"What the hell did you just pull out of yourself?" Zinnia's voice wavered, her breath visible in the cold air that now enveloped the room. She rubbed her nose, feeling the discomfort of it running and the sting of the cold.
"[Cryohex Tincture]," Silas responded flatly, his attention fixed on Selen as he examined her from head to toe. Her condition seemed to have stabilized; the strange properties that had overtaken her body appeared to have disappeared to a point where even Silas, with his keen senses, could no longer detect them.
Perched atop Zinnia's head, Nyx was uncharacteristically serious as he stared intently at Selen's neck. "This is mildly unsettling," he mused silently. "Even if the dose was small and old, a Paramount-level brew should have turned her into a solid block of ice. Yet here she is, as relaxed as a lump of dough."
"I've never heard of that Cryo-whatever," Zinnia remarked, rubbing her hands together as she channeled energy into her palms to warm them. She began deicing herself and the nearby furniture, the frost retreating under her touch. "Did you manage to fix her?"
"I did," Silas confirmed, his tone neutral. "However, her energy meridians are beginning to shrink."
"Shrink?" Zinnia echoed, her brow furrowing as she continued to deice the floor. "Is she entering deviation?~"
Nyx squawked and fluttered down to Selen's stomach, his beady eyes focused as he prepared to investigate further.
"What do you think, Nyx?" Silas asked, observing the crow's actions closely.
Nyx used his wings and talons to conduct a detailed examination of Selen’s internal Energy flows. When he reached a point just above her navel, he tilted his head, his mind racing as he discovered something unusual. "The main Energy lines... they're branching off into odd segments."
Zinnia, having finished deicing, felt a pang of irritation. "Am I being ignored again?" she muttered, clearly annoyed.
"Patience," Silas advised calmly. "Nyx is more skilled than I am when it comes to detecting Energy."
Zinnia blinked in surprise, unwilling to acknowledge anything positive about the damnable crow.
Nyx continued his inspection, delving deeper. "What’s this? How is this possible? Even we can’t grow another pair!" He squawked at Silas, communicating something only the two of them could understand.
Silas reached into his satchel and pulled out a small, red, palm-sized box adorned with a feather symbol. He placed it in front of Nyx, who eagerly flicked it open with his wing. Inside was a fine amber powder, which Nyx quickly absorbed into his beak, its tip turning shadowy as he did.
Zinnia watched Nyx's shadowy beak with suspicion, mentally noting to be cautious around shadows in the future, and to occasionally stomp her own.
Nyx hopped back onto Selen’s abdomen, pinpointing the abnormality he had sensed. With a powerful exhale, he released the amber powder from his beak, spreading it over Selen’s stomach.
Zinnia and Silas both leaned in, watching as the powder revealed the intricate network of Selen’s meridians, normally hidden deep within her body.
"...That’s... incredible," Zinnia murmured, though her tone held grudging admiration. It was one thing to sense your own meridians during cultivation, but to actually see someone else's was… well something else entirely.
Silas wasn’t surprised by Nyx’s skill, but the sight that the crow had uncovered did catch him off guard. "She is indeed undergoing a deviation," Silas said, finally addressing Zinnia’s earlier question. "But it’s an unusual one."
"That’s never good, right?" Zinnia responded with a hint of sarcasm. "Any deviation in the energy flow makes cultivation impossible, or am I mistaken?"
"You’re correct," Silas confirmed, his gaze steady. "There are no known cultivation techniques that work with deviated meridians. However, what’s intriguing here is that her meridians aren’t just deviating—they’re being absorbed into her body. And from her core, a new set seems to be forming."
"What the hell!?" Zinnia's head snapped away from Selen as she looked up at Silas, astonished.
At that moment, Selen stirred for the first time since being brought in, her body shifting slightly as a soft grumble escaped her lips.
"Looks like sleepyhead is waking up," Nyx squawked thoughtfully, his head cocked to one side as he observed her.
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Pain gnawed at Selen's gut as she slowly drifted back into consciousness. The terrifying images from her dream clung to her mind like a suffocating shroud, making it difficult to distinguish between reality and the nightmare she had just experienced. Her head throbbed, each pulse like a dull hammer against her skull, amplifying the unease that lingered in her chest.
Her eyes felt unbearably heavy, as if weighed down by stones, and it took all her effort in an attempt to flutter them open, but with no luck.
Her throat was parched, yet it also felt as if she had swallowed a lump of ice, each breath sharp and chilling as it moved down to her lungs. She swallowed with difficulty, the sensation uncomfortable, almost painful, as if the icy coldness had lodged itself deep within her body.
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With great effort, she raised a trembling hand to her neck, her fingers brushing against the sweat that had gathered on her skin. The dampness clung to her, making her shiver in disgust. A sore spot throbbed under her touch, the skin tender and aching. She grumbled incoherently, trying to make sense of the pain and the memories that clouded her mind.
A yawn forced its way through her dry lips, her body reacting instinctively as she fought to stay awake. Slowly, she managed to pry her eyelids open, her vision blurry at first. As her eyes adjusted, the sight that met her took a moment to fully register. Perched on her knees was a rather plump crow, its beady eyes fixed on her with unsettling intensity. The bird's presence was odd, almost surreal, but it was the least of her worries.
Confused and still groggy, Selen turned her head to the side, her muscles protesting the movement. She noticed a tall woman with striking silver hair standing nearby, her arms crossed beneath her chest. The woman regarded Selen with an expression of curious interest, though there was a hint of something else in her gaze—perhaps concern… or amusement?
Her nose was comically red and raw, as if it had been rubbed repeatedly with a rough cloth, adding a strange, almost whimsical touch to her otherwise composed appearance.
Beside the silver-haired woman stood a young man, his features youthful yet marked by distinct laugh lines that suggested a life filled with both joy and sorrow. His deep dark blue eyes locked onto Selen, reflecting the same look of intrigue she saw in the woman’s gaze. His expression was calm, but there was a sharpness in his eyes that made Selen uneasy, as if he was trying to read her thoughts or peer into her very soul.
Selen shifted uncomfortably, the strange sensation of the thin, oddly scented gauze wrapped around her body becoming more apparent.
The gauze felt foreign against her skin, and the scent was unfamiliar, a mixture of herbs, leather and something else she couldn’t quite place. It was soothing yet slightly unsettling.
Glancing down at herself, she suddenly became acutely aware of her vulnerability, the thin gauze doing little to cover her properly. Embarrassment and fear mingled in her chest, and she quickly pulled a sheet from the side, covering herself more modestly.
As she did, the crow hopped off her knees and fluttered onto the young man's shoulder, its gaze never leaving her. The movement was swift and fluid, the bird’s dark eyes unblinking as it continued to watch her with what seemed like unnatural focus.
She coughed, trying to clear the dryness from her throat, the sound harsh and grating. Her body still felt sluggish, her mind foggy, but she mustered the courage to speak, forcing her voice to remain steady despite the uncertainty gnawing at her insides. "Hello… May I ask, what exactly is going on here?" Her voice was soft, almost a whisper, but it held a note of calm determination.
The silver-haired woman exchanged a look with the young man, her expression shifting into something Selen couldn't quite decipher. There was a strange baffled look in her eyes as she said something in a language that Selen couldn’t understand. The words were foreign, their meaning lost on Selen, leaving her even more puzzled and anxious.
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"Hɘllo… Mɒγ I ɒƨʞ, w⑁ɒɟ ɘxɒɔɟlγ iƨ ϱoinϱ on ⑁ɘɿɘ?"
Zinnia's lips curled into a wry smile as she glanced at Silas. "Seems like you messed up somewhere, Boss~. She’s speaking in idiotese."
Silas turned his gaze to Zinnia, his eyes locking onto hers with a cold, unsettling intensity. The smile on Zinnia's face faltered, and she shifted uncomfortably, feeling as though she was on the brink of experiencing something very unpleasant. But then, Silas merely shrugged, his expression indifferent.
"Considering everything that’s happened, I’m honestly surprised to see that her brain has only suffered standard trauma."
"So this is what you were expecting?" Zinnia's voice held a note of disbelief.
"Not in the slightest," Silas replied, his tone flat and unbothered as he moved closer to Selen, inspecting her more thoroughly.
Nyx, perched quietly on Silas's shoulder, squawked softly and pruned his feathers, seemingly uninterested in the exchange.
Selen's brow furrowed as she tried to speak again, her voice hesitant. "U⑁, qɒɿbon mɘ… I bon'ɟ unbɘɿƨɟɒnb ɟ⑁ɒɟ lɒnϱuɒϱɘ… bo γou qɘɿ⑁ɒqƨ ƨqɘɒʞ Vɒlɘniɟ⑁? Ƨɘɿɒɟ⑁iɒn? Korr'av-el?"
Silas’s eyes narrowed slightly, and Nyx’s feathers ruffled as they both snapped their attention to Selen with much greater intensity. Nyx waved his wing, creating a gust of wind that carried one of his drawings toward Silas. Silas deftly caught the paper along with a feather dipped in ink that Nyx offered him.
Zinnia, intrigued by the sudden shift in atmosphere, watched curiously as Silas began to scribble furiously on the paper. She tried to focus on the symbols he was writing, but the more she looked, the more a dull ache began to form at the base of her skull. She quickly averted her eyes, rubbing her temples in an attempt to alleviate the discomfort.
Silas finished writing and turned the paper toward Selen. She reached out cautiously with one hand, still clutching the sheet around her with the other. The message scrawled on the paper was barely legible, the penmanship rough and the grammar worse: "Cn you udersand ths? If ys, nod. F not, shae your hed."
Selen stared at the words, her face scrunched up in concentration as she attempted to decipher the message. It took her a moment, but she finally grasped the meaning and gave a small nod in response. Silas’s stern expression softened, and a warm smile crept across his face as he clapped his hands together.
"Korr'av-el iɟ iƨ ɟ⑁ɘn, w⑁γ bo γou noɟ ƨqɘɒʞ?" Selen asked, attempting to speak in the language he had written, hoping to establish clearer communication.
Silas took the paper back and began writing again, this time more slowly, trying harder to mimic the symbols from his memory. The result was slightly more legible, though still far from perfect: "I know litlee of what thiss written mean, I do not know the hearing."
Selen blinked at the message, her mind racing. "How does that work?" she thought. "He can read and write, but he doesn’t know how it sounds? What a strange person."
She pointed at the feather in Silas’s hand, and he handed it to her without hesitation. Taking the quill, she quickly wrote a much clearer message in neat, flowing script: "What is going on here?"
Silas took the paper from her and studied the words carefully, his brow furrowing as he pieced together their meaning. Zinnia, still nursing the remnants of her headache, glanced over at the paper and grimaced. "What the hell is that? And how can you even stare at it?"
Silas, with a smile that sent an involuntary shiver down her spine, responded in an unusually cheerful tone, "It seems we have someone blessed on our hands, perhaps."
"Huh?" Zinnia blurted out, utterly baffled by his words.
Ignoring her confusion, Silas handed Selen another piece of paper, this one written with more carefully drawn symbols: "We are here to help you."
Selen read the message, her tension easing slightly, though her mind remained a whirlwind of questions and uncertainties. However, now that she has had a moment to calm down, she could not help but feel that this young man… was familiar.