Jacob had no idea how he was supposed to escape, and the truth was that he wasn't even in the right frame of mind to attempt it, since fear had settled into him like a fog, clouding his ability to think clearly, though even if he had been calm and sharp it would have remained impossible.

He was trapped in a place he didn't recognize, surrounded by people who could easily end his life with a single careless strike, he had no allies nearby, no idea where Jessica or Arthur had been taken, and he could not draw on runes to defend himself, nor had he his sabre, which he hadn't brought in the first place though he suspected they would have taken it regardless.

As he considered his position, he realized that there was only one course open to him, and that was to wait until his family found him, for surely they would, and in the meantime he took some small comfort in the fact that his captors would not kill him until they had wrung from him whatever it was they were searching for, which meant that as long as the strange thing buried in his mind resisted them, he would continue to live.

Fortunately, the woman who carried out the strange invasions of his mind did not seem close to success; if anything, the task appeared to grow harder the more she attempted it. She had already come to him close to fifteen times, and although in the early sessions she had shown signs of exertion, they had seemed manageable, but more recently he had seen her visibly falter when it backfired, her composure breaking for an instant, and from that Jacob drew a thin thread of hope that she would not be succeeding any time soon.

It was during one of these stretches of waiting that Jacob heard voices approaching his cell, rough, gravelly tones carrying the cadence of men used to muttering complaints.

"She still banned us from touching the prisoners?" one voice asked.

"Yep. I nearly got a beating for bringing it up again. You owe me," the other replied.

Moments later the speakers appeared in the doorway and entered, clad in full suits of silver armour that concealed every feature of their bodies and faces, leaving Jacob to wonder if the identical, faceless forms were intended to rob prisoners of any sense of individuality in their captors.

One of them let out a low whistle as his gaze swept the cell. "They gave him the good one. Look at that, she even left the door open."

Jacob turned his head slightly, his eyes settling on the rough walls of stone, the darkness that weighed heavily in the corners, and the complete lack of furnishings beyond a toilet set into the wall. If this was considered the good cell, he decided, then he had no desire whatsoever to learn what a bad one looked like.

The other guard gave a short laugh, his voice echoing faintly under the helmet. "And the boy doesn't even look hurt. I could've sworn she was using him as a blood bank."

Without further comment, one of them stepped forward and set a tray down in front of him. On it lay a simple meal, bread and soup, the kind of food that might be described as modest in any other setting, but to Jacob it seemed unexpectedly generous, for he had not expected food at all, let alone food that looked fresh.

"Hey, boy," one of the guards called, his voice muffled beneath the silver helmet, "you'd make our jobs a whole lot easier if you just gave that witch whatever it is she's digging for, because ever since you came along her mood has been sinking, and guess who has to pay for it?"

The second guard gave a quick nod, his tone laced with irritation. "On us, of course. Every time she storms out of here, it's the rest of us who take the blows. Still, it isn't only her mood that's sinking, you know, hard to believe there are spells that can knock even her down a few ranks."

"It's the backlash, I keep telling you," the first replied, stepping toward the door, his tone half serious and half weary, as though he had repeated the same argument a dozen times already. "Horrible backlash. I'm surprised she hasn't tried to dump the work on one of us instead."

The other chuckled, though the sound carried no humour. "She wouldn't dare. The word is it came as an order straight from one of the cardinals, and there's no way she'd pass that kind of responsibility down. Not unless she's lost what little sense she has left."

Their voices trailed off as they left the cell, their words echoing faintly in Jacob's ears even after the sound of their boots faded.

Jacob sat in silence for a moment, his thoughts racing. In the careless chatter of two bored guards, he had been given more information than he had learned since he got here: the woman's struggle was not imagined but real, her failures stemmed from some kind of backlash, her persistence was not by choice but by command, and the shadow of a cardinal's involvement loomed above it all.

He wondered, with no small degree of disbelief, how men so careless and loose with their tongues had ever been entrusted with roles within Whisper, though for the moment such questions mattered less than the tray of food set before him.

He reached for the bread, tearing a small piece free before dipping it lightly into the bowl of soup, when a sharp, commanding voice erupted inside his skull. 'Do not eat that.'

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Jacob froze mid-motion, his fingers tightening slightly around the crust before he slowly lowered the bread back onto the tray and shut his eyes. 'What's wrong?' he asked silently.

'You are in Whisper,' Yggdrasil's voice came, heavy with disdain, 'a den of butchers who worship the very gods your people spit upon, a nest of those who see cruelty as devotion. And you sit here thinking of eating the food they hand to you?'

'That's too vague,' Jacob thought back, his voice edged with irritation despite the danger of speaking that way. 'Give me an actual reason.'

There was a pause, and then Yggdrasil's tone grew imperious, swelling with pride. 'You forget who you speak to. I am no spirit or shade, no mere whisper in your head. I am a divine being, one who could crush your entire bloodline with a passing thought, and you will address me with the respect that is owed.'

Jacob exhaled slowly, resigning himself to the being's vanity. 'Fine. My apologies, great Yggdrasil. Now, would you care to explain why exactly I shouldn't eat it?'

He heard Yggdrasil make a sound, not quite a sigh and not quite a growl, but something caught between the two, the sort of noise that carried the weight of long frustration.

'You really are something, so utterly different from him. Whisper has a habit of weaving faith bound to a dedicated follower into their food. If you eat it, the faith coils inside your stomach like a parasite, lying quiet until they decide to rouse it, and then, with the smallest act of will, they could end you as easily as snapping a twig.'

Jacob felt the colour drain faintly from his face, his eyes shifting back to the tray as though it had turned into a snake poised to strike. He pushed himself back from it and muttered in his mind, 'How does that even work?'

'What do you think faith is?' the voice asked, carrying the sharp edge of disapproval. 'I take it you have not yet been taught.'

Jacob said nothing, but the silence stretched long enough that it spoke for him.

'Of course,' Yggdrasil went on, his tone softening with a shade of inevitability. 'They would not teach you, and books that tell the truth are never placed where your type can reach. Listen then. Mana is the means by which one draws runes and bends the patterns of the world to give rise to phenomena that are otherwise impossible. Aura is what warriors use, shaping it to harden their bodies, to sharpen their blades, to breathe unnatural strength into flesh and steel. But faith, faith is not like them. Faith is the will of devotion given form. It is the tool by which mortals call upon gods and make possible what should not be, the force that drags imagination into the waking world and calls it miracle.'

Jacob was startled by the explanation; it made faith sound limitless, untouchable, something far above the other two. Still, common sense told him that nothing in the world could truly be without bounds. 'But it isn't necessarily better than aura or mana, right?' he asked. 'It must have weaknesses of its own, advantages and disadvantages, the same as everything else.'

'No,' Yggdrasil said simply, and the word fell into Jacob's mind like a stone into still water. 'Faith can be wielded as aura. It can be shaped as mana. It can replace either, it can strengthen both, it can exceed both, and it can reach into realms neither could ever touch. That is not speculation, it is fact, and it is why the Holy Kingdom stands where it does, why it is counted among the three great powers of the world.'

Jacob thought on that, recalling the names that even children knew, the Holy Kingdom, the Ancient Clans, and the Great Empire, the three forces whose weight pressed upon every other nation, shaping the order of the world. 'If faith is so powerful,' he asked carefully, 'then why do three powers stand instead of one? Why does Eterna still exist?'

Yggdrasil did not hesitate. 'Two answers. The first is that the other great powers also make use of faith, though they give it to gods most beleivers would call unorthodox. The second is that Eterna endures under the shelter of Akashic's protections, and until those are torn away, it will remain.'

Jacob let out a slow breath and pulled the tray toward him, then, with a glance at the food that moments ago he had nearly eaten, he carried it to the farthest corner of the room and tipped it out carefully, leaving the bread and soup in a small heap against the wall.

He set the empty tray back in the middle of the cell as though nothing were amiss, reasoning that if they bothered to check, they would look in the toilet first, and this way they might believe he had eaten every bit of it without suspicion.

With that done, he could finally turn his thoughts to the fragments of information he had managed to gather. The first was the mention of a cardinal. The word was familiar to him from stories of priests and bishops who ranked above ordinary men, yet it felt strange to hear it carried into the mouth of a group like Whisper, a name that belonged more to fanatics and murderers than to a house of worship.

Still, whatever title they bore, he could only assume it marked someone high enough in their order that they had the authority to send others scurrying at their command, and that was enough to trouble him. If someone like that wanted whatever it was that Yggdrasil neither accepted nor refused to deny, was hidden inside him, then even escape would not bring freedom, for they would only send more and more until they caught him again.

There was, however, a shard of comfort buried in what he overheard, and it was that Arthur and Jessica were still alive. He clung to that thought for a moment, though it carried its own shadow. If they were being fed as he had been, then they had likely eaten without question, and that meant danger already lodged within them, something he could not undo and could do nothing about from here.

The last and perhaps most useful thing he had pieced together was the backlash. He had noticed it before but now it had been confirmed; the woman was being hurt by her own attempts, weakened each time she pressed against whatever barrier kept her from breaking through. Now Yggdrasil's earlier suggestion made more sense, fight her, not now but later, when the strain had drawn her low enough to make the impossible slightly less so.

Of course, even then the chance would be thin, for she had more skill, more power, and more experience than he could hope to match. Yet it was something, a thread of possibility, and with that thread came the faint shape of hope.

If she weakened further and if he sharpened himself enough, if he endured and practiced while waiting, then perhaps there would come a moment when her fall and his rise met at the same point, and in that brief instant he might not only stand against her but defeat her. He told himself it was not merely a chance, it was a certainty waiting to be reached, and he held to that thought as though it were the only weapon he had left.

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