"So basically."

Eloa only spoke again after eating five whole pieces of the jerky Tie had given her.

"You came back here to steal that strange powder from the storage room?"

"Mhm!"

Tie nodded.

The faint glow of the sealing stone embedded in the wall reflected in Eloa’s eyes.

"...That’s stupid."

But her gaze quickly dimmed again.

"I don’t know what exactly you’re planning, but Papa and the Dark Spirit Squad aren’t opponents you can joke around with."

Tie silently watched Eloa muttering to herself.

'Last time, I didn’t really look at her properly.'

Now that she paid closer attention, Tie could see just how pale Eloa’s face was.

Like someone who had not seen sunlight in a very long time.

And not just that.

Long fingernails packed with dirt.

Skin cracked and torn in places because she could barely wash herself properly.

"Fine. Let’s say I give in a hundred times and agree that you somehow manage to carry that stuff out safely. Then what?"

Eloa continued.

Tie swallowed and exchanged a glance with Lucarion.

"Then we’ll make an antidote."

"An antidote?"

"Mhm! If there’s an antidote, then Tie and the squad will be safe too, and maybe the children here can come back to their senses!"

"...Come back to their senses?"

Eloa’s eyes trembled for a moment.

But soon she shook her head.

"Nonsense. There’s no guarantee that’s even possible. Do you even understand what kind of drug this is?"

Tie quietly lowered her brows.

Eloa let out a dry breath.

"The children here... at first, they were all normal. They smiled, talked... even joked around with each other."

"..."

"But over time, they all became strange. Their eyes turned empty, they talked less and less, and then one day they stopped recognizing even each other’s faces."

Eloa’s gaze darkened sorrowfully.

"Those demons took them away. I saw it so many times from here. Someone would arrive, change, disappear. Then more would come again."

Eloa raised her head.

"Do you know how long I’ve been here? Only recently did I finally stop thinking about escaping. But you..."

Eloa bit her lip.

"You haven’t been trapped here all this time. That’s why it’s easy for you to talk about escaping or antidotes."

Tie dejectedly fidgeted with her fingers.

Then she carefully walked over and sat down in front of Eloa.

"That’s true. Actually, Tie doesn’t know a lot of things. You’re not supposed to talk carelessly about somebody else’s home."

The grandma from Room 107 used to say that often.

That you could never truly know how other people lived just by looking from the outside.

"But you know."

"..."

"If nobody does anything, then nothing changes. And if nothing changes, then everything stays like this forever."

Eloa fell silent.

"You can’t eat candy unless you unwrap it first. And a door won’t open unless somebody pushes it. And you can only see the sun if you climb all the way to the top of the mountain."

Tie squeezed Eloa’s hand more tightly.

"So maybe it’s still better to try? If Eloa does it, Tie will do it together with you. And after we escape, we can go look at the sun together. Okay?"

At the word "sun," Eloa’s face twitched.

The child biting her lip quietly swallowed down a groan.

Several seconds passed.

Then, with a sigh, Eloa finally spoke.

"...The children brought here are divided into two groups."

Tie’s eyes widened.

"This prison is split into two sections."

Eloa stood up.

Walking toward the bars, she pointed to the left.

"That side is really complicated. I only went there once myself. The Dark Spirit Squad calls that place the First Zone. This side is the Second Zone."

Tie swallowed nervously.

"The strange thing is that there are way, way more children in the First Zone than here."

"Way more?"

"Yeah. Like you can see, there’s only one person in each cell here, right?"

"Mhm!"

"But it’s different over there. I only saw it for a moment, but there were at least ten... no, twenty children packed into the smaller cells."

Tie’s heart began beating anxiously.

At that moment, Lucarion, who had remained silent until now, finally spoke.

"Do you know what standard they use to divide them?"

Eloa turned toward Lucarion.

"I have one guess."

Turning around, Eloa dragged Tie and Lucarion toward the hole beneath the bed.

"The Dark Spirit Squad calls the children in the Second Zone ‘test subjects.’"

"Test subjects?"

"Yeah. They perform experiments on them..."

Eloa twisted her face as though even remembering it disgusted her.

"Right here. They shove some disgusting thing into this spot, then watch for changes afterward."

Eloa pointed at the area around her heart.

"Recently, I heard the Dark Spirit Squad calling it ‘Croa.’"

"Croa?"

Tie tilted her head.

Lucarion spoke.

"Croa... it’s an ancient word that once referred to both holy power and magic at the same time."

Tie’s lips parted.

"In the past, they were never separated. People believed they were energies born from the same origin at the beginning of the world."

"Wait. So the Dark Spirit Squad has been injecting me with holy power... or magic this whole time?"

Eloa asked in confusion.

"That makes no sense. My body always hurt after the experiments. I thought it was just poison."

Lucarion stepped closer to Eloa.

"Are you perhaps a mage?"

Eloa’s eyes widened.

A few seconds later, she frantically waved her hands.

"What are you talking about? A mage? There’s no way I could be something that special. Although..."

"Although?"

"Before I was brought to the Central Continent, the people where I lived called me a problem child. They said I was born with cursed power."

Tie cautiously asked:

"Where did you live?"

"...At an orphanage attached to a monastery. Just a tiny place where only parentless orphans like me and a few priests lived."

Tie’s lips slowly parted.

'A monastery? Priests?'

If it was a monastery, then it definitely belonged to the Temple.

And among the abilities Temple people would call "cursed power," magic would be the first thing that came to mind.

"Eloa! Then you really do have magic!"

Eloa blinked blankly.

"Me? Magic? I just..."

"Oh!"

But Tie had already grabbed Eloa’s hand.

Tie’s eyes widened.

"So that’s what it was. It’s because of the sealing stone."

If not for the sealing stone, she would have sensed the energy long ago.

Magic really was flowing inside Eloa’s body.

Because of the stone, it felt weak and faint, but the moment Tie focused, she could clearly sense its condition.

Maybe that was why—

"...Listen, Eloa."

Tie looked up with an anxious expression.

"Doesn’t it hurt...?"

The magic inside Eloa was unbelievably sharp and unstable.

Just sensing the flow of power that looked ready to explode at any second sent chills down Tie’s spine.

Eloa hesitantly asked back:

"...How did you know I was hurting?"

Then she added quietly:

"It hurts a lot, actually. The last experiment was only three days ago."

Tie’s face darkened.

'They deliberately tangled up the flow of magic.'

"Kkamani."

Turning her head anxiously, Tie saw Lucarion nod.

"I’m thinking the same thing."

Lucarion looked at Eloa.

"We believe they intentionally injected holy power into your body to mix the two energies together."

Eloa’s eyes widened.

"...They mixed holy power with my magic? But why?"

Lucarion’s expression turned serious.

"Probably to see whether you could endure the collision between the two powers."

Eloa froze.

"And if I couldn’t endure it?"

"Well. Aren’t you the one who knows the answer to that better than anyone?"

Eloa closed her mouth.

She stayed silent for a long time before finally muttering:

"...I heard screams."

Eloa herself already knew.

The children who failed the experiments disappeared.

"I... only I..."

But Eloa was one of the few who produced good results every time.

Of course, she would suffer for days after each experiment.

Even so, she always recovered and survived the next one too.

Eloa’s eyes trembled with fury.

"What even is this? What are they trying to create with experiments like these...?"

"They’re searching for a vessel capable of holding both distorted magic and holy power at the same time."

Lucarion said quietly.

"The power currently tormenting Luciano works in almost the same way."

The power of the World Tree Luciano had stolen was an ancient energy symbolizing life and harmony.

But the problem was that he had no right to possess it.

Inside Luciano’s body, the World Tree’s energy was growing increasingly unstable.

His body was breaking down.

His magic was spiraling out of control.

"So he needed to find a solution."

Lucarion spoke softly.

"A way to contain the raging power of the World Tree inside his body and stabilize it."

Tie blinked blankly.

"The first stage is finding a child born with two powers from the beginning... or artificially creating one."

"..."

"And then deliberately breaking that balance. To see whether the person can restore it on their own."

"..."

"Whether they survive or destroy themselves, all of it becomes valuable information to Luciano."

For some reason,

Tie suddenly remembered Papa’s face from before she left.

Papa, who had suffered his entire life because of the imbalance between two powers.

Papa, who lost Grandma after his power spiraled out of control and still carried the guilt even now.

'It was a purification ritual.'

Papa had said the order took him away at four years old for "purification."

But now, Tie thought she finally understood the truth.

"..."

It had never been purification.

Tie took a short breath, and tears filled her eyes.