Within the privacy of her study, Bernadette gaped at the letter in her hands.
The parchment had a brittleness to it.
If she continued to grip it so, she might tear it apart.
> To the interloper Bernadette,
>
> While your concern is noted, it is of no value to me. You belong in this search no more than I would in the ruins of your family home, and to act as though finding my sister were some task or duty of yours is laughable at best and disrespectful at worse.
>
> What you do with your time and resources is your business to mind, so return the favor and keep your course clear of my affairs. None wish for her safe return more than I do, and your missives are unwarranted and unwelcome. Should I wish to communicate anything to my family, I can do that myself.
>
> You who have always stood between us and our unity have no right to ask these things of me. For the good of us both, never contact me again.
The response lacked a signature, but it need not have one—there was only one answer that fit.
Bernadette remained at her desk, steadying her breath. She need not dignify this with a reaction.
The parchment was torn apart anyway.
----------------------------------------
Anselm hadn’t the faintest clue why he awoke feeling worse than usual—he had been beginning to wonder if that was even possible. An insurmountable weight appeared intent on keeping him still, and he couldn’t so much as open his eyebrows or even gasp.
It had to be a dream, he reasoned. Not unlike that day. He had caught glimpses then and there of that liminal place of flowing water that howled like air, of flickering stars and cold humidity that seemed to permeate existence itself. Always while asleep, but never for long—fleeting memories of a persistent dream.
Something was different this time. It felt closer to the first time, even if he found himself surprised to see no panic building in his chest. The intangible waves danced harmlessly around him, lapping at rocks just beyond grasp. The wind carried a distant tune, joined by cries belonging to animals he couldn’t recognize.
Not once before had he thought—even considered thinking—of the waves as peaceful, but as he watched them sway, he could not think of any other way to see it. There was a rhythm to it that could not possibly belong anywhere beneath the waves.
It cooled him as cloth might to a fever, while a warmth that hovered the line between pleasant and searing built within his core—a strange balance, but it worked. And it tugged at him, pulling him in some unfathomable direction.
All that frustration stemming from his inability to recall what he had seen the first time around was but an afterthought, yet the desire to try again bloomed in him.
An immeasurable amount of time into the dream, Anselm realized he could look around himself, gaze upon a strange expanse of stars impossible in their brilliance. Rocky keys surrounded him on all sides, a luminous cove to his right. His focus on it seemed to move him closer, calm waters splashing beneath him as though he were walking through them.
There was a nameless beauty to it all, something he could have never attributed to the sea outside of a dream. At least, Anselm hoped it was a dream, not some product of delirium. He wasn’t even sure he believed he’d hallucinated what he saw after taking those tonics anymore. By now, most of what he had experienced seemed genuine in hindsight, with the means of it happening being what remained unclear.
He wondered at what point he’d started to view things this way—perhaps he always had. His instincts were pointedly lacking in self-preservation as far as most aspects of life went, in part driven by what he now recognized as arrogance. Of course things could go wrong, but why would they ever go wrong for him?
Perhaps concern should have been at the forefront of his mind, both then and now, but Anselm found he didn’t particularly care. A preternatural sense of contentment circled him like the beats of a drum, and nothing more complex than superficial thoughts formed.
The scents were pleasant, lacking the stench of rot that usually accompanied the sea’s brine. It made him want to stretch, take in the sights, relax—desires that did not belong anywhere near the waves.
Only once he approached the coast proper did the expected dread and discomfort manifest. Baskets and other—unidentifiable—objects were strewn about the surprisingly light-toned sand, shifting in position every now and then as though in use by people he couldn’t perceive.
Pulses of dread coursed through him, almost like whispers foretelling how he was unwelcome, being watched, but he found he could not stop moving through the space. Shadows encroached on him as he dove into the space sheltered by the cove, almost sunken into darkness as sand shifted to sandstone and into steps.
The hall it led down to was cramped and unlit, almost seeming unfinished, like it had been crudely carved into the ground in centuries past and neglected ever since. It was dry, with piles of sand having collected at every turn—a contrast to that which had preceded it.
Anselm moved past half a dozen doors, barely catching a glimpse of some of them. He wanted to stop, to learn of whatever hid behind those doors, but he found himself all but carried to the last turn, leading into a hall and a single door at its end.
Ceramic tiles spring from the edges of the door-frame, decorating parts of the wall closest to the wall before they simply stopped, as though whoever had placed them never returned to resume the task.
The door creaked open on its own, wood lined with splinters, and Anselm dropped into the room as if pushed, the door slamming shut behind him. Glass rose above him, a mosaic of colors that made the room’s contents appear bathed in a facsimile of magic. He felt it even in the air, for a moment before it struck him that that was exactly what it indeed had to be—the entire room buzzed with it.
Though far from large, the room was heavily furnished, swathed in fabrics and with many seats and cushions available. A small tea table bearing a set of porcelain serveware stood at its center, and a figure lingered on one of its two chairs, both elbows on the table as a perch for its head.
Anselm tried and failed to ignore it within the first second—he couldn’t look away.
Its face bore more than a passing similarity to the porcelain on the table, an inorganic yet fragile-looking visage of off-white and gold. It was unnatural, but humanoid enough—certainly a more palatable sight than the shape the entity had worn the first time around. Nevertheless, he was close enough that he could see its legs were tangled in some imitation of a crouch atop the chair that would have been impossible had it been a human being, given how the rest of its body was positioned above the table.
Were the entity aware of him watching it, it showed no reaction—perhaps he would be beneath its notice. He remained unsure of how he knew it had to be her, the creature at the center of his problems. She appeared to be doing nothing in particular, slow blinks being the only indication of the passage of time.
Waiting for something—anything—was an oddly peaceful endeavor. Anselm would be a fool to deny himself even a distant chance at getting some answers. The passage of time was an uncertain thing, but the deity must have remained in that position for hours. Perhaps that was the way with they who were eternal—what weight did days hold when one’s weren’t numbered?
At some point, awareness that he could move away began to dawn on him. The tether that had shifted his dream in this direction was not an absolute force. Anselm was pulled back the instant he reached that conclusion, and his surroundings began to fray around the edges.
Again, he felt as though he were swimming, but the pressure that descended upon him was considerably gentler than it had been—perhaps he could simply no longer offer any significant resistance. Cold gushed through his head, painting before him a picture. A forest that felt vaguely familiar, for all he knew with certainty that he had never been through it.
The woman was there again, her face hidden by a trick of the light—most of which was golden. It danced around her, around everything, as though its source were moving. It took him a moment to understand he was wrong there—the rustling of leaves above was undeniable, and the light was shifting in tandem to that.
Without warning, the tide came at them from all sides, and the woman turned, her body shielding the point he was watching the events unfold from. He grew disoriented then, before a force far greater than what had dragged him around until now pulled him downwards.
As with the first time, the scene looped around itself. The woman grew distant, then closer, while the sea fell upon them, and rose, all the while the sensation of falling intensified. Cave walls hugged at him as his descent came to an abrupt halt—unrecognizable pictograms adorned them, despite the passage’s narrowness.
Something snapped, and he tumbled once again.
The sight of someone flying caught Anselm’s eye—not within the cavern he crashed into, but elsewhere. Superimposed events, almost two difficult to follow. The cries of a child injured by a daunting fall rose to match the howling of wind as a masked figure soared through open skies.
Sunlight smiled upon them, shimmering enthusiastically on the bangles they wore. The mask was one befitting a celebration, ornate and dainty—it connected to earcuffs that somehow managed to avoid growing entangled with their flowing dark hair.
The individual seemed shrouded in the same energy the woman the sea fell on was, something Anselm was growing certain he could identify yet knew not how to define. It was solemn yet joyous, dreadful yet natural.
At once, both images collapsed, and Anselm found himself floating again. The beauty of it was gone, replaced by a growing discomfort. He remained as stiff and unmoving as he had been throughout the dream, without being afforded any numbness anymore.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
The instinct to wheeze and gasp fell short—his body would not obey him at all. Not once before had he been kept from something as crucial as breathing, and while not long ago he had been resigned to the likelihood of dying, he found himself dreading the idea of it being this way.
The warmth in his core intensified—perhaps it had belonged to his heart all along. A jolt went through him, making his entire body twitch, and he shot upwards into a sitting position, finally able to gasp.
As his eyes opened, it struck him that the burning had neither stabilized nor stopped. He gritted his teeth involuntarily as his blood lit up, the distinct sensation of foreign mana burning through it, and he knew he could no more scream than he could have spoken of anything without the blessing lashing out at him.
For a drawn-out minute, Anselm could have sworn he could see the light even through his skin, his heart thundering in his ears as an explosive headache disrupted his ability to focus. As it retreated, he found his heart slowed considerably, until he grew uncomfortably aware of it barely beating at all. He knew instinctively that his blood had returned to the frigid sludge the past months had turned it into.
The moment his body no longer felt locked into place, he collapsed back.
Anselm panted. He felt exhausted in a way separate from his usual lethargy, as though he had exercised far beyond his capacity. Sleep barely helped combat his tiredness most days, but he could not recall ever awaking more drained than he previously had been.
A cursory glance at his panels had him doubting he could even be surprised anymore.
[Integrity] 0 / 682 [Toll]
???? / 1810
He exhaled slowly—in part to calm himself, and in part to consider. He did not make a habit of using sunsetblade. Nothing short of that inane blessing intervening could justify his current lease on consciousness—something backed by the obnoxious gilding of his overtaxed [Toll].
Summoning his log, Anselm half-expected to find nothing out of sorts—though his maladies were varied these days, they rarely left their mark on his panels.
Perhaps a part of him expected this time to be different—perhaps he’d went through the motions idly. In either case, a panel greeted him.
[03/5766] You were barred from inheriting an Affinity from Katrina Skrībanin. [03/5766] You were barred from inheriting an Affinity from Katrina Skrībanin.
Anselm blinked—he had not quite expected to see any notification at all, let alone that. System messages also did not usually have a date attached to them.
The Flowers of 5766. None of them had been born back then, not even Beryl.
The conjoined notifications had no business being in his panels.
He unfortunately recognized their phrasing—his research into Affinities had led him to the topic in passing. Much like material possessions, the inheritance of Affinities could be influenced in some ways. None would share the means through which the likelihood of them passing to the next generation could be increased, but most nobles certainly had the capability for it.
The same was true for the prevention of inheritance—behind closed doors, arrangements could be made for children to not get an Affinity their parents had. An absurd concept, limited to those with such stacked bloodlines that they could afford to pick and choose what they believed their children should get.
To think his mother had not one but two Affinities… there was no way around it.
Anselm briefly wondered if the blessing could be playing tricks on him. He had yet to comprehend the full extent of its effects, but while it hindered him, nothing he’d felt or experienced so far pointed towards it deceiving him.
This was a betrayal. Perhaps his mother had not been involved… but that would not be a reasonable assumption. He wanted to absolve her, yet for all her children to lack Affinities when she possessed two, this had to be her doing. Anselm did not believe an outside force could hold enough sway over a matter that… cardinal.
It wasn’t even solely about power—at Core Integration, both their parents would outlive them. Would have, in Katrina’s case. Even with their father’s status being backed by only a hollow core, he would likely live past a century. Denying them an Affinity was not only denying them strength—it was denying them years to their lives.
He was trembling even before flashes of memory started to lap at him. Panels of unsteady making and garbled text blurred before him, the details lost to him. For all he had witnessed them, they had slipped from him.
In that moment, he had reached for it—for whatever his mother had apparently kept from them. It stood to reason he could reach for it again.
Within a few slow heartbeats, he grew disillusioned—Hanne had taken the tonics, and he could not replicate them alone. The experience itself had also left him far too damaged for him to consider repeating it. As far as attempting to force the notification from then to repeat itself went, he had no leads beyond that.
Anselm groaned. Oddly enough, the searing fever he had awoken to had left him feeling refreshed after it passed—not quite better, but no longer on death’s doorstep. His [Integrity] remained at zero even now, but neither pain nor a debuff had followed it.
Could what he saw, both back then and now, have been influenced by the blessing? Not once before did he recall experiencing such vivid dreams. There was an edge to them that rang not of the bright light that haunted him, but of something else—something older, perhaps.
A spark of hope bloomed in him, and he leaned into it, lest he descend through a spiral of self-pity. That feeling of betrayal remained so fresh that the thought of any distraction appealed to him.
Closing his eyes, he did that which he rarely did—he sought his fragile core. If anything positive had followed that fateful day, it might have been how he’d grown more capable of sensing it than he should have been, though he found he rarely bothered. He never even had the energy to feel enthusiastic, and such exercises mattered little to those who could not cultivate properly, as ambient mana could only do so much. Simply living for long enough would take anyone to the Mortal Esse, but you needed the essence of something that was truly your own in order to progress.
His 99th level had been the first for which he earned 250 attribute points, and all of them had gone to Circulation. A decision born from desperation and misplaced hope. But surpassing eighteen-hundred [Toll] had not made a difference—any relief Circulation could provide for the handling of magical plants meant little in comparison to the bizarre situation he was dealing with.
Now, Anselm wondered if it had not been entirely meaningless. It could be attributed to the smoother way in which ambient mana now flowed through him, or even to his 1076 Perception, but beyond whatever the cause may be, what mattered was that which he grew certain of—somehow, he could actively feel the blessing now. It was a burning coal hovering in the center of his core, anchored somewhere imperceptible.
In some ways, it burned too brightly—trying to focus on visualizing it blinded him. He hadn’t much practice with this, and asking Hanne for any sort of advice would have brought forth questions he knew he could not have answered. It was easier to lock onto it by thinking of it as if he were warming his hands by the fireplace—comforting, but if he reached too deeply, he would be harmed.
To his surprise, Anselm found some success—it stirred, and warmth flowed through him. He hissed out a breath. His channels were still all but shadows of what they could be, barely shifting as it happened. The magic cared not for the lack of a clear path—it seemed willing to move through his body even unchanneled. The strangeness to his currently accrued [Toll] made more sense now—if it wasn’t being channeled properly, it stood to reason it might not be measured properly, either.
That could prove troublesome.
With confirmation that he could, indeed, at least trigger its energy into being released, Anselm refocused on that searing lump of mana within his core. Nothing had changed. Curious, he tried to make sense of its anchor, but the issue remained—he hadn’t the faintest clue as to what it had latched onto, seeing as it went beyond the core itself. And while its power could be made to flow, the blessing itself was unmovable. No amount of telling himself—and it—that it was unwanted would affect it.
Anselm’s internal gaze lingered on its anchor. Just how bad would the damage be were the blessing to be removed?
That blooming fear helped him justify his newfound reluctance to reject this in its entirety—it had been forced upon him, and yet… That feeling of pure unadulterated power was thrilling, for all he would have wished to believe he wouldn’t compromise his integrity over such a thing. He found his will to oppose whatever plans the deity that gave him the blessing had for it faltering.
Again, he focused on the blessing within himself, but this time, he made an active effort to recall the panels that had eluded him while he had been close to death soon after taking that tonic. He caught glimpses of it—of what he had almost reached. Anselm knew then, with certainty, that the Affinity he'd been denied had something to do with seeing beyond. Perhaps even beyond reality itself—it was an easy culprit to blame for his dreams then and now, at least.
Something had... interfered. It had not been the deity—that came later. This intruder had been merciless, bringing more harm than he'd noticed. The warmth of golden words pushed most of it away, but he somehow understood now that he would not have enjoyed the outcome had whatever those panels spoke of come to pass.
He recalled his own confusion as if it were that of a stranger—something to be watched, not felt. Anselm saw her, then, a figure far more grotesque than what he had seen moments earlier. The difference had been in its location, he realized—what he saw the first time around was a form that seemed to bend with the currents. He still would never consider the version at the table normal, but the difference was stark.
“...One of her lot...” the words danced by his ears like a shimmering whisper, carried by a force that should not be. Something within him strained, shuddering as he suppressed the urge to let go.
[03/5766] You were barred from inheriting an Affinity from Katrina Skrībanin. [03/5766] You were barred from inheriting an Affinity from Katrina Skrībanin.
The moment the earlier notification repeated itself, Anselm reopened his eyes with a gasp.
He had to speak of this to Hanne, in any way he could manage. He lacked the expertise to understand all of the moving pieces here.
The blessing was somehow enabling him to access something the system seemed to think he should have an Affinity for. Could however Katrina sealed them have been flawed in a way? Or had his actions been what lead to this outcome?
With a wave of his hand, he summoned a pocketbook from his inventory, not writing but gazing upon the pages. Thinking of what he could get away with writing without the blessing lashing out at him. It would be beyond conspicuous, but his confidence on attempting to ask questions in this matter was high enough to surprise even him. He got the impression he would not be allowed to intentionally string any leading questions together, but he could work with this.
On a whim, Anselm thought back to the one snippet he had managed to bring back to himself. Whose lot? Katrina's? That implied this being somehow knew of her, this being who also appeared to have some knowledge of whatever Affinities he'd been barred from.
In truth, he found a sense of eagerness growing within him. He could not recall the last time he had felt like he had something he could work towards, beyond the woes of convalescence. It was not the joy of creation, but it thrilled him, nonetheless.
With an only partially reluctant smile, he settled himself and turned back to the paper.