Estha had been reading her favourite book when she witnessed the world scatter away into nothingness. All she heard was the sound of falling sand before she abruptly found herself sitting at her study with pen and paper in hand.

Sitting beside her with his legs crossed was her tutor, Andrew.

She stopped what she was doing instantly. She dropped what she was holding and slowly turned towards Andrew.

“Andrew, what did you just do?” Estha asked.

There was no magic that she knew of, forbidden or otherwise, that was capable of what she just experienced. She would know. But if it wasn’t, then what had just happened?

“Lady Estha, I beg your pardon?” Andrew’s eyes widened in concern.

“What did you just do?” Estha’s voice trembled. So too did her body as she began noticeably shivering.

It felt like…

She had just died. She felt it.

But here she was. Safe and alive.

But what had happened?

“A-Andrew–”

Andrew’s face became grave. With lightning-speed reflexes, Andrew’s right wrist flexed upwards into prayer position, a hand blue light being emitted from his fingertips, establishing a blue barrier around themselves.

“Milady! Give me a word and I shall summon the entire castle to an emergency. Whatever has caused you such a fright is anything but malicious intent!” Andrew exclaimed. The second daughter of Duke Vosien looked utterly spooked. He had never seen her like this before.

Estha hesitated but gave a quick nod after a couple of seconds of thought.

Andrew understood and acted promptly. Tapping a golden ring on his left pinky, a red circle engraved in cryptic symbols was alit. Almost immediately, the sound of a bell so deafening, so loud that it hurt the ears, reverberated throughout the entire castle.

A state of emergency was enacted.

“Dad, I said it was real!” Estha yelled, balling her hands into little fists.

“Nonsense!” Duke Vosien yelled back. His face was grave and shadows had formed underneath his eyes.

The entire castle was present. The maids, butlers, his personal guard, and most unfortunately, a guest. He had been in the middle of an important meeting with the personal aide of one of his closest contacts when he was interrupted and at the same time, shocked by the emergency alarm.

Such a thing would be used when the castle was either under attack or on fire. But he would’ve never expected it to be activated because his daughter had some kind of psychotic nightmare.

To the side of him stood her tutor, Andrew Eda Levine. He was an old man in his mid-seventies, wore copper glasses, and was dressed in a tunic with a long gown hanging down to his ankles. He held his hands behind his back, not a bit worried at all.

The first thing he thought of was immediately crossed out. Simply impossible.

It couldn’t be an enemy attack either. Andrew would know. The senile old man was a bonafide wizard. He could fly, turn invisible, and even teleport. Something that only a few people in the whole entire world could do. They knew he was in his service, and only a fool would attempt something while he was present.

So if Estha was telling the truth, and Andrew truly didn’t know, then what was happening here?

His daughter was absolutely resolute that she had experienced some kind of long dream that had gone on for several months; as if she had just travelled back in time.

She looked particularly shocked when she learned that today was the 1st of the 1st month.

She called it strange and claimed it wasn’t a coincidence and was even more reason for her claims to be taken seriously.

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Alas, women were a vexing existence.

“Estha, my word is final. You will first apologise to my guest, to me, and then to all the staff whose time you have wasted. They are going to have to work later into the night than usual because of you. Do you understand?”

Estha lowered her head in despondency.

“Yes; father.”

Estha stood in the middle of a circle made out of cryptic white sigils. Only a single white silk covering her naked body from sight, she looked down at her toes and started wiggling them around.

Full inspections; body, mind, and soul were incredibly complicated. Bullshit stars had to be aligned, the circle’s summoner had to be in a good mood or he could get swallowed by the void, and they had to have several years of experience.

However, unlike most mages, Andrew, her tutor, who also acted as her guardian when her father was absent, was a freak.

He engraved the circle with two hands at once.

With chalk in hand, his left hand followed right by his right hand as it drew, redrawing over and consolidating the lines that it created. He never once faltered at any step of the process and continued at a fast cadence until he finished. It took him all but five minutes.

Anyone else would’ve taken an entire hour.

“Andrew, do you believe me?” Estha asked into the silence as Andrew dusted off his hands and stood up.

Andrew gave her a speculative look.

He replied, “Lady, Estha; I do not know anything for certain until I complete this inspection. However, of note worth was your very abrupt reaction that came out of seemingly nowhere. At the very least, I believe your reaction was real.”

Estha nodded but was a little disappointed at the same time. She thought Andrew, out of everyone else, would believe her. But even he was sceptical.

“I’m going to begin now. Are you ready?”

Estha nodded, “Yes.”

Cracking his knuckles, Andrew sat down into a lotus position, closed his eyes, and clasped his hands together. A blue hue glowed through his eyelids, and from the closest edge of the circle to him, the cryptic sigils lit up in a wave from left to right.

Then, Estha held her breath. This was the moment she was most afraid of.

Nine chains, spitting sparks of blue light as they launched forward, latched onto her limbs and neck, restricting her, effectively paralysing her. She could not feel a thing.

Because if Andrew accidentally touched on a trigger of a memory of her walking while sieving through her mind, she could straight up walk outside the circle and force him to have to redo the whole thing again.

Estha understood the reasoning behind it but didn’t like it regardless. Her body would be sore for hours afterwards and she didn’t like not having control over her body. Andrew, she trusted at least.

“I’m about to send you asleep and enter your mind. Are you ready?”

Letting out a built-up breath of air, relieving the tension in her chest, she replied, “Yes.”

Not a moment later, she blacked out.

She entered a dreamland filled with psychotic hallucinations. Amalgamations of life and reality that made sense but not so much that she thought it was real. It was one great illusion that no mage could ever hope to reproduce.

Where dreams were possible and she could escape life. Away from the critics that populated her daily life and the expectations to get married in just a few years.

She didn’t have to worry about a thing.

Here, her heart was at ease.

This dream lasted for years. She had no recollection of what was happening throughout, but right at the end, something changed.

Suddenly, she found herself standing in front of several tens of people. Some were healthy youths with smooth white skin. Others were senile and old and others were in the middle ages, healthy but not as energetic as they used to be.

Men and women. Their eyes were filled with longing.

Simultaneously, all at once, their eyes locked onto her.

No words were exchanged, but what she did see would be more overwhelming and painful than anything they could say.

She experienced death a thousand times over; she bled rivers of blood; Shed oceans of tears. She saw children keel over and die of starvation. She slayed demons that had towered into the skies through the eyes of a mighty warrior who swung his sword with the force of the heavens.

She experienced countless moments of frustration, focus, contemplation, pain, and heartbreak. She made love with hundreds of different people, feeling their sweaty skin against hers and hands running along her body.

She killed thousands of people with her very hands. Though, for some reason, she knew these people were evil existences that they themselves deserved.

She loved and lived countless lives. She witnessed it all.

She woke up and–fortunately–forgot everything.

“Lady Estha, are you okay?” Andrew asked, his face bewildered and his eyes wide.

She had abruptly fainted when he finished the ritual prematurely. He held her while kneeling, preventing her head from having hit the floor. Estha was still drowsy and weakly opened her eyes, gleaning the blurry face of Andrew from beyond.

Seeing him, she instinctively relaxed and fell asleep, slumping in his arms.

Andrew didn’t think for a few moments as he took in what he saw.

Over the years, ever since Estha had been just a little baby, he had performed regular inspections on her mind, soul, and body to take notes and records. This was to measure her growth over the years and to help him pinpoint the reason why this girl had an aptitude for magic that he had never ever heard of in his life.

If it weren’t for him having advised against it, her father would’ve already claimed that she was the reincarnation of Anyel and used it as a crux to seize the throne. She ticked all the requirements.

During the inspection just now, he saw that Estha had more than one soul.

It should be impossible. She should be dead.

But somehow she was left perfectly fine with no sign of sickness. It wasn’t just two or three souls all packed into one body either. He counted eighty-something. Even more peculiar was its shape. Before, it had been an untamed form that imitated that of a fire. But now, it was a perfectly spherical ball located at the bottom of her stomach.

So if he wasn’t hallucinating or in an illusion–of which he quickly checked for with a one-worded dispelling cantrip–then somehow, someone had tinkered with her soul, remotely, while she was studying. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that someone had ripped her original soul out and replaced it with a behemoth.

Andrew frowned. If he was distressed, he didn’t show. Any moment of panic or weakness could be all it needs for an enemy to attack and take control of his mind.

It was silent in the empty basement where he stood, ruminating.

Once, Andrew had asked his now long-dead master if he could learn soul spells. His master was old-school. He didn’t own or wear anything except a single brown robe, slept on dirt, didn’t shave or groom his hair, and had a big grey beard. During his twenty-three years as his apprentice, he had never seen his master become angry; once.

But on this occasion, his master did.

His master grabbed him by the neck and said, “Andrew, know that to lean too far beyond the void will cause you to fall into it. Acting in accordance with nature is to act in accordance with reason. I don’t care whose soul it is, you will never ever tinker or mess with a single soul. Do you understand?”

From that point on, he never gave soul magic another thought.

He might have to break that promise now.