"It's not just you, but Miss Annan, Mr. Pankey, Mr. Perskin, and Mr. Harvey as well. All of you must leave the Gospel Kingdom."

Having just experienced mental expulsion, Ashe never expected to also face physical banishment from the kingdom itself. "Why?"

"Because I can only protect you for another eighty-eight minutes. Once Dine fully consumes me, I will no longer be able to uphold my promise to Lys and continue taking care of you. In fact, I may even become a threat to you.

"When I say I may become a threat, I do not mean direct forms of harm such as being wanted, hunted down, or persecuted. I mean using the environment to slowly wear you down."

Lysdia paused, looking past him into the distance. "I may not yet be the true Dine, but I can already vaguely sense how she would arrange your futures. Mr. Perskin would successfully establish a small intelligence organization. But once his influence expanded to the scale of a city, his growth would stagnate. He would spend the rest of his life dealing with the organization's internal struggles.

"Mr. Harvey would discover an ancient underground battlefield from the era of the Elven Dynasty. However, a landslide would block the way back, forcing him to spend the rest of his life researching inside that ancient tomb. Miss Annan would have a...