The word Origin slipped into the air like a drop of ink into clear water, small, yet impossible to ignore. The room seemed to recoil from it.

In an instant, rainbow-hued threads burst into existence, shimmering with an oil-slick sheen, wrapping themselves around Masamia's limbs. They were impossibly thin yet thrummed with the weight of mountains, locking her wrists, ankles, and even her hair mid-whip. She strained against them, but they only tightened, creaking with a sound like grinding glass.

Both she and Kaiser turned toward the source.

And there stood Aria.

The bow hung forgotten at her side, her fingers curled limply around it as though she'd forgotten what it was. Her eyes… were gone. In their place, two small blue spiders clung to the edges of her empty sockets, their bodies glossy and round, each one perfectly mimicking her irises. Slowly, they crawled forward, descending on strands that glistened in the light, swinging lazily in the air as if savoring the moment.

For Masamia, it was horror distilled—alien and ancient in a way that pierced deeper than fear. Her stillness was not calculated; it was instinctive, the kind of paralysis reserved for prey realizing the predator was already too close.

For Kaiser, it was something else entirely. A pulse of exhilaration. A spark that curved his lips upward, until his expression became a predatory grin.

He didn't waste the heartbeat of shock.

Steel swept in two perfect arcs, his sword carving through the air. Masamia's arms dropped to the floor with wet, meaty thuds, green ichor spraying in a steaming arc across the warped tiles. Her grunt was low and ragged, forced through clenched teeth, her porcelain mask barely holding together against the tremor of pain.

Kaiser's momentum didn't falter. His boot slammed into her chest, the impact lifting her from the floor and sending her skidding across it until she collided with the crumpled, still form of the unconscious painter.

The room changed with her fall.

Its walls shivered, paintings of the green sea twisting and darkening as though drowning in their own depths. The air thickened, the light dimmed, and from every shadow, shapes began to emerge. Dozens, then hundreds of spider-like monstrosities scuttled into view. Their legs were long and serrated, their bodies plated in dark chitin etched with runes that pulsed in sync with the threads still binding Masamia. They formed a living wall around Aria, their many eyes fixed outward, daring anything to approach her.

Kaiser's gaze slid past them, toward something new.

A door now stood at the side of the warped hallway. Its surface pulsed faintly, as if a slow heartbeat were buried deep within it.

His smile sharpened.

He crossed the distance in three quick strides. As he reached Masamia, he lowered his sword and drove it straight through her abdomen. The blade punched into the stone beneath her, pinning her like an insect to a board. It was not a killing blow and he knew she would survive it. That was the point.

Then, without so much as a glance at her pained snarl, he seized Bosch by the head. The unconscious man dangled like a ragdoll in his grip before Kaiser hurled him into the door. The impact cracked it open with a thunderous boom.

Kaiser followed instantly, stepping into the threshold without hesitation. The door sealed behind him with a sound like stone grinding on stone. Its surface shimmered once, the seams knitting together until it looked as though it had never been open at all.

Then, in the very center, a number appeared, etched in deep, perfect lines.

12.

The air itself felt different... It was cleaner, lighter, but with a density beneath it. Above, the sky was an endless, soft gradient, a strange pale-gold horizon bleeding upward into velvet black, where stars swam like slow fish beneath the surface of an invisible sea. There was no ceiling, yet there was a sensation of enclosure, as if this place was folded within something larger.

Stolen novel; please report.

His boots met ground that was not ground at all, for it was smooth, silver-gray, and warm underfoot, like walking on a blade that had been left in the sun. Off to one side, an impossible tree grew. It was tall but twisted into the shape of a letter J, its main trunk curving down, then bending sharply upward at the tip like the tail of some great beast.

Perched within that upward curve was a boy.

Black-haired, golden-eyed, dressed in clothes so fine they seemed out of place here, they were rich navy and ivory with delicate gold filigree stitched into the cuffs and hem. He couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve, yet there was no childlike looseness in the way he sat.

In his hands was a brush, and on his lap a small wooden frame holding stretched parchment. He painted with precise, unhurried strokes, dipping into pigments that shimmered faintly like powdered gemstones.

The subject of his work caught Kaiser's eye, for it was a strange creature, half-fish, half-hare, its fins translucent and trailing, its long ears curving upward like streams of water frozen mid-splash. Ridiculous, yet… there was something oddly serene about it.

Kaiser didn't question the choice of subject. In reality, what mattered wasn't the image, it was what the image meant to the one who painted it.

A soft crunch of motion reached him, though the surface underfoot made no sound when he moved.

Through him, as though he wasn't there, walked a woman.

Even he had to admit... She was beautiful.

Her hair spilled in long, weightless waves that seemed half-liquid, half-smoke, flowing outward as though the air itself obeyed her. Dark at the roots but fading into a pale, watery blue at the tips, it caught the light with a shifting, translucent shimmer, as if strands of the sea had been woven into her crown. From it rose two long, rabbit-like ears, delicate and soft, their white fur gleaming faintly in the dark.

Her skin glowed with a pale, glass-like sheen, almost translucent, patterned in places with faint, drifting shapes that resembled water lilies or ripples frozen mid-motion. It gave her the appearance of something sculpted from moonlit tidewater, fragile in beauty yet utterly unyielding.

She wore no gown of fabric, but something stranger, an elegant, form-fitting weave of flowing water and light that clung to her frame before dissolving outward into drifting, translucent veils. These veils coiled and unwound like living streams, swirling around her in constant motion, carrying faint outlines of spectral fish that circled and vanished as though swimming through her aura.

Every detail was purposeful, every line crafted not for modesty but to command the gaze. She needed no jewels to adorn herself; the only ornament she bore was her own essence, crowned by the water's glow and the phantom creatures orbiting her like constellations given breath.

Her beauty was not the soft kind. It was the kind you could cut yourself on if you dared too close.

Kaiser's gaze narrowed.

'I suspected Arias Origin is able to show me his true nature,' he thought, his stride slow. 'Not the polite mask. Not the version of oneself that survives among others. Here is the marrow. The truth. The thing a person cannot lie to themselves about... Not even the person, but their soul.'

Aria's power was still an unknown, and it was one far more dangerous than she herself likely understood. He remembered the first time, her pulling him in without meaning to, the world reshaping itself into something dredged from the sediment of his own past. The places he'd sworn he would never walk again. The voices he'd buried. The blood that even time refused to wash away.

Now here he was, stepping freely into it, because he had forced her to open it.

Despair, he mused. That is the trigger. Push them far enough, and they reach for anything, anything, to survive. And if "Origin" is that word, they will call it whether they understand the cost or not.

He knew there had to be another way to call it forth, one that didn't require cornering the user to the brink. A sustainable method. One worth finding, because an Origin like hers could be a tool unlike any other.

The spiders… Every single one she controls without strain, for a time. She could flood a city with them if she had to. Hunt down a man to the last shadow he hides in. And the only risk? These doors.

His bootsteps carried him closer to the twisted tree, closer to the boy painting in the crook of its branch. The blue spiders that were Aria's "eyes" slipped soundlessly through the sealed door behind him, drifting to join the scene like obedient sentinels.

Kaiser chuckled under his breath, not mocking, but in appreciation of the symmetry.

She couldn't control what memories would play, but she could watch. Always watch. And the first person through determined the stage, the cast, the script. That was why he had thrown Bosch through first. Let his life unravel before her gaze.

Information is the most exquisite form of power. And she wields a key that opens only the doors he will choose.

The boy in the tree still painted, unconcerned. The woman came to stand beneath him, tilting her head just enough to catch the angle of his brush. There was a softness in her gaze, but it was tempered, like someone observing a flame knowing it could both warm and burn.

Kaiser studied her profile for a long moment.

Who are you? A mother? A teacher? Younge Rosaline?

Not that it mattered—every figure here was a thread in Bosch's tapestry, a point of leverage waiting to be pulled. If this memory could be read deeply enough, it might give him the means to fracture the man's mind without lifting a blade.

His mind was already tracing the web. Every connection here was important. Every truth here was a weapon he could use later. He allowed himself the faintest smile.

'Aria, you don't even know what you've given me.'

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.