Raizen's mouth parted slightly. He didn't understand what had happened.

Raizen was too stunned to speak.

Because the cold whisper didn't feel like it was for him.

It felt like it waws speaking past him, through his mind, toward the thing in the sphere.

And Ignorance quietly obeyed.

Elin's gaze sharpened. She looked at the sphere, then at Raizen, then back to the sphere, as if she couldn't decide if the thing's weird behavior had anything to do with him.

The Ruler stared at the sphere for a long moment. Then his expression softened, not into relief, but into something that made Raizen's chest ache unexpectedly.

Melancholy.

The Ruler reached and picked up the sphere.

It fit in his palm easily, and he held it like holding a memory he didn't know how to bury.

For a second he only looked at the darkness suspended at the center of the crystal, smooth and quiet now, and Raizen realized the Ruler wasn't looking at a monster.

He was looking at his past.

He was looking at what he'd given up.

He was looking at the thing that had been chained beside him every day, even when no one else knew.

The Ruler's voice came softly, and the question wasn't for the room. It was for time.

"When can you leave?"

Elin didn't hesitate.

"Right now."

Atman's expression immediately twisted into a frustrated grimace. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, jaw tightening. Finally, he gave a short nod that looked more like surrender than agreement.

The Ruler's brows lifted.

"Very well."

Elin stepped forward.

The Ruler held the sphere out. For a heartbeat, Raizen expected some reaction - resistance, a surge, anything. But the darkness remained centered, smooth, and quiet, like it was pretending to be harmless.

Elin took the sphere with careful fingers, not because she feared dropping it, but because she understood that the act itself mattered.

The transfer was real now. Physical. Final.

Atman rose from the chair at last. Dark-blue smoke coiled around both his hands now, thickening in slow spirals, as if his Eon had been waiting for permission to show itself. But now, it didn't look just like fog. It looked like a sea's depth, like the air itself was being turned into something heavier.

Raizen's eyes flicked to it, then away.

His mind was still circling on one thing.

"Silence."

Did he imagine it?

No.

The darkness changed too perfectly.

Ignorance felt it.

He felt it.

Elin's voice cut through his thoughts, low.

"Raizen."

He looked up.

Elin was already moving toward the door, sphere in hand.

"Outside. Come."

Raizen's feet moved before his brain fully caught up. He followed her out of the chamber and onto the platform, where Ukai's open air greeted him like a wall.

The cloud was still there.

No - it was worse.

The dark fog had thickened until it swallowed the edges of the platform, rolling in heavy layers around the living wood like a sea pressing against a small boat.

As far as he remembered, it should've felt suffocating. It should've felt like pressure on his Eon.

But it didn't.

This time, it was just fog.

Dark fog that hid everything beyond a few meters and muffled everything you could see. This different kind of fog was only meant to hide Elin from the average human.

The dragon was still there on the platform, massive and still, a silhouette half-devoured by the haze. From beneath its scales, dim traces of red light. It looked like it had been carved out of the storm itself.

Elin stopped close to Raizen. Too close. Close enough that the fog made them feel like the only two people left in the world.

She reached out and took his hand.

The contact was surprisingly gentle. Raizen's pulse jumped, instinctive, and he forced himself not to pull away. Elin bent slightly, lowering herself so her eyes met his directly, not from above, not from a distance.

For a moment the sovereign mask cracked just enough to show something colder underneath.

Not cruelty.

Not quite.

Then she placed something in his palm.

A knife.

Silvery, simple, minimalistic. Just a clean piece of silver with a narrow blade and a grip shaped for function, not display. It felt balanced in his hand, like it belonged there.

One of her 2 knives. The ones he had seen in her sleeves.

Raizen's fingers closed around it automatically.

Elin's voice dropped even lower.

"Listen carefully."

"When red threads start circling it" Elin said, eyes locked on his, "you tell Atman it's been done."

Raizen nodded once. "Done" could mean a thousand things in situations like this.

Elin didn't explain. She didn't soften it.

"Until then" she continued, "you spy. You watch the Ruler."

Raizen's brows pulled together. "What!?"

"I don't care how" Elin said immediately, and the way she said it made Raizen shut up instantly. "I don't care how long it takes. You will not be seen."

The fog rolled made her hair and shoulders blur at the edges. She looked like something that had stepped out of a story meant to scare children into going to sleep early.

Raizen's grip tightened on the knife. "Elin, what are you -"

Her fingers squeezed his hand once.

"Not a word" she cut him off again. "Not a sound. If you're discovered, I won't be able to do anything. Understand?"

Raizen wanted to argue. He wanted to ask why this was necessary, why he had to do this, why the plan was suddenly built around his silence and his invisibility.

But he chose just to nod again, slower this time.

Elin watched him for a beat, like she was deciding whether he could really do it.

Then she spoke the last instruction, and Raizen felt the world shift under his feet.

"When the threads appear" she said quietly, "After you tell Atman, you go to him."

Raizen stared.

"To the Ruler? After I've been hiding?"

"Yes. No more questions."

Raizen made a confused grimace, and thought "Why me… Again?'

"And you tell him" Elin said, voice calm enough to be terrifying.

"To break the contract."

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