Lia Shinsei - Pov
Night in Eldoria was not dark.
It was blue.
Blue light traced the ceiling in rigid lines, pulsing softly as if the stone itself were breathing. The Cold Hall never slept. Skeleton patrols passed every twelve minutes. Mana meters ticked inside the walls. The temperature never changed.
Lia Shinsei lay awake on the floor with the rest of the refugees, cloak folded beneath her head, journal pressed against her chest like armor.
Cold was a constant. Not biting—measured. Maintained.
She catalogued it automatically.
Temperature: low, stable.
Purpose: suppress illness, reduce agitation, preserve resources.
Blue magic was not about copying spells.
It was about learning why something worked.
Around her, Ostorians whispered in fragments.
"A cage."
"They watched us die."
"This isn't sanctuary."
Lia didn't argue. Arguing required certainty, and certainty was a luxury of the unobservant.
She watched instead.
The skeletons did not leer. They did not threaten. They did not even look at the refugees unless someone moved out of bounds. Their routes overlapped perfectly. No blind spots. No wasted steps.
Labor without rest.
Security without emotion.
Fear without intent.
A system.
Near the center of the hall, Seiko Nakahara sat with her back to a pillar, arms wrapped around herself—not for warmth, but containment. Kaisei Aoi stood nearby, eyes never leaving the patrols, measuring angles, exits, timings.
Soldiers always noticed the same things.
"They enjoy this," someone muttered.
Lia wrote it down.
Perceived intent: cruelty.
Observed behavior: restraint.
A contradiction. Interesting.
Hours passed. No one slept deeply. Children whimpered until their voices thinned into nothing. Adults stared at the ceiling, counting breaths like prisoners measuring time.
Lia shifted closer to a shivering family, subtly positioning herself between them and the patrol route. The skeleton adjusted its path by half a step. No reprimand. No escalation.
Flexibility within constraint, she noted.
A Blue Mage learned by exposure. Pain accelerated the process.
When dawn should have come—but didn't, because the dome filtered it into the same pale blue—Lia finally understood what the Pillars had built.
Not a sanctuary.
A containment miracle.
They had optimized survival down to the bone. No excess. No softness. No assumption that comfort was safe.
We escaped hell only to find a prettier cage, the refugees believed.
Lia exhaled slowly.
We built a perfect cage so no one would suffer like we did, the Pillars believed.
Neither side was lying.
That was the problem.
Later, when the announcement came—the tournament, the smiles, the word purpose spoken like a blessing—anger rippled through the hall like heat through metal.
Lia didn't shout.
She watched the man speaking. His posture. His cadence. The way he never mentioned choice.
Control masquerading as fairness, she wrote. Learned behavior.
When night returned—identical to the last—Lia approached the inner gate alone.
She was stopped by a skeleton. It raised a hand, not threatening. Procedural.
"I want to understand your city," she said quietly, knowing it would not answer.
Behind the gate, blue light intensified. Silhouettes moved above—distant, elevated, unapproachable.
They did not come down.
They did not explain.
They did not need to.
That was when Lia realized the truth that would isolate her from both sides.
The Pillars were not evil.
They were traumatized engineers of survival.
And the refugees were not ungrateful.
They were people who believed dignity was as necessary as air.
She returned to the hall and knelt beside Kaisei and Seiko.
"They won't change," Seiko said flatly.
"No," Lia agreed. "They optimized too deeply."
Kaisei looked at her sharply. "And you're defending them?"
Lia met his gaze, calm and exhausted. "I'm learning them."
Silence stretched.
Understanding, she realized, did not build bridges.
It only revealed why the gap existed.
Later that night, a child stopped breathing.
The cold did not flinch. The system did not err.
Lia recorded everything with shaking hands.
Not to accuse.
Not to absolve.
To remember.
You need to learn their story before judging them, she wrote.
But learning their story does not mean you can live inside it.
When the page filled, Lia closed her journal.
She lay back down among her people, eyes open, blue light reflecting in them.
A Blue Mage did not choose sides.
She learned the cost of every spell.
And some knowledge, once acquired, ensured you would never belong anywhere again.