At noon, the dining hall was alive with clinking dishes and easy chatter. Evelyn was teasing Rocher about his appetite—he'd had a fairly big breakfast, and he was still stacking his tray high for lunch. Lumiere was carefully sorting ribbons to make gift bags for her congregation. Only one seat remained empty.

  "She's really sleeping in today," Evelyn said, half-amused. "Think she's drowning in her research again?"

  "I'll go check on her," I offered, sliding a bowl of stew onto a tray. "She'll compin less if it's me."

  Rocher waved me off with his spoon, his mouth full. "Good luck surviving the morning grumps."

  I smiled faintly and headed upstairs.

  The corridor felt still compared to the din below. I turned the corner—and stopped. Seraphine's door was exactly as I'd left it that morning. Her Courtship Moon basket still sat outside, ribbons perfectly tied, the little card untouched. The bottle of mana tonic inside was fogged with condensation. No one had moved it.

  A small chill crawled down my spine.

  "Seraphine?" I called softly, knocking. "Lunch is ready."

  No answer.

  I tried again, harder.

  Silence.

  The handle turned easily under my hand.

  Her room was immacute. The bed made. Papers gone. The desk drawers left open but empty. Even her coat hook was bare. The kind of tidiness that didn't come from routine—it came from departure.

  The air felt... wrong. Thin and humming, like the moment after lightning. My fingertips brushed the windowsill. Warm. A faint tang like ozone hung in the room, the scent that followed overworked mana.

  She'd cast something big. Recently.

  I gnced down—and froze. The velvet pouch where she kept the Tear y open on the bedside table, its drawstring unfastened. Empty.

  My heartbeat quickened. No. Not yet. Not this soon.

  She shouldn't have had anything near the requisite mana. The Tear was powerful, yes, and under my instruction she'd been training hard—but it still shouldn't have been enough. Unless I'd misjudged—unless all that practice had refined her control faster than I ever realized. Perhaps I'd spent so long dealing with Evelyn's css advancement that I simply lost track of it.

  Once she crossed that mana threshold... her css advancement quest would begin. Whether she wanted it to or not.

  I pressed a hand to my temple. I hadn't seen it. I couldn't see it. No status screen, no neat little bar to warn me she was getting close. Just instincts dulled by compcency.

  The air trembled faintly—a fading trace of the surge that must have torn through here hours ago.

  "Cire?" Lumiere's voice came from behind me. "She isn't downstairs. Did you find her?"

  I turned slightly. "No."

  Her gaze followed mine to the empty pouch, the spotless desk, the untouched basket outside the door. She said nothing. She didn't need to.

  The silence between us thickened until even breathing felt loud.

  I set the tray down on her desk, though the stew had already gone cold. "She's long gone by now."

  Lumiere hesitated. "Gone where?"

  I didn't answer. The truth wasn't something I could expin. Not yet. Not without telling her how this world worked beneath its skin.

  I looked once more at the untouched basket outside the door—its ribbon still perfectly straight—and felt the quiet press of guilt in my chest.

  She'd already been gone when I set it down.

  And I, in all my supposed foresight, hadn't even noticed.

  We gathered in her room not long after. The air still thrummed faintly with the residue of her magic.

  Rocher leaned against the window frame, arms folded. Evelyn prowled the floor, opening drawers just to sm them shut again. Lumiere stood near the bed, her fingers white around the hem of her sleeve.

  "So she didn't leave anything?" Evelyn asked finally. "No note? No message? Nothing?"

  "Nothing," I said. "Her room was cleared out. She took the essentials—staff, notes, maybe a few mana drafts. That's all."

  Rocher's eyes flicked to me. "Did she say anything to you? Before...?"

  I shook my head, keeping my expression carefully neutral. "We spoke yesterday. She compined about paperwork, same as always."

  Evelyn muttered a curse under her breath and began rifling through the drawers anyway, unwilling to accept the obvious. "She wouldn't just vanish. She's not the type."

  "She is the type," Rocher said quietly. "If she thought she'd crossed a line she couldn't uncross."

  That caught Evelyn's attention. Her eyes narrowed. "What line?"

  He hesitated—then sighed. "She's been... researching things. On the side. I didn't say anything because I thought it would come in handy."

  Lumiere tilted her head. "Researching what, exactly?"

  His gaze slid toward the small pile of spent demon cores she'd left behind, their surfaces dulled to ash. "Those."

  I stayed quiet, tracing the faint scorch at the window with my eyes. I already knew this script—where her curiosity led, how the game rewarded it. She'd finally crossed the line her css advancement quest demanded.

  Her first demonic spell. Though she'd been diligently studying demonic magic the entire time, it wasn't until she reached a certain level of mana that she could cast it.

  I folded my arms, letting him fill the silence.

  "She said she could learn from their structure," he went on. "How their magic circuted differently. How corruption could be filtered or reversed if she understood the flow. I told her it was dangerous, but she said she had it under control."

  "Under control," Evelyn repeated, grimacing. "That phrase never means what people think it does."

  "She didn't show any signs?" Lumiere asked. "No... changes?"

  I gnced toward the scorch mark on the windowsill, faint but unmistakable. "If she'd cast anything truly forbidden, the effects would've shown immediately," I said aloud. "But make no mistake, she did cast something."

  Lumiere's hands were clenched now, small fists against her skirt. "Studying is one thing, but actually using it—does she understand what that means? What it does to her?"

  Her anger startled even Evelyn into silence. It wasn't fury or judgment; it was fear. Fear that Seraphine had hurt herself beyond reach.

  The first tell was physical—dark filigree patterns over her neck and hands, an eerie luminescent ring in the irises. The Tower's padins had devices that could detect it instantly. Even a small trace of demonic corruption was enough to brand someone an apostate.

  The air in the room seemed to tighten, as though even the residual mana itself felt Lumiere's reproach.

  "She thought she could handle it," Rocher said quietly. "That she could bend the rules without breaking them."

  Evelyn straightened, dusting her hands. "I can send my people after her. The Guild has trackers who can trace mana. If we move fast—"

  "No." The word came out sharper than I meant. Everyone turned.

  I forced my voice softer. "If she went underground, it's because she doesn't want to be found. Not by them, not by us. Sending trackers will only draw attention."

  Evelyn frowned. "You have a better pn?"

  "Not yet." I smiled thinly. "Give me time."

  A muscle twitched in her cheek. "Fine. But your pn better come quick."

  Rocher looked like he wanted to argue, but Lumiere id a gentle hand on his sleeve. The silence that followed hung heavy in the air.

  I studied the room again—the untouched basket, the faint scorch, the hollow where her presence should've been—and felt the weight of every mistake pressing behind my ribs.

  If she'd truly succeeded in harnessing demonic magic, there was no returning to the Tower. Not without condemnation.

  And once she missed her next report, the padins would come looking.

  They'd call it a "purification effort".

  We'd call it what it was—a witch hunt.

  "We have maybe three days," Rocher said quietly. "After that, she won't just be missing. She'll be wanted."

  "Two, actually." I swallowed. "That spell she cast was more than a day ago."

  The others looked at me perplexed. The first demonic spell Seraphine cast was always the same—no wonder we'd been so hungry.

  "We've already slept through an entire day."

  I watched as the weight of that revetion settled on their faces.

  The cell stank of ammonia and rust.

  Ramón Huerta crouched in one corner, eyes sunken, lips cracked from fevered muttering. His wrists twitched as though still feeling the weight of the shackles that cnged against him during the sentencing.

  "She's a witch! A witch, I say!"

  The White Warden stood before him—tall, unmoving, his breath pale in the chill. He'd heard the once illustrious Guildmaster was accusing the hero party of harboring witches, but it didn't seem there were any leads to be gained here.

  "She was so small and weak in my hands. I should have strangled her when I had the chance!"

  He sighed, not reacting to the mad outburst. Sir Ramón was a shell of his former self, reduced to incoherent rambling. Still, he had a job to do. Best get it over with.

  "Seraphine Maxwell. The elven mage who vanished from the Tower," the Warden said evenly. "Red hair. Red eyes. Do you know anything that might help our investigation?"

  "Red hair?" Ramón shook his head, spittle flying from his mouth. "Who the hell is that? I'm talking about that vixen who ruined me—Cire de Lune!"

  A faint pause. The Warden's brow lifted. The name matched a secondary report—a nun, attached to the hero's retinue, repcement for the fallen Saintess.

  Officially insignificant.

  But all too conveniently pced.

  He stroked his white beard in thought.

  A pnt, perhaps. An agent of the Demon Lord meant to unmake the party from within.

  His eyes narrowed, sharpened by a growing suspicion.