Tristessa found herself in an unknown but simple room. White walls, fluorescent lights on the ceiling, a small wooden table against the wall filled with books, a chair of the same material, and a bed with black sheets that smelled of perfume, where she was currently lying.

"Oh… My mind palace," she murmured, one hundred percent certain it was one of the two rooms she hadn't visited the first time she used her [Divinity of the Dark Room]. That white room felt more than familiar; it felt like a part of her. "Lenore?"

"Oh, finally awake, (mistress/master/owner)!" said that woman with short black hair. She had been there all that time, sitting in silence on the edge of the bed and watching her sleep with those creepy, carbonized eyes of hers. "I hope my office is to your liking. You can use it to rest as often as you wish. How are you feeling?"

The attendant stood and clasped her hands behind her back. A smile full of harmony dedicated to Tristessa as she straightened up and sat in the same spot Lenore had seconds before.

"I feel… okay? Yes… yes, I feel better," she said, lowering her gaze and running her hands over the crimson dress she was still wearing. She couldn't see out of her right eye, but it didn't hurt. She no longer felt pain or extreme fatigue, which relieved her, but also made her look at Lenore in confusion. "What happened to…? Oh, right, you're part of me. You shouldn't know it."

"I see you're beginning to understand how your (Divinity/Dark Gift/Blessing) works, Mistress," the woman celebrated. "Although you did know that already. My comment was unnecessary, I'm sorry."

"No need… huh?" Tristessa looked at the room in general. Empty, silent, absolute whiteness. And yet, there was something fundamentally wrong with that place. "Lenore… Where's the music? And…why can't I leave my mind palace?"

When she turned her attention back to her assistant, she had burst into tears. Tears burned her cheeks, and instead of her smile, there was now a grimace of dread, unable to control her trembling lips that also got charred when some of the boiling-hot tears reached them.

"I'm sorry, Mistress." Quickly, the assistant went to the curtains blocking the entrance and stood beside them, urging her to pass through. "There's nothing we can do… There are memories too painful, too terrifying… And they're calling you to the real [Dark Room]."

When she realized it, Tristessa was not only already on her feet, but walking with steady pace toward the set of curtains. She didn't think. Couldn't think. She was acting as if in a dream, with no choice but to go with the flow. Her hands move on their own and part the curtains to open the path to a place that wasn't the main hall of her mind palace... But that hallway filled with lit candles on the floor, a hostile cold like a sinister atmosphere, the red carpet leading her toward that black door full of secrets inside...

Tristessa found herself once again facing the darkness emanating from inside that door. It wanted to escape, to engulf everything in its path. The door opened wide, and on the other side there was nothing but absolute blackness.

"…still here, Tristessa?"

Even after so many mortal experiences, so many encounters with Death and successive Resurrections, the girl could still feel that terror toward her mother's voice, along with a hatred so overwhelming it filled her with dark thoughts… A dewdrop of negativity that seeped between the ventricles of her heart, carrying it throughout her body, to every corner, a virus manufactured with pure evil.

And now, new words from Selene Irandell. Words full of pride and arrogance, with the intent of mocking her daughter even more:

"Do you hear it? Tick, tock...Tick, tock. [Time] is running out for you..."

She laughed at Tristessa, who felt inhuman hatred, a murdering frenzy. Cruel intentions, spreading through her eye and covering everything in black, killing all traces of light that remained in that cursed corridor…

"Ah!"

Tristessa, her scream held in her throat and startled, opened her eyes—or at least the one that still possessed full vision—and this time she woke up in the real world. That world called Nekrom, to which the God of Chaos, Vel'Moran, had summoned her for reasons she still couldn't even imagine.

Any hope of waking up in her room, surrounded by articulated dolls and a large mirror to appreciate her figure, was shattered into a thousand pieces, like every time she woke up since arriving in that world. The only good thing was that this time she hadn't woken up in the middle of a forest plagued by palkuriae, with her stomach growling and feverish from dehydration; or in the greenhouse of a Mystic Tattooists Sanctuary, crushing the flowers of an irritating little priestess-in-training of perhaps ten or eleven years old.

No, this time she had woken up with her head against a window partially covered by a light-green curtain. A line of drool had run down the side of her cheek, leaving a wet stain on the neck of the dress that had belonged to Tiara.

"Shit… That nightmare can mess with my mind palace?" she thought as she took her face off the window, feeling cold sweat against the back of her neck. The dread she had carried out from the dream was slowly diluting, along the deep hatred towards that woman. "Mom…"

Thinking about her mother left a sour taste in her mouth, its right side feeling numb as if she had been leaning against the window for a long time, and it hurt a little bit.

But such pain was meaningless, now that her mayor injuries were gone, and she could enjoy and feel the warmness of the sun coming through the glass.

"I'm alive… We did it!" she thought, a deep feeling of relief overwhelming her as she breathed out all the tension gathered the night before, while escaping from the Dullahan. "Now where…?"

She was sitting at one end of a slightly hard chair with black upholstery that was soft to the touch. In front of her was another padded and fabric-covered seat, empty and against wooden, partial division that kept a series of boxes and closed barrels separated. There were bedsheets, informal clothes and dresses piled up on one side that smelled of abandonment and humidity, but it could not compare to the strong smell of fish that was coming from one of those barrels.

"Whoa!" Tristessa felt a jolt beneath her bare feet and instantly realized she was in constant movement, feeling vibrations under the wooden floor and a slight vertigo as she saw the silhouettes of people and other objects passing by on the other side of the curtains.

She was inside a stagecoach.

"You're finally awake."

Tristessa was so focused on locating herself in time and space that she hadn't noticed someone sitting next to her: arms crossed and leaning against the corner of the seat, the gunslinger Auron Casimir stared at her, no apparent expression reflected on his eyes, his hat over the seat in between them. Of course, he was wearing his handkerchief, hiding half his face.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Auron... Hi," she greeted him, with uncharacteristic shyness, but unable to contain the smile her lips wanted to form at all costs. The man with short black hair inclined his head slightly in a silent greeting. "I-I don't know where to begin."

"With your Divinity to resurrect the dead, perhaps?" he proposed. He didn't sound annoyed at all, but his voice betrayed a certain interest in answers. Tristessa's innate eccentricity, her mysterious abilities that allowed her to enter the city, undoubtedly attracted his attention. "Or do you want to know what happened after you fainted?"

"I fainted? Oh… I'm sorry," she wailed, beginning to recall the last moments before her memory faded and she regained consciousness in her mind palace. At that moment, the stagecoach stopped in front of a thaumaturgy barrier that allowed pedestrians to pass, and Tristessa could hear the irritated growl of a vilecross outside. "I hope I didn't cause you and Severus any inconvenience."

"Inconvenience, you say?!"

Tristessa hadn't realized that between her and Auron, in the wooden wall, there was a small sliding door that an adult could pass through with some difficulty. It opened, and the crimson head of the blood elf poked out, angry and causing the girl to release a yelp, which he ignored.

"You fainted in the middle of our escape, and we didn't lose the Dullahan until we left the industrial district! She was your pursuer, and you left all the work to us! Seriously, couldn't you have waited a little longer before losing consciousness?"

"I'm sorry, Sev, I mean it!" Tristessa had no problem apologizing as many times as necessary to this man who had helped her so much and was now, strangely, serving as the chauffeur of that carriage. "Sorry for being so useless, I only bring you trouble..."

"Waaa, waa, I'm a stupid little girl who can do nothing but cry!" Severus mocked her, intending to anger her. He failed, as Tristessa not only agreed with him, but also made him think of the Severus with whom he shared dinner at the Mercer-Archeos house… Before all hell breaks loose. "And don't call me Sev!"

"I don't think your provocations will work, elf," Auron commented, causing Tristessa to give him her attention, in good spirits like she hadn't felt in a long time. So accompanied, protected. Far from the crushing loneliness she was so accustomed to. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Ah yes, that's the face Tessa makes when she's about to hug you and shower you with tears and snot."

That comment made the girl blush wildly and threw daggers at Severus.

"Don't even think about it, lady," the gunslinger warned her. "If you want to thank me, pay me with a bond in soul-jewels."

"How much did your services cost?" Tristessa asked in return, hoping to change the subject. "No, wait, how did you get into the city? You told me it was impossible!"

"Impossible for you, a nobody. I had to use my last remaining connections to get in legally one last time," he explained, without elaborating. "If the elf hadn't paid me an advance, I wouldn't have wasted such a scarce resource."

"That's the way to talk, my dear mercenary!" Severus thrust his arm almost completely into the carriage and slapped Auron's chest several times. Auron rolled his eyes but allowed him to have his way. "And as for you… Ah, to hell with it! I can't be angry with you, Tessa. After all, it's thanks to you that we're all here."

That comment completely unsettled the girl.

"What? But I didn't do anything…"

"What do you mean, no?" "It was you who led me to Auron," the blood elf explained, nodding at the gunslinger peering out the window. "If it weren't for your idea, we'd both be dead."

"Now, now, you're giving me credit for something I didn't do," Tristessa quickly said, laughing with discomfort. "It was all thanks to you and Auron!"

Blue eyes twinkling, Severus smiled with sympathy at her.

"I know this isn't the right place to tell you this… but think about what I told you, Tessa. Love yourself a little more, alright?"

The girl didn't know what to say, except to keep her mouth half-open and then lower her gaze a bit, confused and strangely hurt. Not because of the melancholic paradox indirectly presented by the blood elf, but because thinking about a concept such as loving oneself… It made her nauseous.

She couldn't forget that she herself had said, from the bottom of her heart, how much she hated that person named Tristessa Irandell.

"Oh, we need to keep going!" Severus exclaimed, glancing over his shoulder and then pointing at the gunslinger with his index finger. "You explain the plan to her!"

"Sure…"

Severus closed the small door, and they could hear the sound of chains hitting the back of the Vilecross pulling the carriage. A sound that sent shivers down Tristessa's spine; combined with the sudden jolt of the moving vehicle, she flinched, and her partial vision made her slightly dizzy.

"Maybe if I take this off…" she thought, bringing her hands to the bandages wrapped around her head, compressing her injured eye and containing a medicinal ointment that smelled of herbs and awful spices.

"No, no, stop! Don't touch your eye, lady!" With authority in his voice, Auron stopped her just in time. "We did a lot to fix your head, but neither of us is a healer. It's a miracle your eye didn't pop out of its socket. You could have lost it, you know?"

"Yes… It hurt a lot, so much so that I wondered if it wouldn't be better if it came out completely," she explained, dropping her hands to her lap and closing her intact eye for a few seconds to clear the dizziness. And the recent memories of the event that had led her to be in that condition, with partial blindness. "…"

"Severus told me that Astoria Silverthorn did that to you," the gunslinger said softly, and seeing his companion's pained expression, he let out a sigh muffled by his handkerchief. "Don't worry about her. Even if she won't help you, there's a high chance she won't rat on you for being inside the city as an illegal."

"…why?"

"Because according to everyone I know, she's a violent drunkard despised by all… Now I see that the stories are true," he said, with deep disappointment. "If it comes to light that she almost beat a civilian to death, it will tarnish the reputation of the city's authorities. It's as simple as that. So forget about Silverthorn, that bitch doesn't deserve a single tear from you. Focus on what's coming next, lady… Oh, about something else, here."

Tristessa saw him pull an object from inside his jacket, which made her gasp in surprise: it was Jin's hunting dagger, which she had dropped during her attempt to enter the city, now safely in its sheath. And the gunslinger was offering it to her.

"Take it. It's yours, isn't it?"

"Y-yes… I thought I'd never get it back. Thank you, Auron!"

As she gripped the hilt of the hunting knife, Tristessa felt that abnormal lightness in her fingers. She remembered that the [Divinity of the Dark Room] had helped her understand that it was thanks to Viktor Enma's echo that she had inherited some of his skill with such weapons. She sheathed the dagger and tied it roughly around the waist of her dress, having to compromise the expensive-looking fabric a bit to secure her grip.

"You're carrying a lot of stuff inside that jacket of yours. How does it all fit?" she asked the gunslinger, seeing him cross his arms again and settle into the seat made with upholstery.

But he took his hat and used it to cover his face, getting ready for a nap.

"I'm going to take advantage of this moment of respite and rest for a while; it's the least I deserved for spending all night taking care of you," he said, without even touching the topic of his jacket. "I also made red viper sandwiches -not free of cost, of course, that also goes to the bill. It's a miracle that you're not eating your own arm off, to be honest."

"Now that you mention it, yes, I'm starving," she realized and looked below, towards the small wicker bag near a pair of shoes that, like the dress she was wearing, had belonged to Tiara.

"Indeed. I'll explain the plan we devised with the elf to you once we reach the south entrance, in fifteen minutes if there's no traffic… And if you wake me up, I'm going to charge you with five SJs."

"What?! That's unfair!"

"Nothing in Nekrom is, lady."

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