Chapter 643: A Strange Power

Martha stepped into the foyer from the living room, wiping her hands on a dry tea towel.

She stopped, taking in the sight with a soft knowing crinkle around her eyes, unbothered by the sudden influx of drama.

"Welcome, Lady Harper," Martha said, her voice sounding smooth and welcoming. "It is wonderful to see you well and... I must thank you once more for the automobile... It drives like a dream, though the maintenance manual is nearly three inches thick."

Harper didn’t immediately let go.

She lingered for two more heartbeats with her fingers tightening into the fabric of Silas’s shoulders, before she reluctantly released him.

"Umm..."

She stepped back, though her hand lingered on Silas’s forearm and her fingers lightly tracing the cuff of his robe. Her composure reassembled itself with astonishing speed with her chin lifting as she looked at the housekeeper.

"You are very welcome, Martha," Harper said, her voice turning smooth again though the flush on her high cheekbones remained. "And frankly... I would willingly purchase five more of those cruisers if it meant seeing that smile on your face every afternoon."

Martha paused mid-step with her eyebrows lifting slightly as a dry smirk touched her lips.

’Good heavens,’ Martha thought, amused. ’Aren’t you supposed to be flirting with Master Silas? Why are you trying to charm the domestic help?’

’What’s going on here...?!’

"The vehicle was intended for the household," Harper added, turning her violet eyes back to Silas with her gaze softening. "I wanted Silas to have something secure and comfortable to transport the entire family... The Zenith IVR is a fine car, but it’s a bit unsuitable for grocery runs with three children."

Silas let out a low chuckle, stepping past her into the living room and sinking heavily back into the corner of the sectional couch.

"Fair point," Silas said, resting his arm along the backrest.

Harper followed him, slipping naturally onto the cushion beside him, tucking her legs beneath her with effortless grace.

Silas looked at her tired pale profile.

Without thinking, his right hand rose with his fingers gently threading through the silky cool violet strands of her hair, brushing them back from her temple.

"Mm..."

A tiny involuntary sound escaped the back of Harper’s throat.

Her eyes fluttered half-closed as her head leaned instinctively into the warmth of his palm with her shoulders dropping two inches as the lingering tension drained from her spine.

"How are you holding up, Harper?" Silas asked quietly, his thumb tracing the soft line of her cheekbone. "Really..."

The question seemed to pull her back to the room.

Harper opened her eyes, looking around the living room before her gaze locked onto Penelope standing in the archway.

"Penelope," Harper called out, reaching into her inner coat pocket and withdrawing a sleek titanium transponder key.

She tossed it with a light flick of her wrist and Penelope caught it cleanly with one hand.

"Take the cargo from the boot of the Valkyrie," Harper instructed her sister. "There are three garment boxes containing sleepwear for everyone in the house... I had the tailors use imported silk-cotton blends and there are four insulated containers of prepared dinner dishes. Martha has spent the entire day cooking, she doesn’t need to spend her evening over a stove hehe~"

Penelope looked at the key, then looked at Silas with her expression deadpan.

"Understood, Sister."

"I’ll help!" Lia offered, bounding toward the front door. "I want to see the fancy pajamas!"

"I will accompany them to manage the containers," Martha nodded, following the two girls out the heavy cedar door, pulling it shut behind them with a soft final click.

The front door sealed and the room fell into heavy silence.

The amber light from the windows had faded into deep twilight blue, casting long cool shadows across the Persian rug and the scattered boxes of figurines.

Harper waited until the crunch of the girls’ footsteps on the gravel driveway faded completely then, she shifted.

She pulled her legs out from beneath her, sliding across the cushions until she was sitting directly beside Silas with her thigh pressing firmly against his linen robe.

Her hands rested on her knees and her fingers curled tightly into the dark wool of her trousers.

"Silas," she said, her voice dropping into a tense tone that made the hair on his arms stand up.

Silas turned to her, his hand falling from her hair to rest on the cushion between them. "What is it?"

"My body..." Harper swallowed hard, her throat working with a dry click. "...it feels weird."

Silas’s expression sharpened instantly, the relaxed sleepy expression vanishing as it was replaced by a sharp one.

"Weird how? Are your meridians rejecting mana or something? Did something else happen...? Talk to me."

Was this possibly why she was acting so weird? If so, Silas wanted to know.

He didn’t expect her to be back to normal especially since Ititius had taken over her body and used her to kill off the Royal Family of Khemet in one go, it was a surprise or perhaps a miracle that Harper herself wasn’t vindicated of the whole thing.

’I guess I should thank Ititius for ending all the possible witnesses...?’

He still hated that guy, that much was for certain and Silas really hoped he killed him that time because if he didn’t... He would have a field day when next he saw the bastard.

"No," Harper shook her head, her violet hair swaying. "It’s not damage, well it’s... something else."

She hesitated, and for a moment the polished expression she had been giving slipped, leaving only a tired young woman who had not slept properly at all.

"I haven’t told anyone... Not Penelope and not the clinic... Every night I lie there and feel it moving under my ribs like a second pulse, and every night it feels very weird but I know what it is."

She took a slow deep breath, staring down at her own manicured hands.

"When I was trapped..." She began. "...my body was taken. First by Nitocris..."

Silas’s brow furrowed. "Nitocris? I thought the entity orchestrating the engine blowout was Ititius."

"They were... essentially the same entity," Harper murmured, her fingers tightening against her fabric. "It’s a bit complicated, I really can’t explain without confusing you but essentially Ititius is Nitocris’s main body while Nitocris is a split part of her consciousness, Ititius is a woman too so..."

"Eh?"

Silas was confused and Harper pouted as well, was it her fault that her ancestor was that crazy.

"U–um... anyway... Nitocris occupied my vessel, she suppressed my consciousness, and before she was purged, she kept her promise."

Harper looked up with her violet eyes dark, swirling with an intense unreadable depth.

"She engraved the ancient techniques of the Black Sand directly into my soul, Silas... Deep into the spiritual marrow where the human meridians are born."

She raised her right hand into the empty space between them.

FSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Her eyes didn’t flare with purple mana.

From the pores of her palm, a fine light-devouring mist of pitch-black sand began to seep outward.

’A-ah...’

Ordinary mineral dust would have fallen, but this defied gravity, swirling in a tight perfectly controlled miniature whirlpool that hovered two inches above her skin.

The sand was so black it seemed to drink the twilight in the room, radiating a cold aura of desolation.

’What a weird spell...’

CRACKLE!

Without a word, Harper’s core shifted.

Thin violent arcs of purple lightning, her native elemental affinity, erupted from her fingertips, coiling tightly around the black sand vortex like hunting vipers.

WHOOSH!

The lightning didn’t scatter the sand at all, instead it fused with it, turning the swirling vortex into a shrieking cyclone of electrified obsidian particles that made the air smell of scorched ozone as Silas watched the miniature storm hover between them.

His dark eyes tracked the movement of each individual grain with his instincts analyzing the density packed into that three-inch sphere.

...This was very impressive.

"You’ve become stronger, Harper," Silas said softly, real respect coloring his tone. "A lot stronger... The control required to braid lightning through a mineral like this black sand... most high-tier lords would spend ten years in a seclusion chamber just to balance it out given that you just awakened."

A fragile smile touched Harper’s lips, though it carried none of its usual pride.

"I did," she whispered. "My mana capacity expanded during the whole thing. The hospital diagnostic scanners nearly shattered when they ran the initial scan so right now... my total mana reserves are resting comfortably above ten thousand points... I checked my Status too."

Silas’s breath hitched.

’Ten thousand?’ he thought with his pulse spiking. ’For an Awakened who hasn’t even completed her Second Stage Advancement? That’s an absurd mana pool too.’

"That should be impossible for your current level," Silas said seriously, was there something Ititius had done? She needed to tell him.

"I know," Harper said.

She closed her fingers, snuffing out the black sand and the purple lightning in a single clean fist.

"And that isn’t even the part that scares me," she murmured.

Harper closed her eyes.

She drew a long slow breath through her nose, holding it deep in her diaphragm.

HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

A sound began to rise in the living room...

A pressure settled directly against Silas’s skull with a frequency that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise like quills as Harper slowly opened her hand once more.

From the center of her palm, an energy began to bleed into the air.

It wasn’t purple nor was it black either, this time, It was a brilliant, blinding pure white light.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

The miniature torrent of sand erupted once more, but it had completely shed its dark corrupted form.

The light-devouring black sand had transformed into fine crystalline white particles that spun with terrifying speed and the lightning coiling around it...

The violet arcs had inverted entirely, bleached into pure, blinding white plasma that let off a quiet vibration.

’This...’

The coffee table groaned, and one of the plastic heroes tipped over on the rug with an accusing click.

The carpet beneath their boots flattened under a sudden invisible gravity that Silas had only ever felt in one other place as Silas’s eyes widened to their limits and his body went rigid on the sofa.

’This energy...’

His mind raced, slamming through the memories of the Keep of Blessed Land.

No element carried that weight, and neither did high-tier mana from his other women, nor even the refined Gold Core output he wielded through his own meridians... apart from two beings that he knew very well.

"I don’t know what this is, Silas," Harper whispered, her face pale in the blinding white glare, looking at the swirling torrent with wide frightened eyes. "Every time I call upon it... my attacks don’t just hit harder, They erase whatever they touch very easily. It feels... foreign, like something that doesn’t belong to mortals you know. Similar to those novels..."

Snuff!

With a sharp jerk of her wrist, she dispelled the light and the living room fell back into the cool dark twilight.

Harper slowly turned her body with her knees shifting on the cushions until she was facing him directly.

She reached out, her cool trembling fingers gently resting over the top of his calloused hand with her grip tight.

’I love holding your hand...’

"Does it hurt when you use it?" Silas asked, keeping his voice level.

"No." She shook her head slowly. "That’s a bit good. The Black Sand burns a little, like a stretched muscle... This doesn’t burn at all, It feels like breathing, like something I was always meant to do in a way if that makes sense, I know it can feel like I’m blabbing a lot but I’m being serious."

"What do you think, Silas?" she asked, her voice trembling in the quiet room. "I need your opinion so please... tell me the truth."

Silas sat motionless.

He looked down at her small hand resting over his as he looked back up into her wide searching violet eyes with his heart hammering against his ribs like a war drum.

He was sure of it... There was zero doubt left in his mind...

He turned his hand over beneath hers and closed his fingers around her cold ones.

That feeling she was describing... He knew it very well since it was the same feeling that both Eluned and Thor gave to him, how would he not know it that well, he was being graced by it every single day.

Harper Whitmore... was using Divinity.