering like a blade. "Aria."

She stopped, catching the look he gave her. It was sharp, unblinking, and enough to pin her words in her throat. He then stepped toward Masamia, who still had Bosch cradled lightly in her arms. "May I," Kaiser said, his tone almost polite, "Borrow your glasses for a moment?"

Bosch blinked at him, then gave a soft laugh. "Of course."

Kaiser's mouth curved faintly. "Though I'm surprised you've been so hospitable toward me when you don't even know my name."

Kaiser took the glasses without comment.

"My house," Bosch continued as Masamia adjusted her hold on him, "Is always open to visitors. I like to think of it as more of a gallery than a home. Art should be seen, after all—"

Kaiser slid the glasses on.

He froze.

The smile on Bosch's face remained, oblivious. "I find strangers often make the best audience. They have no preconceived notions, no history to weigh them down. They simply look. That is all I ask."

His sight now blurred without the lenses, Bosch's head turned slightly toward Masamia. "And I do hope you're enjoying your time here. Hospitality is an art in itself."

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