"That sounds like him," Ludwig said. "Dying and still finding a way to become flammable."

Lorina smiled.

The inner elevator finally reached the upper sanctum.

The leaf opened onto the place where the pond of longevity rested.

Ludwig remembered the chamber well. The great roots. The sacred stillness. The pool whose water shimmered with dense life. The old horror of seeing Lorina’s mother bound by the tree, petrified and sustained at the same time, fed by the World Tree and feeding it back in an endless exchange born from Envy’s theft.

But the roots that had once coiled and wrapped around Lorina’s mother were gone.

In their place, a woman sat on a chair beside the pond.

She was an elf.

That much was obvious.

Yet she was different from every elf Ludwig had seen.

She looked old.

That alone was a statement. Elves did not age the way humans did. Most died still wearing the faces of youth, their long lives hidden beneath smooth skin and ageless eyes. An old elf was something close to impossible, a contradiction made visible.

Her face was cracked like porcelain with fine fractures running across cheeks and brow. Her hair was gray, not silver in the elegant way of courtly description, but truly gray, thin in places and carefully brushed. Her hands rested in her lap, long-fingered and fragile. Yet her posture remained dignified, and a calm smile sat on her face as if she had already accepted every cruel joke time had played on her.

Lorina approached carefully.

"Mother."

The word carried all the fear she tried to hide. She moved as if a careless embrace might break the woman in the chair, stopping near her rather than rushing into her arms.

The old elf looked past her daughter and toward Ludwig.

"So," she said, voice soft but clear, "this is the young one who took down Envy."

Ludwig studied her.

"I thought the effects of what she took would be canceled," he said. "How are you still looking like this?"

Lorina stiffened, likely because most people did not question half-recovered queens with the tact of a brick.

But the old elf only smiled.

"This is much better than when I was petrified, young man."

Ludwig’s eyes shone.

[Inspect]

[Elven Queen Miraless]

[Level ???]

[Race: High Elf]

[Status Effects: Time Lost]

[Status Effects: Excessive Life]

[Status Effects: Pseudo Immortal]

[Lore: A long-lived elf that ruled over the domain of elves. Currently, her time and body are mismatched due to Envy borrowing away her longevity. Now that Envy has died, her body is unable to sync with its time.]

"Huh," Ludwig said. "Time and body are unsynchronized."

Miraless’s eyes narrowed with interest. "Was that the ability you used just now?"

"Ah," Ludwig said. "I keep forgetting powerful entities can sense it. Yes. It tells me what’s wrong with you."

"Powerful indeed."

"Yes, my time is lost," Miraless said. "I grew weak. A cruel thing for an elf. We usually grow stronger the older we get."

"Any way to fix that?" Ludwig asked. "Besides drinking half the pond."

Miraless looked toward Lorina.

"That was not something I wanted. I was basically drowned there."

Lorina lowered her gaze. "Mother..."

"I do not blame you," Miraless said gently. "But I remember water in my lungs even when I had no breath to drown with."

Ludwig looked again at the statuses.

"Sorry to tell you," he said, "but you have Excessive Life."

Lorina frowned. "What is Excessive Life?"

The air at Ludwig’s side folded open before he could answer.

Kaiser stepped out.

Both Lorina and Miraless reacted instantly.

Lorina’s hand moved toward magic. The guards behind them drew weapons halfway. Miraless’s calm shattered for the first time, her eyes widening with old fury and recognition sharp enough to cut through age.

"Calm down," Kaiser said, raising both hands. "I’m not here to steal anything."

"You wretch," Miraless hissed, suddenly sounding much less fragile. "You already took a tree branch. What more do you want?"

Kaiser looked up at the vast inner canopy of the World Tree, then back at her. "Grandma, you have a whole damn tree. Why are you crying over a branch?"

The guards looked horrified.

Lorina looked as if her soul briefly left her body.

Ludwig sighed. "Kaiser, why are you out?"

"To fix this," Kaiser said. "Least I could do."

That made the chamber still again.

Kaiser glanced upward, toward the pulsing light of the World Tree. "Don’t worry. I won’t harm your girlfriend."

"Wife," Miraless said immediately.

Ludwig froze.

Lorina froze differently.

The guards froze hardest of all.

Ludwig turned slowly toward Lorina with an awkward look. Now that Miraless had returned, Lorina was no longer the reigning queen in the way she had been when they last met. Princess, perhaps. Regent, maybe. Royalty either way. But that was not the issue his brain chose to focus on.

"What are they saying?"

Lorina covered part of her face with one hand. "The World Tree is basically my father."

Ludwig stared at her.

Then at the World Tree.

Then at Kaiser.

"Ah," he said. "I guess... I see. Maybe?"

"You do not," Lorina said.

"No, I do not."

"Don’t mind the nuance," Kaiser said, clearly enjoying himself. Then he pointed at Miraless with one red finger and traced the air up and down. "Anyway, you want help? I can fix that."

Miraless’s eyes sharpened. "You? With what magic? Not even the pond could help."

"That is because you fail to understand that the pond is the reason you are like this."

The chamber went cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.

Lorina looked at Kaiser. "Explain."

Kaiser gave her a lazy glance. "You used the pond to keep her alive while time was stolen from her. Understandable. Desperate. Very touching. Unfortunately, life does not fix stolen time. It just keeps pouring more life into a vessel whose clock has been ripped apart. So now that Envy is dead and the theft ended, the pond’s gift remains tangled in her body. Too much life, not enough proper time to hold it correctly."

Miraless stared at him.

For all her anger, she did not dismiss the words.

Ludwig looked back at the status.

Excessive Life.

Pseudo Immortal.

Time Lost.

"Basically," Ludwig said, "the pond saved you, but also made the mismatch worse."

Kaiser snapped his fingers. "Look at him. Thinking. Growth is beautiful."

"I will shove you back into the book."

"You say that like I don’t live there."

Miraless leaned back slightly in her chair. "And you believe you can repair what the World Tree and the pond could not."

"No," Kaiser said. "I believe I can undo what should not be there. Different thing."

Lorina’s voice lowered. "Will it harm her?"

"Probably."

Her expression darkened.

Kaiser rolled his eyes. "Not like that. Removing bad support from a broken structure makes the structure complain. But it is either that, or she stays mismatched until her body forgets how to be a body entirely."

Miraless closed her eyes.

For a few seconds, only the pond moved, its surface trembling faintly beneath the breathing light of the World Tree.

Then the Elven Queen opened her eyes again.

"What would you do?"

Kaiser’s smile thinned.

"For once," he said, "something useful."

He stepped closer, then stopped when several guards raised their weapons fully.

Ludwig looked at them. "If he wanted to steal another branch, you would already be screaming."

"That is not comforting," one guard muttered.

"It wasn’t meant to be."

Kaiser ignored them and held his hand toward Miraless. Red light gathered faintly over his fingers, nothing Dark like what he is used to but something smaller, sharper, almost surgical. A thief’s hand learning restraint, which was somehow more worrying than theft.

"So," Kaiser said, looking at the old queen, "you want my help or not?"