Chapter : 1123

After Martha had been led away, Lloyd approached the trembling figure in the corner. He didn't loom over her. He crouched down, bringing himself to her level, a gesture not of a lord to a servant, but of a craftsman to a rare, precious, and dangerously unstable material.

"Jasmin," he said softly.

Her head snapped up, her eyes filled with a wild, desperate fear. "My lord," she whispered, her voice cracking. "I… I don't know what happened. I… I hurt him. I think I broke something inside myself."

"You didn't break," Lloyd corrected, his voice a quiet, unshakeable certainty. "You awakened. There's a difference."

He explained it to her not in terms of spirits and magic, but in a language he knew her practical, loyal heart would understand. He used the metaphor of a hidden inheritance. "Imagine your family, long ago, buried a treasure. A sword of immense power. They left it for their descendants, but over the years, the map was lost, and the treasure was forgotten. But it was always there, sleeping beneath the ground. Today, you didn't just stumble upon it. The danger to your friend, the memory of Pia… it was like an earthquake. It shook the ground so hard that the treasure chest was thrown to the surface, and it burst open."

He looked into her terrified eyes, his gaze intense. "The power you feel, the speed, the strength… that is your inheritance, Jasmin. It has always been a part of you. But it is a raw, untamed thing. It is a sword without a master. And a sword without a master is as dangerous to the wielder as it is to their enemies. It needs to be understood. It needs to be controlled. It needs to be forged."

He stood up and offered her a hand. "I can teach you. I can help you become its master. But not here. Not in this world, where time is our enemy."

Jasmin stared at his outstretched hand, her fear warring with the first, fragile flicker of hope. She took it. His grip was warm and steady.

"Close your eyes," he commanded gently.

She obeyed. The moment her eyelids closed, the world dissolved. It was not a gentle fading, but a violent, instantaneous erasure of reality. She felt a sensation of falling and rising at the same time, a dizzying, weightless plunge through a void of absolute nothingness. The solid floor beneath her was gone. The air in her lungs was gone. Her very sense of self seemed to unravel. It was the most terrifying experience of her life.

And then, just as suddenly, it stopped.

She felt solid ground beneath her feet again. The air was still, sterile, and silent.

"You can open them now," Lloyd's voice said, impossibly calm in the dead silence.

She did. And she screamed.

The scream was a raw, primal thing, ripped from the depths of her soul. It was a sound of pure, undiluted, existential terror. But in the place where she now stood, the scream had no Doppelganger. It simply left her lips and was swallowed by an infinite, featureless, and absolute silence.

She was standing in a universe of pure, unblemished white.

There was no sky, no horizon, no walls, no ceiling. The floor was a smooth, seamless expanse of the same luminous white, stretching into an endless, featureless eternity in all directions. There was no sun, yet the space was filled with a soft, even, shadowless light that seemed to emanate from the very substance of the void itself. There was no temperature, no breeze, no scent. It was a perfect, sterile, and profoundly unnerving vacuum of sensory input.

It was the color of a blank page. The silence of a tomb. The emptiness of a forgotten dream. It was nowhere.

Jasmin stumbled back, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her mind, already reeling from the traumatic awakening of her power, was now being assaulted by a place that defied all logic, a place that should not, could not, exist.

"Where are we?" she whispered, the sound small and pathetic in the vast emptiness. "Is this… is this the afterlife?"

Lloyd, standing a few feet away, a solitary, solid figure in the endless white, let out a soft chuckle. "No, Jasmin. Not the afterlife. Something… other."

He walked towards her, his footsteps making no sound on the pristine white floor. He seemed completely at ease, as if this impossible place were his own private study.

Chapter : 1124

"This," he said, making a grand, sweeping gesture at the infinite nothingness, "is my storeroom. A private space, a pocket dimension, that exists outside of the normal world. A place where the rules are a little… different."

To demonstrate, he raised his hand. From thin air, a simple, elegant teacup of his own design materialized, a solid, tangible object in the ethereal void. He held it for a moment, then willed it to disappear. It vanished without a sound.

Jasmin could only stare, her mind struggling to process the casual, god-like display of creation and un-creation.

"But the most important rule here," Lloyd continued, his voice taking on a new, serious tone, "is the rule of time."

He pointed a finger at a spot in the empty air. A shimmering, holographic clock face appeared, its hands sweeping around its dial at a dizzying speed.

"Out there," he said, gesturing vaguely to the world they had left behind, "one hour will pass. In here…" He pointed to the clock, which had already completed four full rotations. "In here, four hours will pass. Time flows differently. For every one day that passes in the real world, we will have four days in here."

The implication of his words slowly, impossibly, began to dawn on her. The fear in her eyes was slowly replaced by a dawning, disbelieving awe. It wasn't just a storeroom. It was a cheat code. A place where time itself could be bent.

"This is your new home, Jasmin," Lloyd declared, his voice resonating with a new, profound authority. "This is your classroom. Your forge. Your crucible. Out there, we are pressed for time. We have enemies, deadlines, and a world that does not wait. But in here… in here, we have all the time we need."

He walked towards her until he was standing directly in front of her, his gaze intense and unyielding.

"The power that awakened within you," he said, his voice dropping to a low, serious murmur. "The speed that stops the world. The spirit that turns your hands to diamond. You called her the 'Diamond Queen,' did you not? A fitting name. But a queen is not born. A queen is made. She is forged in pressure and fire. She is cut and polished until every flaw is gone, and all that remains is a brilliant, unbreakable, and absolutely perfect gem."

He looked at her, and for the first time, she saw not a kind master or a brilliant lord, but a master craftsman looking at a raw, precious, and unformed stone. He was seeing not who she was, but who she could become.

"I am going to train you," he stated, the words not an offer, but a declaration of intent. "I am going to push you harder than you have ever been pushed. I am going to break you down and rebuild you, piece by piece. You will learn to control your speed, to summon your power at will, to fight, to endure, to conquer the fear that is currently mastering you. You will leave the timid handmaiden behind in the old world. In here, you will be reforged. You will become the warrior you were always meant to be. You will become the Diamond Queen."

He was giving her a new name, a new identity, a new purpose. He was offering her a path out of the terrified, helpless victimhood that had defined her life. The path was terrifying. The training would be grueling, an agony she could barely imagine. But it was a path. It was a choice. It was hope.

Tears welled in Jasmin’s eyes. But for the first time since Pia’s death, they were not tears of grief or fear. They were tears of a profound, overwhelming, and liberating gratitude.

"What… what is the first lesson?" she asked, her voice trembling but resolute.

Lloyd’s grim expression softened into a small, approving smile. He pointed to her right hand.

"The first lesson is simple," he said. "Summon it. Right now. Not by accident, not out of terror. Summon it with your will. Turn your hand into a diamond, and hold it for ten seconds."

Jasmin looked at her hand, at the simple, pale, trembling flesh. The task seemed impossible. But as she looked up into the steady, unyielding gaze of her master, her teacher, she took a deep breath. She closed her eyes. And for the first time, instead of running from the power within, she reached for it.

The first, tiny, beautiful, and impossibly bright flicker of crystalline light appeared on the tip of her finger. The forging of the Diamond Queen had begun.