Chapter 1, Interlude
void of labyrinth
omen, abyss

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[ [ ██:██

Ren Jikan Metanovae was in the school library again.
That, on its own, was a contradiction in terms. Ren Jikan Metanovae did not go to school in the first place - a great deal of effort was put into preventing it, so much so that it was a paradox. The only thing remotely close to that idea that made sense was Jikan Ren's attendance there.
Which meant that he was here.
He raised his head from the wooden table where it had been laying, and stared down the corridor of bookshelves. They were short. He could see over the top of them, but it was no use. He already knew that this space didn't conform to just what he could see.
The electrical hum of the pale lights struggling to illuminate it was the only sound save for his own breathing. He took a deep breath.
As always, the air was stale, as if it had been motionless for thousands of years - as if this modern library had merely been built around a wasteland that had already been here.
He stood up, taking a few steps and mustering all the resolve he could.
This time, he would reach the end.
One foot forward.

To his left, the curtains were drawn over the windows.
If he wanted, he could have walked right up and opened them to look at the sky.
He had tried that a few times before.
He'd died from the mere sight of the black void beyond it, and woken up with enough pain coursing through his brain that he'd howled and howled until his lungs were raw.

There were books he didn't recognise on the shelves, with words on their spines unlike titles.

Isn't dying enough?

Why did this happen to me?

Please, someone else, anyone else.

Everything is cruel.

Is anyone there?

It hurts.

I'm begging you to answer me.

I don't deserve this.

Anguish was blending with loathing. Desperation to be saved and condemnations of a world which offered nothing to save them mingled and bled together.
If he wanted, he could have stopped to open them, reading the bone-white lamentations contained within their black pages.
That had been the first thing he'd done when he had this nightmare for the first time.
He had woken up choking on his own vomit.

There were shadows on the walls that weren't his own, moving swiftly as if cast by a predator.
Was he being stalked? The question itself didn't matter. They would not catch him unless he let them.
Forward.
Keep moving forward, and you'll make it.
This space got more and more complex every time he entered it. He turned a corner.
Another aisle of bookshelves that didn't exist before was waiting for him, splitting down the middle. The light above the left-hand path flickered.
He would take the right-hand path.
No matter what, he could not look at nor touch the dark.
He had done so twice before, and not woken up the next day.

This place was hostile. Ren still wasn't sure if it was real or fake, but it certainly didn't want him to be here. The feeling was mutual, but he couldn't stop himself from straying into it. This was what happened when he slept.
The nightmare had not been with him long. It had been infrequent at first, with a full week between his first and second visit here. That was… in January, perhaps. But as the days went by, the library had appeared to him more and more, as though closing in around him. Every time, it got more complex, more alien, seething with malice at his continued intrusions.
It had appeared every day for the past two weeks.
If it despised him so much, why did it not just bar him entry? Why did it look so familiar? This hardly felt or looked like some foreign reach where he did not belong, or some sacred ground where he was forbidden to tread. Everything seemed to indicate this place as a carnivorous trap, luring him in by perverting an image close to him. Indeed, that would have been consistent with how he found himself here so often.
It was as if this nightmare had attempted to devour him, only to do everything in its power to spit him out once he was in its grasp. It acted like it had tasted poison on him.
It was impossible to figure this out by himself. He knew that much.
He had to ask the one person who might have had an answer.
And to that end, he had to find the heart of this labyrinth. He'd managed it before, a few times, near the very start. But as it tangled and knotted itself to strangle him and pry him from its innards, it became harder and harder to reach it.
He had to focus. A single mistake, and he would be cast out once again.
Left. Forward. Shadow. Right. Right. Spine. Forward. Forward. Left. The light blinked. Wrong turn, go back. Right. Left. Left. Forward.
It didn't look like it at first, but this way was off-limits: there was a table up ahead. Dead end.
It didn't look like it at first, but this way was lethal: there were no words on the spines of the books up that way. Turn around.
Ren didn't have time for trial and error. If anything was strange, even slightly, it was going to be a new hazard. Anything that took his eyes from the way forward was nothing less than instant death.
Everywhere safe looked the same. It was all equally nauseating, equally oppressive.

There was one exception. One thing here was darker than everything else combined.
"Found you."
One lone chair, and one lone figure.
At first, it seemed like nothing more than a shadow was present, but he had been here before. He knew what he was looking at. It was no mere illusion.
One leg crossed over the other, one of the countless sinister books in hand, one side of her mouth poised in a smirk as she meet his eyes.
She was even smaller than he was. Dark, shaggy hair only flowed as far as her shoulders. Her eyes were like voids, and her smile was barely more than a paper cutout. The school uniform she wore was black with a white scarf - more evocative of the Showa era than this one - and a pair of glasses with thin round frames rested on her face. She seemed so ordinary, yet so out of place, like a crease on the page to make one word look like another. Everything about her seemed so incredibly thin, as though she were one false move away from revealing herself as a mere facade. No matter how many times he saw her, Ren could only think of her as a ghost, doomed to haunt this twisted room until nothing remained, but even a sheet over a child's head had more semblance of being than she.
"Well, well. Look who finally made it back," the girl sneered. None of it stopped her from speaking with a voice so caustic that it seared his brain. "You actually survived this time. That's nice. Your corpses stink, so I'm pleased."
Ren was used to it. Joking or otherwise, he got enough lighthearted abuse from his friends that even her genuinely bitter dismissiveness wasn't particularly anything new to him. That said, it was news to him that he left 'corpses' here. He filed it away in his mind for later, intent on not getting distracted.
"I was meaning to ask about that," he replied. "Why is this library so intent on trying to murder me?"
The ghost raised her eyebrow. "Library? Is that what it looks like to you?"
"You see it differently?"
"I don't see anything anymore. I saw a lot of things a long time ago. But it's been too long. All of the dreams have long since lost all meaning to me."
Ren pondered for a moment, and then slowly nodded. "So if this isn't a library, then what's that in your hand?"
The book between her fingers snapped shut, and she sighed. "Just a regular dying wish. A common wretch cursing their miserable fate. 'It's not fair' and so on. You know the type."
He doubted he knew it as well as she did, but he had seen the books on these shelves. There was something of a running theme, at least. With everything here being so entwined with killing and dying that it almost made him self-conscious about being alive.
───What a grim place.
"So, what brought on the fire in your eyes?" she asked. "It's unlike you to be so motivated."
Ren took exception to that - he got motivated about plenty of things - but kept his mouth shut. There was a real answer to this one.
"I saw a Magus today."
That woman, Momiji Musubi… Her body flowed with an unmistakable magical energy, just like Ren's. His was extremely low, especially compared to hers, so he wasn't sure if she'd noticed him, but…
"Okay. So?" the girl said.
"It's weird, but it's not exactly earth-shaking," he agreed. "But… there was a spirit with her."
The woman by her side, her so-called associate.
"'Lancer'... Well, that might just be an alias…"
She had strained belief. It took everything he had not to react to her presence at the time. That kind of spiritual mass was absurd. She outclassed an ordinary human probably a hundred times over in density alone.
Ren's left eye was named Capricorn. Or, more precisely, that was the name of the magical formula that dwelled within his eye. It was a constellation derived from the Mesopotamian deity of water, magic, and intelligence. It was far from a genuine divinity itself, but even the Magecraft was a Mystery dating back thousands of years.
That was, after all, what the name Metanovae implied. Although his family had no doubt risen and fallen over the generations, their origin stemmed firmly from ancient times and the birthplace of Magecraft.
That's why, even if he himself was so weak that he could have been missed by a Magus who simply wasn't paying attention, looking at Lancer was almost like staring into the sun.
There was so much data, so much power, that he had seriously wondered if he was going to hurt himself if he examined her too closely.
Of course, that eye was useless in this dream. No matter how hard he tried, the girl before him remained inscrutable as ever as she raised her eyebrows.
"Is that so…? Well, that might begin to explain why we were able to meet," she murmured. "How sad. Seems like you stumbled headfirst into a disaster in the making."
A chill ran through Ren's body. Maybe it was just because of how soaked she was in death, but there was something about this girl that made it seem almost deterministic when she promised 'disaster'.
"I was under the impression that it had already stopped…" she mused. "Someone really restarted that ritual? Human beings really never learn, do they?"
His fingers closed just slightly.
He'd had a hunch that she would have known something. It wasn't a huge leap that two strange things were connected. And if she really was a ghost, then perhaps a powerful spirit would have been on her radar.
And he had been right to think so.
Apparently noticing his thoughts, the girl gave him an uncharacteristically serious look.
"Don't misunderstand. This has nothing to do with me. I'm not involved with whatever is happening now."
"What do you mean, 'that ritual'?"
"Huh? Why are you asking me?" she shot back. "You think I know anything about the ins and outs? Aren't you a Magus?"
Hardly.
Ren was a practitioner, not a professional. He had inherited this pathetic excuse for a Magic Crest that could barely even be called one, but he'd had no formal training. He might have been beyond an ordinary apprentice, but he only assembled what was available to him. No matter how many colouring books one completed, it did not qualify them as an artist.
"Well, excuse me for not paying attention," she said, "but I don't recall whether there's even another Magus in your town besides you. Those families stayed here once upon a time, but who even knows anymore. I don't care enough about you people to keep tabs."
"That's fine. Just knowing that there's someone I can ask is enough," Ren said. "Thank you."
She pulled a face like she'd been served an unfamiliar meal. Expectant silence.
"That's all," he assured her.
"…Gross."
"What? Why?"
"Shut up. Everything you say just reminds me how much of a sack of fluid you are. You're disgusting."
"What does that even mean?"
He didn't understand, but the revulsion on her face was genuine. Something, at least, had upset her.
The air was heavy, and his limbs weakened.

…No, it wasn't that his limbs were weakening.
The atmosphere had literally become heavier. A dark miasma was beginning to well within the space, clinging to his arms and legs. His skin was normally dull to the touch from modification to his nerves, but now a thousand, a million needles were suddenly biting mercilessly into his flesh all at once.
Unease creeping into him as the pain began to worsen, Ren raised his right hand to try to shake the crawling shadow off.
In the next instant──
Snap.
It turned on his wrist one hundred and eighty degrees.
"Ah…?"
The sound from his mouth was not a howl of agony, but a formless breath of confusion.
"I said 'shut up'."
Something was leaking from his throat. It felt like it was bleeding. Something was dripping down his neck.
He didn't dare raise his other hand. He couldn't touch it. But something cold was just under his chin, nothing came in or out through his nostrils, and──
──Oh.
Of course. His throat was liquefying, and air was drifting inside.
Was it the shock of such a thing, or just because he was used to the brutality of this place? He couldn't even bring himself to panic.
The floor suddenly flew up to meet his chin, and his skull shuddered like gelatine as he made contact. Had his legs melted too? Something metallic was spilling out from between his lips - the remains of his tongue, he suspected. Dark spots were beginning to cover his vision. He couldn't move.
It had probably only taken a few seconds for every muscle in his body to turn to this iron-tasting fluid.
It was probably red. He couldn't look at it to check. The world seemed to split as his eyes wandered in separate directions.
"Yeah, I thought so," he heard the girl muttering.
He couldn't see her anymore, but his hearing was still enough that he could make out her words. The crisp leafing of paper graced his ears as she spoke.
"I figured I'd try out that, see what your Origin is. This is basically what I was expecting. Difficult as you are, you sure are predictable at your core, aren't you?"
Ren couldn't even tell where his body was anymore. Where did he end? Where did the room begin? Holes were starting to appear, but he couldn't tell where.
In his thoughts, perhaps.
"Ugh. Your insides really do stink. Maybe drink some soap every once in a while or something," she scoffed. "Don't worry. I'm not actually killing you. I'm not that heartless. I was just curious."
The words were beginning to lose meaning.
"This is just a dream. So go to sleep."

Sleep?
Wasn't he sleeping?
There

was sa

...Oh. Something just disappeared.

Thud.
A splitting pain rushed through Ren's nose.
…At least he had a nose, he noted.
Blinking, he raised his head, trying to get a feel for his surroundings. His room was sweltering, and his body was drenched in sweat. His legs were tangled in bedsheets from the mattress that loomed above him.
Fell on my face, huh, he observed, pushing on the wooden flooring to right himself and sit up. Groping around for the cable leading under his pillow, he dragged out his phone, tilting it to check the screen.
05:37, it noted, with a single notification: a message from Sato Mayu, received five hours ago.
Let's do our best tomorrow!
He'd fallen asleep without replying. That felt a little rude.
Unlocking, he sent back the first thing that came to mind.
I'll meet you at the gate after classes
Might be a little late, so feel free to get a snack or something while you wait (ᵔ◡ᵔ)
Jikan wasn't going to bother going back to sleep just to get another thirteen minutes. It was, for better or worse, time to get up.
Rubbing his eyes, he stood up and went to wash his face.

- Chapter 1 -
end