Chapter 298: It’s Not Permanent

The door opened and Baldwin stepped through.

Three figures followed him in.

They wore baggy, plain, unmarked clothes, with no way for one to tell their affiliation or gender.

Their faces were covered by smooth white masks with no features carved into them at all. There were no holes for their eyes or mouths.

They moved in silence, spreading out just inside the doorway without being told, and stood there with perfect rigidity, as if they’d done this many times before.

Baldwin walked across the room and stopped in front of Morgana, giving a short bow.

"My lady. I’ve brought the necessary people." He gestured briefly to the three masked figures behind him. "They can begin the moment we’re prepared."

"And the rest?"

Baldwin’s expression flickered.

"The materials are delayed."

Morgana went quiet, her demeanor growing cold.

"Explain."

"Your brother has noticed the increased activity at Lotus Hall," Baldwin said. "He’s seen the healers moving in and out, the archive requests, and the volume of supplies flowing through our channels over the past two days. And he’s drawn conclusions from it."

He paused. "He’s taking measures. Our requisitions have been flagged for review, and two of our suppliers have suddenly discovered scheduling conflicts. The materials aren’t refused outright, they’re simply being slowed down."

Lukas felt his stomach drop.

He only had a window of two weeks. That was how long the stasis star would hold. And every day lost was a day that shut the door to reviving Akira.

Morgana’s expression went dark.

"Of course he did," she said quietly.

She stood in silence for a moment, and Lukas watched something calculating pass behind her eyes.

Then she spoke, and her voice had changed entirely.

"Baldwin. Take care of it."

"My lady—"

"Whatever it takes." She turned to face him fully. "Go to the suppliers directly. Go to the review office. In fact, go to whoever is holding those requisitions and make it clear that the delay ends right this instant."

"If someone stands in your way, remove them from your way. I don’t care who they are or whose name they’re operating under."

Baldwin’s posture straightened.

"And don’t worry about being polite about it," Morgana added. "Not this time."

"Understood."

"Make sure the message reaches him." Her voice dropped, which somehow made it worse than shouting. "I’m not interested in competing with my siblings. I’ve never been interested. They can have the seat, they can have the city, they can carve the family apart between themselves for all I care. I want no part of it."

She stepped closer to Baldwin, her eyes hard.

"But that is not the same as being harmless. If they choose to interfere with my affairs, if they reach into my house and put their hands on something that belongs to me, then they’ll learn exactly how much distance there is between not competing and not fighting back."

Baldwin bowed low.

"It will be handled within the hour, my lady."

"Good."

He turned and strode from the room, closing the door closed heavily behind him.

Lukas waited until the sound of Baldwin’s footsteps had faded down the corridor before speaking.

"What’s the deal with the materials?" he asked. "You said the people are here and ready. What exactly are we still waiting on?"

Morgana turned back towards the bed, her expression going softer.

"Creating a revenant isn’t a simple thing," she said. "It’s not just one skill cast over a corpse or the wave of an [Item]. If it were, revenants would be common, and every grieving family with enough money would have one walking their halls."

"Then what is it?"

"It’s a construction." Morgana looked down at Akira’s body. "A revenant is a man-made being, Lukas. It doesn’t occur in nature."

"There’s no beast that produces one and no dungeon that grants one. It exists because someone worked out how to force several unrelated skills to function together in sequence, and create this as a permanent result."

Lukas frowned. "Explain the process."

"It works in stages." She held up one finger. "The first stage calls the soul back. That requires a skill from a class capable of reaching beyond death, someone who can locate a departed soul and draw it back to its origin point."

"Without an anchor, the soul simply passes on. The stasis seal on her forehead is what’s kept her tethered close enough to be found at all."

A second finger.

"The second stage prepares the vessel. A body that has died begins to reject occupancy almost immediately. It has to be reopened, made receptive again, and that’s a separate skill entirely, from a different class."

She raised a third finger.

"And the third stage fuses them. Soul into flesh, bound together into a single functioning existence, and anchored to a living being. That’s the moment a revenant is actually made."

Lukas absorbed it. "So three skills, three casters."

"Not exactly, but yes." Morgana gestured to the three masked figures standing motionless by the wall. "Which is why there are three of them. Each one carries a class capable of performing at least one stage of the sequence."

"They’ve worked together before, and I have no reason to doubt their capabilities."

The masked figures didn’t react to being discussed. They simply stood there, perfectly still.

"Then where do the materials come in?" Lukas asked.

"Here." Morgana’s expression grew serious. "Not every effect of one of those three skills is permanent."

"That means if we performed the ritual right now, exactly as it stands, Akira would open her eyes. She’d speak. She’d know you both. And by tomorrow evening, everything we’ve done would come apart, and she’d die a second time, permanently, with nothing left to anchor another attempt."

Melody’s breath caught audibly beside him.

"The materials are what make it permanent," Morgana continued. "They act as a foundation. They hold each stage in place so the next one can be layered onto it without the first collapsing underneath."

"This includes rare reagents and specific components, none of them substitutable. And on top of that, there’s a fourth skill required at the end. A sealing operation that locks the entire construction into a stable, permanent state."

"And who casts that one?"

Morgana smiled as she answered.

"Baldwin."