"And what is it about you that makes so many Origins willingly treat you so well? Since you refuse to tell me, I'm sorry, but my patience has run out. I'll peel your consciousness open myself and see... just what it is."
She spoke without haste.
With every step she took.
Scarlet vines pierced their way forward beneath her feet.
But Lynn remained unmoved. Instead, his smile grew strikingly clear and bright. "What? Aren't you afraid of stirring the monster sealed inside my consciousness?"
The girl smiled, her eyes brimming with amusement. "If it were really that easy to stir, you wouldn't keep using it to threaten me. Neither of us is stupid, after all, are we?"
Slowly.
She walked up to Lynn.
Lynn made no move, not because he refused to resist, but because the girl had already locked the space around him in place.
"Let me see."
"Just what you are."
Her eyes narrowed. Under his gaze, the slender hand she extended transformed with a wet rustle into a twisted hand of flesh covered in cysts.
That twisted, fleshy hand drew closer to his brow.
Yet just as it was about to reach into his skull, an utterly uncanny smile suddenly appeared on Lynn's face.
Like the opening of a grand ball.
The final grain of sand marking that moment.
Quietly fell through the hourglass at that very instant.
"Isn't it already here?"
Lynn spoke to her gently.
In an instant.
The expression on the girl's face changed drastically.
Without any warning, the Blood Mist around them, which should have remained calm, began to surge in terror, as though it had suddenly been plunged into a pitch-black, bottomless pool, trembling and suffocating uncontrollably.
As though every leaf, every branch, every flower bud had felt the frost drifting down.