Voices.

Low pitched, high pitched, from a few seconds ago, from a few days ago, all mixing in a continuous, looping echo. Constantly changing, until arriving to the end, repeating all their noises.

These voices didn’t only pertain to spoken conversations, but also thoughts.

Of course, Creftalia wasn’t able to hear the thoughts, only the conversations. But the same couldn’t be said for Dianthus.

He had previously informed the Queen about his intentions of investigating the responsible of making the formation used to free Frenese, so he wasn’t working in secret. Also, without permission, he really couldn’t go back to the pocket dimension.

He had made sure to get rid of any remnants pertaining to his and Velvet’s conversations during the time the official mages couldn’t access the pocket dimension, but he had left the ones surrounding the formation alone. Deleting those would be detrimental, and put him under dangerous attention.

Dangerous attention which ended up going towards Velvet, but oh well.

Not only that, he needed a Remembrance formation to recover and explore the past.

It wasn’t like he couldn’t do one alone, but those formations took a lot of manpower to be made, so Dianthus simply dragged Creftalia along, just as she left the hospital, and put her to work.

The girl complained a lot, but only in her mind. In reality, she was doing as told, only making a sad expression.

"Kartal wouldn't do something like this." An echo said.

"Neither. Would. Lucius." Was another’s echo response.

Those were Velvet’s and Vina’s remnants.

“Can… can we skip the next part?” Creftalia half-asked half-begged. She had already made the formation loop twice, and she didn’t want to hear a third loop.

Unlike Dianthus, she was a Remembrance mage, unable to forget the screams! She didn’t need to have a third set of memories with those scenes!

“No. I still haven’t checked all of them.”

Creftalia sniffed, choosing to close her eyes. Even so, she still could hear the remnants screams, together with Velvet’s steps and stabs.

If she had known this beforehand, she wouldn’t have slept next to Velvet for three whole days! How was she now supposed to look at her? Was Creftalia supposed to go and say ‘Hey, I saw you butchering a flesh portal made of live mages. I also saw them begging for their lives during that!’.

At least I didn’t confront her… Creftalia grieved, knowing that she never confronted anyone anyway.

On the other side, Dianthus checked the mages’ last thoughts before dying.

Just moments before truly dying, humans and mages alike saw their whole lives pass in front of their eyes, and, together with that, they tried to find someone to blame for their demise.

Some blamed their lives before choosing to become mages and travel to the Mergifari, others blamed the Tarius, or the families working under them, their Selectors.

Dianthus theorized one of those Selectors was the traitor. The Tarius didn’t tell anyone outside their closest circle about Frenese, so one of them was a traitor.

The memories went until Velvet started to lose control, where they became corrupted, and thus, irrecuperable.

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A small echo remained after Velvet passed out, when steps started to be heard, but then, the owner of those, like Dianthus did previously, erased their traces, blocking any intent of uncovering their identity through magic.

The next and last remnant was when the Director and the other official mages showed up, noticing the second formation and Velvet holding Frenese's book.

Hasdrubal’s remnant instantly approached Velvet, but someone pulled his long white hair from behind, stopping him.

“What’s the rush, old man? Having some senile confusion? Focus on your own novices.” Ceres said, pulling the hair harder, making Hasdrubal tumble.

Ceres… Dianthus squinted at the echo. He had wanted Ceres as Selector, but he refused, rejecting him like a used paper.

The reason was simple. He couldn’t read Ceres’ thoughts. Not his or his echo’s. And not only that, Dianthus couldn’t see his Paradigm or Esca.

Ceres wasn’t the only exception, the Director was one too. But he could attribute the Director’s status to her being a very old, almost inhuman monster. Her presence felt like a dark hole, swallowing the light around her. Like a very fragile bomb, who could end the world if it made a bad move.

But the same couldn’t be said for her son. For every single thing, Ceres felt, looked and acted like a normal man in his thirties.

A cocky, affluent man who abused her mother’s power and influence to be an all around asshole to everyone.

He had every possibility laid out before him to be an insufferable, untouchable dick, and he did not let down that chance.

Those weren’t Dianthus' opinions, but the ones of every official mage who knew Ceres personally. And Dianthus hadn’t mentioned the long, descriptive, graphic and intense rant going inside of Hasdrubal’s mind. And he wasn’t going to.

Ignoring the Ceres situation, none of the mages present had any thoughts of victory, of a plan having gone perfectly.

The culprit didn’t go back to the crime scene… that means that there are at least two culprits. One official mage and one novice mage.

The second formation couldn’t have been placed once the Opening started, because the official mages were watching during then, so someone had to install it before the Opening.

But the formation core was taken before the pocket dimension opened, allowing the official mages to enter. So only someone already inside could have done so.

Only High Ranked official mages affiliated to the Mergifari and Ceres entered to check the damages. The others remained outside.

The remnants ended, and started looping again.

“I’m running out of magic…” Creftalia complained.

“How? You’re using me as a core, the magic you have to waste is almost zero.”

“Um…” Creftalia flinched, having been caught. “I’m being mentally drained… You shouldn’t overdose a remembrance mage with too much information…”

“The information is the same every time, the place it occupies in your brain shouldn’t increase. Also, there’s no way you’re having an overload just from this.”

“Um…” She started fidgeting with her fingers, looking to the side with nervousness. “The new monthly edition of the…” Her voice went extremely low, until becoming a barely audible whisper. “Monster&Maiden magazine comes out today, and they always sell fast, so…” Creftalia started sweating. “C-can’t you just ask Velvet for help? She probably won’t refuse if you pay her…”

“I am not doing that.” Dianthus said, an unpleasant crawling sensation running through his back. He didn’t feel like poking Lothrigern right now, or bringing the attention who was now over Velvet back to him. The further she was from him, the safest he could move and act.

Also, unlike with Creftalia, Dianthus felt like Velvet wanted to experiment with him. And not only her, her demon familiar, Hyde, also wanted to. He even nudged her on!

“Oh.” Creftalia said, “Is it because you don’t want to compete with Igern?”

Dianthus blinked in confusion. “What?”

“The competition between you and Igern over everything?”

“That’s not a competition. I won against him, and not only against him, I won against everyone else. I am number one, in case you've forgotten.”

“But Velvet does prefer Igern, right?” Creftalia said, not only not reading the room, but misunderstanding the situation.

“He has the personality of a double edged sword with no handle that actively tries to kill you. I cannot compete against bad taste in men.”

“But he is just… more attractive than you. Objectively, of course!”

Dianthus scoffed. He should be the bigger person in the conversation, and yet… “Igern being more good-looking doesn’t mean I’m not good-looking!”

“Well, when you two are next to each other… the comparison is there…” Creftalia looked up, thinking. “Maybe you should ask Velvet for help when Igern isn’t close, so that the difference isn’t so noticeable. You cannot win at everything…”

“... Did I say you could stop working? No. Clearly you’ve read too many weird novels and not worked enough. Guess it's up to me to fix that. Go back to the loop.”