Chapter 40
A Weighing
The night air was sharp, and each breath filled Mags’ lungs with a biting chill as she pushed herself through the final stretch of her route. She ducked under the sprawling branches, let her steps lighten over gravel, and poured more aura into her [Void Cloak], cloaking herself in near-perfect shroud of silvery aura. It clung close, swirling at the edges of her form, a seamless shroud that turned her into a living shadow. She could keep it up a bit longer, she knew, if she just pushed herself a little harder. The aura wavered as fatigue began to creep in, but Mags ground her teeth, willing herself forward.
Over the past several weeks she had added an additional run to her routine each evening. Before bed, she would run a route through the outside of Bijel Garden’s grounds (careful to avoid entering the sacred grounds that were off-limits), activating [Void Cloak] and maintaining it for as long as she could during the run. It would force her to constantly channel a steady amount of aether, generating aura and expending it for [Void Cloak] but also occasionally fueling her body. At first, especially during the tail-end of her runs, she would accidentally lose her [Void Cloak] when she pulled on aether to suppress the screaming pain in her muscles. Now, she was able to keep up with both for the entire run. It was a testament to Malacoda’s training regiment and the hard work she put in outside of their training sessions.
Bijel Garden at night was peaceful, a contrast to the pounding of her heart. While out on her evening runs, she had grown an appreciation for how quiet everything grew. It was like the world had been swallowed by darkness and the sounds of the sea. It sort of reminded Mags of Solstice, and the quiet she would find in the countryside.
But then, through the shadowy tapestry of moonlight and swaying branches, a movement caught her eye. A man was approaching the Temple’s grounds, his silhouette crisp and foreign against the familiar shapes of Bijel Garden. Mags canceled [Void Cloak], abruptly cutting off the shroud of aura, and flattened herself behind a large stone pillar, her pulse roaring in her ears. Visitors during their time as the Shrine Maiden’s guest weren’t unheard of, but late arrivals to a remote sanctuary like Bijel Garden were rare, and this man looked out of place.
He walked with a measured, almost predatory grace, his slender frame draped in a close-fitted, sharply tailored suit that seemed out of place amidst the temple ground’s worn stone and winding paths. His face was angular, eyes gleaming under ashen hair combed precisely to his scalp. Mags watched him through a crack between stone columns, noting the way his thin lips curved into a razor-thin smile. With a click, he opened a small silver case and lifted a cigarette to his mouth, the flare of a lighter illuminating his face in flickering orange. Smoke curled from his lips as he took a slow, deliberate drag.
A voice came from the shadows nearby, rich and unmistakable. “Basil Trompst,” it drawled. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Mags’ stomach clenched. Captain Frey Sarto. Her voice was calm, almost amused, as she stepped into the moonlight, a figure of stark authority in her own well-tailored buttoned shirt, black pants. Her golden eyes, glowing in the darkness with their hypnotizing, concentric circles, were fixed on the stranger, this Basil Trompst.
The stranger took another drag, exhaling a smooth plume before replying. “I’m here to see the Shadow, the Shrine Maiden,” he said, his voice precise, clipped. “Official business of the Explorers Guild, on behalf of Izmir Kresla himself.” The man’s voice carried the clear pronunciation and rhythmic flow of the Broceli tongue.
At the sound of that name, Mags’ world tilted. Her stomach clenched in tight, painful knots. Kresla. She hadn’t heard that name in what felt like a lifetime, yet the sound of it carried an almost physical presence, threatening to dredge up the memories she’d tried to bury.
She took in a shaky breath, clinging to the stone at her back as if it could steady the tremor in her limbs. Her mind spun with memories—but only for a moment, like a flash of steel in the moonlight. She blinked, grounding herself, but her legs felt like they’d been cemented to the earth. She pushed away the uncomfortable memories, and focused on Sarto’s voice.
“Strange hours to be visiting a Shrine,” Sarto murmured, circling around the man with deliberate, catlike steps.
“The Guild has . . . pressing matters,” Trompst said, his eyes still and unblinking. “And I’m sure you know, Captain, how persistent our benefactor can be.”
The two stood silent for a moment, smoke drifting between them. Mags clenched her fists, breathing as quietly as she could, but she could feel her heart pounding. She should leave, slip away while Sarto’s attention was on the stranger—but she couldn’t. Instead, she stayed hidden, mind racing, waiting to see what would come next.
The night seemed to sharpen, the shadows pulling in closer as the exchange between Sarto and Mr. Trompst deepened in tone. Mags leaned in, barely daring to breathe as the tension between the two men swelled, stretching tight across the cold night air.
“Tell me, then,” Sarto pressed, each word edged with a careful, simmering curiosity. “What exactly is the nature of your business here? I would be lying if I said I wasn’t curious about your master’s . . . interests these days.”
A spark of amusement flickered across Mr. Trompst’s face. “Master? I have no master, Sarto.” He let the words hang, slow and deliberate, smoke spilling softly from his lips. “Nor do you. And yet here we both are—different roads, same destination. A goal that serves us both.”
Sarto’s expression turned to granite, unreadable. She tilted her head, her voice quiet, dangerous. “Do we now?”
Trompst’s lips curved again, that slash of a smile faint but deliberate. “Reunion. Restoring the perfect unity of Ein Sof.”
The words dropped like stones, and for the first time, Mags caught a flicker of something on Sarto’s face. Not shock, but something subtler—a serious, grim recognition that drained the faint smile from her lips. She took a step forward, voice barely more than a whisper, “And what do you and the Explorers Guild know of Ein Sof?”
The words hung there in the cold night, mingling with the smoke from Trompst’s cigarette. Mags’ mind scrambled to make sense of it, but the words were meaningless to her. Trompst’s reaction, however, hinted at weight behind them. He inclined his head just slightly, as if offering a silent acknowledgment. Then, he glanced down at his wrist, the gleam of a watch face caught the moonlight. “Die gute! Would you look at the time? As riveting as this conversation offers to be, Madame Sarto, I really must see the Shrine Maiden.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Finally, Sarto straightened, smoothing the unreadable mask over her face once more. “You’ll have what you came for,” she said. “I’ll show you to Lady Celestine.”
Trompst took a final drag of his cigarette, the ember glowing fierce before he tossed it to the ground. He ground it into the stone with a quick twist of his heel, leaving nothing but a faint smear of ash.
As Sarto led him through the garden’s shadowed paths, their voices faded into the quiet. Only when Mags could no longer hear them did she let herself breathe out. She slinked back further into the shadows, the mysterious words echoing in her mind. Reunion, unity, Ein Sof—she had no idea what it meant, but her instincts told her it mattered. If the Explorers Guild was directly involved, it was also likely something Mags wanted no part of. The entire situation wreaked of politics and danger, ever increasing layers to whatever game Frey Sarto was playing.
image [https://i.imgur.com/7P7JEZo.png]
Mags crept into her room, the door clicking quietly shut behind her. She took a moment to listen to the silence, letting the exhaustion of the day sink in as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. Calcabrina’s slow, even breaths rose and fell from the small bed across the room, her silhouette barely visible beneath the coverlet. The room felt heavy, and Mags couldn’t shake the strange chill she’d felt ever since overhearing that conversation between Sarto and Mr. Trompst, the odd and foreign words looping in her head like echoes from a forgotten past: Reunion. Unity. Ein Sof.
She moved through her nightly routine as quickly as she could, every step feeling almost surreal, her hands working on the ties and buckles of her training clothes with automatic efficiency. Exhaustion weighed on her shoulders, yet her mind wouldn’t settle, thoughts flickering and sparking like embers. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d overheard something of enormous consequence. Something Sarto wouldn’t be pleased with her hearing. She slipped beneath the thin covers, lying flat on her back and staring at the ceiling, trying to empty her mind as Sarto had taught her.
Gradually, as her eyelids grew heavy, the day’s anxieties gave way to darkness.
image [https://i.imgur.com/7P7JEZo.png]
The air was cold, damp, and felt ancient, each breath scraping against her lungs. Mags blinked, disoriented, glancing around the familiar stone corridors that seemed to twist and coil into shadow. The walls stretched in strange angles, distorted in the way that bent her perception. Yet she knew this place, recognized its silence, the heaviness that wrapped around her like a shroud. She walked down the corridor, her footsteps echoing in the emptiness, every step seeming to pull her further into some unknown depth.
Eventually, she approached a familiar doorway appearing at the end of the long hallway, the sight sending an icy thrill of dread through her bones. An emerald green door, the border etched with runes in silver ink. As she pressed forward, the shadows of the corridor creeped inward, eventually swallowing the green door and obscuring it. When Mags finally reached the end of the hall, the door had vanished, swallowed by the stone and replaced by an open doorway built into the stone itself.
She recognized the chamber beyond it, though stepping into it felt as though she were trespassing into something forbidden. The room was vast, an endless space opening before her. The ceiling was lost above—only darkness and a strange false moonlight that cast a single beam down onto the center of the room, where her eyes were drawn to the three-tiered altar. It rose like a monument in the dark, illuminated by the cold, silver light pouring from a source far above her. She approached slowly, her steps cautious, her heart beginning to beat faster as she reached the foot of the altar.
Her gaze went immediately to the pedestal, where she half-expected to see the strange, shimmering egg she’d glimpsed there once before. But instead, something else waited on the altar.
A stone bowl.
It sat there, simple and unassuming, yet it seemed to pulse with an energy that made her blood run cold. She couldn’t help herself; she stepped closer, until she was leaning over it, peering inside.
The bowl wasn’t empty.
Within it, a strange substance rippled and writhed, like an inky blackness brought to life. Dark threads twisted and tangled, thousands of lines crossing over one another in a chaotic dance, as though someone had scribbled ink onto a page and then set it moving. The sight was mesmerizing and terrifying all at once, a living darkness that defied reason. She could almost feel it pulling at her, as though it sensed her presence.
Then, suddenly, two white eyes blinked open within the mass of shadows, staring up at her.
A voice—small, young, and scratchy, like a boy’s—echoed softly from the inky pool. The sound was weak, almost like it was trying to remember how to speak after a long silence. “Where . . . where are we?”
Mags opened her mouth, her throat dry. “In the Deep,” she answered automatically, though the words felt wrong as they left her lips. The knowledge hung somewhere in the back of her mind, distant but certain, that the answer wasn’t right. Her brow furrowed. She tried again. “No . . . I don’t know.”
The eyes in the darkness watched her with a weighty stillness, silent and observing, as though studying her answer.
“Who are you?” the voice asked, quiet and yet somehow heavy with meaning.
“I’m Mags,” she said, her voice feeling small in the vastness of the chamber. The name felt strange in her mouth. She didn’t know what else to say, and the question hung in the air between them, feeding the tension of the silence.
The eyes blinked, slow and deliberate. The shadows shifted, pooling upward in the bowl until something started to take shape. “I am . . . Enoch,” it said, as though tasting the name for the first time. “I . . . don’t remember anything. I was sleeping. Sleeping for . . . a long time.” Enoch’s gaze flickered around the room, a distant, unfocused look passing over the black mass that she understood to be its face. “I came here for a reason . . . but I don’t remember what.”
The mass in the bowl surged, and as she watched, dark tendrils began to twist and shape themselves into something almost human. Two hands stretched out from the inky pool, thin fingers curling over the edge of the pedestal. Mags took a step back, her heart pounding as the liquid shadow rose higher, the inky substance coalescing into the figure of a child. A strange, shadowy silhouette, all inky darkness and slender limbs, like the vague shape of a young boy, but with features that seemed half-formed, caught in the strange interplay of light and shadow.
Wings unfolded from the figure’s back, black as pitch, and a tail flicked behind him, serpentine and unsettling, ending in a small, hooked tip. The figure shifted, lifting its head to look at her, those blank white eyes studying her with a depth that chilled her.
“Wait,” she managed to whisper, her voice catching as she took another shaky step back. Her foot slipped, and suddenly she was tumbling backward, down the altar’s stairs. She landed hard on the cold stone floor at the base, her breath knocked from her lungs, her mind spinning as she struggled to gather herself.
When she looked up, the dark figure loomed over her, standing on the pedestal. Its eyes fixed on her, and its shadowed tail flicked softly in the air, a motion that reminded her uncomfortably of a predator’s idle patience. She tried to scramble back, but before she could so much as move, the figure dropped from the pedestal, descending upon her with unnatural grace.
“The Watchers,” it breathed, as though coming to a realization.
It lunged, its eyes locking onto hers with a terrifying hunger.
image [https://i.imgur.com/7P7JEZo.png]
Mags woke with a start, gasping for air as her heart hammered in her chest. She was back in her bed, the dim light of early dawn just beginning to creep through the window. Her blankets were twisted around her legs, her sheets damp with sweat. She sat up, disoriented, the remnants of the dream clinging to her like cobwebs. The fear ebbed slowly, giving way to a strange feeling of emptiness as the details of the nightmare began to blur and fade from her memory.
Then she noticed the soft, silvery glow hovering just above her face.
She blinked, realizing the light was forming words, delicate and shining, each letter hovering in the air like a message from some other realm. She squinted, the letters coalescing into a simple phrase that made her breath hitch.
[USER LEVEL INCREASED]
[Level E-2 increased to Level E-3]