Legacy Index - All Chapters
The rain came down harder the farther south they walked, and at some point, the city stopped smelling like a flooded grave and started to resemble the musky, earthy scent he was used to. After two years, that scent was worse than the graves.
It meant the slaughter had yet to begin.
Above, veins of purple light occasionally bled through with the flashes of white lightning. Something was happening above, be it the Skygate or some other force.
Jason kept the fang bare against his shoulder, hood low, water running off the stolen robe in sheets. It beaded and rolled rather than soaking into the fabric. He put one boot in front of the other through streets that ran shin-deep in the rising flood, slow and constant.
Synchronizing with Nyx, he could feel the current, sensing what lay within several meters out. His breathing required constant focus to maintain it, but he welcomed the control.
Eli walked in the dry pocket the formation made, pack on her back, her doll’s foot poking from the flap. Wēi walked beside her as if they’d always been best friends.
Jason slowed a moment when the tide split, Melissa channeling her mana to cut a path for them to walk. The woman whispered a chant under her breath, the rain curving around them in a gathering bubble, sliding back as they moved.
It was their little pocket of calm amidst a storm that chewed on the dead city, thunder rolling long overhead, and Lilly muttered the whole way like a woman arguing with a locked door.
She’d been at it since the building. He caught about half.
The eye constellation in his soul, she’d decided, was True Divine Sense: her own innate blood talent. Talents weren’t like typical cultivation arts, like the sword.
They were blood-related. She, herself, didn’t know where hers came from, or which divine lineage she possessed it from. It was the only thing that allowed her to progress as quickly as she had, helping her gain a true understanding of universal laws and her own soul’s foundation.
He’d lit a sliver of True Divine Sense; that was how he was able to connect with her so easily. Then, how was Nyx so compatible too?
One lightning strike? Sure.
Three totally compatible souls?
Nuh-uh. No way. At least, that was her murmurs.
The weird part was that she couldn’t use her True Divine Sense without her body.
So she couldn’t even scan him properly to put the cause to rest.
It was useless to linger on. It was flickering. Unstable.
That was the part she kept circling.
A star burned steady, or it collapsed.
It didn’t make sense.
“Forget soul-bonded,” she growled for the third time to no one. “We would need to be soul-fused for you to gain access to my talent. Forged souls in the same cosmic furnace… And we’d need to survive melting into one. A fusion. I can’t do that. Even at Jade Core.”
Her silver irises fixated on him as if he was to blame.
“Did a Soul Transformation Core shatter my soul and…”
Jason let her ramble. He’d learned the shape of it: he was advancing faster than his mortal soul should allow. His body was too weak, yet, oddly, it was refining with his spirit as if training in the astral plane. His connection to Nyx was so demanding, it was forcing her into a half-lucid dream state.
He had to refocus her; they had more pressing matters, like a homicidal twelve-year-old Silver Core snake girl.
What do I do about it, Lilly? We have no gun to call for help. I can deal with F-tier monsters now, but if an E-tier shows up, what then?
“We run, obviously,” she huffed, arms crossed as she floated nearby. “My concern is that if I’m correct… No! But… True Divine Sense allowed me to fold seven hundred and fifty years of typical cultivation into seventeen years… Could you be faster with my guidance? This world is drowning in divine qi, as well. If guided properly…”
Is that a compliment?
“It’s a concern.” The old smugness flickered back, thin, almost relieved to be there. Her chin lifted a degree. “Normally, cultivation is a slow, exhausting, resource-consuming, and torturous process. You will become a target…”
I’ve already become a target…
“Did the rain just get warmer? What’s that tingly feeling? And, Eli, when did you take out that mask?”
Wēi’s voice came from just ahead of her, no longer light and curious, but guarded and defensive. Her serpent eyes flashed under her hood, darting from Jason’s surprised little sister, noticing the floral mask now attached to her hip, and heavenward.
Lilly’s vision blew wide.
“Jason, something is coming. ”
He looked up as the others noticed the change.
Melissa’s water magic chant ended in awe, her lips parting.
“Wow… So pretty.”
The drops that broke through weren’t quite drops anymore. They were wider, slower, softer at the edges, and where the next white flash caught them midair they weren’t gray—they were violet, the deep wet purple of a bruise an hour old, falling in a trillion-petal dance.
The heavens bled the color, the sound of lightning dimming in that moment, rays of lilac hues shimmering like sun-glazed amethysts.
“Violets,” Melissa whispered. “It’s raining violets? Is it magic? I don’t sense mana in it.”
“No,” Lilly whispered, folding her arms. “This is reality warping on a degree I have not seen since… This is not cultivation. It’s something else.”
One petal landed on the back of his hand, slick and smooth for half a breath; a small five-lobed flower-fall of a thing, before it gave up its shape and ran down his wrist as plain cold water and was gone.
The whole street was doing it. Petals by the million blanketing them in the oppressive silence the heavens demanded. It sheeted down through the pulsing clouds, dissolving the instant they touched anything.
None of them spoke for a breath.
The wind was silent. The thunder. The water flowing over their shins.
Wēi’s serpent irises were narrowed, tongue flicking out to taste her lips and the air. It didn’t last long, as he saw her gaze shift to Eli, now holding the mask, looking at the quiet dance of petals that showered them.
Jason was beginning to see a concerning pattern.
Lilly, what can you tell me about that mask?
“Hmm? The sky bleeds flowers, and you’re worried about a mask?”
Lilly.
“Nothing. You have the strangest priorities when it comes to your sister! You’re using innate blood talents, bonding seamlessly with spirit animals, and connected to a soul-shattered Jade Core cultivator, and you’re talking about a weird mask your sister picked up?”
She rubbed between her eyes.
“Unbelievable.”
Then, Peter broke the spell, Wēi’s irises returning to amber.
“Okay,” Peter very carefully held up his ax, watching a petal die on it. “That’s new.”
“It’s pretty,” Eli breathed, almost in a daze. Then, she blinked and looked down at the mask in her hands as Wēi nudged her. “Hmm? Oh, uh… I don’t know. Hey, it’s the same petals on the…”
A petal landed on the mask and was absorbed rather than returning to water.
Wēi slapped it out of her hand and into the river.
“Hey!”
It vanished into the stream, making her glare at the snake girl, a very Eli pout coming on.
“That was mean, Wēi. I was—”
“It’s back,” Wēi mumbled. “I didn’t see it return… How? Eli, truly, where did you get that from? It scares me a little.”
Jason moved closer, spotting the mask at her hip again, and making his sister jump.
“Huh? I told you, I don’t know! Here, I’ll just—” Eli reached down, yanked it up…then turned the mask in her hands. Her head tilted, and a little skipped-frame blankness passed over her like a cloud-shadow before the grin chased it off. “Uh. I dunno! I must’ve grabbed it scavenging. It’s an Earth artifact, I think. We make masks here. It sticks to stuff, watch—”
Lilly was already close, examining it, though everyone else was more focused on the still, quietly crying heavens. Jason’s hand went to Eli’s shoulder.
She was about to throw it away, and immediately pivoted.
That’s not a good sign, Lilly!
I was so focused on Wēi that…
The snake child’s brow furrowed, fingers flexing with her focus on the mask.
“Haven’t any of you noticed?”
“Uh, the flowers falling? Hard not to,” the spear-guy mumbled from beside Melissa. “We’re still in the open. Weird shit like this happens all the—”
Wēi’s amber eyes had gone very still. She lifted one small hand and, without looking away from the mask, pointed back the way they’d come.
“No. That flower. You called it a violet? It’s been painted across the city. The monsters are painting it. Is it a talisman? A symbol? Then it appears on this clingy mask? Now the sky does this? Have none…”
The tension in the kid’s voice eased out with a controlled breath, her masked cadence returning as everyone looked to her in shock. Well, everyone but Lilly and him. Eli just looked confused.
The ghost next to him hummed, hand rising to her chin, focus sharpening.
“Perhaps I was too centered on your mystery, Jason… Wēi is right. There is a bigger picture at play, and she almost broke character with how spooked she is.”
A Silver Core spooked? Jason internally growled. That’s something to be scared of. And we don’t even have the flare gun, because of Wēi.
“Exactly.”