To most people, the Ironhold slums were a place of grey shadows and brown rot. To Neptune, the slums were a screaming, jagged mess of discordant violet and the sour taste of copper coins.
She stood at the mouth of a narrow alleyway, clutching her "legendary" weapon—a rusty, three-pronged pitchfork she had lovingly named Poseidon's Wrath—and tried to ignore the way the barking of a stray dog looked like splatters of muddy orange against the brick walls. For Neptune, the world was never just one thing. A sound had a color; an emotion had a smell; a surge of mana was a texture against the roof of her mouth.
The doctors in her village had called it madness. Her parents had called it a curse from the Void, a sign that her soul had been stitched together incorrectly. They had whispered about "heterochromia" and "unstable circuits," but mostly, they had just whispered about how much it cost to feed a girl who screamed when the church bells rang because they looked like heavy, falling slabs of lead.
"Don't worry, Wrath," Neptune whispered to the pitchfork, her mismatched eyes—one a deep sea-blue, the other a vibrant meadow-green—scanning the street. "We're close. I can feel the resonance. The destiny of the True Hero begins here."
She adjusted the red, tattered cape she had fashioned from an old tavern tablecloth. It was dusty and smelled of stale ale—a scent that manifested as a dull, ochre haze in her vision—it was the only thing that made her feel like the Magic Swordsman she claimed to be.
Neptune had been wandering Ironhold for three days, fueled by nothing but a handful of dried biscuits and a delusional sense of purpose. She was looking for a "Master." Not the arrogant mages of the White Tower, whose voices sounded like the scratching of dry parchment, and not the Ksatria of the Royal Guard, whose auras smelled of iron and ego.
She wanted something balanced. Something that didn't hurt her head.
And then, she saw it.
At the end of the crooked street, nestled between a collapsing tannery and a boarded-up warehouse, stood a building that didn't just exist; it vibrated.
In Neptune's vision, the structure was a lighthouse. Radiating from its windows was a color she had never seen before—a black so deep it shimmered with the iridescence of a raven's wing. It wasn't a dark, scary black; it was clean. It was a "Symphony of Mana" so powerful that it sounded like a thousand silver flutes playing in perfect unison.
"Master..." Neptune breathed.
But there was something else. Intertwined with that black symphony was a different texture. It was a fog—a thick, swirling mist of charcoal-grey that drifted out from the corner of the building. It didn't have the music of the mana, but it had a scent. It smelled of rain on a cold forge, of rust, and of a sadness so heavy it tasted like unshed tears.
It was a broken Will, a shattered Aura that was being physically held together by the mana of the shop.
"The Hero and the Sage," Neptune whispered, her imagination already weaving a tale of epic proportions. "A forbidden alliance! A secret training ground!"
She broke into a run, her boots splashing through puddles that looked like indigo ink. She didn't care about the thugs who glared at her or the mud that splattered her overalls. She reached the door of the building—the sign read Cafe Abyss—and didn't even bother to knock. She didn't have time for the etiquette of mortals.
She kicked the door open with a resounding bang.
The silver chime above the door rang out, and in Neptune's eyes, the sound was a burst of crystalline white light.
"I have found you!" she shouted, thrusting her pitchfork toward the ceiling. "The bridge between worlds has arrived! Master of the Abyss, Guardian of the Void—I, Neptune, am here to claim my apprenticeship!"
The scene inside the cafe was not quite the epic tableau she had expected, but it was far more intense.
Behind the counter stood a woman who was the source of the black symphony. Up close, the mana was suffocating. It wasn't just a color; it was a physical weight, a velvet darkness that pressed against Neptune's skin with the warmth of a hearth. The woman had horns—obsidian curves that Neptune saw as sharp, violet crescents—and eyes that looked like twin suns of blood.
And in the corner sat the fog.
A man in rusted black armor, his shoulders slumped as if the world were trying to crush him into the floor. His Aura was a flickering flame of dying embers, struggling to stay lit against the cold wind of his own despair.
Vespera, the owner of the cafe, lowered the milk jug she had been holding. Her crimson eyes narrowed, and for a second, the mana in the room turned into a low, threatening hum—a growl of thunder that tasted like ozone.
"Krix," Vespera said, her voice a melody of knives. "Did we leave the door unlocked? A... peasant child has infiltrated the perimeter."
A small, tuxedo-clad goblin scrambled out from the kitchen, his monocle rattling against his face. "I-I am so sorry, Your Majesty! I was calibrating the dishwasher! I'll remove her immediately!"
"Wait!" Neptune shouted, her gaze darting between Vespera and Marcus. In her synesthesia, the air between them was thick with "Warna Suara." Vespera's voice was a rich, purple velvet, while the man's silence was a heavy, slate-grey wool.
She pointed her rusty pitchfork at Marcus. "You! The Fallen Guardian! I can see your scent! You are the rain that never stops falling! And you—" she turned to Vespera, her eyes wide with awe. "The Master of the Dark Symphony! You are the one who mends the broken! You are the Equilibrium!"
Marcus, who had been staring into his coffee as if searching for a reason to live, finally looked up. His eyes were red-brown and dead, but as he looked at the girl with the mismatched eyes and the tavern-tablecloth cape, a flicker of something—was it pity? Or just confusion?—sparked in the grey fog of his soul.
"Who are you talking to, kid?" Marcus rasped. His voice was like grinding stones, a sound that Neptune perceived as a series of rough, brown cubes.
"I am Neptune!" she declared, striking a hero's pose. "The one who sees the colors you hide! I have come to study the way of the Magic Swordsman! I will learn to weave the Mana of the Sage and the Will of the Knight! Teach me!"
Vespera leaned over the counter, her terrifying aura pressing down on Neptune until the girl's knees buckled. But Neptune didn't look away. To her, Vespera wasn't scary; she was a masterpiece of composition. She was the most "organized" being Neptune had ever seen.
"A Magic Swordsman?" Vespera mused, her vertical pupils dilating. She looked at Marcus, then back at the girl. "A human who wants to combine the intellectual path of Mana with the barbaric Path of Will? That is a taboo, little girl. You would most likely explode."
"I am already broken!" Neptune chirped, a wide, gap-toothed grin on her face. "My soul is a rainbow that someone stepped on! I can't explode any more than I already have! Please! I'll wash the dishes! I'll sweep the shadows! Just let me stay in the light of your symphony!"
Vespera paused. She looked at the dirty, exhausted girl who was staring at her with genuine, unadulterated worship. In the three centuries she had spent on the 100th floor, no one had ever looked at her like that. They had looked at her with fear, with hatred, or with greed.
Never with appreciation for her "composition."
"She's crazy," Marcus muttered, taking a long sip of his syrupy coffee. "Perfect fit for this place."
Vespera's lips curled into a smile—a real one this time, sharp and dangerous. "Krix, we have a surplus of Slime Jelly and a deficit of labor. Give the child an apron. If she breaks more than three plates, we'll feed her to the Gargoyles."
"I won't let you down, Master!" Neptune squealed, dropping her pitchfork and hugging the counter.
For the first time in her life, Neptune didn't just see the colors. She felt like she was part of the painting. And to her, the smell of the cafe—the scent of roasted beans and hidden power—was the most beautiful thing she had ever tasted.
The bridge between worlds had been built. It was made of coffee, trauma, and a very rusty pitchfork.