A/N: As usual, many apologies on the wait! It's still me (again) writing this chapter, while panaili gets to deal with all the joys of newborn parenting ^_^ Please please please let us know what you think of the chapter and the series in general! We are eternally grateful for the feedback so far. Also, be aware that the next installment, 'Interlude: Fourteenth' (my pet project) is written and undergoing revisions, so that will be released in five chapters on a more regular schedule very soon. In lieu of using footnotes (for AO3 anyway), here's one required term for you to know:

- Patience: another name for the card game solitaire; patience was the preferred term used in the UK and certain parts of Europe in the late 1800s (and it still is, in some countries).

The Revelation

"My teams have been focusing repair efforts on the Grove's four entry points since yesterday," Seamus explained, obvious exhaustion clinging to his tone and dulling its usually condescending edge. He tapped the carved rod at each of the points on Bookman's antique map of the region. "Once those critically vulnerable areas have been reinforced, we can continue clockwise along the entire border."

Bookman nodded from his imposing ash wood chair, immovable as the Seated Scribe of Egypt with a stack of papers in his lap. Lavi rested his elbows atop the back of the chair, his chin in his hands as he half-listened to the brief, while the other half of his focus ran triage against rehashing the past eighteen hours of emotional whiplash.

It had been an uphill mental battle to even step foot in the office after the crushing blow Bookman dealt him the previous day, much less take up his casual position right above the old man's head. He was a good enough actor to adopt his 'Lavi' mask without fail, but that didn't stop Allen from sensing the tension regardless – at intervals, Lavi caught him glancing over from his perch on the desk, his concern impossible to block out.

Trying to shake off Allen's knowing gaze, Lavi grounded himself by zeroing in on the map's features. He knew every inch of it by heart. It was an ancient map of the Grove, crafted with exquisite detail from the finest materials over a thousand years ago, and it had hung in a place of pride in Bookman's office since the current building was constructed. Lavi had often stared at this very map during the many tedious meetings he observed as apprentice.

He never imagined that it would be used to plan strategic defense. Fifteen people were currently crowded behind the desk – eight of them Exorcists, plus Link and Johnny, and the rest consisted of Chief Elder Horace and Seamus' security team leads. The older members of the group, namely the Chief Elder and General Tiedoll, were seated alongside Bookman and Lenalee in antique chairs turned to face the wall map, while the rest of the gaggle either stood near or sat on the desk itself, like Allen had. The whole situation clashed so intensely with Lavi's memories of the formal affairs in Bookman's office that it jarred his senses further, leaving him nearly numb to the reality of the threats bearing down on them all.

Nearly.

Seamus finished his brief and turned his dull gaze toward Tiedoll, attempting to hand off the pointing rod. "The floor is yours, General."

The older man just smiled kindly, sitting back in his chair and gesturing at Kanda instead. "I'm afraid you've got the wrong General," he corrected.

"Apologies," Seamus muttered. His tone belied his sincerity, but Kanda did not seem to care.

Kanda moved to face the group, whipping out Mugen in response to Seamus's sulky attempt to pass off the pointing rod to him instead. Lavi snapped to attention at the gesture, suppressing a smirk when Seamus jerked back from the unsheathed sword in alarm.

"Since points of entry are a known weakness in the Grove's defenses, Exorcists will be posted at three of them: the East Gate, the southern entrance, and the western entrance," Kanda directed. The group collectively winced when the swordsman maneuvered the tip of his blade just short of the fragile map, but Kanda's control over Mugen didn't waver.

"Why not all four points?" Crowley asked, shrinking back in surprise when all eyes turned toward him.

Kanda scowled at the interruption, though to his credit, he kept his tone even as he responded, "Because we don't have the numbers to focus on all four sites."

"Even with eight of us?" Lenalee asked, raising a hand from her seat to Lavi's right. "Wouldn't two per entrance make sense?"

Rubbing between his eyebrows, Kanda took a huff of a breath and explained, "Dividing into pairs is the plan, but we only have six Exorcists in play. Bookman and Lavi have to assist the security teams, and we can't estimate how long that will take. Even if Bookman joins us later, we can't risk putting the Heart anywhere near the front lines."

A surge of indignation built in Lavi's chest, and against his better judgment, he interjected, "Don't I get a say in this?"

"No," Bookman, Kanda and Allen fired back at once, though the latter two Exorcists' faces pinched in aggravation about the agreement. Allen at least had the grace to give Lavi an apologetic shrug.

Lavi threw up his hands, aiming his sharp glare at Kanda. "So what, you're just gonna lock me in the Catacombs while you all fight for your lives to defend my home? What the hell were you training me for then?"

"To control your fucking powers!" Kanda snapped, whipping Mugen around to point at Lavi over Bookman's head. "This is not the time for you to face off with a bunch of nutjobs. The Heart's the only thing that can defeat the Earl, and as far as we can tell, he's not the one coming for us right now. That sicko puppeteer Sheril, his Noah cronies, and a rogue Innocence abomination are out for your head," Kanda declared. Then, almost as an afterthought, Kanda shifted Mugen over to point at Allen instead, adding, "And his, in case you forgot."

Allen quirked an eyebrow at the sword just inches from his face, leaning back on his hands against the desktop. "If you think you're throwing me into the Catacombs, you've got another thing coming."

In lieu of an answer, Kanda lowered Mugen and scoffed, "You'd know that's not in the plan if you were paying enough attention to do basic math, idiot."

"Wait, wait," Seamus said, fingers pressed to his temple as his brow furrowed deeply. He met Lavi's gaze and pointed at Allen in accusation. "Those monsters are also coming here for him? And you conveniently failed to mention this at the meeting yesterday?"

The Chief Elder's eyebrows shot up at the new information, and he snapped his gaze to Bookman. "You must agree that's a very concerning omission. Were you aware of this, Bookman?"

"It is inconsequential to the current state of affairs," Bookman said. He sounded even more beleaguered that usual, clearly hoping Horace and the others would take a hint and drop the subject.

Instead, Seamus dropped his arms in utter exasperation, face reddening as he turned his attention back to Lavi and continued, "You realize this means that even if we had banished you, we still would've been targeted for attack!"

Posture going rigid, Allen replied, "As if we'd have let you get away with that in the first place."

"I wasn't talking to you," Seamus spat, redirecting his glare at Allen. "Unlike our 'indispensable' failed apprentice, we could've afforded to toss a freak show back into the wild."

The reaction was instantaneous. Lavi felt heat bloom in his side and wash over his entire body, his mind blanking out. Before he could do more than tense up at the sudden flaring of the Heart, a streak of blinding white flashed across his vision. The next thing he knew, Seamus was practically mummified in the clown belt, wide-eyed with panic as Allen gave the white ribbons a tightening yank.

"No one asked for your goddamn opinion," Kanda snapped at Seamus, though he rolled his eyes at Allen's theatrics.

"Get that thing off of him!" Horace exclaimed, pointing a shaky finger at his bound great-nephew. Only fear kept the Chief Elder glued to his seat, his eye darting over to Allen's clawed hand and back to Seamus' face. "Violence is not the solution!"

At the same time, Allen smirked at his victim from behind Crown Clown's opera mask. "Nasty words are not the solution, either. This one could use a lesson in manners."

Before Seamus could so much as twitch in response, and before Chief Elder Horace could burst a blood vessel in his forehead, another voice cut in.

"Both of you," Bookman said, his words slicing the air with a keen edge. "Stop this now."

Crown Clown abruptly deactivated, releasing Seamus from its grip and leaving the older boy white as a sheet, too shocked to move or speak. As the surge of Innocence stopped pulling power from the Heart, Lavi managed to steady his breathing and consciously drew his power back to center. He could feel Lenalee's concerned stare aimed in his direction, though no one else seemed to have caught on to how the altercation had affected him as well.

Allen slumped back against the desk, pressing a hand against his head. "Sorry," he muttered.

"Control your fucking emotions, beansprout," Kanda growled, sheathing Mugen. "In fact, everyone needs to stop acting like children. We still have to cover the actual assignments. If I don't hear silence, I'm gonna start punching dicks."

Lavi choked up a nervous laugh before Kanda's glower silenced him. He glanced at Allen, who seemed equally torn between amused and concerned, and stifled the small part of his brain that urged him to needle Kanda even more.

"We have to assume the most likely attack vector is the East Gate, since it's the largest and most visible, followed by the southern entrance," Kanda soldiered on. "Those two sites need balanced offensive and defensive capabilities, so General Tiedoll and Miranda will each be stationed at one of them. Lenalee and Crowley will be stationed at the western entrance, which is furthest out. They're the fastest moving Exorcists we have – ideal if our forces have to regroup elsewhere."

Allen chimed in, "You realize there's one way to practically guarantee their choice of entrance, right?" When Kanda hesitated a fraction too long, frowning back at him, he proposed, "Just put me there. Apocryphos is bound to aim for my location, and the Noah are following his lead."

"Walker, that is unacceptable," Link said, his shoulders stiffer than ever. "Apocryphos is the most lethal thing we've ever come up against, which is honestly saying a great deal."

"Well, we're about to come up against him one way or another!" Allen retorted, his gaze flashing from Link to Kanda instead. "Isn't it most strategic to force his choice of entry?"

Kanda's eyes narrowed to slits as he glared back, but eventually he heaved a sigh. "Even though I can smell the stench of your heroic suicide antics a mile off, the logic is sound."

"But we don't want to bait them!" Johnny cried, glancing back and forth between Kanda and Allen like they had both lost their minds. "Why can't Allen just stay in the Catacombs?"

"Because we don't have enough fighting force without the beansprout," Kanda growled. "I think you're severely underestimating how much of a threat Apocryphos is."

Annoyed, Lavi interjected, "We'd have a shit ton of force if you'd let me join the fight!"

"That is non-negotiable," Bookman said, his commanding voice sharp enough to end the discussion in a final blow. Lavi flinched back from the chair as his protests fled down his throat. "General, if you approve of Allen's strategy, I suggest he be positioned at the East Gate," Bookman continued, as if he hadn't just shut his former apprentice's mouth like so many well-used books.

Stroking his beard, Horace added somewhat reluctantly, "I agree that the East Gate is preferable. The area is wide open and impossible to enter without being seen, unlike the southern entrance. Though I do hope such a grand and historic piece of architecture can be spared the ravages of battle."

Kanda nodded. "The East Gate it is. We'll still consider the southern entrance a secondary point of concern as a precaution."

In the wake of Bookman's decision, Seamus began a follow-up discussion with his team about their next steps, while most of the Exorcists bickered amongst themselves. Kanda seemed begrudgingly committed to the strategy, undeterred by a barrage of protests from Link, Johnny and Crowley in turn. Lavi stayed where he was, feeling detached from the argument unfolding before him. He wanted to scream at Bookman and Kanda and Allen, but what was the use? They'd already shot him down every time he tried to protest being sidelined, and now they'd all agreed to set Allen up as a target.

It was all he could do to watch and not implode.

Lenalee also seemed to be stewing on the situation, her hands clenched around the hem of her skirt. The tension in her face as she defiantly kept her silence resonated with Lavi's feelings in the moment. They had both been here before – it was just like their battles through the Ark and the attack on the Order, where their hands were tied while others took the fall.

While Allen took the hardest fall, almost without exception.

Abruptly, Lavi shifted his attention to the instigator. "Why do you always do this, Allen?" he asked.

"Do what, Lavi? Protect my friends at any cost?" Allen fired back, clearly upset by the question and too done to hide it. He smacked his palms against the edge of the desk, the conviction in his voice brooking no argument. "We've got to use any means necessary to win this battle and keep you safe. Mark my words: If they get to you, it will be over my dead body."

The room fell silent. Lavi held Allen's gaze for one charged second, afraid that the clouds building in his eyes might herald an absolute maelstrom. It was no idle threat. Allen never hesitated to put his life on the line. He had almost bled out under the trees of a different forest for far less than the current stakes.

The very idea of Allen doing such a thing again, leaving Lavi with no means to even help, burned Lavi to the core. He was too pissed off to sort out a response.

Before he had a chance to retort, Allen shoved off the desk and walked right out of the office.

A tidal wave of indignation crashed over Lavi's mind, drowning every rational thought beyond the need to stop this. He vaulted over the desk, ink toppling and papers flying everywhere as he charged after Allen.

Lavi emerged in the quiet hallway, slamming the heavy wooden door shut behind him. The sound stopped Allen in his tracks near the stairs, but he did not turn around.

"You should go back to Bookman," Allen said.

"Like hell!" Lavi snapped, storming across the ornamental rug until he reached Allen. He spun him around by the shoulders. "You really expect me to sit back and let you take on a horde of enemies while I hole up with the ultimate weapon? I am not some fucking damsel in distress!"

Allen fired back, "You'd rather be treated like a weapon, then? The way the Order treats all its Exorcists? Even if Seamus was being an asshole, he wasn't wrong – you actually are indispensable!"

"And you're just expendable?" Lavi countered, fuming. He relinquished his hold on Allen's shoulders before he could do any damage, tightening his hands into fists at his sides.

With a short, hollow laugh, Allen replied, "Depends on who you ask. What matters right now is that I'm both Apocryphos' secondary target and the most familiar with his attacks; Kanda and Link are also familiar. If you were on the field, we'd be too focused on keeping that thing away from you to attack effectively, even with your power boost," Allen insisted. He seemed to sense that Lavi was cooling down enough to consider his words, and he reached out to take both of Lavi's fisted hands.

"Do you understand where I'm coming from, at least?" Allen asked.

Lavi dropped his head to Allen's shoulder, releasing a frustrated sigh. "I'm just so sick of everyone else making my decisions for me," Lavi said. "I want to fight with you."

"Well, that's sort of what you're doing here and now—"

"Allen—"

"—and strictly speaking, we'd be wasting time and energy if we had to physically stop you from joining the battle," Allen said. "But I promise you, staying in the Catacombs is the lesser of two evils. Can you imagine what Apocryphos would do to us all if it absorbed you like it threatened to do to me, when it tried to 'purify' Nea out of my Innocence? Or if the Noah actually did destroy you and the Heart? That would spell the end for humanity."

"Humanity needs to stop trying to die already," Lavi groaned. He raised his head and looked Allen in the eye, unable to find any trace of uncertainty there. "If you really think I'd do more harm than good out there, you've at least gotta promise me you'll stay alive, Al. Because if you don't…" He trailed off, unable to voice such a soul-crushing thought, allowing the seconds to pass between them in silence instead.

Allen smiled, the saddest thing in existence, and kissed Lavi's cheek. "I've got this, okay? Trust me."

Lavi's defenses crumbled. There was nothing he could say or do to stop him. They were running out of options and time. Allen released his hands and turned to head down the stairwell, pausing for just a moment to call up, "I'll see you later."

Word was passed quickly around the Grove for residents to shelter in designated bunkers until the barriers were secured. Unsettling as it was to see the main road completely devoid of foot traffic or deliveries in the middle of the day, Lavi could not muster the strength to care.

"You know, you completely trashed Bookman's official correspondence on your way out," Seamus remarked drily, side eyeing Lavi as they walked up the wide, empty thoroughfare. "I'm not exactly surprised by the lack of restraint from your Exorcist counterparts, but was it really necessary for you to launch into a fit of passion?"

Lavi just shrugged, eye forward and hands in his pockets. The morning thus far had wrung him out like an old dish rag, leaving him with nothing but moldering frustration. "Setting aside this whole 'pot calling the kettle black' arrangement, could you stop going on about pointless shit already?" Lavi said. "We're all in very real danger of annihilation right now. If we survive today, I'll clean up the office later."

"That was not my point," Seamus huffed. "You're clearly an emotional minefield right now. I may have a limited understanding of Innocence, but I suggest you cool down whatever part of you needs cooling before we get to the outer barrier."

"He is not wrong," Bookman supplied from just ahead of them.

Lavi did not bother with a reply, though he had to stifle the urge to roll his eyes. It was impossible to predict what embarrassing and emotionally charged nonsense might spew from his mouth if he did try to speak out against Bookman right now. Kanda would be screaming at him to meditate, and rightly so.

They were a stone's throw from the East Gate when the three of them passed Allen on the main road. He was seated right in the middle of the smooth surface, facing away from them and unresponsive to their approach. At first, Lavi thought he might be meditating, odd as that seemed for Allen, but he got a better look as they passed by.

Allen was laying out cards on the ground in front of him, in deep concentration as he played a round of solitaire.

The familiar sight pulled painfully at Lavi's chest. He found himself drawing to a stop to watch the lineup – counting the glossy cards as they were turned and placed by Allen's fingers, as if he might read their fates in the outcome.

"Don't suppose you've got a cheat for this game, too," Lavi quipped, trying to lighten the mood despite the heavy atmosphere.

Allen smiled up at him, his eyes unreadable. "You really think I can cheat myself?"

"Hey, if anyone can, it's you," Lavi laughed. He looked down for a moment longer, several different possible actions shuffling behind his eyes—

What if I refused to leave him alone like this?

What if we just played cards until it was too late to hide me away?

—before Allen blinked.

"Did you… want to play?"

Lavi shook his head and came back to reality, even as Allen dangled the option of evasion before him. He suddenly realized that Bookman and Seamus were staring him down from a few paces ahead, ever since he had stalled their progress to the East Gate. "I'd love to, but I've gotta see what's up with this barrier. Let me know if you win, okay?"

"Patience is not my forte, but sure." Allen accented the pun with a wink, then shuffled the remaining cards between his hands in a blurred arc of red, black and white.

In spite of everything, Lavi snorted at the joke, moseying away as he remarked, "You are such a clown, Al." It rang truer than ever before, and his heart sank at the admission.

"Your favorite clown!" Allen called after him.

"No contest on that one!" Lavi called back just before he reached the others. Bookman's face was a stone wall as he turned to lead them on, and Seamus followed suit with a beleaguered sigh. Mere minutes later, they stood beneath the towering golden frame of the East Gate.

The barrier before them flickered and crackled, layers of ancient spellwork coming apart at the seams. Only the faintest tendrils remained of the warmth Lavi had sensed from the barrier weeks ago, prodding here and there at his skin.

"It's breaking down even faster," Seamus grumbled, busily scanning a handheld device from left to right across the broad expanse of the entry area. He repositioned himself at the center of the space, raised his hand in a gesture similar to those Link often used, and muttered a short incantation. The barrier rippled and rebounded with a static wave that set Seamus's curls standing on end.

He slowly turned to glower at Lavi. "I knew you'd do more harm than good," he said, adding to Bookman instead, "Short of absolute control, he might just crash the barrier entirely."

"He must accomplish that level of control, then," Bookman declared, his flat stare directed at Lavi. "As we are short of any other options."

Seamus flinched at the finality of Bookman's tone. Lavi did not need to be told twice, even if Bookman's choice of words scraped at yesterday's barely scabbed-over wounds.

Lavi sat cross-legged on the road and closed his eyes, trying to calm his mind and read the situation. He measured his breathing as he spread out his awareness, raising a hand to contact the barrier. It felt akin to a threadbare quilt fraying all over with loose fibers of magical energy. As Lavi breathed, he pictured the strands coming back into order, weaving together, and smoothing out. The stigmata in his side tingled with warmth from the effort, until the furnace-like heat of the barrier began to radiate against him as it had before.

Not daring to open his eyes, Lavi said calmly, "I think the barrier's starting to stabilize. Can either of you see or feel the difference?"

"I'll check," Seamus muttered. Minute electronic noises emanated from his handheld measurement device, but Lavi's mind began to stray from the immediate environment. Waves of heat from the barrier surged around him, shimmering behind his eyelids until he swore he could see an oasis in the distance. Something told him that he might find what he needed there, if he could only reach that place in his mind.

The longer he looked, the stronger the pull became, as if a presence was beckoning him. For a moment, Lavi resisted, trying to focus on the noise around him to steady his grip on reality, but the pull increased with every passing second.

Finally, it was just too much to resist. Lavi released a long breath and let himself be dragged away.

Lavi opened his eyes to the sight of silver leaves.

"You have not yet found the truth," the voice said, weak on the breeze to Lavi's ears.

Pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes, Lavi sighed in frustration. "Not for lack of trying," he said. "I think I was getting close, but we're kind of in a crisis right now! I could use some help to control this barrier – anything you've got. I'll definitely never find the truth if we all die here."

"I respond to you," the voice replied. "But you cannot control yourself, nor understand me."

At the sensation of soft taps against his skin, Lavi uncovered his eyes and gazed up at the branches overhead. Leaves had begun to steadily shower down, dissolving to dust on contact with his body. The fine particles coated his clothing and skin, accumulating all around him until the circle of shaded grass resembled a dull ash heap.

"You know not my sorrow."

A loud pop and the sharp smell of smoke jarred Lavi's senses, shattering the dream.

"What the hell? It's never shorted out like this!" Seamus exclaimed. He shook the scanning device in question, which did nothing but rattle suspiciously and emit even more smoke. "You weren't supposed to supercharge the barrier!"

Lavi shook his head, briefly disoriented by the shift, and turned toward the accusation. He took a deep breath and disconnected his hand from the barrier. "I didn't mean for it to do anything specific. I'm working on the fly here! As far as I can tell, it feels like it's improving."

"Blowing up my equipment is a pretty clear indicator that it's being overloaded, regardless of how it feels," Seamus sneered, gesticulating at the near-blinding energy between the gate posts. "You of all people should know to rely on hard evidence and logic, yet here you are, flouting everything the Clan stands for and literally tearing down the establishment!"

His blood threatening to boil and hands balling into fists, Lavi jumped to his feet and squared off with Seamus. "You really think that's what I want? To potentially get us all killed?"

"As long as a few select people survived, I don't think you'd care!" Seamus fired back, his face flaring up like a sunburn. "The rest of the Clan could burn to the ground, just like your apprenticeship. You're no different than any other myopic, self-serving human being after all – except that they aren't weapons of mass destruction!"

"So what, wielding a cataclysmic weapon was good enough for the original Bookman, but not for me, is that it?" Lavi countered.

"Yes, that is exactly my point!" Seamus exclaimed, tossing aside his broken scanner. "You keep getting handed responsibilities that you do not deserve and are not fit to take!"

"I didn't ask for any of them!"

"Enough!" Bookman snapped, his sharp tone cutting off the shouting match like a guillotine. Both Lavi and Seamus froze, unable to do anything but stare down at the furious spectre of a man suddenly standing between them.

He directed his laser focus on Seamus first, and the boy shrank back. "Seamus, you will cease these delusions of superiority at once. Your great-uncle did you a disservice for all these years, filling your head with nonsense," Bookman stated. "He knew I had selected my apprentice thirteen years ago, yet he and his supporters chose to mislead you into thinking otherwise. You have great potential to serve the Clan without that artificial ego. As of this moment, you will refrain from speaking another word against Lavi. Understood?"

Seamus's face had gone white with shock at Bookman's intimidating presence, but anger still reverberated through the clenched fists at his sides. It almost seemed like he was going to argue back, conflicting emotions playing out on his face. Lavi wondered if anyone had ever told Seamus about Horace's lies and manipulation; for a moment, he almost felt a kinship with the young man. They'd both been lied to.

In the end, Seamus' training won out. Taking a measured breath, he replied, "Yes, sir."

Lavi didn't have long to relish the shut-down, however, as Bookman turned his full attention to him instead. His wrath had diminished to the usual shuttered expression Lavi had seen time and time again over their years together.

Honestly, he would rather have received a scolding. Better to be beaten about the head than face this indifference.

"You need to focus, Lavi," Bookman reiterated. He was using the calm, flat voice he reserved for everyone outside his inner circle, and Lavi wanted to sink right into the ground. "Seamus will no longer distract you. Think of nothing but the barrier's stability. If you do not concentrate and fix what is broken, all will be lost."

He was right. Lavi hated it with every fiber of his being.

He still could not bring himself to speak directly to Bookman. He nodded once and sat back down, trying to meditate away the hurricane of awful feelings consuming his chest. One breath at a time, Lavi fought to filter Bookman's voice, ever present in his mind, teaching, correcting, admonishing—

"Had you presented me with a hundred more qualified candidates, my choice would have been made for me all the same."

The memory of Bookman's cutting remarks came unbidden. Clenching his teeth, Lavi took a shakier breath—

"This is more important than succession."

—and another, steadying—

"But from now on, you shall be called Junior."

—until he strained and reached with his next breath for the tattered remnant of his Bookman-ingrained objectivity, his lifeline to control. His pulse slowed, though the air surrounding him remained sauna-hot in its overcharged state. He had to take this chance.

Lavi touched the barrier, and the lifeline burned to a crisp. Reality melted away.

Lavi gasped awake in the ashes heaped beneath the silver tree, choking violently on the air as he struggled to his feet.

"Objectivity is not truth," the voice scolded. "It is a gilded lie. An ideal of a bygone era."

The familiar words resonated with Lavi's memories – with the journals he had been reading.

"It's you!" Lavi exclaimed, stepping back to regard the tree with new eyes. The ashes swirled and scattered on a passing breeze as the tree began to sprout fresh foliage, each leaf more feather-like than Lavi had noticed before. "Are you… some remnant of the original Bookman?"

"Of his mind, perhaps," the voice whispered. "I shall never be free of this Innocence. Nor of my failure. There is a truth I cannot recall, a void in my most crucial of memories…"

Lavi's eyes went wide at the admission. "You forgot?"

"You do not seek the truth in vain. One cannot find that which is not first lost."

The wind picked up, and Lavi's gaze followed the resulting ash cloud on its journey toward the dark, twisted tree in the distance.

Someone was standing there, too far away to clearly identify beyond a tall, dark hat.

"Who…?" Lavi struck out into the field, striding swiftly toward the other tree.

"Wait!" the voice in the tree called. "You cannot cross over—"

Lavi turned, aggravation beginning to overshadow his confusion, and asked, "Cross over what?"

"Time," came the reply. "That tree is an anchor. What you see could be the past, the present, or even the future. Where you now stand is outside the flow of time. It exists in all states at once, infinitely."

As if to punctuate the point, the scenery around Lavi blurred and changed to that of a lush forest filled with birdsong and the chittering of animals. He had seen this forest in his dreams before but had never strayed from the base of the silver tree, then. The edge of where this realm met the golden field of time was unmistakable now.

Lavi marched through the remaining expanse of timeless forest until he could once again see the shadowy tree in the wheat field, but the figure beside it had vanished. Instead, a different figure approached the tree from the side. Lavi hazarded another step closer, freezing in place when his sharp eyes caught the shimmer of a barrier where the forest ended.

At this range, Lavi could see a young man with unruly dark hair and a casual air about him, hands in his pockets as he made his way to the barren tree. He stopped suddenly and turned, staring straight at Lavi's position with a confused expression and a shudder. His golden eyes stood out sharply on his pale face.

"Nea!" someone called, seemingly from behind Lavi. Lavi jumped in place when an unfamiliar woman materialized directly in front of him, as if she had phased right out of the forest barrier. She waded through the tall wheat with her skirt hitched up and one hand on her bonnet.

So the young man in the field was Nea. He waved at the approaching woman and wore a mischievous grin, the look on his face startlingly familiar. They began chatting at the tree, but Lavi could not hear a stitch of their conversation.

It dawned on him that neither of them was aware of his presence. Lavi's curiosity snowballed into desperation, heart pounding as he realized this could be a rare opportunity to learn crucial information. He hazarded another step forward, hands raised to the barrier.

"Stop!" The voice of the silver tree – of the original Bookman – reverberated through the peaceful woods. "You must not cross over!"

"Why not?" Lavi called back in frustration.

"It could present a dangerous disruption to the normal course of events. There is no precedent for its effect on you, either," the original Bookman warned. "Only the Noah so flagrantly meddle across time and space with no regard for the consequences."

"Oh, is that all?" Lavi scoffed. "If you ask me, the 'normal course of events' could use a good shake-up as it is." He clenched his teeth, defiantly pushing his palms against the searing barrier as he channeled his building aggravation. The stronger the barrier resisted, the more Lavi bolstered himself with thoughts of his years of relentless training, until he struck on a far-removed memory of his former master's words about the secret war and what it meant to be a Bookman:

'On the scale of good and evil, we are the balance,' he had said.

"Y'know, I really believed the old panda," Lavi ground out, certain his palms had to be scorched raw. "We've been playing chicken with the Noah long enough!"

The barrier finally gave way. Lavi hurtled headfirst out of the forest and flopped forward into the sunbaked field. He lay still in the sweltering heat for several jarring seconds, marveling at his miraculously unharmed hands, before he was able to sit up and swipe at his brow.

He had only just reoriented himself when he was roughly hauled to his feet. Fierce golden eyes stabbed straight through his own as Nea shook him.

"What the fuck are you doing here, bookworm?" Nea bit out.

Wresting himself free, Lavi shoved Nea back a step. "You know who I am? So this is happening in the present time…" Lavi glanced over Nea's shoulder for a fraction of a second, looking for the woman from before, but she was nowhere in sight.

"No shit, genius," Nea deadpanned, arms crossed as he narrowed his eyes. He leaned in alarmingly close to accuse, "You're either breathtakingly stupid or a pretty convincing actor, but either way I don't appreciate the ambush. Now tell me what the fuck you're doing here, because it makes no fucking sense how this is possible!"

"I wasn't trying to sneak up on you!" Lavi insisted. "I just saw some woman chatting with you, and I have a load of questions! Speaking of, who was—?"

"Drop the act!" Nea interjected, yanking Lavi by the front of his shirt. "You just pop in to this dimension and expect me to take that shit? You have no connection to me! You're not Allen, you're not Cross, and you aren't working with Road, so bumbling into this place should not be possible for you!"

"Well, I'm standing right here, so clearly it is!" Lavi shouted, already beyond irritated with Nea not even two minutes into their encounter. He resisted the urge to shove him again or punch him right in the face – satisfying as that would have been – and considered Nea's string of accusations to arm himself with words instead.

"Besides," Lavi charged, "do you seriously think I've got no connection to you, when you're bound to Allen and his Innocence?"

A shadow passed over Nea's face as the sun disappeared behind a cloud in the dream realm. Lavi instinctively traced a hand over the warming stigmata in his side, and Nea released his shirt to jump back out of range. In a blinding flash, Crown Clown materialized and covered Nea from head to toe – but without the claws of Edge, and with the Sword of Exorcism already present in his hands. He shouldered the sword and glowered back at Lavi.

"Motherfucker…" Nea growled.

"What's wrong?" Lavi said, not bothering to hide a smirk at the sight of Nea caught off guard. It was both unnerving and a little bit gratifying to see him play the fool. "Don't tell me you're afraid of me now."

And it looks like you're even more closely tied to Allen's Innocence than I assumed...

A beat of silence passed before Nea laughed darkly, collecting himself to retort, "Afraid of you?" He waved a dismissive hand at Lavi. "You can barely control the Heart, you're in love with my doomed host, and you tend to favor powering his Innocence. All of these things only benefit me, so what the hell do I have to fear? I'd thank you, if you didn't disgust me. You're the bastard spawn of Cross, after all."

Lavi rolled his eyes, but before he could respond, Nea stepped closer. He cocked his head, a spiteful grin playing on his lips below the opera mask. "On that note, I almost forgot that it's half-past time for you to get the fuck out of here," he said, making a twirling motion with one gloved hand. "Go on, move your ass, princess."

"What? No!" Lavi fumed, his blood beginning to boil again. He narrowly managed to bite his tongue before he strayed from his purpose for coming. "I just got here, and I still have a ton of questions! For starters, what sort of shit logic makes you think you can defeat the Earl by using the Heart, then turn around and become the Earl without getting wiped by the Heart yourself? What is your actual endgame?"

Nea shoved back the fur-trimmed hood of Crown Clown and raised his eyes skyward for a long moment, chuckling to himself as a peal of thunder sounded in the distance. He looked back at Lavi with an ominous smirk.

"You don't need to know. You just need to be a good little weapon and let me use you."

"Why the hell should I do that?" Lavi snapped, his patience wearing thin. Another, louder rumble reverberated across the air as a thought from his argument with Allen crossed his mind – something with the potential to shake Nea's confidence in his power position.

It was a stretch of the truth and a bit of a leap, but Lavi continued, "If I'm going to be anyone's weapon against the Earl, the Order could just as easily use me instead of you. So why shouldn't I take you out along with Crown Clown and set Allen free? The Heart can absorb Innocence, you know. I've done it before. Bet you'd be a lot less annoying without anything to trigger you – if you survived at all, that is."

A flicker of apprehension ruffled Nea's expression before he schooled it back into a smug mask, summoning a wicked grin that nearly split his face. "We both know Allen would never agree to that, so you'd be taking his Innocence by force. You really wanna explain to Allen why you robbed him of his left arm and his only means to fight, just like Tyki did? I doubt he'd survive the trauma. And I mean that in every possible way."

The thought made Lavi sick, anger warring with nausea as the accusation struck. He hated that Nea was right, manipulative devil though he was, and he hated himself for ever suggesting such a thing, even as a ploy. The air around him seemed to drop several degrees as the wind picked up, a tang of electricity on the air while clouds continued to build overhead.

"You still can't make me do your bidding without any explanation," Lavi said bitterly, unable to come up with a better response. Drops of rain began to pelt them in a steady shower, evaporating to steam where they came into contact with his stigmata. "At some point, you'll have to tell me your plan if you want my cooperation. Or Allen's, for that matter."

"Oh, just try me," Nea said, his tone ice-cold. Swiping the wet hair out of his eyes, he pointed upward. "Now, you really have worn out your fucking welcome, because this particular shitstorm is not my doing."

As if on cue, lightning streaked across the iron sky in time with the burst of irritation in Lavi's chest, followed by another deafening crack of thunder. The wind whipped through the tall wheat and the rain swirled around them. Pain flared in Lavi's side until he gasped for breath, but he couldn't focus clearly enough to stifle it. The Heart's reaction was going out of control.

Nea clenched his grip on the massive Sword of Exorcism and spun it in his hands. Raising the weapon, he skewered it straight through Lavi and plunged it into the barrier behind him with a sizzle of energy.

"Gotcha," Nea crowed. "I had a hunch you didn't just pop into existence from nowhere."

Lavi gaped at the sword protruding from his chest. It didn't seem to harm him, but the intense pressure pinned him in place to the invisible boundary behind him.

"Time to get out, bookworm."

Releasing the hilt, Nea shoved Lavi backward into the barrier.

Lavi woke on his back with a start, the taste of electricity on his tongue while his head throbbed relentlessly. His single eye tried to focus on the situation through a haze of smoke and the migraine-induced aura, both ears ringing as if in the aftermath of an explosion. He was far from steady when a pair of small arms lifted him to his knees, a brilliant white glow all around.

As his vision began to clear, Lavi recognized Crown Clown's cape spread wide and high over the entire immediate area. Off to his left, Seamus got to his feet, hands still on his ears. Lavi had barely noticed him standing before he sprinted off elsewhere, shouting orders to someone in the distance.

"We must leave immediately," Bookman said, his forcibly calm voice muffled to Lavi's ears. He was at Lavi's side, wrapping an arm around his back. "Stand up, Lavi!"

With a monumental effort, Lavi did as instructed. He leaned heavily against the short old man, his free hand braced against his aching head. The cape barrier around them shrank away in that moment, revealing both the toppled wreckage of the East Gate and the beginnings of what appeared to be General Tiedoll's Embracing Garden growing across the gap. The familiar stench of burning machinery and flesh wafted over from somewhere out of sight.

Allen dropped down in front of them, his eyes stormy with concern. Gears cranked around his left eye, and Lavi's stomach clenched as he pieced together the gravity of the situation.

"More akuma are inbound, less than twenty minutes away at the speed they're travelling," Allen reported, still catching his breath. "I can't say for sure how far away Apocryphos might be – only that I sense something familiar in a bad way. You have to get to safety before he can track you."

It felt as though the world was spinning around Lavi. Between his pounding migraine and still shaky grasp on balance, he could not sort through his chaotic thoughts. Instead, he launched at Allen and grabbed him by the shoulders, his white-knuckled grip blending with the cape's feathery trim.

"Please, just…" he began, unable – or maybe just unwilling – to give voice to his fears. "Please don't—"

"Trust me, Lavi. Remember? I've got this," Allen said, reaching up to hold Lavi's face. His expression was steeled with resolve, no smile or empty reassurance to be found. "Right now, you need to run."

Allen's pure determination eclipsed all else in the moment. Once he'd locked away that image of Allen in the vault of his mind, Lavi kissed him, hard and fast. "You'd better be right," he said, as if the words alone could make it so.

With a force of will born from years of training, Lavi turned away and ran after Bookman.

Their hasty retreat to the main complex, through the Archives, and deep into the Catacombs passed in a blur as Lavi's head throbbed, his mind practically drawn and quartered. Lavi did not feel fully there until Bookman slammed and locked the door behind them, securing them within the innermost room of the original Bookman records. The sound shocked Lavi's senses back to the foreground, his eye fixing on the single torch in Bookman's hand. The sealed air of the space felt like a tomb, cold and stagnant and cut off from the living – from his comrades preparing for battle.

No amount of reasoning could override the way Lavi's heart sank into the depths. He turned and smacked his fists against the ancient door once for good measure, as the stigmata in his side burned unbearably hot.

"Damn it, this is so wrong!" Lavi hissed, raking his fingers up into his hair as he pressed his forehead to the door. He inhaled sharply on instinct, Kanda's voice replaying in his head with the command to fucking breathe until each intake became more measured than the last, bleeding away the searing heat along his ribcage. "I should be out there with them. This isn't what I wanted…"

"Are you suggesting that what you want is the better course of action?" Bookman supplied. Lavi turned to watch him light the lamp on the table and snuff out the torch. His kohl-rimmed gaze was calculating. "You know better than most that blindly following one's own desires is humanity's greatest folly."

With nothing better to do, Lavi joined his former master at the table. He dropped into the single armchair and cradled his head in one hand, still measuring his breaths to avoid descending into another spiral. So much had happened in such a short time, and now he was trapped underground with Bookman while a cocktail of volatile emotions stewed in his gut. He'd said he could handle the inevitable confrontation between them, but in this moment, he was sorely tempted to burn the bridge down instead of mending it.

Still, he at least owed it to Allen to make the attempt.

"I am a human, you know," Lavi said, forcing his tone flat as if he were pressing out stubborn parchment. He looked up to meet Bookman's stare. "And so are you, old man."

A flicker of something dark passed over Bookman's eyes before he replied, "I am well aware of my own mortality. That does not grant me license to make poor choices or compromise our mission."

"But you did do both of those things, right?" Lavi retorted, a lingering and long-denied bitterness turning up the side of his mouth. "You picked Cross and then me, the Heart was stolen and crystallized, and now you've got no successor."

Bookman did not blink. "You should know by now that protection of the Heart is a higher priority for the Clan's mission. Failing in that objective would render the recording of human history moot, as existence would cease altogether. Or did you think I came here with you for my own health?"

"Guess that settles it," Lavi muttered, leaning back in the chair and crossing his arms over his chest. He uttered a short, brittle laugh. "You really did just choose me for the Heart. Not because of my potential or any other bullshit reason. And you're sticking around here now to make absolutely sure I don't run off and endanger the Heart, to boot. Sure does put a lot of things in perspective."

The slightest twitch of an eyebrow disrupted Bookman's composure. "That assessment is severely lacking—"

"Like hell it is!" Lavi cut across him, straightening up to meet his glare. "I've got zero evidence to believe otherwise."

As if a switch had flipped, Bookman suddenly radiated fury. His posture went rigid as he glowered Lavi into the chair with a pressing, repellent magnetism. "You have zero evidence? Did the last thirteen years of painstaking effort to train you mean nothing, Junior? Was it not perfectly clear when I kept you from harm and defied the Clan Elders that I chose you?"

Lavi stood, his own anger and hurt pushing back against Bookman's imposing aura as he countered, "You chose the Heart! It didn't matter who held it – you would've chosen that person over anyone else no matter what!"

Abruptly, the tense air around Bookman dissipated and his defensive posture dropped. His eyes widened minutely, staring back at Lavi with a certain rawness that the old man had never before displayed. He looked almost frail in the moment, the damage from their recent ordeals showing itself in his deeply etched skin and thinning ponytail.

The shift stunned Lavi into silence, rooting him in place and defusing his temper in one fell swoop.

"That… that was a half-truth," Bookman said quietly, his eyes softening in a way Lavi had not seen in a long time. "You overheard my conversation with Horace yesterday, didn't you? I thought I sensed your presence nearby, but I dismissed it then."

Lavi did not fully grasp why the simple admission brought a lump to his throat, but he swallowed hard before he could speak. "You sensed me?"

"You think I'm able to communicate with you telepathically, but am unable to sense your aura in a space?" Bookman chided, the admonishment carrying the stern fondness of his training methods. "I have used this to locate you on countless occasions over the years."

"But… I'm not your apprentice anymore," Lavi said, feeling his composure slowly crumble. "If you sensed anything, it should've been the Heart making your Innocence react."

Bookman just shrugged. "My Innocence is far less acquainted with the Heart than I am with you, which is honestly the more significant position to have. You control the Heart, not the other way around. I did not realize the effect my words would have on you, either. It is clear that such an oversight has contributed to the current state of things."

Lavi's shoulders sagged under the weight of guilt. "You mean how I wrecked the wards, huh."

"I am far from innocent, myself," Bookman stated. "I thought it best to maintain distance from you to lessen the chances of an emotional overreaction and allow time for recovery. It seems you interpreted my actions as rejection instead – a view understandably cemented by my conversation with Horace. You made a critical error, however."

Bookman paused for a thoughtful breath, narrowing his eyes at Lavi. "You must know by now that I am far from transparent with the Elders – the Chief Elder in particular. With you, I have been more honest than with anyone else. I merely told Horace what he needed to hear," he explained, his expression severe. "Did you ever consider that there was a viable alternative to taking you on as my apprentice? That in addition to having me choose a different gifted child, the Elders had an actionable plan for what to do with you as the Heart's accommodator?"

No words came to Lavi's rescue. He opened his mouth, momentarily perplexed, but shut it just as fast once Bookman's claims fully sank in. The Clan had kept the Heart in its heavily protected chamber for literal millennia and outright banished the one person who defied that condition, making clear their stance on the matter. Lavi's eyes tracked up to the ornate box atop the bookshelf – the container for the raw Heart Innocence.

It was easy to make the logical leap concerning how the Elders would seek to contain the accommodator of that same Innocence.

Would that have been his fate, then? A gilded cage of sorcery wards with nothing but books and his undeveloped Innocence for company? Would he never have been allowed to see the sun, much less have friends or any semblance of a life?

Would they have shut him away until he died and left the Heart in its raw state again? All for the sake of keeping the Heart safe and securing humanity's future.

The thought made his blood run cold. He felt sick to his stomach.

The worst part was how effortlessly he could imagine them making such a decision.

"I see you have followed my suggestion to its logical end," Bookman concluded, clearly reading all of Lavi's thoughts as they played across his face. "The Bookman Clan contains that which we cannot control – we collect, curate, and preserve. The Clan never was given to progressive thinking, and certainly not risk-taking. Nevertheless, I suppose I did come around to the same truth Cross had accepted: that hiding the Heart could not indefinitely postpone the inevitable. That, and I found it unconscionable to permanently lock away an innocent and talented child."

Bookman paused for a long moment before admitting quietly, "Perhaps I am more similar to Cross than I like to think. In my own way, I also turned from what the Clan has become."

Lavi wasn't sure how to respond. Bookman's thoughts were laid bare before him, too shocking and personal to be anything but real.

The implication hit Lavi in the chest like a well-landed kick from his former master: Bookman did care about him, just as Allen believed.

Tears flooded his vision, and Lavi did not care. He took a page from Allen's book and skirted the table to tackle the old man in a hug. Bookman startled but did not shove him away.

"I'm so sorry, Gramps," Lavi cried, actively shutting down the urge to latch onto the sad remnant of ponytail that had been a comfort object of his past. "I was such a foolish apprentice, after all. Now I'm just a foolish human."

Bookman pushed Lavi back at arm's length to look him in the eye, patting his shoulder awkwardly. He cracked a conspiratorial grin. "Between us sentimental fools," Bookman said, "you will always be Junior to me. Council decisions notwithstanding." From the weight behind his words, Lavi knew with absolute certainty that no future apprentice could actually take his place in Bookman's eyes. It was more consolation than he could have imagined.

"Guess you'll always be Gramps to me, too," Lavi managed quietly, rubbing at the back of his neck to offset the uncomfortable vulnerability of the moment. "Of course, that won't count for shit if I let the Grove and everyone in it get destroyed. There's gotta be some way for me to help besides hiding in here."

Bookman nodded. "Given a moment's thought, I'm sure you'll come up with something."

Lavi brought a hand to his chin and paced around the tiny room for half a minute, turning over the situation in his head. Allen, Kanda, and all the Exorcists outside were dealing with an invasion through the East Gate, primarily. Whether on offense or defense, all of them would be activating their Innocence.

That, and one enemy in particular was a powerful sentient Innocence itself.

"Maybe… I could connect with them all from this room," Lavi muttered. "Even with the warding layers around the place."

"It's worth a try," Bookman acknowledged, shrugging. "I know we dismissed it as a possibility given the strength of the wards, but they've never actually been tested against the activated Heart Innocence. You may be able to circumvent them. They are structured differently than the outer barrier, which should help to avoid burning them out."

Lavi settled down on the cold ground right in front of the door and closed his eyes. Compared to the past day of emotional turmoil, he felt incredibly calm. All around, he could sense the edges of the magical wards protecting the room, sealing the door, and restricting the larger chamber of Bookman records beyond. His mind continued on its journey, creating a mental map of every magical obstacle and allowing Lavi to orient himself by the many familiar markers along the way. He visualized his body moving through the surroundings as if physically there, rooting himself at the heart of the Grove before expanding his consciousness outward. In short order, he had exited the Archives into the main complex.

After weeks of practicing in a warded arena, Lavi wasn't sure what to expect once he pushed past the barrier of the Archives. He was startled to encounter a faint but vast presence in the middle of the area, branching out in many directions – it took several seconds before he figured out that this was the enormous yew tree at the center of the Grove, which apparently harbored some innate magical properties of its own.

The original Bookman must have used it like this, Lavi thought, patching in to the hum of the yew tree's power. He could practically see the canopy spreading overhead and the roots burrowing below.

Lavi's awareness had just connected with the yew tree's vast reach when the stigmata in his side flared to life, the Heart reacting sharply to all the active Innocence in the area. Several energy signatures pulled at his senses from different directions, automatically linking to the Heart, though their influence was significantly weakened through distance and interference. Lavi's brow furrowed in concentration as he sorted out exactly where and from whom they were coming.

Two of the connection points were moving insanely fast, both headed eastward in distinct patterns – one in a series of leaps and the other in rapid zigzags.

Lenalee and Crowley, Lavi assessed, just in time for both of them to blur past his mental location, heading for what remained of the East Gate. His mind assigned them colors for ease of distinction, one streak continuing in purple and the other in red.

Two more densely concentrated energy signatures caught his attention next, both of them stationary and situated at or near the East Gate in his mental map. One of them was growing, stretching skyward and outward on each side like an overgrown wood – it had to be Tiedoll's Maker of Eden, the Embracing Garden a wall of green to his visual interpretation. The other force constituted a dome-like space over a large portion of the road just inside the East Gate, waves of power centered on a point that pulsed with a metronome-quality beat – that was Miranda's Time Record, her dome now a swath of gold. Lavi could just barely make out the exact locations of the two Exorcists commanding their powers in the midst of so much energy output, but each of them morphed into a matching color-coded silhouette.

Another pull had Lavi panning to the right, where a fifth energy source swept around the area in the practiced dance of battle. It flared and faded in time with every strike, and he recognized Kanda wielding Mugen immediately. The swordsman carried on against enemies invisible to Lavi's senses, his form a blue-tinted force slashing at dark figures that blocked out portions of the mental landscape.

As Lavi drew back to try and take in the whole scene, focusing harder to maintain his tenuous connections with multiple Innocence energies, he realized with a start that he was able to identify the locations of akuma – they presented as negative images interrupting his visualization of the Exorcists fighting them on all fronts. He counted over thirty of them, but no enemy among them stood out as the Noah in control.

It was then that a sharp and compelling force yanked Lavi's attention back to the East Gate, and he recognized Crown Clown by its familiar presence alone. Allen was a brilliant silver firework launching up from behind Miranda's golden dome, his cape flying erratically as the clown belt extended to catch and pull him around the debris of the collapsed gate. He was fiercely engaged in battle with something, an entity which finally rounded the other side of the dome in pursuit of Allen.

Lavi's Innocence linked to the adversary just as it had the Exorcists, and he gasped in shock. The enemy Allen faced was a glaring white concentration of power in the shape of a human. It latched onto Lavi's fraying connection with palpable desperation. Suddenly, it stopped and turned as if it were staring directly at him.

Apocryphos.

Lavi's eyes shot open, cleanly severing his hold on the battle above. He broke out in a cold sweat, fighting a tremor as he clenched his hands on his knees and counted his breaths. The dimly lit room came back into focus, but the afterimage of that blinding silhouette hung in the air before him like a ghost. Lavi wasn't exactly sure what he had expected of a lethal independent-type Innocence, but it certainly wasn't this.

Allen had mentioned how Apocryphos went around disguised as a cardinal inside the Order, but akuma did the same thing all the time, erupting into their true forms through a ghastly metamorphosis. Apocryphos was apparently human-shaped, however, which made him an enemy more like the Noah than anything else.

Worse – an enemy that even the Noah could barely restrain, let alone eliminate.

How the hell does Allen plan to beat it?

"He can't," Bookman responded, his knowing gaze locked on Lavi from a seated position opposite on the floor.

Lavi shook himself, swallowing over his parched throat. He dropped his gaze and briefly deflected, "I, uh… I didn't realize I was thinking aloud."

"Only in the sense of our bond," Bookman replied. "Your thoughts tend to broadcast when you panic."

"I'm not panicking, just concerned," Lavi bristled, his fingers digging deeper into the fabric of his pants. "They're up against at least thirty akuma out there, who knows how many Noah, and Apocryphos to boot, while you've all unanimously declared that your precious Innocence battery has to sit here in cold storage. And now you're telling me Allen can't beat that thing? What exactly do you mean by that?"

Bookman's expression betrayed a flicker of sympathy before it hardened again. "You may recall that I referred to Apocryphos as a 'creature of legend.' The facts speak for themselves. Allen has been targeted by this creature on at least two prior occasions. In both instances, the intervention of others saved his life by allowing his escape: in the first case, Link nearly lost his life while Road lost her physical form, and in the second case, Kanda was brainwashed and Timcanpy destroyed," Bookman explained, the details neatly corroborating what little Allen had disclosed in the past about his time on the run. "This stands to reason, as no one would expect the Innocence-based attacks of an Exorcist to be effective against a being of pure Innocence. Furthermore, Jasdevi has been the only one to successfully incapacitate Apocryphos with the assistance of other Noah, and it still escaped under the influence of the Heart's power."

"If that's all true, there's no way Kanda didn't know—" Lavi aborted the thought. He sank back against the door in silence, his stomach churning as realization dawned.

Allen was only ever meant to be a distraction. Of course Kanda knew. He and Allen both knew, and he still made the call as General. There had never been any real hope of Allen winning, with or without the help of other Exorcists. The best-case scenario for Kanda's current strategy would be for Allen to keep the wild-card monster busy while the other Exorcists picked off the akuma and battled the Noah, until at last it became a matter of drawing Apocryphos away from the Grove and shutting the creature out with a newly fortified barrier.

If the objective was to keep Apocryphos away from the Heart, Allen would have to distract it indefinitely, or at least until the Noah were willing and able to contain it again – unless he died in the process.

Lavi reflected on Allen's insistence that he trust him, that it would be okay, and the careful way he had convinced Lavi to let it be—

"Can you imagine what Apocryphos would do to us all if it absorbed you like it threatened to do to me…? Or if the Noah actually did destroy you and the Heart?"

Because of course Allen was not concerned about his own demise. He had outright declared, in front of the entire group, that Apocryphos would only get to Lavi over his dead body.

That was not acceptable. None of it was.

On the heels of that thought, it occurred to Lavi that the Heart-bearer was the oneperson – the sole variable – with the ability to change such an outcome.

"Well, shit," Lavi muttered, letting slip a dark laugh as he pushed to his feet. He dusted himself off and cracked a smile at Bookman. "I'm really sorry, old man, but I've gotta go."

Bookman rose to his feet as well, stance imposing as his sharp eyes compelled Lavi to listen. "Do not do this, Junior. Their choices are their own, and you know better than to interfere. Running into this battle would be beyond reckless. If Apocryphos takes control of the Heart or the Noah destroy it… heaven forbid, if either of those things happen, humanity is doomed."

"Yeah, that's exactly what Allen said. But here's the thing. Humanity is doomed if I do nothing," Lavi countered, realization upon realization surging through his mind like a flood. "Don't you get it? Hiding away in here, letting other people keep fighting and dying over and over – it's more of the same! The same old bullshit from the last seven thousand years, and it just keeps getting worse. It's so damn pointless!"

The sudden revelation made Lavi pause. Narrowing his eye at Bookman, his voice was steadier than he expected when he charged, "This is why Cross quit, isn't it? Maybe even why he stole the Heart. Nea was just… a catalyst."

The stunned expression that flashed across Bookman's face jarred Lavi for a moment, deflating his confidence and leaving him to stand impotently in place. His former master looked as though he'd just seen a ghost.

As quickly as it had come, the look passed, leaving sadness to linger in the old man's eyes. "That is not the entire truth, but it certainly is the crux of the matter. I seem to have a knack for choosing apprentices who are destined to 'tear down the establishment' as it were," he conceded. He bowed his head and added in a low voice, "I understand what Cross tried to tell me, now. There is little more I can teach you."

"H-hey, hold up there, Gramps," Lavi stammered, stepping forward to take hold of Bookman's thin shoulders. "What are you talking about? I'm still a mess of an apprentice – not even an apprentice, actually."

Bookman looked up with a clear and steady acceptance written on his face. "You are under the tutelage of the original Bookman, now. I should have seen it when you first told me of the dreams. He is connected to you through the Heart, in your mind, and in his writings – a level of access no Bookman before you could have imagined possible."

Turning swiftly, Bookman stepped over to the table and gathered up the two worn volumes on its surface. He returned to Lavi and offered them without reservation.

"These are yours to keep. I harbor no delusions of stopping you here, but wherever you do go, you must finish your research."

Lavi hesitated only a moment – a weighty, almost sacred moment – before he took the journals and tucked them carefully inside his new Exorcist coat.

"Don't talk like you're not gonna be there to see it," he said, wrestling against the sinking feeling in his chest. "I don't know what's about to go down outside, and neither do you. All I know is the original Bookman said I have to take action to avoid making the same mistake he did – whatever the hell that was. I can't just sit here hoping it'll work out. Either I take this fight to the enemy, or they'll bring it to me after they decimate everyone and everything else."

Bookman perched a skeptical eyebrow at him. "I suppose you have a plan, then?"

"Well, you've given me some food for thought," Lavi declared with a half-baked grin, already moving to unlock the door. In truth, his so-called plan was little more than a rough outline that would require stellar execution if it had any chance of success.

"I control the Heart, after all," he said, willing his Innocence to activate as he unlocked and pulled the door open. "Not the other way around."

Lavi and Bookman emerged from the central complex onto a scene of pure chaos. It had been less than an hour since the East Gate's destruction, but already the main road looked like an exploded minefield. Plumes of black smoke billowed up from mangled akuma carcasses littered amongst charred trees and buildings. A swarm of Level 3 and Level 4 akuma battled with Exorcists on all fronts, and Lavi could see that at least one Noah had joined the fray – Jasdevi, who apparently found themselves in a grudge match with Crowley for the time being.

"We must keep you in range, but out of sight," Bookman warned in a low voice, ushering Lavi back from the complex's eastern exit and into the empty headquarters building.

"The roof?" Lavi guessed, matching Bookman's pace as he darted up the stairs. It wasn't hard to determine it was the best vantage point for surveying the battleground while limiting risk of discovery.

As soon as they emerged from the stairwell, Lavi took up his meditative position on the tiles and closed his eyes, trusting Bookman to keep watch.

This time, he sought out the familiar energy signatures of his friends with sharpened focus, blocking himself from even an awareness of Apocryphos to avoid being linked. Within moments, his senses stretched across the expanse of the Grove, and he was fully connected to all of the Exorcists.

Lavi kept his inner eye on their positions, dazzled by the intensity of colors exploding across his mental landscape as he willed surges of power into their every move.

As more and more dark patches interrupted his visualization, dread sank into Lavi's bones at how badly the akuma outnumbered his fellow Exorcists. Despite the disadvantage, however, they were fighting fiercely. On main road's north side, Lenalee launched a savage flurry of attacks on multiple akuma at once, while Kanda assisted Crowley in forcing Jasdevi to retreat into the thick of the southeastern forest boundary. All three Exorcists changed positions so fast that Lavi could scarcely track their movements. At the same time, Tiedoll's Maker of Eden shifted form to the offensive attacks of Art, two of his gigantic mannikins dispersing from the East Gate area toward a target that was out of sight.

Finally, Lavi turned his attention to Allen. Crown Clown's pull felt more desperate than before, as Allen's rapid and erratic movements only sped up from his earlier pattern: he danced around the gate's wreckage, a blur of silver moving in and out of Miranda's now-flickering dome. Flashes of a different magical energy flew through the air alongside Allen, which Lavi had to assume was Link assisting near Allen's position.

C'mon, Innocence, he pleaded, the stigmata scar already searing against his side like a hot poker. We've gotta give Allen more—

Low, bone-chilling laughter suddenly hit Lavi's ears from far too close, nearly breaking his concentration. The sound made his stomach twist in fear, but he refused to let himself be distracted.

Bookman will take care of it, Lavi chanted in his head. He redoubled his efforts to focus.

In mere seconds, the tide had turned against the Exorcists. Miranda's Time Record had deactivated. Allen's clown belt now strained to bind his opponent, making Apocryphos' insane power output impossible to ignore. Distantly, Lavi tracked Lenalee's lightning-fast movement to the scene, and he could only hope she was going to Miranda's aid.

Opposite Allen, the blinding silhouette of Apocryphos suddenly registered in Lavi's view. It cocked its head, seeming to stare directly at Lavi despite the distance.

"I know you're there, Master. Are you pleased?"

Lavi gasped in shock and jolted out of his meditation, collapsing back against the roof. His connection to the other Exocists was shattered as Lavi tried desperately to calm his racing heart. He covered his face with shaking hands and fought the descent into panic, his breaths coming in shallow pants.

It was one thing to acknowledge the horrifying presence of this enemy as it leeched on the Heart's power, but it was something else entirely to have that enemy speak directly to his mind.

"Oh shit… oh holy shit—!"

He scarcely managed to catch his breath before a low chuckle froze the air in his throat.

"Now, now, surely it isn't that hopeless already, my pet."

Sheril's voice, all honey-coated daggers, pinned Lavi in place with sheer terror. His hands dropped from his face, fingers clawing at the tiles beneath him in a futile grab for stability. The Noah's spindly form was already in view on his good side, Sheril's smile sharpening further.

His approaching footsteps took Lavi back, summoning the ghosts of a thousand wounds and carrying the promise of contorted limbs.

Lavi's paralyzed mind had barely begun to fight for his survival when Bookman shouted, "Heaven Compass, North Crime!"

The metallic flash of ten thousand needles passed over Lavi's vision just before Bookman hauled him to his feet. The old man gave him a rough shake.

"Stay focused, Junior!" Bookman commanded. "He's no match for you now."

Nodding dumbly, Lavi took a deep, shuddering breath and summoned up his circle of seals. Across the roof, Sheril was already shaking off a shower of needles as he muttered a curse and stalked toward them.

"Let's not jump to conclusions just yet," Sheril said, hands raised in false surrender. "I may have a tempting proposition for you!"

He flung his hand forward, but Lavi was faster on the eight strokes of his metal seal. Sheril's strings zapped harmlessly against the surrounding shield, burning up like fine strands of silk.

The Noah's smug smirk twisted into a sneer.

"I see you've learned some new tricks," Sheril said. "Too bad they won't be enough to save you, your home, or your precious friends from being annihilated. I don't even have to raise a finger – not with Apocryphos on the loose."

"Then why the fuck are you here?" Lavi snarled back. He held his stance, the rush of anger clearing his head and bolstering his Innocence barrier.

Sheril smiled, sickly sweet and dripping with malice. The brightness of Lavi's Innocence reflected eerily off his monocle.

"Oh, that's simple," Sheril said. "I've come to reclaim my favorite pet and my traitorous so-called brother, of course. Apocryphos was a rather handy divining rod, but he can carry on decimating the Bookman Clan for all I care. We both know you Exorcists can't stop that creature. My Noah brethren, on the other hand…"

Pausing, Sheril tapped his chin before he continued, "We might be willing to make a deal."

"A deal?" Lavi said, nearly laughing in disbelief. "You really think any of us would trust a sadistic monster like you after what you did to us?"

"You can't truly control the monster, either," Bookman said, his voice flat but confident. "Only a fool would take such a deal."

"I suppose that's fair," Sheril said with a mocking bow, glancing between the two of them. His smirk spread wide and sinister as his gaze locked back onto Lavi. "It's far more entertaining when you struggle, anyway."

The last thread of Lavi's composure snapped. His shield dropped as the circle of symbols whirled around to the fire stamp on impulse, and Lavi launched a white-hot flame dragon at Sheril with all the force he could summon.

It blasted loose a hurricane of scorched tiles and sent everyone flying off the roof.

Gathering his wits, Lavi summoned his hammer in midair and extended it to anchor on the ground, catching Bookman amidst the falling debris. He shot off toward the primary battle before Sheril could regroup.

The instant they touched down in the middle of what used to be the main road, Bookman charged toward a cluster of akuma closing in on Lenalee and Miranda, the latter Exorcist unconscious on the ground. Lenalee had retreated a fair distance from the East Gate with her comrade, seeking shelter under one of the few remaining trees along the road.

Sheril was nowhere in sight, so Lavi closed his eyes and took a few precious seconds to reconnect with everyone's Innocence in the area, feeling out their energies as quickly as he could before he ran after Bookman. The old man and Lenalee cleared out all but one akuma, which Lavi dispatched with a well-aimed lightning strike.

The immediate crisis averted, everyone refocused on Miranda.

"She won't wake up!" Lenalee cried, frantically pacing around with her eyes on the sky for incoming threats while Bookman assessed Miranda's condition. "Link even used a healing spell on her, but it made no difference!"

"What happened to her?" Bookman asked.

"Apocryphos got through her time barrier," Lenalee said, a slight tremor to the words despite her defiant expression. "It waved a hand and she just… spasmed and started sprouting feathers everywhere before she passed out. Then Allen got hold of the monster, so Link and I took the chance to move her away. But Link had to go back and help Allen…"

Abruptly, Lavi felt his connection to Crown Clown falter, weakening to the point that he could hardly sense it anymore. He looked to the collapsed East Gate far up the road with trepidation. The entire area was shrouded in a thick cloud of dust, but he felt the long-denied Apocryphos pulling at the Heart's power like a desperate and petulant child.

Bookman eyed Lavi warily, as if he could sense his intentions. "Do not go after him, Junior—"

"You know I have to," Lavi said, cracking a watery smile. He placed a hand over his chest where the ace of spades still resided within his coat. "Sorry again, Gramps."

Without a second thought, he planted his hammer and aimed himself for the wreckage of the East Gate.

Flying on the hammer at high speed, Lavi caught glimpses of the battle's various fronts: Kanda raced along the distant treeline to his right, while to his left, Tiedoll's gigantic mannikin was not fast enough to catch Feedler, who easily slipped through its clunky fingers and darted in the direction of Bookman and the girls.

With a frustrated groan, Lavi changed his trajectory northward to intercept the immediate threat. He called off the hammer and dropped down not ten yards from the Noah, blocking his path to the others.

Skidding to a halt, Feedler paused to consider his new target. His disgusting tongue lolled out as he broke into a feral grin.

Lavi had no time to waste and no words to spare. He fixed his glare on the Noah of Corrosion, summoned his ring of seals and traced the nine strokes of pestilence without hesitation.

Noxious yellow gas billowed out toward Feedler at a creeping pace, and the Noah cackled maniacally at the sight.

"Whatcha got here, a stink bomb?" Feedler scoffed, flapping both hands at the cloud as if to waft it away.

In that instant of contact, Feedler howled in agony. Boils ballooned on his hands, spreading up his arms and catching on his tongue as the gas began to envelop him further. The eyeballs on his tongue swelled and exploded like large, bloody grapes, and he collapsed to the ground after less than a minute. The Noah was still flailing in the fluid-saturated dirt when Lavi turned away.

Good riddance.

Lavi said nothing to the screaming creature as he left the gas cloud behind to finish the job. Summoning his hammer, he rocketed off toward the East Gate once again.

The dust from the drawn-out struggle with Apocryphos had finally begun to settle, baring the scene to Lavi's eye as he dropped in range and pulled the hammer back to normal. Link lay on the ground beside a pile of rubble, his face bloodied as he tried and failed to get up. The collapsed golden slabs of the East Gate behind Apocryphos reflected a fractured image of the creature.

Apocryphos smiled broadly at Lavi's approach, one hand clenched around Allen's neck as it dangled him above the ground like snared prey. Allen dropped the Sword of Exorcism in favor of gripping his captor's wrist, kicking and writhing to no effect. Despite the white cloak still enveloping Allen's body, Lavi could not even sense Crown Clown to bolster its energy.

With building dread, Lavi's eye traced the diminishing glow from the clown belt encircling the monster to the brilliance of Apocryphos' body and put the pieces together.

Apocryphos had usurped his connection to Allen's Innocence. It was siphoning the Heart's power straight out of Crown Clown.

Fury burned in Lavi's chest until it consumed all else, leaving a bitter cold in the air around him as he commanded, "Let him go."

Apocryphos inclined its head, its bloody eyes almost confused. "Are you not a Bookman, Master?" it asked. "Why should you care if I put this pathetic creature out of its misery? He has served his purpose."

"I'm not going to waste time arguing with you," Lavi growled, his hands clenched tight around the hammer. "Now let him go!"

"I think you can spare me a little time, Master," Apocryphos said slyly, tightening its grip around Allen's neck just enough to make Allen squirm with renewed panic. "I could have easily ended his life by now – an act of service, honestly – but I needed to get your attention."

"Congratulations, you have it!" Lavi exclaimed. "What exactly do you want with me?"

"I exist to help you achieve your intended purpose," Apocryphos said, giving Allen a rough shake as he added, "and to prevent threats such as this abomination from interfering beyond their intended purpose. Surely you understand."

Lavi could not believe his ears. "All you're doing is wrecking everything that matters! If you're really an independent type of Innocence, why the hell are you trying to kill Exorcists?"

"I am killing a Noah, and a pitiful human whose Innocence has been irreparably corrupted," Apocryphos said with an incredulous laugh, as though Lavi's argument was beyond ridiculous. "A catalyst is not meant to survive the reaction it causes."

"Allen isn't just some catalyst!" Lavi refuted. Even so, he couldn't stop Allen's words from echoing back at him:

"I'm just… a means to an end."

It sank a stone in his gut. Everyone and everything seemed to be using Allen however they saw fit.

"Is he not?" Apocryphos countered. "You know so little of his history, yet you are at least aware that he provoked your awakening. Even now, it pains me to dispose of him because of his unprecedented connection to Innocence, despite my resolve. Do you understand?"

"Of course not!" Lavi said, hazarding a step closer as Allen's struggling limbs began to falter. He needed to stall Apocryphos until he could come up with any sort of plan – even if that meant a ludicrous and drastic play for the other Noahs' involvement. "Hevlaska predicted that Allen would be the Destroyer of Time, and that likely connects him to defeating the Earl," Lavi argued. "How can you possibly justify killing the Exorcist who's meant to end the war?"

"Ending the so-called war has never been our purpose," Apocryphos said. "You are too distracted to see the true end, but we are one and the same. Thus, I will make the necessary sacrifice for you and return this Innocence to its source."

Lavi had next to no time to consider the chill that shot down his spine. Apocryphos began to glow with such intensity that Lavi's eye watered at the sight, the creature's power overflowing as it spread through the ribbons of the clown belt and into the rest of Allen's Innocence. Brilliant, feathery tendrils exploded around Allen, seeming to come from every part of him at once. The sight of it was eerily captivating.

The sound of Allen's broken screams crashed into Lavi's brain. Lavi dropped his useless hammer, covered his ears and tried to focus, his stomach in revolt and his mind racing. All the power of the Heart could only add more fuel to Apocryphos' attack, leaving him helpless to do anything but watch as Allen's life was extinguished.

I have to do something! Anything… think!

His instincts refused to accept defeat. Frantically, Lavi parsed Apocryphos' every word, seeking any hint of vulnerability or means of advantage.

We're one and the same? Same purpose, same abilities, same—

His eyes went wide.

The same source! The Heart is the power source of all Innocence. Even this thing.

In a flash of memory, Lavi pictured the raw Innocence from the dank cavern melting in his palm, sinking into his skin.

Apocryphos is just another piece of Innocence, Lavi realized. And that means…

I can take it back.

"You're mine!" Lavi shouted, his body suddenly electrified by a surge of power that shot stars across his vision and almost blacked him out. He dropped to his knees, barely able to focus as a thick, root-like extension of energy spread across the ground from his body to completely engulf Apocryphos. The creature relinquished its grip on Allen, its hands clawing at the snare of swirling power instead, ineffective as a mouse struggling in the belly of a snake. Apocryphos' body began to tremble, its mouth open in a silent shriek as its extremities slowly dissolved down to the torso and head.

In his hazy periphery, Lavi glimpsed Allen lying still on the ground where he fell. His heart lurched into his throat and choked off even his ability to call out to him. He desperately clung to the hope that Allen was just unconscious.

Lavi's panicked thoughts barely had a chance to form before they were drowned under a deluge of power. Apocryphos was no more. The Heart's extension of energy which had assimilated its substance rebounded onto Lavi and shattered his senses, his awareness spiraling—

Lavi opened his eyes to the sight of silver leaves. He stretched a hand toward the tree.

The shining image shifted, beams of light jumping out of alignment as if the scene had been spliced into place. The leaves melted to ash as the trunk twisted and darkened to stone, to the ghastly pallor of tombs and their occupants.

He sensed a presence from behind, terrifying in its power—

"Lavi!" Kanda called, his black ponytail flying like a banner as he rushed toward Lavi, whose mind struggled to hold on—

It was close enough to raise the hairs on Lavi's neck. With a voice that surely commanded legions, the presence whispered in his ear—

Lavi was shaken back to the present, Kanda's stern expression hovering before him. Kanda squinted against the light that seemed to be coming from Lavi himself.

"Snap out of it, rabbit!" he shouted.

Just beyond the swordsman, Allen was miraculously climbing to his feet, but Lavi could not maintain his focus—

"Finish it," the voice said. Inexplicably, Lavi's heart was pierced with dread and horror at this command. The world tilted and swayed…

Lavi's eye blinked open to the East Gate wreckage again.

His head was pounding, his body unresponsive as energy coursed through his veins with such force he feared he might explode. He remained frozen on his knees but felt sure that his mind could flee the scene any second.

Kanda turned his back to Lavi, posed in a protective stance as he faced a new threat.

Near the fallen gate, Cross Marian stepped out of a large checkered door and strode rapidly toward them, Tyki on his heels.

The Heart's power surged anew, and Lavi's vision slipped away again—

A dark-haired man knelt before him in the ashes, the air around him saturated with smoke and death. His fierce, golden eyes streamed tears through the dirt on his face as he cried, "Do you think yourself a savior, now? You are nothing but a puppet!" He lifted a single shaking hand…

"Well, someone has to move him!" Allen demanded, but it was not Allen speaking. Instead, Nea's amber glare shifted from Lavi to Cross as the former General reached his location.

"Not it," Tyki said, one finger on his nose and another on the nose of the sulking doll perched on his shoulder. "I'd rather not be fried today."

Cross cursed under his breath and huffed, "Just guard the door, imbeciles."

He approached Kanda along with a very agitated Nea, but before Kanda could raise his sword, Lavi's vision went black again—

A ball of dark energy gathered in the man's palm. It grew and spread to cover the scorched land around them in a dome of pitch and a vortex of wind. The immediate area and the man's intense, resolved expression were lit only by the flames of the sword in Lavi's hands. Tongues of fire danced around the blade and caught on the man's hair as it whipped wildly around him.

Lavi held aloft the massive sword for a fraction of a moment before he plunged it into the man before him, sickened by the crunch of flesh and bone as it went straight through.

But it was not Lavi's doing. He was powerless to stop the scene unfolding. Lavi looked down at the sword held in strange hands, the translucent skin blinding with power, as he heard the original Bookman's voice speak from his throat.

"I am no savior," he said.

The other man coughed and gushed blood onto the ash-covered ground, flames enveloping his body as the darkness receded…

"Step aside or lend a hand, Ponytail," Nea barked at Kanda, his voice pulling Lavi back from the vision. "Because the Heart-bearer's coming with us."

Pointedly ignoring Nea, Kanda slashed Mugen toward Cross instead and growled, "You'd take the Heart and abandon the rest of our comrades? How many times are you going to run like a fucking coward?"

"We're moving Sheril's targets to a safer location, and I'm willing to bet he and his minions will abandon the Grove in pursuit," Cross replied. He squatted down and hoisted one of Lavi's arms over his shoulder. "You'd do well to keep your eyes on more than just the battle in front of you, General."

The scene around Lavi swam before his eyes and faded out—

"Finish it, child," the terrifying voice commanded in Lavi's ear once again.

His heart burned in his chest with fear and fury in equal measure, images of unfamiliar faces racing through his mind in a blink. He had only one thought, only one answer.

"No."

Palpable wrath vibrated the air around him. The flames from the sword in Lavi's hands turned inward, molten fire churning within the weapon and superheating the hilt. He was forced to release it before he could even pull it from the other man's body. He stumbled back in shock, the scorching heat in his palms sinking into his skin and building in his bones.

The dark-haired man looked up in bleary-eyed confusion, barely clinging to life as blood pooled around him. The sword protruding from his body had turned black as coal.

Lavi lost sight of all else as fire flared within every nerve, his vision going blank—

His body was jostled back to alertness, his face half-smothered in dark red hair that smelled faintly of cigarette smoke, the scent exacerbating a near-blinding migraine.

Cross was hauling him to the checkered door ahead at a fast clip, and he could not so much as twitch a muscle. Just to the side, Link limped toward them with Kanda's help, cradling a badly injured arm.

"The CROW comes too," Kanda snapped at Nea as they passed.

Fighting the pain, Link hissed through gritted teeth, "I made… a vow."

The Noah rolled his eyes and gestured impatiently toward the door. "I don't give a fuck. It's your funeral."

Nea's voice became muffled along with every other sound in the vicinity. Lavi could feel his consciousness failing in a different way than before, the pulse that thudded in his ears growing slower as he fought a losing battle against the Heart's strain.

The silver tree appeared before his eyes again.

Within moments, the sight flickered, shining leaves replaced with ash and fire.

"Finish it."

Dread and horror consumed his heart.

Icy despair ran down his spine.

No.