Elrhain walked down the cavern holding Agwyn’s hand. The floor was slippery, with teal moss growing on every surface. Water ran in streams in the cracks, helping the moss extend its reach into the walkway.

Earlier, they had rejected Cyra when she offered to carry them like always. Agwyn wanted to move their bodies, and Elrhain wouldn’t say no. Cyra sulked to no effect.

The other cousins were busy chitchatting about this and that. About the attacks yesterday. How the clan was on its tiptoes, even low-born servants working their tasks with tight eyebrows. There was a muffled sense of excitement, the sort that Elrhain didn’t want yet seemed to prevail in society here.

Cadfael and Vesiphis glanced their way from time to time. No doubt to ask them their experience. Being victims and all.

The two were not in the mood. They had wanted to make a few to-do lists today, but the mean Cyra plucked them from their bed first thing in the morning and skipped into the Elder’s rest where their entourage waited. This definitely wasn’t the reason Agwyn didn’t let her carry them.

To no one’s surprise, today was going to be another long day of safety precautions. Part of Elrhain felt reassured, and part of him annoyed. The shamans had auguries to do and divinations to perform; this took up all the free time they had before their daily cultivation.

Along the way, they met up with their teacher shaman Tudor and a lanky chocolate skinned woman wearing every manner of bone and stone jewellery imaginable.

Her beast-skin robe was gaudy and ember gaze haughty; naeman witch Alorakana glared at Cyra like she had stolen her biscuit.

“This isn’t what we agreed.”

“Ten oceanic grade herbs and one high oceanic core.” Cyra huffed, annoyed as Agwyn looked away from her.

“Well I can’t refuse now, can I?”

The witch grinned. She looked down at the two toddling scions, saying, “Princess, it seems like we’ll be needing more of your beautiful azure hair. What a shame it is.”

Agwyn’s stumpy legs could not reach her even though she jumped for a drop-kick. Cyra caught the yelling little girl before she could crash into the ground.

“Let! Go! I don’t want to sit in another ritual. The weird manna makes my nose tingle!”

“Only your nose?” Alorakana grinned.

“It must be fun bullying children.” Elrhain grabbed Agwyn’s hand as her mother put her down. The Earthloch princess was fuming like a kettle.

Alorakana turned her amused smirk towards Elrhain. “We’ll be using eight oceanic gheist cores today. It will be four times as tinglier last. We’ll also need four times the hair.”

“….N-Nyo!” Agwyn screamed while the girls paled. Eight locks of hair? How long would it take to grow back? They counted with their fingers, then gasped in unison as if the sky had fallen.

“Witch Alorakana, enough. We aren’t paying you to run your mouth off.” Cyra warned the Naeman woman. Though Elrhain could see her trying to hold in a grin as Agwyn crashed into her, begging with all her cuteness not to do the ritual. Indeed, angry toddlers were more adorable than threatening.

Cyra’s face looked conflicted for a second as Agwyn’s pestering grew more pitiful. But the slug woman steadied her resolve.

“Yes, my lady, oh great Faediaga Eldress. Though princess, if you ask your dear mother if she can part with a sky grade gheistrum core and not oceanic, I might be able to make other arrangements.”

The witch muttered half-heartedly as they passed through another cavern. But the glint in her eyes told that she had picked up on Cyra’s hesitancy. A merchant first and witch second, like all naeman were.

The group soon entered a stone corridor inscribed with mysterious patterns in lost languages. Murals of bygone times illuminated by only dim glowing water leaking from ceiling to floor.

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It was a familiar passageway. Elrhain guessed that the cavern at the end of this path was the one with the colossal dhionne statue with many arms. The chambers where he and Agwyn had prepared for their blessing ceremony and saw that apocalyptic vision lay inside a lotus flower hoisted in one of its hands.

Were they headed to the same place? Would he meet Maeog again? Or maybe this time it was a temple inside one of the other hands.

As he pondered, Agwyn held tight her mother’s robe and planted her feet into the ground. Cyra dragged her forward for a couple more steps until the faediaga eldress was forced to stop.

“And this alternative method…,” She asked with a groan, “Doesn’t require hair?”

Agwyn’s gaze was expectant enough to save puppies.

“It doesn’t.” Alorakana stilled, turning around with a swoosh of her colourful frock. She took off one of the many necklaces hung from her neck. It looked like a shard of ice tied to a bristle rope, with small fangs tied between the string at equal intervals.

“A Death Teller,” Alorakana explained. “The ritual today is to glimpse into the future and infer whether your two children will face danger within the next day. It is an expensive ritual, but the glimpse it gives you is hazy. About what you would expect of dhionne magic. This death teller on the other hand, while can only discern what happens within the next seven minutes, can foretell the wearer’s death. And only death.”

Elrhain’s mouth widened. Future… sight? It was a time telescope! Or radar. Or!

「Wait, we have rituals that can see into the future?」 The boy’s brain hanged. His eyes quickly crossed with Agwyn’s, who looked greedy and shocked at the same time.

「We need this! For safety… And your hair!」 The little girl nodded as if the spring on her neck was broken.

Alorakana continued on like the seasoned trader she was, “A sky grade core for a second chance at life. You wouldn’t have to waste your oceanic cores on these bogus dhionne rituals every day either. You could also spare your daughter her hair.”

“E-Eight locks of hair… Every day?!” Agwyn turned her tearful eyes towards Cyra. “Mommy? Is Ellie going to marry a bald Annie?”

“H-Hey, dhionne rituals aren’t that bad. The Grand Shamanka said we could also use nails and blood!” Cyra hastily defended dhionne magic, but the twitch in her words made her a horrible lawyer. She looked away from her daughter’s judging eyes in shame, only to meet Tudor’s.

The dwarfish dhionne shrugged. “The Naeman Witch speaks the truth. Their kind is far more proficient in these sorts of rituals than our shamans. I’d say the trinket is worth it. Besides,” Tudor looked at Agwyn, “It’s not pleasant trying to teach a grumpy student.”

“Y-Yes! Annie will be super grumpy without hair!” Agwyn tugged on her mother’s robe and started wailing again.

“Okay, I get it. Don’t cry Gwyn.” Cyra sighed, then nodded at Alorakana.

Elrhain swore he could see a triumphant twinkle in the witch’s eyes. Agwyn excitedly ran to her and snatched the death teller from her long-nailed hands.

“So, how does the trinket work?” Tudor asked with interest. Eudav and Arfon’s ears also perked up. Alorakana tilted her head with squinting eyes, then smiled like a cat. She went into a cryptic theory of manna aspects and glyphs while taking every chance to mention other of her cryptic ware.

Elrhain had no interest in any of that for now. He turned his gaze towards Agwyn’s open palms where the death teller lay. The other cousins surrounded the two and looked at the icy necklace with keen eyes. It changed hands one by one. Agwyn winced when Cadough gave it a lick.

Cyra was the last one to observe the necklace. Her eyes glowed a neon blue as she held it up. For some reason, she nodded in satisfaction and then returned the trinket, which was actually a high-level talisman, back to Agwyn.

The Naeman witch’s prideful boasts came from behind. After Cyra judged that today they need not perform any tingly, hair-ruining ritual with the death teller on hand, the group had turned around.

Some noisy minutes passed, and they were once more near the exit of the mural inscribed passageway from where they had entered.

The little princess wore the death teller and tucked it under her collar. Clicking her tongue, she changed her mind and untucked the necklace again.

The whole point would be futile if this death teller was hidden behind clothes when it, well, told of death. Not that they knew how it did so. Elrhain made a mental note to ask the witch after her boasting ended.

「Huh… something’s weird.」 The boy suddenly said through their link, his eyes catching an anomaly in the transparent shard. 「Why’s there a crack in the middle. It wasn’t like this a moment ago… And it’s growing bigger. Did she give you a broken product?」

「Uhh, really?」

Elrhain nodded in response as they stepped out of the passageway into the previous cavern. Agwyn held the necklace up in front of her eyes. The bioluminescence illuminated their faces. It flicked off Elrhain’s eyes as they followed as the crack fissuring larger, almost bisecting it in two vertical halves. Alorakana’s voice reached his ears with the underground wind as the colour in Agwyn’s face faded.

“… and the moment this fate aspected glyph picks up on the death of the wearer’s soul, the Lamionite Fatestone on the death teller necklace will crack. Within breaths, it will split in two. The count has already begun by now, as has the future changed. The wearer knows of the danger and will inevitably struggle. Her effort might save her life or extend the time of death’s arrival. It may even hasten it if she were particularly unlucky that day. Hmm, what’s wrong little princess? Why are you holding up the death… teller… By the voids!”

Agwyn, now visibly panicking like she had lost a duckling in a desert, raised the two halves of the necklace towards the three adults in their group with trembling hands. She gulped, and with much difficulty managed to squeak, “M-Mommy?”