The shift back to the corporeal plane was atrocious. Ozone lingered in the air as my body forcefully hit the ground. Bones were cracked; skin was lacerated. Yet I couldn’t care less.

I lived.

I stood up on the solid ground, only to fall back on my very damaged legs. Mystic’s Dominion worked overtime to keep me alive with Regeneration. By all means, I shouldn’t have mana.

And I didn’t.

Yet the phylactery was bursting with lavender mana.

Yes, phylactery.

It was scuffed. It was incredibly imperfect. It was even more dangerous than before, no longer a doomsday bomb, but a doomsday entity. What mattered to me is that it kept me alive.

I coughed as air filled my lungs. I forgot I hadn’t breathed all this time on the spiritual plane.

A sound behind me startled me.

Dread settled.

“How!” A voice vociferated. “How did you bring me here, ellari?”

Eygaz unfolded his wings and closed them instantly as he approached me with an aerial dash. His incredible speed overwhelmed me and drove my limp body to the wall. The crash was powerful. The prince used his clothes to grab me by the collar of my tunic.

“Answer me, ellari!” Eygaz’s fangs were centimeters away from my face.

I laughed at the bizarre situation. I was before an eleven-star mage that looked at me with hate and intent to kill, yet my first reaction was to laugh.

“Do you think this is amusing?” The prince’s face was contorted by hate.

“Not really, but it is quite ironic.” It was difficult to breathe from my awkward position, yet I didn’t need air that much besides talking. “I have used your own magic against you.”

“My own magic?” His vertical pupils widened in realization.

Eygaz threw me away like a dirty cloth to the laundry basket. I forcefully crashed on the ground, not before bouncing once or twice like a ball.

Like many times before, I would say that it hurt, but I could no longer feel it.

The angry mystic didn’t bother looking at me as his sight glued onto the floating black orb. Many emotions flashed in his eyes. Amazement, confusion, anger. Fear.

“How?” For the first time in our short encounter, he appeared to have lost control of the situation. “You are a novice ten-star mystic! You shouldn’t have been able to create a phylactery, especially here!”

His confusion was true, but his words gained an emphasis in the last section. Eygaz knew he was in the imperial palace, and that distressed him.

I coughed. Five ribs had cracked and two had pierced my lungs. Thankfully enough, I had plenty of mana to heal those wounds. The usage of the lavender-leyline mana incinerated my body from the inside, but the minimal and recent damage could be healed, unlike my left arm.

“I’m not your average ten-star mystic though, I have been using Mystic’s Dominion uninterrupted for weeks now.” I stood up. “I have more practice than you think.”

“Uninterrupted...” Eygaz looked at the phylactery artifact and back at me. Then he facepalmed. “Oh, I now understand. Of fucking course. The goddamned ellari is Aligned.”

The prince began laughing in a crazed burst. Mana revolved around him, space started to shift.

“I’m out of here.” He stated in defeat.

“Oh no. You don’t!” I shouted, channeling my mana.

Eygaz intended to return to Ferilyn by using the anthology as an anchor. Lavender mana filled the room, concentrating especially on the draconid mystic. Mana poured out from my body and the mana capacitator.

A singularity was created.

It was feeble, but the three planes shallowly connected. Mana traveled from the corporeal plane to the cognitive, then to the spiritual. The leyline mana assaulted the dragonborn’s soul.

“Stop interfering with my life!” As Eygaz shouted, a pulse of grey mana assaulted me, moving through the lavender-flooded room.

It hurt my soul.

It was painful.

I was used to being the one attacking other people’s souls, not being on the receiving end.

But the pain... it was minuscule.

Conceivable. Countable. Discardable.

My soul was far too big to be swallowed by the eleven-star mystic. A typhoon against a mountain. A powerful force against an unmovable object.

Rifts in reality spawned. Small, insignificant, but present. Through there, my very spirit manifested on the corporeal plane.

The room was set ablaze.

Even though I could no longer see with my eyes, through my other bodily senses and my Soul Sight, I could tell that Eygaz and I were knocked back by the shockwave.

And whilst I had been knocked to the ground again, I felt more alive and healthier than ever.

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“You are really beginning to enrage me.” My eyes were still out of commission, but I sensed him standing through his shining soul.

Through the spiritual plane, I saw him charge at me with what I could only suppose were his sharp dragon claws.

I dodged to the side by using my double Slow Fall synergy to reduce my weight to near zero. I needed to gain time until my eyes healed.

My ears trembled as the prince roared with a might worthy of a dragon. I was thankful that we were in a tiny basement so he couldn’t shapeshift into a true dragon.

Instead of charging again, Eygaz shot a barrage of spells. Twenty Necrotic Bolts.

The seven-star spells were simple but incredibly mana hungry. I was taken aback that the prince was able to afford such a waste of mana.

But he made two fatal mistakes.

The first was to use spells that traveled through the spiritual plane. With my compromised sight, I would have faced many more troubles if he had attacked in the corporeal plane.

But the worst mistake was the second.

To use a lower-starred spell against a manaweaver.

The Necrotic Bolts were dissipated into grey soul mana with a single swoop. The whole place was overflowing with my own mana, using such basic spells on my very dominion was a futility.

But it still took me a fraction of a second to dispel the barrage. Enough for a physically strong draconid to fly across the room and charge at me. My eyes healed and I opened them, only for then at the exact same moment he clawed my heart.

Temperature and blood left my body, yet I was oblivious to the pain.

I looked directly at Eygaz’s eyes. They shone with murderous intent and satisfaction.

I smiled at him.

“You should have aimed for the head.” Blood poured from my mouth.

I had done my part; the cavalry had finally arrived. To my left, I could see a very horrified princess Salayah.

The air became stale.

Salayah looked at her brother. Eygaz looked at his sister. Their sights crossed, irises connecting, souls engaging. And I still had a claw on my heart. Damn, it was becoming itchy.

As the brother had done, the sister dashed hastily with her wings, lunging on the prince.

Then slapped him. Hard.

By the Lady! That sound... If it didn’t break the sound barrier, it certainly came close. The prince’s cheeks shone bright red, sections of skin lacerated showing the flesh below. The wounds instantly disappeared with the work of the Regeneration spell. I was dumbfounded when I saw Eygaz’s red blood, but then I remembered, that’s how blood was supposed to look like.

Her sister didn’t care.

“Why!” The princess cried, tears streaming down her visage. “Why did you go away?”

Salayah fell to the ground, her shaky legs unable to keep her standing up.

“Why...” She continued wailing.

Eygaz’s face was brimming with shame. How would you explain to your family that you went for two decades? And I didn’t think the prince had a good reason to do so in the first place.

He wordlessly retired his claws from my chest and kneeled before the crying princess.

As for me, I just began healing my heart. I could somewhat survive without a pulse and flowing blood, but necrosis would begin to kick in after a few minutes. For a few seconds though? Yeah, I had way worse.

Closing arteries was quite a pain, especially if you were the one doing it to yourself. I left that in the back of my mind and focused on the sibling’s exchange.

Eygaz put his clean hand on the albino princess’ shoulders. Her eyes were already crimson red, but now even more so as her eyes became irritated.

I noticed the souls of the emperor and his Right Hand, but they stayed out of sight. But I could tell they were prying onto the scene. Hints of divination spells fluttering around.

Salayah dived into her brother’s eyes, and I could only assume they were communicating through telepathy. I found no signs of intrusion or compulsion, so at least, Eygaz wasn’t trying to mind-control his very sister.

The princess grabbed the mystic’s non-bloodied hand with both of hers, rising it to the level of her face.

To be honest, I wanted to hear their conversation, but I decided it was best to stay quiet and immobile like the wall behind me. Something told me any movement would escalate the situation.

Then Salayah dropped the hand she was grabbing and gave Eygaz another subsonic slap.

“Fair.” The man caressed his reddened cheek. “I deserve that.”

It was fairly obvious that he had confessed his reasoning to disappear. And it didn’t appear to be that good of an excuse. I really, really wanted to know the why, but if I asked, I expected the answer to be a projectile to my head.

They stayed a minute in silence, or well, I guess they still were talking with their souls, but finally Salayah wiped off the tears on her face with a fancy handkerchief, one you would expect from royalty.

When the whole ordeal finally settled, Eygaz sighed and stood up.

“Come here, father. I know you are watching from there with Caius.” A mage of his caliber certainly knew of their presence since the very beginning. Probably sooner than me.

The steps echoed through the basement as the highly dressed emperor and the armor-cladded knight made their apparition.

“Oh, my son, you truly haven’t changed a bit since the last day I saw you.” The elder man slowly walked to the man. “And quite literally at that. It seems as if not even a day has fazed you.”

That last part arose my interest and my suspicion.

“And you have aged at least a century.” The prince dryly added. His relationship with his father wasn’t as close as his sister's.

“Yes... I haven’t aged that gracefully.” Amyr lamented.

Now that I thought about it, Amyr was the first old-looking person I saw. Even my three-hundred-something-year-old grandparents looked young. They were different from young and adult ellari but certainly didn’t appear decrepit like the emperor.

“Thank you, Edrie.” The emperor directed to me. “For bringing my son back.”

Was no one going to acknowledge the gaping hole in my chest? The one where my heart was visible and was dripping with magenta blood?

Alright, it seems I’m the weird one for thinking so.

“It was our deal, wasn’t it?” I smiled at him. “But I fear you won’t be able to fulfill your part of your deal. Thanks to your son, I was forced to transform the artifact into my phylactery, so I believe the whole ‘removing my soul from the artifact’ part of the deal is not possible anymore.”

“I...” Amyr mussitated. “I have a lot of questions.” Everyone looked at me with confusion. Amyr, Salayah, Caius, even Eygaz!

Why are you looking at me like that? This is your fault!

“Your son can fill you in on the details.” I sighed in defeat.

“Anyways, you have done a lot for us. More than enough to compensate for all previous offenses and beyond.” Right... The whole hostage situation with Salayah and putting him at spell point. I had forgotten, not going to lie. “You are free to look at our private dynastic library if you wish to do so.”

“I willingly accept your offer.” I bowed slightly.

There was still an unbelievable amount of tension in the room, and I wanted to get out as soon as possible. Whatever problems had this dysfunctional family, they had to resolve this themselves. I can tell they also wanted me out, and I had had enough of ellari political turmoil to worry about draconid families.

Hmm... That came out rather racist.

“So, Eygaz.” I casually talked to the black-horned draconid that tried to kill me multiple times. “Can you bring me back to Ferilyn?”

“Edrie, wasn’t it?” I nodded. “Phylacteries do not work that way. Previous to your... tricks, I didn’t even know you could open portals between the planes and use phylacteries as gateways. I’m not certain I can take you to Ferilyn with mine, but even if I could, I would also need to go back with you, as you did when you took me here.” I held my groan as I predicted the man’s words. “You’ll have to get back to the island on foot.”

And I groaned for real once he said the dreaded words. Ignoring the impossibility of his statement, I couldn’t walk to an island from a continent, I had better mediums of transport.

I made my way out of the basement, followed by a silent Caius who decided to escort me. Or more accurately, overwatching me. It was still dark, but sunrise would come in an hour or so. If I pushed my body, I guess I could make it back to Lan’el before any soldier or, worse yet, the Ceaseless Storm found out I wasn’t in my dormitory.

I sighed as I took on the skies, wishing my farewell to the hanging city on the mountainside.