When his consciousness returned, he was paralyzed.

  No—paralyzed wasn't quite the right word for this peculiar predicament. His body felt bound, constrained by something both present and ethereal. A thought drifted through his mind.

  He'd never experienced anything quite so strange before, though "strange" felt woefully inadequate to describe the sensation. In the technologically advanced Tachyon Empire, tales of demons causing sleep paralysis should have been dismissed as superstitious remnants of the Ancient Age. Yet the Empire's doctrine held firm—it was through the Lord and His divine grace that Thaumaturgy manifested in their world. Thus, stories of angels and demons still permeated their culture, from silver screen productions to children's bedtime stories.

  But this was no aftermath of a nightmare, no matter how desperately he wished it to be. Darkness veiled his sight completely akin to an impenetrable curtain drawn across his vision. Each attempt to move his legs was met with resistance. His arms remained similarly immobile, refusing every command his panicked mind issued. Sharp, metallic sounds echoed through the empty room with each attempted movement, a discordant symphony of… chains?

  "He's awake. Release the restraint." a voice cut through his frantic thoughts, gruff and weathered like aged steel. It carried the unmistakable tone of a career serviceman.

  "Yes, sir. [Inversio].”

  “Wha—”

  It stung; it felt like hot sauce splashed on his face, right through his eyes even when they were closed. But it was for a fleeting moment, then it returned.

  Light flooded back, initially blinding in its intensity. The chains that had held his vision hostage shattered with that single command, reality bleeding back into focus. Through the haze, shapes gradually coalesced—two men standing before his restrained form with broad figures stark against the room's oppressive whiteness. What a room it was—painfully, artificially white, with tiles stacked in endless rows and columns, creating what humans would generously call a "room." But that word felt wrong, almost offensive in its inadequacy. Normal rooms held warmth, suggesting habitability.

  This space was a prison, a sterile cage designed to break monsters.

  "Don't tell me you're spacing out already. It's only been your first few hours inside of the White Room." The utterance came from a middle-aged man whose face bore a jagged scar and tone dripping with contempt.

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  "W-White...Room?" Acacia slowly repeated, as if the words themselves tasted appalling.

  "Yes." The scarred man grunted. "This is Ocarina’s Investigation Department. Within this sector lies the White Room: an interrogation device used to expunge the filthiest truths from criminals."

  “Yes sir, I know that—”

  “As anyone who has passed primary school should,” the man added.

  "But I don't get why I'm here, though. All I remember doing last night was walking home from the public library, and now I'm chained up." Acacia struggled to piece together yesterday's events, but nothing explained his presence in a interrogation room. "If I did something wrong, like jaywalking—" he had to suppress a nervous laugh at the absurdity of being interrogated for crossing the street "—I'm sorry if I ever did that. But I doubt that's why I'm here. You guys can't possibly be that crazy, so could you explain, buddies?"

  "..."

  Acacia looked up.

  Then down.

  Needles.

  They came without warning—prickly, barbed, a million of them skewering his body. He wanted to scream, but a thousand more lodged in his mouth, stealing his voice. The urge to cry overwhelmed him, but another ten thousand needles forced his eyes open like cruel chopsticks, denying even that small mercy. Unable to cry, unable to scream... he could only lower his head as the crushing weight bore down. A single needle might weigh little more than a feather, but a thousand—a million—could easily crush a human soul.

  Yet the needles didn’t exist. At least, not physically. They were all products of Acacia’s mind. The men imposed the feeling of needles into Acacia’s imagination through sheer thaumaturgical energy—prana.

  Paralyzed, his bloodshot eyes shot wide open, just like a corpse.

  "Silence, ." The command froze Acacia's thoughts mid-stream. "You misunderstand your place."

  His tone was steel. His prana saturated the air, suffocating and appalling, the phantom needles manifesting his pure malice. At that moment, the "Irregular" truly understood his position. In this world of Thaumaturgy, where life's path was predetermined at birth, he possessed no right to speak. He was cattle. Their uniforms marked them clearly—Imperial Police Association. Of course they'd look down on an invalid who couldn’t practice Thaumaturgy like him. What had he even hoped to achieve with all his talking? Friendship with police officers?

  "Don’t play coy with me. You should know exactly why you're in the White Room." The scarred man dropped to a dangerous whisper. "I have to wonder, why did you do it? Did you not accept your place in the world? Was the heir truly caught off guard by a lowlife? Maybe you hired someone to assassinate him—though with what a student can afford, you'd need years to plan what a Thaumaturge could accomplish in seconds."

  Acacia couldn't speak. The option simply didn't exist. If he'd been a Thaumaturge, he might have fought back against the oppressive prana by releasing his own. But he wasn't. He was an Irregular—defenseless against even the simplest Thaumaturgy.

  "Look at yourself." The scarred man seized Acacia's curly black hair, ripping several strands loose. "You can't scream. Can't yell. Can't even whisper. It’s pathetic to think someone like you shares space with top-class criminals. At least they maintained their honor, never once pretending ignorance." He yanked harder, dragging Acacia's head forward until barely inches separated them.

  The boy’s throat had turned to desert sand, blocking any sound he might have made. It wasn't the officer's threats that paralyzed him, nor even the phantom needles piercing his flesh. These torments… he'd grown accustomed to such things.

  The fact that he seriously did not know what the officer was talking about frightened him.

  "C-C-Crime? I didn't even do anything! Hitman? Heir? Assassination? Seriously, what are you two even talking about?!"

  "Ha! You still don't know?" A ghastly smile split the man's face, his scar twisting into something grotesque. "Oh my days, you actually managed to block out your memories from yesterday. Though I suppose after what happened, anyone normal would, right? Irregular?"

  He savored the word like poison honey.

  "Allow me to indulge you."

  Acacia had always possessed a shoddy memory, but it would be impossible to forget that man’s face.

  His eyes, his gaping mouth, his vicious and crooked teeth, and that scar…he remembered that the world was truly cursed.

  “Yesterday, May 31st, Giovanni Copernicus Narma was murdered. You are the prime suspect."