The scream came from Mirabel, dressed in a fancy summer kimono, who rolled down the trampoline slide. Everyone crawled out of their shelter when the Celestial flopped on her belly at the end of the slide, and Viktor quickly pulled the girl to himself. Together, they hid from the hostile fireworks in a building with a “12D-Cinema” sign. The mages found themselves in a tiny hall with a door to what could be a movie theater.

“Mira!” Viktor grabbed the elfin mage into his arms. “I’m so happy you’re okay! Where have you been?”

“I’ve met with this girl... oh my Goddess, she was crying so much!”

“What girl, Mirabel?” Niji asked.

“Just… a girl. Young. Cute. But she is lonely. So lonely.”

“Do you know her name? Can you describe her?”

“Um… she had scary purple eyes… dark hair… two pigtails… a burgundy school uniform. With a hairpin. And there was a crown on her head.”

“Emilia Spencer,” Hitomi summed up. “The mayor’s daughter. Does it mean we are in the dimension that the Children have created?”

“Masaka!” Izumi was enraged. “No way they could obtain such power! I cannot believe it!”

“What was that crown, I wonder?” the Azure folded her arms. “An artifact?”

“Mira, tell us everything from the very beginning,” Niji encouraged her teammate, but a powerful gust of wind tore the movie theater door off its hinges, and the mages barely managed to evade it. A stream of violet energy poured over them, and Viktor—raising his left hand forward—generated a vast pale orange aura, protecting everyone with his arcane shield.

Everything around began to shake. The space was being distorted and transformed as it started to swallow all the objects that got into its way from the spots here and there. It was troublesome even for this robust and resourceful Amber to resist such an outbreak of the magical storm.

“Hey, Izumi!” Viktor tried to stay cheerful. “How shitty is the situation we’re in?”

“On a scale from one to ten—or should I give you a more precise percentage?”

“Wow, guess Viridians can joke too!”

“That… wasn’t a joke, actually.”

“Huh?”

“Tonikaku, we must find this girl and try to negotiate with her. Surely she is under the influence of the artifact, whatever it is… if the Children of Evolution made her a full-fledged Cursed with their methods, we must help her and neutralize the effect at all costs.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Sure, who would want to kill a mayor’s daughter even if she’s a Viol?” Niji mumbled, but the investigator noticed her remark.

“Even at PRISM, we distinguish the issues of common magic level and overall social—”

“Just saying—I can’t hold that too long!” Viktor gritted his teeth.

“Mirabel, are you good at healing?” Shadow glanced at his Celestial colleague.

“Um… not quite.”

“Fine. Can you restore mana, then?”

She nodded happily.

“Perfect. I will do the healing, and you’ll provide some support. Help Niji, for example, so she can cast more spells, or me if—”

Explosions were rocking the entire building, and Viktor's shield vibrated intensely. The powerful wind kept on tearing the world apart piece by piece while the amusement park behind the mages’ backs was being fractured into a mosaic, parts of which tumbled down into the Unknown.

“We must advance forward, through the theater!” yelled the Viridian.

“Against this wind?! My, Izumi, that’s crazy!”

“Trust your Sage!” Shadow threw back his hair with such a spectacular gesture, as if the storm was not a deadly phenomena, but a fan blow for a photo shoot.

“Indeed,” the investigator nodded. “The world will get destroyed everywhere else before around the caster, so more reasons to find the source. Quick!”

Viktor cursed heartily, but nonetheless advanced, and the group cut their way through tumultuous magic outburst, hiding behind the orange shield. The Amber was wasting an incredible amount of energy to maintain the aura, and each of the mages shared his tension almost physically.

“Mirabel, help him!”

Obeying Shadow’s command, the girl tried to fill her friend with mana, but her input didn’t prevent him from drying up. Streams of sweat were flowing down Viktor's face, and flashy arcane bursts turned into a burning flame around his body. A hefty metal piece crushed into his shield, splitting into smaller ones, and the largest part flew into Shadow. He deflected it with a well-timed protective aura, swaying slightly to the side.

“An amateur’s work, this world,” he noticed. “So unstable that it can be ruined at any minute.”

“Won’t we be kicked out of here to our reality then?” Niji tried to make herself heard above the roar of merciless wind.

“Everything is possible when you deal with forbidden magic. But I believe the destruction of this world will do us no good.”

The storm died down a bit, and the mages were back in the open. However, it was no longer like what they had seen before. The uplifting park music had changed to a creepy, rattling ambience. The ice cream stalls were swept away, and paper lanterns floated away over the debris into the black void instead of sky. Most of the rides stood destroyed and motionless, and the impressive Ferris wheel was slowly rolling through the park, crushing everything in its way.

The bouncer looked a little deflated, but steady. Without any discussion, everyone assumed that they needed to go up: if Mirabelle had escaped from the Violet from that side, then they had every chance to find a safe spot there. Although Niji was scared to death, she couldn’t help laughing at how ridiculous it seemed to be climbing a children’s slide. Meanwhile, the space continued to disappear, and under the feet of runaways the abyss swung open, absorbing remaining pieces of the park.

At the top, the mages were almost blown down with another storm. They appeared in what looked like the center of a giant whirlpool made from numerous fragments of the fragile reality. The floor cracked and collapsed, so they had to jump up over platforms drifting right in the air. Somewhere in the middle of their way, a flying stone hit Niji’s shoulder. She cried out and slid off the ledge, but Shadow managed to grab her hand. For a second or two, the colors before the girl’s eyes turned negative. This touch caused an unbearable vibration in her veins, and the symbol tattooed on the back of the healer’s palm glowed pale blue.

He is an Exorcist! Shadow feels my curse!