The way he saw it, there were two questions that needed answering, and one he was still unsure whether he actually wanted to know.

The first: What exactly was the nature of their mental bond?

The second: How in the world was she able to do the things she did?

And the third: Why, in the gods name, did he trust her so implicitly? Not to mention, had he been wrong to do so in the first place?

Intellectually he knew these were all very valid concerns he’d been insane not to bring up, even in passing, until now. While instinctually, he knew they weren’t questions that needed asking—that the answers should’ve been as obvious as they were unimportant, even if he didn’t quite know what those answers actually were.

It’d been during the last solitary hours spent traversing the under city—perhaps the first time he’d truly been alone with his thoughts since Ivory’s untimely arrival—that he’d realized something rather unusual.

While cradling Ivory’s small body to his chest, he’d reflected on how protective he’d become of this peculiar little creature. And then, on how quickly that possessiveness had come about.

Suspiciously quick, the more he thought on it. Seeing as he wasn’t, on the whole, someone in the habit of rushing blindly into trust. Add to that the fact his budding doubts did little to shake his solid convictions, and the intense feeling of wrongness only grew.

Thinking back, he was able to recall a number of instances wherein his protective instincts for her heavily outweighed all other concerns. After all, what had it taken for him to dismiss every reasonable reservation he’d held about her in the first place? A short-lived conversation that, technically, never addressed even one of what should’ve been a lengthy list of concerns.

And when he’d been given the chance to risk the life of a spirit beast he barely knew, in exchange for the possible safety of his very own mother, what had he done? He’d protected Ivory at all costs.

Did that really sound like him?

To skew things so heavily in a total stranger’s favor? An entity that wasn’t even human, over the mother who’d cared for him his entire life? Sure, his mother was no pushover, but still… He hadn’t even given it a second thought at the time, and maybe, just maybe, that should’ve raised more suspicions.

And then there was the mind reading aspect of things.

Yet another ominous sign he’d barely thought to question. As it was, despite still having nothing but good will towards her—in fact, dredging up the will to even voice his concerns at all was proving more and more difficult by the second—he was nevertheless in desperate need of some explanations. Ivory, perhaps sensing this, held nothing back.

Name: Ivory

Race: Albino Cthulle

Bloodline: Call of the Voidling (2 Stars)

Titles: Denizen of the Void, Lofty Pedigree

Resonance Pillar: Aged Stone [0 of 30]

Body Mutation: NOT APPLICABLE

Body: 0 Celestial Dew (619 Celestial Essence)

Mind: 3 Celestial Dew (3458 Celestial Essence)

Spirit: 1 Celestial Dew (1755 Celestial Essence)

Insight: 0 Celestial Dew (329 Celestial Essence)

Martial Alignment: NOT APPLICABLE

Substantive Alignment: Concept of Mind (1st Aspect)

Conceptual Alignment: NOT APPLICABLE

Talents: Galaxy Eyes (1 Star), Soul Bond (2 Stars)

Core Grade: Common (MAXED)

Core Capacity: 3 of 2

Mutation Points: 1000

Mortal Potential: 5,986,000 Points

Jun stared at the foreign status screen, transfixed—wondering at all the minute differences, and the reoccurring “void” themes readily apparent—while Ivory awkwardly wrung her hands in the background. Once he’d finally found his bearings, however, he immediately locked onto her rather suspicious sounding alignment. It was all starting to make a horrible kind of sense.

“Concept of mind? This whole time…? Have you been-”

“No! It’s nothing like what your thinking! I couldn’t have! Even if I’d wanted to! My alignment is still weak. Pitifully so, remember? It only really works on small creatures, and even then, only for very short periods of time. Look!”

Mantra: [Minor Suggestion] (1st Aspected)

Grade: (Trash Quality)

“Okay… Wait, but if that’s the case then how…? Why-?”

Without uttering a word, Ivory pulled up two more screens. At which point his general stupefaction only deepened further.

Born Talent: |Galaxy Eyes| (Inheritance)

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Unveil With Your Eyes the Breadth of Infinity

(Passive Effect) Allows for the Perception of Things Normally Hidden.

(Active Effect) Enhances Perception Immensely When Used.

Born Talent: |Soul Bond| [Linked]

If Two Minds Are Better Than One, Two Souls Must Be Greater Still

Your Soul and Another’s Have Been Karmically Linked at Birth.

(Passive Effect): May Share Any Property and or Status Inherent to the Soul.

“This is…?” Jun paused.

He was actually at a loss for words. He hadn’t known what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this. The feeling of wrongness only grew, as he thought, for the first time in a long time, of his corrupted talents. The ones that’d first appeared as if in response to Ivory’s impromptu arrival.

“Wait! Before you say anything! I promise I was going to tell you. Only it kept being the absolute worst time. A-and! Also, I don’t know if you know this, but you can give very mixed signals at times. You should really work on that, you know. Because sometimes you acted just like you knew! So I really don’t think it’s entirely my fault. Only… other times it was as if you really did forget? So, in the end I mostly got all confused and didn’t know what to do, or say, or, well… and so I… sort of… didn’t saying anything at all, but-!”

“Hold on, wait! Slow down. Slow down. Forget? What could I have possibly forgotten that makes any of this make sense?” it wasn’t the question he wanted to be asking, seeing as his “faulty memory” seemed the least of recent developments.

“Me, obviously! Our… you know… our thing? Our… bond, or… ugh! Take a hint Jun! Are you really going to make me say it?!”

“Our what? You mean your talent? But that’s… I’ve never even seen it before now. I mean, if I were soul bonded with someone, which sounds like a pretty big deal, all things told, I think I would at least know about it. Right?”

A shadow passed over her face.

“Do you really not remember anything?” she said in a quiet voice.

“Remember what?!” he was becoming exasperated at this point.

“When we met! Surely… you-! You can’t have forgotten that much! I mean, that would just be…!”

He nearly scoffed.

“I’m pretty sure I remember what I had for breakfast that morning. I still don’t see what that has to do with-”

“No, not that! That was just… I don’t know, a reunion. I’m talking about the time before. The first time.”

Jun hesitated, a small frown forming on his brow.

“First time?”

Linked at birth, it’d said. But that couldn’t possibly be… could it?

And with those two words it was as if a faintly flickering hope had finally gone out in her eyes, and, as he watched, she appeared to deflate in on herself. She held that dejected pose for a long time. Then, almost as if he were watching her in reverse, her spine straightened, her shoulders lost their slump, and her air of dejection turned to one of determination.

“I’ll just have to show you, then. Yes. That’s what I’ll do,” she balled her hands up into little fists. “I can do that much. Or I very much think I can, so I probably can anyway. And then, once you’ve seen, it’ll all come rushing back, and you’ll remember to remember properly this time,” she finished the statement with a sharp bob of her head.

“Wait? Show me? Show me what? Hold on, what are you-?”

But before he could even finish his sentence, the slightly clammy hand had already adhered itself to his forehead, and in the next moment the world as he’d known it first wavered, then smeared, before it vanished entirely. For the umpteenth time in less than two weeks.

image [https://i.ibb.co/rw6tMBB/IMG-2711.png]

A brisk wind descends from snowcapped peaks. Carrying with it light dustings from lofty mountain heights, as it spirals down, ever closer, to the valley far below. The secluded valley floor, a cozy little clearing, and the two restless seven-year-olds plotting mischief therein.

It travels down treacherous switchbacks, past ravenous beast dens, and the occasional cultivation cave long since abandoned. Through towering pine forests, and the mornings’ creeping mists, which make as if to embrace the quaint clearing on all sides. It skims across the surface of one freshwater pond, then around the storybook cottage that lay just shy of the water’s edge.

And in that special way only mid-autumn winds possess, it blithely races onward, until at very long last, it gently buffets the two children as they skulk and scheme. Eager to pluck, with pleasantly cool fingers, at just about anything and everything in reach.

From the odd bits of foliage, to the hems of their fine cloaks, and finally, to the grass which stands tall at their feet. Where they weren’t being squashed flat by a young Cthulle’s restless pacing that was. The mischievous wind tugging green stalks this way and that, as if to sway them in time with her own wavering conscience.

“But!” she whispered in a half shout. “If mother finds out-!”

“Blah blah blah! We’ll be back before no time! You worry way too much. Actually…? That’s probably why all your hair fell out,” the boy snickers.

The young Cthulle, so cruelly and viciously attacked, becomes absolutely rigid with indignation. And in turn, says nothing for a very long time. Meanwhile, the cheeky boy only grins his stupid stupid grin all the wider.

Almost like he wasn’t being the most impossibly insufferable thing to ever exist. He knew very well she’d never had any hair to begin with, though perhaps not that she still very much held out hope.

He was just trying to get a rise out of her, she wisely decides. That was all this was. It was how he always dragged her into his empty-headed foolishness.

Well, she wouldn’t be falling for it this time, that was for sure.

In fact, she wouldn’t even give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten to her. Be elegant and poised in all things, she tells herself. That was what she’d learned from watching his mother in secret, and that was how she ever aspired to be.

“You take that back right now!” she hisses, lunging at him with arms outstretched.

In response, the boy merely lets out a short laugh, then leaps into the sky with a deft manipulation of winds. And as for the young, elegant, and poised Cthulle? She was leaping right after him of course, already hot on his heels.

Dragged yet again into another of Jun’s utterly foolish, impossibly reckless, and what was no doubt bound to be the hairiest of all the hare brained schemes.

image [https://i.ibb.co/rw6tMBB/IMG-2711.png]

Jun blinked. It took a second for his vision to fully adjust. Once it had he found himself staring into wide, opalescent eyes from mere inches away—a tight knot of confusion squeezing his chest.

“What…?”

But before he could finish formulating that thought, an explosion sounded from somewhere uncomfortably close, sending a tremor up his spine, and raining loose dust and shale down from the ceiling. And then—so faint that he almost chalked it up to his imagination—the shouting began.

And not long after that, the screams.