"Hey! You in there!?" Lyric's voice pierced what was left of the veil concealing reality's light from his eyes. They were in what looked like an alley, the boy able to see where they were standing in the road just moments before.

"The hell was that about..." Kyoya sat upright. A gradually fading headache seemed to have been left over, confirming to him that he wasn't merely imagining things. Color and tone slowly began to return to his surroundings, and allowed the boy's senses to finally cool down.

"You tell me! We were just having a normal conversation in the street, and then you fell to a kneel and clocked out!"

Her voice stammering for a few moments afterward, the Seraph soon managed to calm herself. Amidst shaking hands, the signs of panic appeared to be working themselves out. "Takera's sake... What even happened?"

Kyoya didn't have an answer for that.

"I got nothin'. I just know it hurt, a lot." He put pressure on his temple, not quite able to feel any pain, now. Whatever came about him had come and gone, thankfully. The deeper details -- those faces -- he chose to keep.

"Gracious... I've only known you a few hours, and here I thought you were gonna croak on me."

"Psh, nah. I've got a bit more mileage than that." Kyoya's offering of a thumbs-up appeared to do an alright job of calming her down. To him, the irony of this role reversal a spectacle in itself. "Speakin' of... We still on for that archive business?"

"If you can put one foot in front of the other, I'd like to."

She took a hard pause after that. "I've got something... New, on my mind."

That offbeat seriousness resumed flowing throughout her statement. He wasn't entirely sure how to feel about those changes in her tone quite yet, as for the greater majority of her company, she seemed almost carefree. And now, it was almost as though her whole personality had flipped.

"New, huh?"

"Don't think too hard -- I'm already doing enough of that. C'mon."

She led him further up the road, a right turn some hundred yards up presenting them with the destination Lyric seemed so fixated on.

It was a mystery to him, how he hadn't noticed such a striking difference in appearance until it was in his face. The Archive was fashioned completely differently than any of the surrounding buildings, cracked and darkened stone from generations long before his own still standing strong against the tests of time. Now, a massive solid-stone door was all that stood between the pair and whatever secrets they sought.

Though, patience was suddenly something that found itself lacking in Lyric's case. She didn't ease the door open, instead pushing it to give way with such force that they left sparks in tow -- all with only one hand, as hissing electricity fizzled out in the wake of her stride.

Kyoya couldn't pin down what it was that brought about this shift in tempo, the boy feeling the ever-so pleasant sensation of a knot welling up in his throat. But, this time, he felt... Excitement?

Raw, concentrated adrenaline coursed through him one heartbeat after another. His surroundings became increasingly vivid as they proceeded deeper through this mossbound labyrinth of limestone and literature, cobwebs of gargantuan proportions being swatted away with each progressive step.

"Something feel... Off?" Kyoya finally spoke up. At this point, he was no longer able to pin down his senses reliably enough to relax. Now, there was a faint, cerulean glow emanating from somewhere in front of them, it's origin mirroring every turn Lyric took. He'd never seen such a light before, as it simply existed. It didn't light anything up, nor did it provide warmth -- merely taking up space.

"Do you see it?"

A sharp glance over her shoulder prompted him to stop.

"Yeah."

"Then I was right to think we'd met before... Go figure, The Hope being the only one with any hope of pulling this show together." Lyric didn't follow that statement with so much as a breath, immediately returning to their traversal of the Archive.

Once they'd ascended a flight of stairs, leading into a much more well managed section of the building, that light revealed it's source.

An enormous mural stood before them. It was flat on the Northern wall, twenty feet tall and thirty wide. Several depictions rang increasingly glaring bells in his head.

One image in particular, though, struck him. Nine figures standing atop some sort of mountain, with jagged, blackened silhouettes ascending that same summit. Faces began assigning themselves to individual heads on the peak, but they seemed to scramble soon afterward, jumbling into a mess of lines and color.

"What am I looking at-...?" Kyoya's total inability to make sense of this began gnawing at him, but that thought wasn't nearly as intense as the return of that splitting pain reappearing in his head. Those scrambled faces erupted into swirling masses of nothingness that flew from the mural and enveloped his body, the boy sure that this time, whatever had been out to get him, would succeed.

Though, before he could be reduced to his knees, a face strikingly similar to Lyric's appeared on one of the figures... But, not quite her. Stormy grey armor laid atop a significantly taller form, hair much longer and visibly flowing with sparks and static. A weapon reminiscent of a polearm was in her hands, and with the roar of its thunder, all of everything bar the real world vanished completely.

She stood with a palm outstretched to the mural.

Then, a small, singular blue flame singed the art's material, until all that remained was a blank canvas... This memory -- it was his.

He was sure to greet his old friend before it disappeared.

The boy spoke with newfound closure, the last traces of indecision taking their leave. "I still don't know what just went down."

Even if he was mostly in the dark, there came about an unforeseen ease in this vision. Unlike every premonition he'd experienced before, these were almost uplifting in nature.

Both the re-emergence of that joyous azure ember, as well as whoever appeared briefly within the mural. All of it became so much clearer. Despite remaining shrouded in ambiguity, they rang their bells louder and more prominently than ever before.

If this girl, Lyric, in all her mysterious allure, could prove to be the only means of answering the innumerable questions that had rooted themselves into his psyche, it was then and there that Kyoya knew he'd have to make a decision.