Chương 78: Chapter 77 - Lock Me Up and Throw Away the Key

The guard's sneer faltered, replaced by irritation at being ignored.

"You deaf as well as cloudy? I said—""I'll take it from here." A new voice, calm and authoritative, cut through the cell's tense atmosphere. The guard spun around, his bluster evaporating. In the doorway stood the young knight, Frederick. He was no longer in his full armor. He wore a simple, crisp white long-sleeved shirt, the sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms, tucked into deep navy trousers. The lack of plate mail did nothing to diminish his presence.

His sky-blue hair was straight, his striking blue eyes sharp and assessing. He looked every bit the noble, a picture of gentle charisma, yet the air of command around him was imposingly solid. The guard stammered, "S-Sir Frederick! I was just—" "What are you doing here? Ahah." The guard tried to laugh pathetically.

"I remind you that I do not need to explain my motives to you," Frederick said, his tone pleasant but leaving no room for argument.

"You are dismissed." The guard hurried out with a haste that bordered on fear, the cell door left ajar. Frederick stepped fully inside, his gaze settling on Lucid. Lucid looked back.

'Well-kept,' he thought dully.

'Charming. Kind. Yet imposingly authoritative in a way that feels... odd.'

"He is strong." Alice spoke agian. Lucid didn't care.

"So," Frederick began, leaning against the wall opposite the bench, his arms folded.

"You're the one who found the body first." Lucid was quiet for a long moment. The silence stretched. Finally, he said, "Yes." The knight nodded slowly.

"Passengers spoke of a figure coming from the rear of the train. A similar silhouette was seen entering the front cabin earlier. The conductor, before he succumbed to his injuries, reported seeing a figure out on the celestial rails, where no passenger should be." He paused, his eyes cataloging Lucid's state.

"And to top it all off, the fate essence from the lingering, dead rift is a perfect match for the residue all over you. Your clothes are tattered. And there is a very specific, neatly pierced hole in the fabric over your stomach. Which matched a bloody glass shard." Frederick's gaze intensified.

"You know what I'm implying." Lucid gave a single, indifferent nod.

"The evidence is stacked against you, Lucid," Frederick stated, his voice softer now, probing.

"And yet... I can't fathom it. Why would you willingly turn yourself in? Why come directly to Vex, knowing what awaited? It's... it's practically suicide."

"Tell him!" Alice yelled, a desperate psychic shove.

"Tell him you're innocent! This is your chance!" Lucid looked away from the knight's penetrating stare, his eyes finding the dull grey of the floor. The weight of Neptune's passing lit a guilt inside him that felt heavier than anything.

"Did you do it?" Frederick asked, the question direct and simple. Lucid looked back at him. His voice, when it came, was low but clear, stripped of all emotion.

"No." He held the knight's gaze.

"Matter of fact, I saved the whole damn train. Were it not for me, it would have been rammed by a narwhale." Frederick's composed expression finally shifted. His eyes widened, just a fraction.

"... Narwhal? Do you mean... the Monolith? Lucid nodded once, unsure. The young knight managed a short, breathless, almost sheepish laugh. It was a sound of pure disbelief.

"Ah... haha. I see you must be joking... You'll have to try better than that. Don't make the sentencing harder on yourself." He stepped closer, his demeanor shifting to one of earnest persuasion.

"I'm on your side here. I'm not here to lock you away forever. I believe in justice —that the crime must be proven before the punishment. You seem like a tr—" Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. He stopped mid-word. His intense blue eyes fixed on Lucid's face, searching. Something about the man in front of him, sitting in abject defeat yet speaking of impossible things with flat conviction, seemed to radiate a terrible, pure truth.

It wasn't confidence; it was the absolute absence of a lie. Frederick reassessed him, the last of his official skepticism fading into wary curiosity.

"Okay then," Frederick said quietly, pulling a small stool from the corner and sitting down, facing Lucid.

"Tell me what happened. From the beginning, right to the end." And so, Lucid spoke. Time passed in the grey cell. He explained in a monotone, omitting the core horror. He said nothing of the pocket dimension, nothing of meeting the deity Neptune, and certainly nothing of killing her. He spoke of a companion, Ayame—who had vanished after the initial tremor. He described the strange quiet, finding the attendant, the chilling sight.

He told of taking control of the train, of the struggle on the rails, of mending the rails with his chains of Envy made out of light that cost him so much fate essence leaving almost lost to the void. He spoke of the narwhales attack, the piercing, and the fall into the void. He mentioned absorbing the unstable rift to prevent further catastrophe. It sounded like an incredible lie. A fantasy. But it was consistent in its bleak, unembellished detail. There was no plea for belief, no attempt to sound heroic.

It was just a report of catastrophic events. Throughout it all, the blue-haired knight listened without interruption. By the end, the faint, shocked look on his face had solidified into something more profound, a dawning, grave realization. He was no longer looking at a likely murderer. He was looking at a witness to something he had searched for all along. Frederick continued talking, outlining the official process, the hearings, the evidence review.

His tone was procedural, but his eyes remained thoughtful, still fixed on the puzzle that was Lucid. Eventually, with a final, unreadable glance, he decided something in that moment. Of course what else could it have been, making him stay in the cell without a second thought was an easy way of handling things too, but the mere fact that he was thinking suggested otherwise.

"It's not a judgement," Frederick said, standing by the door.

"It's procedure. The situation... there are aspects that are not quite right. I need to verify a few things. But still... you seem believable. Come." He smiled.

"I'll wait for you outside the citadel..." Lucid said nothing. The knight's words were just more air moving in a room. The door opened with a gentle breeze leaving Lucid alone again. He stood up against the cold hard surface, the stone cold against his bare feet. He looked up at the heavy metal hatch at the rear chamber. He knew, with a certainty, that he could likely escape if he wished.

The chains of heart essence stirred sluggishly within him, finally he could use it again, a power that seemed to have a short reserve of fate essence. But the effort required to muster up the remainder of the Fate essence his body could handle from alice. It was not a lot. He felt a profound, debilitating laziness of the soul. He was offering him freedom though he would still be kept around on a leash, he didn't mind it and partially, he admitted to himself, he didn't want to anger the knight.

Frederick seemed strong. Not just physically, but in a way that showed deep conviction and authority. Provoking him felt like poking a sleeping dragon—pointless and potentially catastrophic. Just as his eyes began to drift shut, a skittering noise scratched across the floor. A rat, the size of a large show boot, scurried from the shadows into the middle of the cell. It wasn't just big; it was grotesquely proportioned, with sleek, oily fur and eyes that held a faint, sickly dim luminescence.

Alice's psychic screech tore through Lucid's mental silence.

"A rat! A filthy, disease-ridden rodent! Get it away! Lucid, exterminate it!" Her scream was one of pure, unadulterated revulsion, a primal disgust that echoed in the confined space of their shared mind. Lucid, however, just turned his head to look at it. He felt nothing. No disgust, no fear. The creature stopped and looked back at him, its nose twitching. It didn't seem afraid either.

'Huh...' Lucid thought, his internal voice flat.

'What a strange rat.' Slowly, he pushed himself down on one knee. With his free hand, he felt around on the gritty floor until his fingers closed over a small, smooth pebble. He held it up, considering the rodent. He made a half-hearted gesture, pretending to throw it. The rat didn't flinch. It just stared, those faintly glowing eyes unblinking.

"What are you doing?! Kill it! Throw the stone! Smash its skull!" Alice pleaded, her voice a mixture of horror and frantic insistence. The presence of the vermin seemed to offend her on a fundamental level. This rodent seem weird it didn't even flinch moreover lucid found her reaction intriguing. It was the most animated she'd been since the arrest. His own apathy stood in stark contrast to her visceral fury. He lowered the pebble, his curiosity momentarily outweighing his numbness.

He watched as the rat, after a final, long look, turned and with unnerving agility, squeezed its bulk through the narrow bars of the cell door and vanished into the dark corridor beyond. The cell was silent again, save for Alice's fading, indignant muttering about judgment and lower life forms. He continued out the cell, it had seemed like he was momentarily free to go. Though he would have to be babysit by a knight.