Chapter 26: lira’s Awakening

Chapter 26: Chapter 26: lira’s Awakening

Lira didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she remained standing on the balcony next to Allan. Her fingers pressed against the cold stone of the railing as if she were being held up by it.

Her eyes were still fixed on the fading light of the symbol beneath Allan’s wrist. Even so, she didn’t say much.

She was somewhere else entirely.

"Allan, sometimes I see something and then I remember I’ve seen it before," she said.

Allan twisted his wrist to get a look at his mark in the moonlight. The lines had faded a lot, but his skin still felt warm. "What do you mean?"

Lira closed her eyes. "I don’t know. It’s too vague." She tilted her head back and looked out at the Arclight territory lights in the distance. The view from here wasn’t that great.

Allan furrowed his brow. "You just said you saw it, though," he said, confusion evident in his voice.

"I said I remember seeing it. I don’t remember where, though." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "That’s the problem."

For a moment, the vulnerable Lira who had appeared only moments before, while he’d been pouring all of his time into building up Oakwood as she watched with interest, was gone. In her place stood a woman almost as hard as himself. Hard with...

Fear.

Not fear of him.

Fear of a memory. Like the time when he had mentioned House Emberwind, or the slavery.

Is she awakening to her fate as a witch? he thought.

"I’m here with you, Lira. What do you remember?" he pressed.

After a few moments, Lira’s fingers locked around the railing, her knuckles turning white. She closed her eyes. After what seemed like an eternity, she opened them again.

"A room.

With stone walls.

No windows.

A bunch of people in the room, but I couldn’t see their faces. One person stood before me. There was a symbol on the floor. It looked like... that."

Allan’s attention snapped into razor-sharp focus.

"The same symbol?"

"Notice anything about it?" Lira asked, her eyes starting to haunt him. "It’s not complete. Yours is missing one circle." She motioned to the symbol on the ground between them. "This one has three."

That was incredibly odd. "Incomplete?"

Allan stared at his wrist. The System had never mentioned that.

Just as Allan was about to ask another question, he felt a surge of heat shoot through his wrist as Lira stumbled backward.

The mark had ignited.

A web of black lines crawled across his skin, twitching at the edges like small, fragile creatures. The lines seemed to be trying to escape his skin, but there was no pain, just a heavy pressure, tugging at something deep within him that he couldn’t quite reach.

Then the System appeared.

[Shared Curse Bond: ACTIVE.]

[External Resonance Detected.]

[Linked Individual: Amelia von Arclight.]

[Corruption Stabilization: FAILING.]

Allan’s face went cold.

"Amelia..."

Lira grabbed his arm. "Wait," she said.

"She’s in trouble," he replied.

"I... I know."

"Then let go, Lira. I need to go."

Pause.

"No," she muttered.

Allan whirled on her.

Lira forced his eyes up to hers. She wasn’t trying to hold him; her grip wasn’t strong enough for that. But she wanted him to think.

"Amelia doesn’t need you rushing in there," Lira pressed. "You don’t even know what’s happened to her. If someone managed to trigger that bond deliberately, then running off toward her could be exactly what they want you to do."

The mark pulsed again.

This time, Lira flinched.

Allan noticed immediately. "I don’t feel it, but you do..."

Lira slowly released his arm. "Yes."

"Tell me, then, Lira. What did you feel? What do you see?"

Her eyes dropped to her own wrist. There was no mark there. At least, there hadn’t been one a moment ago, but...

A faint black line appeared beneath her sleeve.

Allan’s blood ran cold. "Lira."

She pulled her sleeve back.

It wasn’t exactly the same as Allan’s mark. This line was much thinner, almost too faint to see. But it was clearly connected to the rest of the design: two curved lines meeting in the center to form a broken circle around a tiny black dot.

Lira stared at the mark in horror, as if she had just seen a ghost.

"I tried to escape it, or at least control it, but it seems..."

Allan stepped back a bit.

"It seems my will is as fickle as my heart."

The System reacted before Allan could.

[Fate Deviation Detected.]

[Target: Lira.]

[Original Fate Route Reconstructed.]

Allan’s heart plummeted into his stomach.

Another notification appeared.

[Original Route: Abyssal Witch Queen.]

Lira stopped breathing. Those words felt lethal between them.

Allan had known of this potential future for Lira. He had known that her Moonlight Sorcery could evolve into something far more terrible. He had known that on the original fate route, she would have ended up as the Abyssal Witch Queen.

But it had always been a future possibility, something he could prevent, something he could change.

This was different.

The System wasn’t showing him a prediction.

It was showing him a route, a fixed route that couldn’t be changed, and this route was now occurring because of current actions and events.

Lira slowly raised her hand to the mark on her sleeve. As she touched it, her expression changed.

A memory surged forward like a freight train crashing into a quiet town.

She saw herself standing in a dark chamber.

Lira remembered herself as younger. Her hair had been short, and she’d been covered in blood. Chains wrapped around her arms had been attached to a circle of silver chains beneath her feet.

Someone stood on the other side of the formation.

A woman wearing a black robe.

Lira couldn’t see her face. But she could hear her voice.

"The vessel will soon accept the abyss, but before that, she needs to experience a maiden’s loss."

The memory vanished.

Lira staggered as Allan caught her before she collapsed. "Lira!"

Before he could say anything, hasty footsteps echoed from inside the mansion.

Seris came around the corner quickly, a look of concern on her face. "I’ve been looking for you," she said.

Her gaze dropped then to Lira.

"What happened?"

"Um... let’s say I received a kind of resonance from Amelia. She’s in trouble."

Seris still looked anxious but seemed to have gathered her composure as she pulled a report from her cloak. "This came from the western route ten minutes ago," she said, handing it to Allan.

Allan unfolded it.

Three caravans of Oakwood merchants had been delayed at the Emberwind border. The guards accompanying them had encountered armed men on an old military road.

The men wore Emberwind colors, but when questioned by the Oakwood guards, they replied that they were not required to identify themselves to the merchants of Oakwood. They then ordered the caravans to turn back.

Allan read the report twice. "Why would Emberwind interfere with our caravans?"

"Those would have been Emberwind soldiers," Seris said, "but they didn’t come from here."

One of Seris’s merchants had followed them and discovered they weren’t heading to the mines but to an abandoned storage facility three miles from the old border road.

"Where?"

"Three miles from the old border road. The same location where the suspicious materials were taken as well."

"For the poison?"

"Yes, and it seems Lady Amelia’s brother isn’t the only victim of this poison. There are many, all heirs of some noble house."

"Hmmm... somebody hates the nobles, like you both."

She came closer, watching Lira. "How are you sure it isn’t Emberwind again?"

Of course Allan would know; he had seen the world to its ending, and he knew what was happening, or part of it.

Then another sound came from the courtyard below.

A carriage had entered the Oakwood estate.

Seris looked over the railing. The carriage bore the crest of House Emberwind.

Allan’s eyes narrowed. "What now? I need to go see Amelia."

Seris didn’t look amused. "Apparently they wanted an answer tonight," she said.

"Allan..."

"Yeah?"

"I will go to Lady Arclight and see if she’s all right. Please handle whatever this is."

The carriage pulled up to the bottom of the steps and stopped. A young woman got out and stood beneath the stairs.

She wore traveling clothes beneath a coat of good quality. A sword hung at her side. Her dark hair was tied back, and she looked about the manor with a sense of calm control foreign to most noble women.

Cedric Emberwind’s sister.

She looked up toward the balcony. Her eyes found Allan immediately.

Then she raised a hand. "I assume you’re Allan Oakwood?"

Allan descended the steps, Seris following. At the bottom, Elena Emberwind, Cedric’s sister, waited and bowed before him. "I’m Elena Emberwind," she said.

Allan nodded. "You came because of your brother’s proposal?"

Elena straightened. "Indeed."

Seris looked at Allan, and Allan nodded, as she walked to their carriage.

Elena watched Seris walk away, before returning her attention to Allan. "And because my brother made a mistake."

"I’d been under the impression that Oakwood needed us."

"He did."

Elena looked out toward the warehouses. "He was wrong," she said.

She moved closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Emberwind needs Oakwood."

Allan remained silent, not having any more words to speak.

"Why has Father agreed to the proposal, when it’s your warehouses, supplies, and roads that make such an alliance valuable to the adventurers’ trade?" Elena asked gruffly, her eyes glinting with frustration.

"Then why?"

Elena’s eyes hardened. "Because something is happening beneath our mines."

The courtyard seemed to grow quieter.

"Miners have disappeared," she said. "At first we thought they’d been caught in a cave-in, but then we found their gear in a tunnel that had never been opened before.

Two weeks ago, a guard captain was found dead with no visible wounds. His armor was covered in a black residue."

Allan’s attention sharpened. "Black residue?"

"Three days ago, someone attempted to purchase a large stock of poison-based materials using an Emberwind merchant account."

Allan immediately stepped forward. "Where?"

Elena met his gaze. "Near the western military road," she repeated.

Allan looked at the two women before him. "Then why did your soldiers block our caravans?"

"...They were wearing our colors," Elena said immediately. "But they weren’t my father’s men."

Allan’s eyes narrowed. "Can you prove that?"

Elena pulled a small metal object from her coat pocket and handed it to Allan. "This is an old Emberwind military seal. It was retired twelve years ago."

Allan turned it over.

A faint layer of black residue clung to the underside. The moment he touched it, his wrist burned.

[WARNING: Multiple Fate Routes are converging.]

Allan stared at the words.

Elena noticed his expression. "What is it?"

Allan closed his hand around the insignia. "I’ll accept your brother’s offer of an alliance," he said.

Elena’s eyebrows shot up. "That quickly? What happened? Did you fall in love with me at first sight?"

"Not through marriage, but through an oath. An imperium oath."

Then she nodded. "I see... why my brother is afraid of you."

"Don’t worry. You will understand it too."