Eik looked around the undecorated room, still not quite able to believe that they had just let him in here without supervision.

"Eik Magnasen, I have been awaiting your arrival," a soft, feminine voice stated. The glittering veil obscured her to the point where only the faint outline of her body was visible Both her voice and the silhouette made her appear almost ethereal. "Do not be frightened of me, Eik," she said.

"I'm not frightened."

"Mhmm," she hummed, the sound of a smile evident in the tone of it. "You can come closer, you know."

"Maybe later," he muttered, perfectly content with staying at a distance.

"Is the door closed properly?" she asked.

Throwing a glance back, Eik nodded. "Yeah, I think so. Why?"

"Good. Do you know why I have asked for you to be brought here to me?"

"Can't say I do."

"Of course you don't. I haven't told you yet."

"I— what?" Eik was the picture of confusion. Was this seriously supposed to be the head of the Moon Shall Swallow cult? Their great and venerable oracle of truth? Was this a joke? If he hadn't already been tortured and almost murdered numerous times since being abducted by the cult, he would have thought this was some kind of hidden camera TV bullshit.

She chuckled softly. "Why don't you come and see me behind the veil?"

"I'm fine here."

"No, you should come here."

He sighed and took the few tentative steps so he could peek around one of the sides of the veil. She was garbed from shoulders to toes in layer upon layer of thick, luxurious fabrics, falling about her body like so many robes. Intricately weaved patterns in vibrant color covered every inch of every layer.

The oracle herself was young. As a matter of fact, she looked even younger than Eik. He had been expecting some old crone who couldn't even see out of her eyes with how much her skin sagged.

Her white hair looked like a mane of snow and her pitch black irises seemed to pierce his very soul. He skin looked as thin and fragile as aged parchment. While he couldn't see her body for all of the fabric, her neck was thin and her face gaunt. Eik doubted she ever got to go outside. Perhaps being the great oracle of an insane cult wasn't all it was cut out to be after all.

Most notable of her features was the third eye in the middle of her forehead, however. Whereas her two normal eyes had black irises on white sclera, that one eye in her forehead had its colors reversed with an intense, piercing white iris on a black sclera. Looking into it was quite unsettling. It was like it wasn't seeing him. It was seeing something far more distant.

How was this person a part of the same cult that he knew to butcher and cannibalize children, murder countless innocents, and plant mind altering bugs in people's brains? And such a prominent part to boot. It just didn't make any sense when he stood across from her, no matter how he twisted and turned it.

"You look exactly as I had pictured you, Eik Magnasen," she said with a smile.

"You pictured me?"

"I did, yes, in here," she said, long fingers on a slender wrist tapping her own temple.

"And how did you picture me?"

Again she chuckled, continuing to utterly break any expectation Eik had had of her. "Cautious but reckless. Urgent but tired. Grave but childish. Responsible but unwilling. Powerful but unripe."

"I can appreciate some of those descriptors," he said dryly. "You're not at all like how I imagined you when I found out you exist."

"And how did you imagine me?" she asked, genuine and childlike curiosity shining in her dark eyes. "How did you picture me before we met?"

"Old and wrinkled."

Her eyebrows shot up in astonishment, mouth hanging slightly open. For a few seconds she was at a loss for words and Eik feared he might have overstepped after all. He didn't know what to think of this young woman who apparently commanded unrivaled authority within one of the most powerful organizations in the Unified Mass.

With a gasp, she broke into uncontrolled laughter. She laughed so hard and so joyously that thick tears began to roll down her cheeks.

"Uuh… are you okay?" Eik asked hesitantly.

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"Y-Yes," she managed to say between giggles. "I'm actually better than I've been in a long time, thank you."

"You know, you're kinda…" Eik began but stopped himself halfway through.

"I'm kind of what?"

"Normal, I guess? You're so different from most of the other culties around here."

She shrugged, the reminder stealing away the light-hearted smile she had been showing. "I don't live like they do out there. I'm always in here."

"I suppose that makes sense. Don't you want to go outside or what?"

She frowned. "Of course I do! Who in the world would want to be cooped up in here all alone all day every day? It's depressing! Truth be told, this short conversation we've had has been the most enjoyable experience for me in the past however many years!" she said fiercely. She didn't shout. As a matter of fact, Eik was not sure if a voice as small and gentle as hers was even capable of shouting.

"Then why don't you?" he asked sincerely. "Don't you have all the power to tell them whatever the hell you want?"

She scoffed with derision. "You think the person who received their precious divine premonitions get to walk around out there in the perilous and stressful world?"

"… No?"

"You're damn right I don't!" she exclaimed. "I'm so important that I don't get to do anything except sit here all day long!"

"That does sound pretty awful," Eik agreed honestly. He would absolutely hate to live a life like that himself. "But aren't you afraid that the others, like Oru, the Devouring Maw, might hear you complain like this?"

"They can't hear anything that goes on in this room. They're absolutely convinced that any monitoring of me whatsoever could interfere with my premonitions and cause me to miss or misinterpret crucial input."

"And would it?"

"Of course not. That's not even how it works, but I'm not about to tell them that. If nothing else, at least I have some privacy in here."

"You just told me, though. Aren't you then afraid that I might tell them?"

"You won't."

"You don't know that."

"No, I do know. I know you, Eik. In some aspects, I suspect I know you better than you know yourself. If I ask you whether or not you are going to tell them, what would be your answer?" she asked, her eyes revealing that she already knew the answer.

"I hate the cult more than I hate the damn Gohkamorians at this point, so of course I wouldn't do shit for them."

"See?" she grinned. "What you seem to forget, though, is that I am also a part of that cult you so despise."

He bit his lip in thought. "No, I— You're… different, right?"

"Am I?"

"I don't know. The way you carry yourself is not quite as… crazy as them."

"I'm not so sure about that. You should have seen me before."

"What were you like before?"

"Kind of… crazy, as you put it, I guess."

"Okay? So what changed? What made you become not as crazy anymore?"

She pursed her lips and sat back against the cushioned seat at her back and folded her hands on a low table in front of her. It was absolutely flooded with drawings. Sunny meadows, cute animals, and smiling faces, all drawn by her.

She was a good artist. Much better than Eik could ever hope to be. She picked up one of her pens and doodled absentmindedly in the corner of an already finished drawing. If he wasn't mistaken, she was stalling.

"What is it?" he asked,

"I saw something. Something that changes everything for us… For me."

"What?"

"Did you know that I'm not the first oracle who had led Moon Shall Swallow?"

"No, of course I didn't. All I've done since getting dragged here by that crazy bastard Gih the Madman is get hurt. A lot."

"Right," she acknowledged sheepishly. "I heard that he hasn't been as hospitable as you might have hoped."

"That's an understatement if I've ever heard one."

"Yeah… So as I was saying, I'm not the first oracle. To be clear, I'm the 678th."

"You're number 678? How the hell have you still not managed to summon that Moon Lord, or whatever the hell its name is by now? Do you even know how to do it?"

"That's actually kind of the problem. We're closer than ever. So close, in fact, that we're gearing up to perform the actual ritual of awakening within no more than a few years."

That was certainly grave news. Whatever kind of monster such a powerful group revered, it couldn't be good news for everybody else. Eik swallowed hard.

"You must be pretty stoked with that, then," Eik said. He was honestly surprised at how friendly of a conversation he was having with this woman. Intellectually, he knew that she was a most hated enemy and the leader of the organization that had murdered Sonja. But for some strange reason, she just didn't feel like it. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something was different. Something that made him not hate her like he hated the rest of them.

"I am very far from 'stoked', Eik. I am terrified and desperate. We're facing a catastrophe," she said. Her face had grown even paler than it had already been. She looked sick with dread.

Eik's mouth felt dry. "Why? What have you seen?"

"Everything is a big misunderstanding. A misinterpretation of a millenium-old prophecy! We were…" she trailed off, her lips having difficulty forming the words. "We were wrong all along."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know how much you know about the cause of Moon Shall Swallow, but we were formed around the belief that the Primal Entity called the Lord of the Moon was the answer to what our founders perceived as the great imbalance of the Unified Mass," she said, clenching the edge of the table with her long fingers to keep her hands from trembling.

"I know the bare minimum."

"A few years ago I had the strongest augury I have ever had and it shook me to my core with its clarity."

"Go on," Eik urged.

"If the Lord of the Moon returns, as the cult desires, it will not bring about absolute order as they hope. It will not reshape the Unified Mass into a paradise of balance and harmony. No, it will annihilate everything and cause a universal rebirth. A complete restart. There would be no salvation. Only death and obliteration. My predecessors misinterpreted the prophecies as a mere readjustment—a revision—but they couldn't have been more wrong."

For a long moment, Eik was silent. "Why are you the first to realize this?"

"I don't know!" she said with exasperation. "I've never told anyone before! It's been eating me up inside!"

"Shouldn't you tell your associates? Maybe we could see an end to this never-ending conflict between our faction."

"No, they would never believe it," she said with certainty. "They are far too invested. I would be branded incompetent or insane before they would trust something so against their beliefs."

"So why the hell are you telling me?"

"Because I need to fight this. And to fight it I need your help."

"I'm a C-ranker, miss oracle. I'm not exactly capable of going up against this cult of yours on my own."

"I know. But you will be."

"And what makes you think that?"

She gazed deeply into his eyes, the third eye in her forehead gripping him. "Because I've seen what you are. Worldbreaker."

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