After hours of neglecting everything else, Malwine nodded sagely to herself.

There's something missing.

The irony of that thought's phrasing wasn't lost to Malwine, considering just what the Affinity had been derived from.

{Vestige} simply felt like pieces—a feature, not a flaw. The whole of it was somewhat understandable, yet few details held up to scrutiny. It was not unlike gazing upon a house from a distance, only to notice the walls had holes in them upon closer inspection.

For all she would have preferred to avoid thinking of it, the fact was that this Affinity's ‘creation’ left her with certain implications. Affinities were personal, no doubt, but Malwine got the impression that they were certainly interpretable.

{Legacy}, to her, was something intrinsic. She'd struggle to put what it meant to her to words, but within, there were no doubts.

{Foresight} was… more complicated than that. An annoyance. She loathed what it represented, the fact that it got her cursed, if indirectly. But none of that ultimately mattered as far as the Affinity was concerned.

Though I fear it could, if I go out of my way to see it that way…

She would not. She refused.

In the end, {Foresight} could be a tool. Preparation without thought, instinct before the turning of the tide. The deck, once stacked, accounts for tomorrow.

Malwine avoided focusing on the details, enough to get the impression that not focusing on that was precisely the point. Teach had made it sound as though outright trying to use it for predictions would be a waste of time anyway.

But what did {Vestige} mean to her? What was the point of it, beyond being her new Root?

It stood precariously between her other two Roots—something distant, and though it was whole, its very essence gave off an impression of incompleteness.

If {Foresight} was a vine-like Root woven around {Legacy}, then {Vestige} was a collection of… wooden puffs around it. They each certainly looked like they could maybe be a part of a root, but up close, there was no true consistency between them. Though they were all part of a whole, they still looked like they existed independently.

An echo of something.

In truth, she'd already answered this before—it was not as instinctive as {Legacy}, but Malwine could get there.

Something that refuses to go out.

Pieces that had been close to aligned suddenly slammed into place, a subtle yet unignorable difference. White light burst from where the Roots joined together, coalescing around each of {Vestige}’s pieces before brightening further, until even the imaginary waters of her core appeared luminous.

{Vestige}’s Root thickened all at once, her core shaking with what wasn’t even truly a realization. Malwine’s mind rationalized it in ways that undoubtedly had literally nothing to do with what {Missing} originally stood for, but that was the point.

A weathered grave with details eroded by time. Old pictures that may be missing pieces that succumbed to decay—or were removed. {Vestige} was what remained, incomplete, but still a testament to something that used to be there, and it would not let go.

As the light subsided, the Root was no longer that irksome dark blue—it sizzled now, the saturation lowering until it dimmed to a sky-blue. Not quite. Something between blue and green, one of the many shades that could technically be considered green opal despite the lack of specificity that stood for in practice.

Your Acclimation to {Vestige} has grown! 0 → 2

Malwine pulled back slightly once again—{Foresight} had yet to do that in her panels. She could see its color just fine when she visualized her core, but that color-coded mana had yet to take over her notifications.

…And apparently, neither would {Vestige}’s. The notification that followed lacked it.

Your Control of {Vestige} has improved! 0 → 1

Is it just a Class and milestone thing?

Malwine couldn’t tell. She didn’t even yet truly understand what the milestones even meant. Only {Legacy} had reached them, and her panels had clarified nothing beyond the forceful forging of her first Class.

If I get these to 50/25 as well, could I have my two other Classes forged? Somehow?

It wasn’t lost to Malwine that, in terms of how the system worked, there might be some preference for Acclimation doubling Control’s value. Whether that was a {Legacy} thing or something related to how Mana Sources worked, she didn’t know. But her last ‘breakthrough’—if she could even call it that—had led {Legacy} to choose quite specific values, to trigger those ambiguous milestones for her. And Acclimation’s milestone had sat at exactly double Control’s.

For all I know, the requirement could be something else, and it just so happened to turn out that way…

Malwine tried not to doubt herself too much, though. What were the chances of it happening twice, anyway…? She shook her head. Yet another worry for later. Not for now.

At least she had progressed somewhat. She imagined looking up, seeing the stars above her within her core. No matter what this world may look like, she still couldn’t truly bring herself to imagine an environment that matched its appearance.

I wonder if the fourth Root could somehow mimic sand…

----------------------------------------

Though she had to pause for the same things as always—food, sleep, and pretending to willingly socialize were still necessary parts of life—Malwine was finally spending time focusing on her core. Did that count as cultivating?

She wasn’t sure, but it was surprisingly relaxing.

At least a week must have gone by this way, with Malwine putting perhaps more effort than she should into solidifying {Vestige} as much as its intricacies would allow. Eventually, she’d have liked to be able to send it flowing just as well as {Legacy} could, but that wasn’t exactly feasible with its current state.

Intrinsically, she understood {Vestige} would never look whole, but there was no reason for it to look downright neglected. She could make it look mystic instead, like an exotic plant that would hide from sight in some spots. Well, like an exotic Root.

Your Acclimation to {Vestige} has grown! 2 → 8

Your Control of {Vestige} has improved! 1 → 4

The details of her progress certainly strengthened her suspicions. Control refused to move before Acclimation had sufficiently surpassed its new value, every single time. In some ways, it was bizarre—{Legacy} had not behaved this way before what happened during her trial for Katrina.

While Malwine rarely took notes to keep track of anything that wasn’t dead people, she was quite sure Control had even eclipsed Acclimation on her early days with {Legacy}.

So what gives? Malwine was reaching the conclusion that she simply didn’t know far too often, but in her defense, it wasn’t as though she had a cultivation manual. Oh, how convenient that would have been.

Perhaps she should renew her efforts of ransacking the library. Again. Though deep within, she doubted her family actually had anything for that. Katrina certainly didn’t seem to have gotten as far as she did during her married life, at least, and none of her children seemed to have Affinities—so why would she keep anything easily accessible, if at all?

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Well, Beryl had power, of some type. With the passage of months, Malwine was growing increasingly avoidant of pondering her mother’s actions too much. She was infinitely curious, but a sensation she could not quite place kept ushering her away. It didn’t come from her Skills—she’d checked.

Am I just scared to know what she might have been like? No, that could not possibly be it. Malwine was no coward. Just because she was currently disillusioned with the majority of her family, that didn’t mean she would allow herself to wince at the mere thought of her absent mother.

Within her core, she was a featureless figure sitting in the lotus position—not because she was attached to it in any sense, but because she had no clue as to in which other position she could possibly cultivate. Her real body might have been lying flat most of the times she did this, but the idea of doing the same with her visualization had her shuddering. It simply didn’t even sound right.

{Foresight} was—perpetually—the runt of the litter. Both its values were still at zero. At least it did not seem intent on momentarily developing a will of its own as {Legacy} had.

Malwine had found somewhat of a balance with her Roots, for now. While nothing had sprouted so far—and if the core stages would have her actually growing plants, Malwine would likely hit something—the mangrove-like roots that represented {Legacy} had served well as a launching pad for that mana. She’d started sending it off to the visualized stars, and it actually worked on the first try.

It was going so well that Malwine wondered whether she should be worried.

Streaks of ethereal citrine fired off intermittently, like pulses from a most disorganized network of fiber optic cables. The {Vestige} Root, in all its parts, had served to turn the waters into something that actually resembled what you might see at a beach… though one still tragically devoid of sand. She wanted to call the sights—and the experience of organizing it—beautiful, but it was still a bit too novel for her to enjoy it in earnest.

The more she succeeded at ‘cultivating’, the more Malwine found herself wondering just why she couldn’t push further to the next core stage. She couldn’t even pretend reaching the peak of the Early Esse had taken any effort, yet here she was.

Still there.

Apparently, things could only be brute-forced so far. In an ideal world, she could shake the contents of the library until something at least remotely reminiscent of a hint on how to get past this bottleneck fell out.

Malwine suspected it would not be that easy, however.

Before a second week could pass, she had to face the undeniable truth—nothing was happening, and she was getting bored.

Your Acclimation to {Vestige} has grown! 8 → 10

Your Control of {Vestige} has improved! 4 → 5

The slight progress she made on {Vestige} didn’t count.

I wonder how many Skill levels I could have gotten if I didn’t put literally all my attention into this… Even [Multitasking] had its limits.

Before putting her cultivation back into indefinite pause mode, Malwine decided to examine her core one last time.

Who’d have thought a small amount of effort could make this? The widow had never been the biggest fan of taking long walks on the beach—or of going outside without a purpose, in general. She’d had her phases, sure, but walking for leisure was not attainable in the long term when you only really had the opportunity to try it out after your joints already hated you.

Still, it was… certainly better than her initial visualization, the one she’d used for [Meditation]. Malwine could hardly believe she’d even pulled it off. That had been closer to stock footage of a beach, protagonized by a blurry avatar of who she was in her past life. This sandless beach—because she would make it a beach sooner or later—wasn’t something that could pass as natural. It was a sphere topped with a perpetually dark night, its stars fueled by the very Root in the center of those green-opalescent waters. {Foresight} stuck out like a sore thumb, but Malwine did what she did best and just ignored it. For all she knew, it might be perfectly normal for mangroves in this world to be wreathed by glowing blue-purple vines.

Does this have any effect in circulation?

Malwine wasn’t about to let that question go unanswered. Mana rose from the waters, dulling their glow. Against the sky she’d made, it shone like a {Vestige}-themed aurora. Without a second thought, she pushed it outwards, watched it thin and disappear. She still wasn’t sure how this core connected to the channels that were clearly there.

Perhaps she should have accounted for that when making this. Probably what I get for just making shit up… Core space fanciness sounded like something that would be closer to endgame to her, but she did have [Meditation] and years’ worth of experience on imagining things that would have little to no impact on her real life. Who knew that could translate into cultivation skills?

Then again, plenty of actions in this life had come instinctively to her. Maybe this was just yet another of those things that she understood without knowing why.

Compared to {Legacy}, the touch of {Vestige} on her channels was cold, light. It carried with it the scent of neglected bazaars, secondhand clothes, and boxes full of mementos no one ever bothered to catalogue.

Its touch was light.

Yet all Malwine could focus on was the growing pit in her stomach.

In its wake, her body shuddered, and she found herself trying to pull the mana right back in. I should have made clear entry points!

It wasn’t quite uncomfortable—in fact, {Vestige} suited her well. No, the source of the disturbance was something she couldn’t wrap her finger around. It was as if pieces of something were suddenly growing clear, and she didn’t want them to, not any more than someone would want to learn infohazards.

[Unpacifiable] was pointedly quiet, all while whispering a persistent stream of what sounded suspiciously like ‘nope, nope, nope’ into her head.

Malwine managed to push her mana back into the waters… mostly.

Too little, too late.

With a wince, even her visualized self couldn’t stop shaking. As her own understanding of {Vestige} should have warned her, this simply refused to go out, pulses of wrongness radiating from several points of her body—real or otherwise.

She had somebody else’s eyes—the eyes of someone who was gone and forgotten. Who? No idea. Malwine was fairly certain she’d yet to even properly look into a mirror in this life! Aches tore into her, the lethargy of far more than eighteen months’ worth of magical stasis.

{Legacy}’s cables shuddered, then glowed anew. Somehow sturdier—somehow older.

Your Legacy ∞ becomes Legacy ∞.

You okay over there, {Legacy}? Malwine managed to glare at the panel despite the worsening disorientation. This was peculiar enough to supersede everything else as far as her attention span went, considering how not only did {Legacy} clearly come from the widow, but it had always been Timeless.

(❗) Error: {Legacy} Affinity tiers do not match.

Your Legacy ∞ becomes Legacy ∞.

Uh.

Is this {Vestige}’s shtick? Just rehashing error messages?

Why can’t I have one normal Affinity? WHY?

(❗) Error: Disinherited.

It was at that point that Malwine decided to simply tune the notifications out.

That was a mistake, but she only noticed after her spiraling resumed in earnest. She was the widow… but the widow was also Malwine. A tiny voice within the depths of her mind muttered a brief ‘what the fuck?’ before being drowned out. What was she, then? A new existence formed from little remnants—the vestiges—of a centenarian who once lived? Or was she just the widow, simple as that? Just missing a few pieces, a few memories?

Both those ideas, for all Malwine had refused to think too deeply into the matter, were somewhat correct. There was a clear divide between the widow’s life and this one, but it was closer to an intermission than anything else. A pause, a transition.

{Vestige} wasn’t pinpointing flaws on the widow’s timeline, on her presence—it was lighting up everywhere. Cracks manifested, long past the widow’s life.

Her lives might as well have both been stages of the same continued existence, because both of them were broken. It didn’t make any sense, even accounting for the curse. Even assuming the widow’s soul had been reborn as Malwine, there should have been a bigger gap, not… whatever this existence {Vestige} was treating them—her—as.

Yet…

What was life, if not something impossibly large—limitless—that spawned from the faintest seed? Her mind blanked into dull silence, until the memory of bitter words rose within.

May your flowers never bloom.

The words thundered, all her focus on them before a dozen emotions began to claw at it all, too tangled for Malwine to put a name to the sensation. Even as silence returned, then receded, {Vestige}’s discomfort fading away, Malwine could only wish she hadn’t allowed it to flow in the first place. It worked too well. She hadn’t wanted to know this.

All paths led to that numb yet fathomless realization—there would never have been a Malwine without the widow. This was her next stage, but it… it only happened because of her. Specifically.

It was strange. Malwine had never felt out of place. Frankly, she still did not. But a part of her had perhaps simply assumed this was simply a direct continuation of her existence. The widow died, and now Malwine was here. There was nothing more to it. Simply reincarnation. There didn’t need to be anything more to it.

Now she knew, with odd certainty, that she'd arrived in the place of one unformed.

But why?

She shuddered involuntarily—the matter was simply too much.

Malwine pulled her senses back. It was good that she’d planned to put her cultivation back on hold, because she was no longer sure she could have brought herself to try this again.

For now, at least. Because that was what it always came to.

Still, she couldn’t keep herself from lying awake. Her memories of her time in the stars, making choices, glancing at panels, were foggy. Incorporeal images. Malwine couldn’t recall the exact words used there, but she now wished she could.

Just when…

She didn’t even consciously understand why she was so certain of this, but it just clicked. It wasn’t even that Beryl’s child would have died from those ridiculous odds had she not been the widow—it was as if she would have never been alive to begin with.

Malwine didn’t know what to think anymore. She stared at her Mana Sources panel, having opened her eyes just to do so.

Nothing good would come from dwelling too deeply upon this. That, she knew. Things can’t ever just be fucking simple, can they?