Mirac’s breath stopped.

  Carmen’s words echoed like the strike of a sword in the silence, cutting through the st thread of trust he had left.

  His hand trembled slightly, his nails digging into his palm, creating reddish grooves.

  “N-No, it’s not possible…!” Mirac stammered, taking a step back, as if trying to escape the weight of that truth.

  His legs wavered, ready to buckle not only uhe weight of exhaustion, but also from the brutal blow of that revetion, which seemed to want to overwhelm and break him.

  But soon after, he regained his bance.

  “Y-You…”

  His voice became sharper, poisoned with pt:

  “You… You betrayed me… You ned me to this hell!”

  Carmen’s gaze remained impassive, but her fiightened around the torch hah such force that the wood creaked, threatening to splinter.

  “It’s not that simple, young Prince…” she tried to say, her tone calm yet heavy with an underlying tension. “If you allow me to expin-“

  “Expin?!” Mirac moved suddenly towards the door, smming his bloody hand against the bars.

  The metal resonated with a grim g.

  It was as if that revetion had recharged him with new energy—o, desperate surge from the depths of his being to fuel the rage that now boiled untrolbly inside him.

  “There’s nothing to expin!” Mirac excimed. “You made sure they locked me up here! That they hated me! That they wanted me dead!”

  Each word was like a sh, an unfiving blow.

  “And now you have the o show up here? To ‘save me,’ you said?! Do you really think I still trust you?! Do you really think I’ll believe what you say to justify what you’ve done?! Fet it!”

  The bars vibrated again, their metallit mixing with the crag of the torch.

  Carmen remained unmoved by Mirac’s fury, but the dang light revealed a barely perceptible tra in her eyelids.

  A flicker of pain.

  Or perhaps, ret…

  “Believe me, young Prince,” she whispered, her voice lower but unshakable, “if I had had another choice, I would never have-“

  “CHOICE?!” Miraterrupted her again, his bloodied fingers squeezing the bars like cws. “I don’t know how you found out about my Chaotiature, but ohing I’m pretty sure of: you could’ve kept quiet! You wahe money? You could’ve bckmailed me! You wanted my life? You could’ve tried to kill me! But tell me… why do all this?! What’s the point of ruining my life?!”

  A long sigh escaped her lips. The torchlight caressed her features, casting shadows in her eyes.

  “You’re terribly mistaken, young Prince. I uand that, at first gnce, revealing your secret to your family might seem like a despicable act towards you. But it’s not like that! You might not believe me, but my duty is to protect you at any cost, regardless of what you are. And indeed, everything I’ve done so far… has been solely to fulfill this duty.”

  Mirac gritted his teeth, his chest rising and falling with brokehs.

  Instinct screamed at him to keep inveighing, to let himself be ed by anger.

  But instead, he turned abruptly, g his fist.

  “Enough! I don’t want to hear your bullshit anymore,” he said, stepping away from the door. “You’re just a hypocrite, nothing more.”

  He didn’t even give her time to respond before shouting, with all the rage still burning in his chest:

  “AND NOW BE GONE! I don’t ever want to see you again…”

  The air thied, became sticky, as if time itself had petrified around that request.

  But the red-haired servant didn’t move. She didn’t obey the order to leave.

  She stood still, her feet firmly pnted on the ground, the sileretg between them like a heavy veil.

  After a moment of refle, Carmen spoke again, her voice low but filled with an iy that allowed no interruption:

  “Young Prince… You, like the rest of the world, are aware of the existence of the so-called Seven Magical Frequency Readers: the only instruments capable of determining whether a person is Chaotic or not. But they are such rge and imposing maes that they ot be transported by the Purifiers. And for this very reason, all prototypes are located in the Sacred Region, immobile, where they were built. But have you ever wondered how many of the people summoned for the test turned out to be non-Chaotid how many of them returned alive to their homes after the examination?”

  She paused dramatically, letting her words linger for a moment in the heavy air of the cell, before answering her owion:

  “Well, I’ll tell you: zero!”

  Miratio ignore her, heading for the dark er of the cell.

  But Carmen’s voice followed him, growing even sharper:

  “And now tell me… doesn’t all of this raise any suspi in you? Why is it that the neers never report on the ‘Chaotics’ who are executed? And why are the only Seven Magical Frequency Readers in the world located in the Sacred Region? From which, by the way, no one has ever returned alive after the test to tell what happens there…”

  Mirac stopped abruptly.

  “So what?” he asked, his voice tense. “What are y to say?”

  Carmen took a deep breath before answering:

  “It’s very simple, young Prihe Seven Magical Frequency Readers do . They have never actually existed!”

  “What?!” Mirac spun around, staring at her in disbelief. “What are you saying?”

  Carme her gaze steady, without blinking.

  “Unfortunately, it’s the truth. They’re just a ventional iion of the Sacred Region to instill fear among the Chaotics hidden within the popution.”

  Mirac couldn’t believe Carmen’s words.

  Not only because he cked trust in her, but also because the very idea that it could actually be true was too vast and overwhelming to process all at once.

  “So… you’re tellihat the Purifiers and the Sacred Region never actually had any means or tools tnize whether someone is Chaotic or not?”

  “Exactly,” Carmen replied, her voice calm but filled with a gravity that left no room for rebuttal. “Or at least, that’s what I would have told you five days ago…”

  Mirac furrowed his brow, fused.

  “Hmm? What do you mean?”

  Carmen responded immediately:

  “It hasn’t been publicly announced yet, not even to the govers of other kingdoms. Practically no one knows about it because it’s still a state secret. But the Kingdom of Luxendar has just finished developing a eology…”

  She paused for a sed, letting the silence charge her words with tension:

  “A new iion by Andra Nucci, this time capable of truly distinguishing the magiature of the Syntonies!”

  Mirac’s eyes widened, speechless.

  His mind raced, trying to process the enormity of what he had just heard.

  “So,” Carmen tinued, without waiting for Mirac to say anything, “if before the Purifiers only relied os and suspis falling on a particur person, without having a real tool to detect magical frequency, things will soon ge drastically! As you imagine, ohis teology is released publicly, all hell will break loose! The Chaotics, who have been hiding among ordinary people so far, will soon be exposed one by one by the Purifiers. The tter, in fact, with the new and authentic Magical Frequency Reader—small in size and easy to carry around—will begin a true global hunt! But this time, they will be able to instantly identify who possesses an Anomalous Syntony or not, without fearing to strike an i. And, of course, all of this s you too! If anyoo ever use this tool on you iure, you would be instantly discovered for what you are: a Chaotid as you well know, not even with the absolute power of a sn could you escape a public execution.”

  Mirac remained silent for a long time after those words, feeling Carmen’s cold tone crystallize the air between them.

  ‘Huh, th-this is absurd!’ thought the prisoner, g his jaw. ‘So before, the wover was just pretending to have a tool for reading magical frequencies, but now they actually have it?! Yeah, right, sure! Does she really think I’ll believe her? After everything she’s doo me?’

  However, Mirac didn’t want to prolong the versation unnecessarily and decided to pretend to be vinced in order to uand where Carmen was going with this speech.

  “Alright…” Miraally said, his voice low but filled with tension. “I don’t know how you found out about the existence of the new magical frequency reading tool, since you yourself called it a state secret… But let’s assume for now that what you just said is true. Then what? If that were the only problem—that there’s a risk I might be discovered iure because of this device—you could have simply warned me i with an anonymous letter. Instead, you chose to send it to my family, revealing to them that I am a Chaotic. So, do you want to expin to me ond for all why the hell you did it?!”

  Carmen sighed, the fme of the tor her hand flickering slightly at her breath.

  “I just wao open your eyes, young Prince…”

  “Open my eyes?!” Mirac roared, his voice eg against the bare walls. “What the hell are you talking about?!”

  Carmen huffed, her patience hanging by a thread.

  “Oh, e on, do you really not uand?!” she snapped.

  Her voice grew harsher, charged with aion that had been suppressed for too long.

  “I’m talking about your family, your life at court, and everything that surrounded you!” she excimed. “Without me, you’d still be living in a lie, uhe illusion that you could lead a normal life! But you are a Chaotid as such, you will never have a normal life! You must give up the and the false hope of being the future sn… because that is not the right choice for you.”

  Mirac opened his mouth tue—to say “And what do you know about what’s best for me?!”—but Carmen gave him no ce:

  “Everything a person owns in this world is nothing more than something fleeting, something that disappear in an instant, the moment they die or bee a Chaotic. Family, the affe it offers, and life itself are all subject to this harsh reality. It’s only natural, then, that to protect themselves, the family of a Chaotic might react with hostility and act against the one who threatens t them into the abyss. Because, after all, this is the true nature of humanity, young Prince: sacrifig others for one’s own survival.”

  She paused for a moment, her eyes gleaming with a dark aless emotion.

  “No one wants to admit it, because we’re too busy trying to appear good and magnanimous in the eyes of others. But in truth, we are stantly driven by deep selfishness, both in our small daily as and, above all, when it es to survival. And in this world, those who fail to accept this wretched part of themselves all meet the same fate, young Prihey break, they weep as they submit to fate’s decree, and they surreo its cruel sentences, ending up like a miserable stray dog locked in a cage…”

  With a sudden movement, Carmen grasped the bars of the porthole once again, gripping them so tightly that the torch fmes illuminating the door trembled.

  The flickering light heightehe tension of that cold, silent night.

  “And now tell me, young Prince…” she whispered, her voiow low but searing. “Is this what you want to do with your life?!”

  Mirac didn’t know what to say.

  His expression, owisted with rage, softened into boundless uainty.

  His gaze slowly dropped to the ground.

  “Y-You ’t uand…” he began, his voice reduced to a broken whisper, which gradually strengthened. “You ’t uand what I’m feeling! Seeing my own family hate me for something I never chose… it’s nothing short of horrible!”

  The shadows of the cell seemed to close in around him, eager to devour any lingering shred of hope.

  “All I ever wanted was to live a normal life…”

  A shiver ran down his spine, and sadhreateo overwhelm him with tears.

  But then, with a deep breath, he pushed away the sobs that were about to e.

  He straightened his bad his posture, and his voice became more resolute:

  “But fortunately, I still fix this!”

  Mirac lifted his gaze.

  His eyelids, still damp, betrayed an unyieldiermination.

  “A person break their Syntony if their harmonization with the element drops to zerht? And if we assume this also applies to Anomalous Syntohen sooner or ter, it could happen to me too!”

  His voice was now steady, polished by certainty.

  His haed on his chest, over the spot where his heart beat—fast and stubborn.

  “So, all I have to do is stay here until the hatred I feel for what I am in Syntony with breaks the magical bond. That way, I will finally be free ond for all from what has branded me as a Chaotic!”

  Carmen remained silent for a few seds.

  “It won’t work,” she simply said. “By now, you should have figured it out for yourself: an Anomalous Syntony doesn’t follow the same rules as aal one.”

  Indeed, Mirac had hated Math from the very first day he had acquired a Syntony with it.

  A, it had remained a part of him. Even now, at the lowest and most wretched point of his existence.

  Even with all the hatred he had harbored over the years, it had never shown the slightest sign of detag from him.

  So, iably, he had begun tn himself to the idea that breaking his Anomalous Syntony was impossible.

  But now, more than ever, one sihought roared in his mind:

  “It will work!” Mirac ched his fist. “It has to work!”

  Carmen sighed.

  “You are truly stubborn, young Prince. But what strikes me even more is your y. This obstinacy of yours, which you like to paint as ermination, is nothing more than a mere hope that the world will bend to your will and wele you with mercy. You g to the idea that perhaps, by some miracle, everything go back to how it once was, as if the past were a safe haven waiting for you with open arms. But let me tell you something…”

  Carmen’s face suddenly hardened, her features carved into a cold, distant mask—an expression Mirac had never seen before, not even when his servant had faced Krk in battle.

  “Nothing will ever go back to the way it was.”

  Carmen’s words fell like a verdict—cold and final, slig through the air with the precision of a guillotine.

  “Even if, by some absurd ce, you mao break your Anomalous Syntony—assuming that’s even possible for a Chaotic—do you really think this would solve everything? That staying for life in some er, cursing yourself, ed by remorse and self-pity, would be enough? I’m sorry to tell you, but that’s not how it works. The truth, young Prihe one you refuse to face, is that from the exaent you discovered you were a Chaotic, you should have turned your ba everything. Abandon every dream, every ambition, every bond. Flee far away, disappear into the shadows, and never be seen again. Instead, you stayed, fully aware that your very presen the castle was a stant risk to the lives of your family. And if you’ll allow me to be brutal—because someone has to be—your staying, knowing all this, was an act of astonishing arrogance, almost childish. A selfish act that reveals how little, deep down, you’ve ever truly cared for those you cim to love.”

  Mirac stood frozen, silent, his breath held as if the weight of Carmen’s words had crushed him against the cold stones of the cell.

  The woman with red hair stared at him, relentless, her eyes gleaming with a sharp light, something Mirac couldn’t quite decipher.

  “Not going to say anything?” she asked, tilting her head slightly, her voice dropping into a sharp whisper. “No brillia, no attempt to justify yourself? Or perhaps, finally, you’re starting to realize that there are no words to defend what you’ve done… or rather, what you didn’t have the ce to do.”

  Mirac opened his mouth, but quickly shut it again, his lips trembling.

  What could he possibly say?

  There was nothing he could retort, nothing that didn't ring hollow ile against the raw truth Carmen had hurled at him.

  ‘Why…?’ Miradered, with a faint, trembling inner voice, as his fingers, which had been ched into a fist until that moment, slowly rexed. ‘Now that I think about it… why did I never sider the idea of disappearing? Of leaving, far away from everything and everyone? I could have taken refuge in some remote pce, in a fotten er of the world, and lived in peace. In this way, not only would I have avoided this disaster, but I would have also spared myself the stant risk of someone disc me aihus proteg my family’s lives. But then… why didn’t I do it? What stopped me? What held me back? revented me from making the best decision for everyone?’

  Then, like a shadow slowly emerging from the darkness, a disturbing thought took shape in his mind, seeping through the cracks in his sciousness:

  ‘Is it possible… that she’s right? That it’s always been my own selfishness holding me back? A hidden, subtle desire in the depths of my mind to not want to abandon a life opposite to the one I had before—fortable, filled with luxury and privilege?’

  Mirac lowered his gaze, his heart tightening.

  Something inside him cracked, a silent but devastating sound.

  But before Mirac could dig deeper into that abyss of uainties, Carmen interrupted the flow of his thoughts. Her hands ched tightly around the iron bars separating them, her knuckles white from the pressure.

  “Staying here is pletely pointless, and deep down, you know it too,” she said, her tone firm, almost accusatory. “But do you really want to pretend everything is okay? Do you really want to throw away your whole life, everything you are and everything you’ve achieved, for a family that didn’t hesitate for a sed tainst you and try to kill you?”

  A heavy silence, charged with tension, fell between them.

  “I-I… I don’t know…” Mirac stammered.

  “Yes, you do!” Carmen shot back, raising her voice. “Stop lying to yourselves! St to escape from who you really are! Throw away this pointless mask you insist on wearing, and act to achieve what you truly want!”

  “What I truly want?” he repeated, almost lost.

  “Exactly!” she insisted, her eyes bzing. “Why have you always trained with a sword? Why have you kept your Anomalous Syntony a secret all this time? Why have you never given up or thrown iowel, even in the face of a formidable enemy like Krk?”

  Mirac lowered his gaze, his hand trembling slightly.

  “Because…” he hesitated for a sed, but then tinued, “Because… I wao protect everything I had… until the very end…”

  “Yeah, I think so too,” Carmen said, for a moment almost softeniohe role of Prince, your prosperous wealth, your family… But now that you’ve lost all of that, what else is there left to protect?”

  Mirac felt a shiver run up his spine as Carmen’s words hit him like sharp bdes.

  The weight of his choices, the past that tormented him, and the uain future ahead became unbearable.

  But deep dowh the fear and pain, a thought began to take root.

  A distant memory emerged, slow and iable, from the depths of his subscious…

  A simple, undeniable truth.

  “My life…” the boy finally whispered, his voice broken but filled with an old determination.

  His life…

  This was what Mirac had promised to protect from the day he discovered he was a Chaotic…

  And it was also the same day Vector had sworn he would do anything to protect his sed ce!

  Carmen stared at him, her eyes narrowed into pierg slits.

  “Proteg your life…” she whispered, then raised her voice, “And tell me: do you think you do that by staying in this cell?”

  “…” Mirac didn’t answer.

  “Then?” Carmen pressed, her tone sharp as a bde.

  “N-No…” Mirac murmured finally.

  “Good,” she cluded, her voice firm. “If that’s the case, you only have two optio…”

  Carmen released her grip from the bars and raised her hand, fingers ched except for one, which remained fully extended.

  “The first is to stay here and die,” she announced, her voice calm but cutting.

  “Die?” Mirac asked. “But I ’t-“

  Carmen didn’t give him time to finish:

  “I assume your family believes you possess a Divine Blessing granted by Mother Nature, don’t they?”

  Mirac remained silent. A slight nod of his head was his only response, his eyes lowered, lost in a tangle of thoughts.

  “Just as I thought,” Carmen tinued, with a tohat left no room for doubt. “But iy, if you survived the deadly poison, it wasn’t due to a Divine Blessing; it was solely because I used a powerful regeive potion in the same dish they carefully poisohat te afternoon, while I wasn’t i and no one aying particur attention. That’s what truly saved you from the poison.”

  “What?!” Mirac stood stunned. His voice trembled, uo hide his shock.

  “You heard me right,” Carmen firmed, impassive. “There’s no Divine Blessing proteg you. And sino one is going to bother bringing you even a crust of bread, if you stay here, locked within these walls, you will surely starve to death sooner or ter…”

  Mirac eechless, the words caught in his throat like stones.

  His gaze wandered, uo find any grip, as the silence grew heavier around him.

  When he had woken up in the cell, he had easily been vinced by his family’s words, embrag up until that point the idea that he truly possessed a Divine Blessing.

  But now, after what Carmen had just revealed, the expnation for how he had survived the poison made much more sense, clearer and more solid.

  After all, for what unfathomable reason would a Deity ever grant such a privilege to a Chaotic like him?

  However, all this amouo a single, bitter truth: Mirac was not truly “immortal” as he had thought.

  In the end, he was as fragile and vulnerable as anyone else.

  And staying locked in that cell, hoping to someday break his Anomalous Syntony, led to only one iable oute: a miserable death.

  Yet, despite the grim and uling implications of that discovery, Mirac remained unmoved, rooted to the ground.

  He swallowed the lump in his throat not to relieve the dryness in his mouth, but to forcibly recim that fident demeanor that once beloo him.

  “The sed option?” Mirac asked, his voice a rasp in the dark.

  “It’s very simple,” Carmen said, raising another finger. “Leave here, abandon your life as a Prince, and e with me.”

  “Where?”

  Carmeated, her eyes barely narrowing as the two fingers curled inward, as though holding back a secret.

  “I… I ’t tell you yet…”

  Mirac furrowed his brow, perplexed.

  “And should I trust you?” he retorted, a spark of defian his gaze.

  “No,” she answered curtly. “I’ve already told you: the choice is entirely yours.”

  Mirac remained silent for a few seds, lost in thought.

  On one hand, this woman had betrayed him, ned him to lose everything…

  But oher hand, had she really do… for his own good?

  The doubt weighed on him like a boulder.

  As Mirac reflected, Carme down and, with quid sure movements, rummaged through the bck backpack she had pced on the ground tht when she had arrived.

  Among the items inside, she pulled out a small vial, thin and delicate, taining a glowing green liquid.

  She stood up fluidly and skillfully slid it through the bars, extending it towards the prisoner, urging him to take it.

  “In any case, whether you decide to stay here or not, please, take this,” she said, her voice calm but firm. “It’s a Maoration potion. After drinking it, your body will feel strong and energized again, and hunger and thirst will nearly vanish.”

  Mirac stood still, his gaze fixed on the vial swingiween her fingers.

  A whirlwind of emotions squeezed his chest: anger, fear, distrust, and something else he couldn’t quite define.

  He felt trapped, not only by the cell, but by the weight of that decision.

  “Carmen…” he began. “I’ll be ho: I really don’t uand you! I don’t know what you’re thinking, what your true iions are, or why you’re so determio help me. Frankly, I don’t even know if I should trust you, or believe everything you’ve told me so far… However!”

  He took a step forward, then another, moving closer to the door. His shadow stretched out across the dirty floor, flickering in the dim light.

  “However,” he tinued, his voice barely crag, “despite all this… despite the mess you’ve put me in with your as… despite the chaos you’ve thrown at me with your words… there’s a part of me that ’t ignore you. A part that wants to believe you’re right. The same part of me that didn’t despair when I found out I had an Anomalous Syntony… that I was a Chaotid that I was destined for a hard life. In fact: I was ready to stand against the whole world and do anything to protect my life!”

  Mirac lifted his gaze, a sudden fire lighting up his pupils.

  “But only now… I think I’m really ready to do it…”

  Carmen stared at him, her face impassive, but in her eyes, a fsh of satisfa flickered, a shadow that vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  “So…?” she said, her voice ft but with a note of hidden anticipatioh the surface.

  Mirac gritted his teeth, his heart pounding in his chest.

  He took the vial from Carmen’s hands, their fingers briefly brushing through the bars.

  The prisoared at the vial for a long moment, which sparkled like a fragment of hope in the dim light.

  He held it in his hands for a moment, weighing it, as if assessing not only the tents, but the weight of the choice he was about to make.

  His firembled slightly as he gripped the cold gss, the liquid inside seeming to pulse with life of its own.

  Without saying anything else, he brought the vial to his lips.

  The taste was sharp, a mix of bitter herbs and something sweet, but he swallowed it in one quick gulp.

  A sudden warmth spread through his chest, traveling down his arm, to his legs, as if his body were awakening from a long stupor.

  With a decisive movement, he threw the vial to the ground: the gss shattered against the stones with a sharp sound, the fragments sparkling for a moment before disappearing into the shadows.

  “Good,” said the woman with red hair. “Now, we just o find a way to get you out of here. Unfortunately, I came unprepared because I didn’t expect them to pce Fire Runes on the door. But if you give me a little time, I go to the ste room and quickly get the right equipment to dig a brea the cell walls and-”

  “Carmen,” Miraterrupted her, his voiow steadier, almost authoritative. “Take a few steps back.”

  She watched him, raising an eyebrow slightly, but obeyed without protest, stepping back a few meters. ’What is he pnning to do?’

  Mirac took a deep breath, his heart pounding in his chest, a mix of adrenaline and uainty c through his veins.

  He pced his hand on the wooden surface of the door, the rough tader his palm giving him a strange sense of stability.

  What he was about to do, he had never done before.

  It had never crossed his mind to try something like this, and so he didn’t even know if it would work.

  In the worst case, both Carmen and Mirac would die instantly, reduced to ashes by the explosiered by the activation of the Fire Ruhat protected the cell.

  Yet, despite the weight of fear tightening his chest, Mirac did not hesitate.

  He could no longer afford to hesitate.

  From that moment on, to survive in the world that rejected Chaotics like him, he would have to trust his instincts blindly.

  But not only that: he would also have to rely on the only resource that could help him achieve his goal of survival!

  ‘I think it’s time… to try trusting you… Math…’ he thought, as his heartbeat quied, and his expression grew more intense. ‘My life is in your hands now! Please, don’t let me down…’

  Mirac took another breath.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, letting his thoughts deo a few simple words:

  ‘Multiply by zero…’

  AnnouHeyy everyone, author’s here!

  First of all, I want to apologize for the ued absence! I’ve been abroad all week, and unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish Chapter 50 on time. That’s also why I haven’t been able to reply to any of your ents yet :(

  Sorry about that… :((

  But don’t worry—I’ll make it up to yht away!

  I also want to say that this chapter was quite challenging to write, but it was totally worth it! I really like how it turned out, and I hope you all feel the same! :))

  The chapter will be out on Friday, March 7th, so stay tuned!

  I hope you ehis chapter, and if you did, please support me with a follow and a ent.

  Thank you so much for your tinuous support and patience! :D

  P.S. To all the Muslims reading this, I wish you a blessed month of Ramadan! :))

  Big hug to everyone!