* * *
“I have no reason to answer you.”
After a short pause, Ben’s voice emerged calm and composed.
Roilnia stared deeply at her reflection in the faint green of his eyes.
A gaze without a trace of fear. A face etched with unwavering resolve.
“A guide, talking back?”
That annoyed her.
“Step back.”
When her red eyes glared, Lus had already drawn his gun.
To Roilnia, the weapon wasn’t even worth calling a threat—it was almost laughably unimpressive.
Still, she parted her lips in mock surprise.
It was such an obviously theatrical expression that no one would be fooled.
“What’s with this? I’m just trying to have a civil conversation.”
Civil? Ben nearly scoffed at her words.
After glaring at him like she wanted to kill him?!
Her half-raised hand toward him betrayed her lie.
If Lus hadn’t spoken up just now, that hand would have surely wrapped around Ben’s throat.
“That’s not persuasive.”
“Oh? So you wanted me to get violent?”
That’s not it, but—!
The red hair spilling over her shoulders looked like blood soaked into fabric.
Ben stepped back cautiously, but Roilnia closed the distance as if the space meant nothing.
Lus, standing beside him, had no choice but to raise his voice.
“Roilnia. I’ll say it again—”
“Yeah, don’t make my guide repeat himself. He said back off, didn’t he, woman?”
A chill wind sliced between Roilnia and Ben as if to force a wedge between them.
The air, long stifled under her oppressive presence, now felt like it had been given breath—like a window had opened.
And the one who brought that change appeared in a flash, silvery hair like a cold winter hue swirling around him as he stood protectively in front of his larger guide.
“El.”
“Stand back.”
There was a subtle sense of relief in the way Lus slowly lowered his gun.
Following Elgran’s command, both he and Ben stepped back toward the staircase.
Only then did Roilnia’s gaze, which had been fixed on Ben, shift to the new arrival.
“A guest I didn’t invite.”
“Says the one crashing the party. You know you’re the intruder here, right?”
The conversation ended sharply with Elgran’s blunt retort.
Classical music playing faintly from a speaker filled the silence.
Meanwhile, the cold, which had been barely noticeable before, intensified.
Frost began to creep across the windows lining the hallway.
Ben wasn’t the only one who saw the glass, once showing the outside world, slowly whitening over.
And though it was blatantly clear who had summoned this chill, Roilnia seemed wholly unbothered.
She observed it all slowly, as if admiring a piece of art.
In that moment—paired with the classical music—she could’ve been mistaken for a painting in a museum.
But clearly, the descending temperature didn’t please her.
Hugging her arms, Roilnia wrinkled her nose ever so slightly.
Her annoyance stemmed not from the looming threat of psychic power, but simply from the sudden cold.
“You’re not even bothered by such irritating high frequencies? You really have time to be chatting with me?”
“What?”
Roilnia’s voice, as she casually inspected her nails, was as indifferent as ever.
While Elgran reacted sharply, Ben and Lus tried to decipher the meaning behind her words—but the answer wasn’t easy to grasp.
Elgran, however, seemed to catch on, his expression twisting as he snapped:
“You mean the high-frequency on the first floor? That’s just a basic security jamming signal!”
“What?”
Roilnia, now examining her fingernails as if bored, sounded completely at ease.
While Elgran bristled at her provocations, Ben and Lus tried to gauge her intentions, but her expression gave nothing away.
Elgran, on the other hand, seemed to catch on, scowling deeply as he barked:
“You mean the jamming signal on the first floor? It’s just a standard security frequency!”
At events involving Espers, it wasn’t uncommon to have jamming signals set up by psychics to secure specific areas.
Since the interference was out of range of normal hearing, Ben and Lus had no way of knowing—but Roilnia did. Still, she gave a cryptic response.
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”
“This isn’t the time for jokes!”
“Maybe not now…”
CRASH—!!
Her words were drowned out by the sudden, earsplitting sound of dozens of panes of glass shattering at once.
The first floor!
Instinctively turning toward the source of the noise, Ben caught sight of the second-floor corridor windows breaking—one by one, in sequence.
Glass exploded outward, shards flying, as if the destruction was racing toward him.
The abrupt psychic assault froze the expressions of Ben, Lus, and Elgran.
Roilnia, on the other hand, burst into laughter—something she hadn’t done once until now—as if the noise were the finest music.
The shards, suspended in midair, defied gravity and glittered under the lights.
An eerie, dazzling sight that felt entirely out of place next to Roilnia.
“Ben! Go downstairs—now!”
“But—!”
“This is not normal! Find Deputy Director Enten immediately!”
Ruth, once again raising his gun toward Roilnia, pushed Ben toward the staircase and added urgently:
“Tell him what’s going on and head straight to Haimar. Whatever her reason is for looking for him, if they meet by chance, it’ll only escalate things!”
“Wouldn’t it be better to go to Haimar first?”
“He might be the key to resolving this, but unless we know what she’s up to, the risks are too high. If we want to end this before it spirals out of control, we need Deputy Director Enten’s help! Go!”
Ben fully agreed.
He didn’t want to compare it to a game of hide-and-seek, but if someone was looking for Haimar, it was better to keep him hidden as long as possible.
Better that Ben find Haima than risk him stumbling into Roilnia.
Besides, Roilnia’s psychic abilities were more than enough to warrant serious caution.
Ben was now convinced—if those two women had vanished yesterday without a trace, this was how it had happened.
With Elgran, an Esper from [Integra], present, Roilnia likely wouldn’t have free rein—but in these situations, the more caution, the better.
“Don’t just stand there—go!”
CRASH—!
The floating glass shards circling Roilnia suddenly dropped like a rain of blades.
Elgran threw up an ice barrier to intercept them, and that was the last thing Ben saw before bolting for the first floor.
Thud—
What the—!
Just as he rounded the stairwell corner, the shards that had been chasing him smashed into the wall behind him.
The impact was strong enough that the shock traveled through the railing he’d been using to leap down two steps at a time.
A chill ran down Ben’s spine.
The shards had been huge.
And they’d been aimed right at him.
But he couldn’t stop now.
With just a few steps left to the first floor, Ben pulled out his phone from his pocket and quickly dialed Haima’s number.
“Damn it.”
No signal.
Only then did Ben realize the jamming had knocked out his reception—the signal bar was flat.
Cursing, he ended the call and opened his messenger app.
[Waitngㅛ]
The last character had come out wrong.
He hadn’t even managed a full sentence, just “Wait.”
But with the call failing, there was no time to fix it.
He didn’t even know if the message would send—but there weren’t many options left.
Staring at the empty signal bar, Ben silently prayed.
Send. Please send. Just once. Please.
Had the loading circle ever looked this agonizingly slow?
Ben could only hope that Haimar wouldn’t come out of his room in response to the commotion before the message went through.
He’d be there soon—just hold on until then.
Sent!
The message to Haimar showed as delivered, and a sliver of relief washed over Ben just as his hurried steps reached the first floor.
But what met his eyes next was a scene so shocking, he couldn’t have imagined it in his worst nightmares.
∗ ∗ ∗
CRAAASH———-!!!
It was the moment they’d all been waiting for.
The colorful stained glass shattered violently, its intricate patterns disintegrating as shards burst outward in every direction.
As if signaled by the crash, every pane of glass on the first floor followed suit, collapsing in a symphony of destruction.
The barriers that had kept the cold wind at bay crumbled, and with them came a slicing chill and a downpour of glass like rain.
“Kyaaaaah—!!”
Standing on the podium, microphone still in hand, Irina Sheril stared blankly as the grand chandelier shattered and chaos swept across the crowd.
Eyes wide in panic were beginning to lose their light—one by one.
And she knew.
She knew very well that the moment she had set in motion could no longer be undone.
Everything had already begun.
“T-Terrorist!!”
“Run!!”
“Fight back! Kill them!”
“I don’t wanna die here! Get out of my way!”
Everyone was dancing in their own hallucinations.
A terrorist, here?
This wasn’t even a conflict zone.
Irina Sheril let out a dry, scoffing laugh at the absurdity of it.
Then again, she was the one who brought this upon them.
So if they wanted to call her a terrorist, well… they weren’t entirely wrong.
BOOM–!!
The entrance to the central hall exploded.
Chaos surged as people began branding each other as enemies, masks of suspicion sloppily plastered onto every face.
A guide mistook their own esper for a terrorist.
A civilian, paralyzed with fear, grabbed a broken chair leg and swung it wildly at anything that moved.
* * *
