Subaru Natsuki woke with the sensation of having been thrown from a sleep far too deep up to the surface of a still lake.
He did not open his eyes all at once. First, touch returned, slow, confused, almost suspicious. He felt something soft beneath his back, a clean texture against his skin, a pillow that did not smell of dust or alleyway or blood. Then came the weight of his own body, whole, heavy, alive. His abdomen, where he remembered feeling Elsa's cut open like a final sentence, did not burn. There was no dreadful heat, no blood spilling between his fingers, no miserable certainty that life was escaping through a wound impossible to close. Only a dull discomfort beneath the skin remained, as if his body retained the memory of the slash even though the flesh had already been repaired.
At first, that frightened him.
Because being alive was no longer a simple answer.
Subaru kept his eyelids closed for a few more seconds, waiting for the sound of the market, the shout of the fruit seller, the bustle of the capital, the rough voice demanding he buy an appa or get lost. He waited to wake once again in front of the same stall, with the convenience store bag in his hand, his phone in his pocket, and everything he had achieved turned into a cruel joke by the world.
But he heard none of that.
The silence surrounding him was far too refined for the street. It was not an absence of life; it was a cared-for, polished calm, as if even the air had been trained not to make noise. In the distance, perhaps outside the room, he could hear birdsong, a soft breeze brushing against curtains, and the faint creak of a huge construction settling beneath the morning light.
Subaru opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him was not Lugnica's sky nor the rotting wood of the Loot House. It was a high white ceiling, decorated with elegant molding. Sunlight entered through a wide window, filtered by curtains of fine fabric that barely moved with the wind. The bed was absurd. Too large, too soft, too clean. There was polished furniture, a soberly designed rug, a table beside the bed, and walls that seemed to belong to the room of someone with more money than Subaru had ever seen gathered in his entire life.
For a long instant, he said nothing.
Then he slowly lifted the blanket.
His clothes had changed.
"Ah."
The word came out small, dry, almost humble.
Subaru lowered the blanket again, stared at the ceiling, and breathed deeply.
"I'm alive, I'm not at the fruit stand, I have clothes I don't remember putting on, and I'm in a room I definitely couldn't afford even if I sold my soul in convenient monthly payments... Good. Excellent. Nothing alarming here."
He tried to sit up. The movement brought immediate dizziness, but not deathly pain. That was a good sign. Or a deeply suspicious sign, which in his recent life amounted to almost the same thing. He brought a hand to his abdomen and felt over the fabric. Nothing. No cut, no thick bandage, no dried blood. Only closed skin beneath borrowed clothes.
Then memory returned with greater force.
Elsa. Reinhard. The old sword. The Loot House splitting apart under impossible light. Emilia kneeling beside him, hands filled with healing magic, her worried face leaning over his. Her name. Emilia. She had said it. Not Satella, not that cruel lie she had used before to keep distance. Emilia.
Subaru remained still, his hand still on his abdomen.
"Emilia..."
The name left him in a whisper.
And along with that name came another thought, less romantic, much more urgent.
"Link!"
He sat up too quickly, and the world spun. Subaru grabbed the edge of the bed, swallowing hard so he would not fall face-first onto a rug that probably cost more than every object he owned on Earth combined. When the room stopped moving, he looked around desperately.
He found him in the corner.
Not in a bed, but on a wide sofa placed beside a side wall, covered by a light blanket up to half his chest. Link was sleeping deeply, his dark hair messy over the cushion and an expression so peaceful it seemed insulting. His face had no cuts. His arms were complete. There was no blood on his hands, no open wounds on his neck, no visible marks on his abdomen. There were no horns either. No black and red eyes. No crimson tentacles spread through the room like an organic nightmare.
Only Link.
Asleep.
Peaceful.
As if he had not tried to fight a supernatural assassin, as if he had not transformed into something out of a horror story, as if he had not tried to attack Reinhard out of pure instinct when he tried to take Felt away.
Subaru let out the air all at once.
"You're still alive, you damn dramatic Latino."
Link did not answer.
Subaru got off the bed carefully. His legs complained when they received his weight, but they obeyed. He walked toward the sofa, feeling like a seventeen-year-old old man, and leaned over Link to check his breathing. There it was. Slow, deep, regular. Far too peaceful for someone who, the last time Subaru had seen him move, had seemed willing to rip off the head of the strongest man in the world if that meant preventing Felt from being dragged away against her will.
"Hey," Subaru murmured, touching his shoulder with two fingers. "Link. Wake up. Don't leave me alone in Dracula's mansion, aristocratic rainbow version."
Link frowned.
Subaru instinctively took half a step back.
No kagune appeared. No horn came out of his forehead. No eye changed color. Link only released a low grunt, buried his face a little deeper against the cushion, and muttered something unintelligible.
Subaru narrowed his eyes.
"No way. Are you sleeping well? After all that? You? The same guy who grabbed me by the neck in the middle of the street like a dimensional debt collector?"
Link opened one eye.
It was brown. Normal. Sleepy.
"If you're dead, Subaru, lower your voice in the afterlife."
"We're not dead."
Link took a moment to process the phrase.
He opened the other eye.
Silence fell between them for several seconds. Link looked at the ceiling. Then the window. Then the furniture. After that, he looked at his own body beneath the blanket, lifted one hand, opened it, closed it, touched his forehead, lowered his fingers to his abdomen, felt both arms, and finally stared at his complete hands with an expression Subaru could not fully read. It was not pure relief. There was relief, yes, but also horror. A quieter, deeper horror, as if waking up whole confirmed something he would rather have been able to deny.
"I didn't go back to the forest," Link said.
"I didn't go back to the fruit stand."
"Then..."
"We won," Subaru said, though the word tasted strange. "Or, well, we didn't die. Which, considering our streak, counts as a crushing victory."
Link slowly sat up. The blanket slipped from his shoulders and revealed clean, loose resting clothes, similar to what Subaru was wearing. Upon realizing it, Link looked at the fabric with immediate suspicion.
"Who changed me?"
Subaru froze.
"That is an excellent question I also asked myself mentally a few minutes ago and decided to store in an emotional box until I had more information."
Link looked at him.
Subaru raised both hands.
"It wasn't me."
"It better not have been."
"Why did that threat sound like I was your first suspect?!"
"Because you're Subaru."
"That is not legally valid evidence."
"In my country, it's enough."
Subaru let out a short laugh, and for a moment the room seemed less unreal. Both of them were alive. Both could say stupid things. That was something. Small, fragile, absurd, but something. Link ran a hand through his hair, breathed deeply, and then touched his forehead again, where the horns had been before.
"Nothing," he murmured.
"Yeah. You're in basic human mode."
"Don't say that like it's a setting."
"After seeing you pull tentacles from your back, regenerate fingers, and attack Reinhard while asleep, I need categories to preserve my mental health."
Link closed his eyes and let himself fall back against the sofa's backrest. For a few seconds, he did not speak. The morning light marked his pale face, and though he had no visible wounds, Subaru could notice the exhaustion in the way he breathed. Link did not look physically broken, but he did look drained from the inside, as if his body had paid a huge debt during the night.
"I remember it," he finally said.
Subaru stopped joking.
"Everything?"
"Almost everything. Elsa saying she'd go after Felt. Me... exploding. The red thing coming out of my back. My eyes. The cuts closing. Then horns. I don't understand the horns. But the other thing..."
Link opened his eyes and looked at his hands.
"I do recognize the other thing."
Subaru sat on the edge of the bed closest to the sofa.
"You recognize it?"
Link slowly nodded, though his expression did not become calmer because of it.
"In my world, there was an anime. Tokyo Ghoul. The protagonist... well, technically I shouldn't start explaining the entire plot because we're in an unknown mansion, you just woke up from almost dying, and I don't know if there are people listening behind the walls. But those red limbs... they looked far too much like a kagune."
Subaru blinked.
"Kagune? Wait, wait. Are you telling me your secret power is from a ghoul anime?"
"Don't say it like I chose this from a menu."
"No, no, sorry, it's just that my otaku brain just got hit by a spinning kick. Are you a ghoul? Like a Tokyo Ghoul ghoul? Are you hungry for... you know?"
Subaru did not finish the phrase. He did not need to. Link understood and immediately shook his head with a grimace of disgust.
"No. I don't feel that. I don't feel hunger for human flesh or anything like that. I have normal hunger, I think. I'd eat a whole chicken, rice, potatoes, ají, and maybe a dessert if this world has anything decent, but not people. That's the weird part. If this were the same as the anime, I should feel something horrible. But no. It isn't pure ghoul."
"Then you're a defective ghoul."
"Subaru."
"A regional edition Latino ghoul."
"Subaru."
"A ghoul with truck and weapons DLC."
Link grabbed a pillow from the sofa.
Subaru raised both hands.
"I'll stop! I'll stop! It was psychological defense."
Link kept the pillow ready for another second before lowering it.
"The horns don't fit. That doesn't come from Tokyo Ghoul. That was something else. And when they appeared... I felt something different. I don't know how to explain it. It was as if something from the air entered me. As if my body was breathing with another part I didn't know I had."
Subaru frowned.
"Magic?"
"I don't know."
"Mana exists in this world. Puck mentioned it several times. Emilia too. I still don't really understand how it works, but it seems pretty important for not dying inconveniently."
Link looked toward the window, thoughtful.
"Then maybe the horns have something to do with that."
"Or this world decided to make you a mix of ghoul and demon to compensate for the fact that I came with a bag of junk food and fragile self-esteem."
"Don't say demon. It sounds worse."
"Oni?"
Link looked at him.
"What?"
"Oni. Japanese demons. Horns, strength, that stuff."
Link fell silent. The word did not seem to give him an answer, but it did give him an uncomfortable direction. He touched his forehead again, as if expecting to find an invisible mark.
"I don't know what I am," he said.
Subaru felt the mocking answer get stuck in his throat. He could make a joke, of course. He always could. It was his specialty and his curse. But Link was not asking from the curiosity of an anime fan. He said it like someone who had seen his own body stop belonging to him.
"You're still Link," Subaru said, lower.
Link let out a brief laugh without humor.
"That isn't even my real name."
"Then you're still the idiot who grabbed me by the neck, insulted me, abandoned me, came back, protected Felt, turned into a monster, and still had time to keep being unbearable."
Link looked at him for a long second.
"That was almost sentimental."
"I know. It disgusted me too."
Link snorted. It was not a full laugh, but it came close.
The moment broke when Subaru looked toward the room's door. It was a tall door of polished wood, with a shiny handle and a design so elegant it seemed to judge him for existing. Subaru stood up with a determination that, in his case, was always suspicious.
"Well, since we're alive, dressed, and apparently kidnapped by a luxury mansion, I propose we do what any rational person would do."
Link looked at him tiredly.
"Stay here until someone comes to explain."
"Explore."
"That is literally the opposite of rational."
"Explore carefully."
"Subaru."
"Explore carefully and scream if something tries to kill us."
Link stared at him as if he had just confirmed every reason humanity deserved extinction. Then he lowered his feet to the floor, stood slowly, and tested his balance. He did not fall. That seemed to surprise him.
"I'm only going with you because if you die in a hallway, I'll probably end up waking in a truck again or something worse."
"That almost sounded like concern."
"It's risk management."
"I accept that twisted form of affection."
"Don't get excited."
Subaru smiled, walked to the door, and opened it.
The hallway beyond was enormous.
Both of them stayed still.
Not because there was a monster. Not because they saw blood. Not because an assassin was waiting for them with knives. It was worse, in a sense: there was nothing. Only a long corridor, perfectly clean, illuminated by light entering from tall windows. The walls had paintings, curtains, decorative lamps, doors at regular intervals, and a rug stretching down the center that muffled their steps. Everything smelled of waxed wood, clean fabric, and that kind of old wealth Link had only seen in historical buildings where they probably would not let him enter if he dressed the way he usually did.
"This isn't a house," Link murmured. "This is a government building with a castle complex."
"Noble mansion," Subaru said, looking around with shining eyes. "This is totally a noble mansion. I knew it. Emilia is definitely important. It makes sense. Silver hair, magic, cat spirit, main heroine aura, and now mansion."
"You're getting too excited for someone who doesn't know who brought us here."
"Emilia brought us."
"You don't know that."
"My heart knows."
"Your heart has made bad decisions since I met you."
"My heart has a complicated history, but it doesn't lack passion."
They walked.
At first, they tried to maintain a sense of direction. It was useless. The mansion seemed designed by someone who hated people with normal spatial orientation. Long hallways led to longer hallways. Elegant staircases appeared where they did not expect stairs. Identical doors repeated as if someone had copied and pasted the architecture. Subaru commented on every detail with a mixture of fascination and fear, while Link tried to memorize the path with the seriousness of someone who did not trust the building to respect the laws of space.
"I have a hypothesis," Subaru said after several minutes.
"No."
"You didn't even hear it."
"I don't need to."
"This mansion has more rooms on the inside than on the outside."
"We don't know what it looks like from the outside."
"Then my hypothesis remains undefeated."
Link stopped in front of a window and looked outside. What he saw temporarily robbed him of any insult. Wide gardens, maintained with almost unreal precision, stretched beneath the morning light. Beyond them were trees, hills, a landscape too green and too peaceful for someone coming from the capital and a warehouse covered in blood. The mansion was not in the middle of the city. They were far away. Very far.
"Subaru."
"What?"
"We're not in the capital."
Subaru approached and looked too. His expression changed. The excitement became uncertainty.
"Ah. That... explains the lack of vendors shouting at me."
"They moved us while we were unconscious."
"Well, technically we already knew that because of the clothes change, but said like that it sounds worse."
"Because it is worse."
Subaru scratched his head.
"Maybe Emilia lives here."
"Or they brought us to the mansion of someone who supports her."
"That sounds logical."
"Or they're going to dissect us."
"That stopped sounding logical very quickly."
"After my thing, don't rule anything out."
Subaru could not argue.
They kept walking until they reached a fork in the hallway. Subaru chose a direction with total confidence. Link followed him for three steps before stopping.
"Do you know where we're going?"
"No."
"Then why are you walking like that?"
"Because if you look confident, the world takes longer to realize you're lost."
"That sentence summarizes your life."
"Thank you."
"It wasn't a compliment."
After several more minutes of useless wandering, they reached a door that did not look different from the others. It was polished wood, with the same elegant frame and the same shiny handle. Subaru passed in front of it, stopped, stepped back, and looked at it with a strange feeling in his stomach.
"This door is calling me."
Link looked at him.
"Don't open doors that call you."
"Not literally."
"Worse."
"I just want to look."
"The last time you said something similar, we ended up negotiating with a little thief and fighting a bowel hunter."
"Technically, it worked."
"Technically?"
"We're still alive."
Link sighed.
Subaru took the handle.
The world changed when he opened the door.
They did not enter another normal room. There was no bedroom, no sitting room, no storage room, no secondary hallway. What unfolded before them was a gigantic circular library, with high ceilings and shelves rising like walls of old knowledge. Thousands of books filled every wall, arranged in endless rows. The air smelled of old paper, ink, clean dust, and something harder to define, a kind of dense stillness pressing against the skin. The light was dim, warm, filtered by lamps and an impossible clarity that seemed to come from no specific place.
Subaru opened his mouth.
"Secret library."
Link took a step back.
"Close it."
"But—"
"Close it, Subaru."
Too late.
At the back of the room, seated in an elegant chair with a huge book on her lap, was a girl.
At least, she looked like a girl at first glance. Blonde hair styled in vertical curls, an elaborate dress, a small face, large eyes, and an expression so full of annoyance that it defied any idea of childish innocence. She did not look up immediately. She turned a page with almost theatrical calm, as if ignoring them were a carefully chosen form of insult.
"What noisy visitors, I suppose."
Subaru froze.
So did Link, though for different reasons. The girl did not seem dangerous in the physical sense. She was not Elsa. She held no knives. She did not emanate murderous intent. But the entire room seemed to revolve around her. The library was not a place where she was. It was territory that belonged to her.
The girl finally raised her eyes.
"Who gave you permission to enter Betty's forbidden library?"
Subaru slowly pointed at the door behind them.
"The... door."
"The door does not grant permissions, I suppose. It only opens when someone annoying touches it from the outside."
"That was surprisingly personal against the door."
Link spoke without taking his eyes off her.
"Subaru, shut up."
"I'm establishing diplomacy."
"You're provoking a librarian girl who can probably turn us into rugs."
The girl closed the book with a soft thump.
"Betty is not a librarian girl. Betty is Beatrice. And you are intruders."
Subaru swallowed.
"Subaru Natsuki. Accidental intruder number one. He's Link, accidental intruder number two, though technically we don't know if that's his legal name."
Link elbowed him.
"There was no need to say that."
"Honesty builds trust."
"Honesty is going to build you a grave."
Beatrice observed them with growing irritation. Her gaze stopped first on Subaru, evaluating him from top to bottom with disinterest. Then it moved to Link.
And stayed there.
The silence changed.
It was not dramatic. There was no music or visible explosion of mana. Only Beatrice's expression, which until then had been pure annoyance, sharpened with a more serious attention. Her eyes narrowed slightly. Link felt something invisible touch him from a distance, a fine pressure, almost imperceptible, like fingers brushing a lock beneath his skin.
"You," Beatrice said.
Link tensed.
"Me?"
"Come here."
"No."
Subaru looked at Link and then at Beatrice.
"Well, diplomacy is going great."
Beatrice raised an eyebrow.
"Betty did not ask for your opinion, noisy human. You, the other one. Come closer."
Link did not move.
It was not simple rebellion. There was something in Beatrice's voice that awakened instinctive discomfort in him. Not the same as Elsa, not the terror of an assassin. This was more like standing before a doctor who had already decided to open you up to confirm a suspicion. Link knew nothing about magic, nothing about spirits, nothing about this world beyond dying in it repeatedly, but his body did seem to recognize that the girl before him could touch something not made of flesh.
"I don't like being ordered around by girls with curls," Link said.
Subaru brought both hands to his face.
"Link, by all the gods of any world, do not insult the magical loli of the forbidden library."
Beatrice appeared in front of Link.
She did not walk.
There was no clear transition.
One instant she was beside the chair. The next, she was less than a meter from him, lifting her face to look at him with icy irritation. Link stepped back by reflex, but his back collided with the door, which was no longer open. At some point, it had closed on its own.
"Betty hates discourteous guests, I suppose."
Link swallowed.
"I hate when people appear in front of me without walking."
"Then we are both displeased."
Beatrice extended a small hand toward his chest.
Link caught her wrist before she touched him.
Or he tried to.
His fingers closed around air. Beatrice's hand was already resting on his chest, right over his heart, with impossible naturalness. Link's eyes widened. Subaru stepped forward, alarmed.
"Hey! Wait, what are you doing?"
"Checking," Beatrice answered.
"Checking what?"
"What should not be here."
Link felt the pull.
At first, it was not pain. It was a strange sensation, as if someone had opened a valve inside his chest and begun extracting air from a cavity that was not his lungs. His eyes opened wide. His body, firm only seconds before, suddenly became heavy. His legs trembled. He did not understand what was happening. There was no cut, no blow, no knife or ice or bullet. Only that small hand on his chest and an invisible current leaving him.
"What... are you doing... to me...?"
Beatrice did not answer immediately.
Because she had gone still too.
Her eyes, which until then had shown annoyance and control, opened a little wider. Not from fear. From surprise. The current of mana she was draining from Link did not behave as she expected. It was not a normal human reserve. It was not a common gate with a mediocre amount, nor a malformed well that emptied in seconds. It was large. Much larger than reasonable. Dense, hot, active. It did not have the familiar purity of a spirit, nor the refined shape of a user like Emilia, but the quantity was absurd for someone who claimed not to understand anything about magic. On a raw level, the presence she was touching brushed against scales Beatrice did not expect to find in an outsider lying around in the hallway of a mansion.
And beneath that, there was something else.
A nature.
Not human.
Beatrice frowned.
"This is... impossible, I suppose."
Subaru felt his stomach sink.
"What's impossible? I hate when powerful people say 'impossible' while touching my friends' chests."
Link tried to pull away, but his body did not obey. His breathing grew heavy. The heat he had associated with his transformation began to move beneath his skin, first as a vibration, then as a deeper pulse. Beatrice's hand kept draining him, and the more mana came out, the more something inside him stirred in response. It was not hunger. It was not rage against Elsa. It was not the conscious impulse to protect Felt. It was pure defense, automatic, the reflex of a body that had just interpreted that extraction as a direct attack.
Beatrice felt the change and slightly withdrew her hand, but not quickly enough.
Link's shirt tore across the back.
A red mass burst from the rear of his waist, smaller than in the battle, weaker, but just as alive. The kagune came out like a badly awakened whip, striking a nearby bookshelf and causing several books to fall to the floor with dry thuds. Subaru shouted. Link gritted his teeth so hard his jaw creaked.
"No...! I'm not... doing...!"
The red limb launched itself toward Beatrice.
Not with precision. Not with human intent. It was a defensive reaction, a brutal reflex trying to push away what was draining him. Beatrice clicked her tongue. A glow formed in front of her, a compact and translucent barrier that stopped the impact before it could touch her. The blow made the library air tremble and tore more books from the nearby shelves.
Subaru ran toward Link.
"Link, stop!"
"I can't!"
Link's eyes changed slightly around the edges. The white began to darken, and a sickly red shone around his irises for a second. On his forehead, beneath the skin, something pressed from within, as if the horns were trying to appear again and his body did not have enough energy to complete the process. Link gasped, bending forward, one hand against his chest and the other against the floor. His kagune contracted, launched itself again toward Beatrice, but the strength died halfway through the movement.
The draining had done its work.
His reserve was enormous, yes.
But his control was nonexistent.
And his body was still exhausted from the battle against Elsa.
"Oni," Beatrice murmured, her eyes fixed on him. "Not exactly, but the root feels close... No. That does not fit completely either, I suppose. What are you?"
Link lifted his gaze toward her. His eyes were half black, half human, as if two natures were fighting for the same face.
"I'd love... to know..."
The kagune fell to the floor with a wet sound and began to retract. The blackness in his eyes slowly faded. The pressure in his forehead disappeared without ever forming complete horns. Link tried to stay on his knees, but his arms gave out. Subaru managed to catch him before he hit his face against the floor.
"Link!"
Link was too heavy. Subaru almost fell with him, but he managed to lower him onto his side on the library rug. The Latino's breathing was deep, heavy, like someone sunk into forced sleep. His face had returned to normal. There were no horns. No black eyes. The kagune was gone. Only the shirt torn across the back and a troubling paleness remained.
Beatrice looked at the fallen books.
Then she looked at Link.
"How annoying, I suppose. Roswaal brings increasingly troublesome things to the mansion."
Subaru lifted his head in anger.
"That's all you have to say?! You knocked him unconscious!"
"Betty drained his mana. His body reacted violently because it is abnormal."
"That does not make the explanation better!"
"Betty did not intend to kill him, I suppose. If Betty wanted to do that, we would not be having this conversation."
Subaru froze, because the way Beatrice said it did not sound like an inflated threat. It sounded like an objective description.
Beatrice approached him.
Subaru immediately stood, placing himself between her and Link, even though the difference in power was so absurd that even he felt ridiculous. Even so, he did it. His legs trembled, his healed abdomen complained from the sudden movement, and fear rose up his throat, but he did not step back.
"Don't touch him again."
Beatrice looked at him as if she had just seen a puppy bark at a storm.
"Now Betty will check you."
"Excuse me?"
"You entered the forbidden library without permission. Besides, you are connected to the other one in some strange way. Betty wants to know if you are also a similar anomaly."
"I don't like the word 'check' when you say it."
"Betty does not care."
Subaru tried to step back, but Beatrice's hand was already on his chest.
This time, the pull was immediate.
Subaru felt something being torn from the center of his body, not blood, not air, not muscular strength, but an energy he had not known he possessed. The world became heavy at once. His knees bent. A choked sound escaped his mouth. It was different from Elsa's pain. Much cleaner, less bloody, but no less terrifying. It was as if his body lost the will to support itself from within.
"You are human," Beatrice said without emotion. "A mediocre gate. Mediocre mana. Mediocre body. Excessively noisy attitude for such poor specifications, I suppose."
"Thank you... for... the very kind... diagnosis..."
Subaru tried to smile. It came out as a grimace.
Beatrice observed him more closely.
There was something in him. Not in the amount of mana. Not in the gate. Not in the body. Something harder to touch. A smell, a shadow, an unpleasant sensation that did not belong to an ordinary human, but also did not reveal itself directly beneath the draining. Beatrice narrowed her eyes. For one second, Subaru felt that gaze saw too much.
"You are unpleasant too, though in another way," she said.
"It's... a social... skill..."
Subaru's body gave out completely.
He fell forward.
Beatrice calmly stepped aside so he would not fall on top of her. Subaru hit the rug on his side, not hard enough to break anything, but with the dignity of someone who had just lost an argument against a blonde girl and gravity at the same time. He tried to lift a hand, perhaps to say something final, perhaps to point at Beatrice with dramatic indignation, but his fingers barely moved.
His vision blurred.
Beside him, Link slept unconscious, breathing heavily.
Subaru forced his eyes toward him.
"I told you... exploring... was a good idea..."
He was not sure Link could hear him. Probably not.
Beatrice picked up her book from the floor, brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the cover, and looked at the two bodies lying on the rug of her library. One was a noisy human with an unpleasant shadow clinging to his soul. The other was an impossible creature with a mana reserve far too large, a nature that smelled of oni, and a red organ that did not fit any known category in this world.
Her brow furrowed with annoyance.
"Definitely problematic, I suppose."
Subaru could no longer respond.
Darkness dragged him away, not like death, not like a reset, but like pure exhaustion. The last thing he felt was the rug beneath his cheek, the smell of old paper, and the irritating certainty that, if he woke up again in an unfamiliar bed, he would have to admit Link had been right.
Exploring had been a terrible idea.
And then both Subaru Natsuki and Link were left unconscious on the floor of Beatrice's forbidden library.