Memo 21: (R1)Reporter’s avarice.

 “Rauvir.” “My name…” He spat it out like it was both a memory and a curse. “we're cut from the same cloth.. "I   Thought I could dig up truths and pull the roots out from beneath the King’s throne.”

His yellowed eyes, sharp but bloodshot, darted to Nagisa. “A body spliced and rewritten until even my own reflection was wretched.” He raised a paw, flexing the claws like they weren’t his. Nagisa stood firm, the Doctrine hugged to her chest, but her knuckles whitened. Rauvir leaned forward now, studying her as if she were a specimen under glass. “What makes you special, girl? I can’t see it.” His nose twitched, his voice dropped to something almost cruel. “You’re completely average. No—less than that. You don’t carry the bloodlines, the training, or the bearing of this world. Nothing remarkable at all.”

He tilted his head, his jagged teeth flashing in the lamplight. “The only thing that stands out is your appearance. You’re not from here. Is that what the King latched onto? Did he see something I don’t… or is he merely toying with you the same way he toyed with me?” For a heartbeat, the room was silent, only the drip of alchemical fluid from a cracked pipe. Rauvir’s stare burned with a bitter curiosity.

Nagisa blinked, her lips parting in disbelief as Rauvir’s tone shifted, his claws tapping against the table in a nervous rhythm. “Do you know what it’s like,” he said suddenly, voice rasping and too eager, “to be remade into this? To never again feel even the brush of a woman’s hand? No affection. No warmth. Nothing but whispers of what I used to be.” His words spilled out, frantic and desperate, like a dam breaking.

Nagisa’s face twisted.

 “Oh God… you’re a creep.”

Her voice rang sharp, cutting through his ramble, but he only leaned forward, ears twitching, pupils dilating. “You don’t understand,” Rauvir pressed, claws tightening on the desk’s edge until the wood splintered. “Not once—since this—has anyone looked at me without revulsion. Not once have I felt even a hint of…” “Affection?” 

Nagisa interrupted, recoiling, her shoulders tightening as if she could fold herself away from him. She winced hard, snapping her head aside. “You’re even more of a creep than I thought.” For a moment, the silence between them was suffocating. Rauvir’s heavy breath rattled in his throat. His stare darkened, not angry but hollow, like a man spiraling into the depths of his own confession.

Nagisa’s palms were damp, her gut coiled with unease. She couldn’t read Rauvir—not his twitching ears, nor the strange mania glinting in his beastly eyes. He swung between pitiful and dangerous with each breath. What in the world do I even do with him? she thought, her hand slipping into her bag. Her fingers closed around Camera’s cool frame. Slowly, she pulled the camera free, angling it low. Rauvir was still rambling about what had been taken from him, what he’d lost, his voice breaking into half-laughs and half-snarls.

Nagisa steadied her nerves. If his words won’t reveal him… maybe a picture will.

Rauvir’s ears twitched at the click, his eyes going wide with panic.

“What—what is that thing?!” he hissed, recoiling as if she’d drawn a blade instead of a camera. Nagisa, flustered, raised it anyway. She hadn’t meant to press the shutter, but the flash lit the room—catching not Rauvir, but the warped, dust-streaked mirror behind him.

The photo developed instantly, and her blood ran cold.

In the image, Rauvir was gone. Instead, the mirror had become a doorway—its glass swirling like black water. A pale hand clawed outward from the surface in the picture, frozen mid-emergence, as if some entity lived inside reflections themselves

A voice rang in her head:

“Reflection Capture unlocked:

Through mirrors and still waters, truth trapped in the hidden self may be drawn out.”

She staggered back, realization dawning. She took photos and with a question the photo would reveal any and all truths.

But this was different.

“Y-you witch…! What have you done?!

The instant his eyes met the print, his body convulsed. A guttural snarl tore out of his throat, and his pupils shrank to slits. Nagisa, drawn in despite herself, leaned over his shoulder—then she saw it too.

Her breath hitched.

The picture wasn’t of the dusty room. It wasn’t even of the mirror. It was inside Rauvir’s mind. His body chained, his hands still human then—squirming as iron pierced his flesh. The King of Veylstra loomed above, his jeweled crown glinting in firelight, his grin stretching too wide, fangs flashing. Like a tyrant drunk on destruction, he raised a gloved hand, and Rauvir’s form twisted, bones snapping, hair bursting across his arms. The image pulsed with his screams, the King laughing like a god reducing worlds to ash.

The photo still twitched on the floor, the image alive, threatening to pull her back into it if she dared another glance. The photograph lay face-down on the stone, still humming faintly, like it wanted to be seen again. The Preceptor lay slumped against the wall, lips foaming, eyes rolled white—crushed beneath the weight of the image. Only Nagisa and Rauvir still drew breath steady enough to stand.

“This… this avarice of yours—this hunger for truths no one asked for—it will consume you faster than the King ever could. Even with whatever strange power you carry… this is your last chance, reporter. Walk away. Live normally. Pretend none of this was ever yours to touch.” She could feel it in her bones—the story clawing at her, daring her to look away and live blind like everyone else. And yet Rauvir’s words lingered, echoing like a prophecy.

Last chance.

Nagisa steadied herself, clutching Camera close, her voice raw but unshaken.

“Reporters aren’t meant to live easy. We wade through muck, crawl through dirt, and walk straight into hell—not because we want to, but because someone has to. If we don’t drag the truth back out for the world to see, then the lies win. And I’d rather burn chasing it than live blind and clean.”

Nagisa smiling with confidence and conviction. Thinking of the other two. 

"Besides, I got a cool bodyguard and friend by my side this time.

I'm not alone!