“You can talk,” I blurt before my brain catches up enough to offer something less idiotic.
One bushy brow lifts.
“Indeed. A skill many insist upon undervaluing,” he says with a solemn nod.
Then his face brightens with sudden delight.
“Oh! You must also be curious how I speak your language, yes? Interesting little spell, that. Technically a curse, I suppose, but—”
“What are you?” Seraphine asks tersely.
His grin never wavers as his gaze shifts to hers, and for a moment he simply stares.
Then he speaks, his smile never wavering. “Good question! Do be a dear and let me know if you ever find out.”
Seraphine seems momentarily unnerved by his sudden focus and answer, so he turns back to me, grin widening ever so slightly.
“As for the curse… it’s only technically a curse. Due to the vowels, you see. Too many vowels and the magic likes to stick. But it’s totally harmless, I assure you. And it works like a charm!” he rambles, as if trying to pitch the idea to me.
Is he insane?
“Oh, but where are my manners! I am—”
The moment he speaks his name, thoughts scatter from my mind like frightened animals.
It’s like the world itself breaks into fractals around me as millions of words batter my brain at once, none of them the same. They're just poured into me without so much as a moment to actually understand any of them.
And for a while, it feels as though my skull has been cracked open and emptied of its contents.
I’m not the only one, though. Bella, Seraphine, and Nyx each drop like puppets whose strings have been cut, blood leaking from their eyes and ears. And they look like they’re screaming, but all I can hear is an incessant ringing, muting the world around me.
I drop next to Bella, grabbing her by the hand and pouring all of my free mana into Arcane Regulation. It only takes a second for her to stop writhing, so I move over to Seraphine and Nyx to repeat the process.
His words still reach me, despite my apparent inability to hear at the moment.
“Wait, why are you all bleeding? My apolo—what is that?”
He watches me with wide eyes, a strange, almost manic curiosity spreading across his features as I reach for Seraphine and Nyx to repeat the process.
“My dear,” he murmurs conspiratorially, leaning forward as far as the throne allows. “You simply must tell me how you did that.”
His eyes sharpen with sudden intensity.
“Do it again, I shall watch carefully.”
I frown, instead looking at the rest of my party
“You try to kill us and now you want me to play the role of a jester?” I ask, while at the same time I push mana into Mana Surge.
With as much magic as there is around here connected to him, I’m willing to bet that at least some of it is responsible for keeping him alive all this time.
…Unless he’s an immortal. Which he might be.
I mentally curse and cancel the Skill.
What if I just free him somehow? At least at the moment, he’s not able to move. But if Mana Surge removes the thrones ability to restrain him, then what?
Not that it matters. How in the hells do you nearly kill people with words alone?
“Kill you?! Goodness, no! I haven’t had company in… honestly, I don’t even know how long. I merely wished to introduce myself, why would that—”
He pauses, then his jaw drops open in shock.
“Oh! It gathered meaning! Hah! Haha!”
He breaks into laughter, and for a moment he sounds truly insane.
“Me?! A Dragon?! Haha!”
He tries to raise a hand to wipe a tear from his eyes, but the throne restricts him. Then his beard moves as if on its own to wipe away the evidence of his joy, and a shudder runs down my spine.
I share a look with my party as he cackles, but none of them have any ideas. Nyx shakes his head in warning, while Seraphine simply glares at the old man, her spear at the ready.
Bella just shrugs, completely at a loss.
Well at least I’m not the only one.
The laughter stops so abruptly it feels unnatural.
One moment he is cackling hard enough that his beard trembles with it, the next his expression goes flat, clouded eyes locking onto us with sudden, startling clarity.
The shift is sharp enough that my grip tightens instinctively.
“Why are you here?” he asks.
No warmth. No humor.
Just the question, spoken with grave seriousness.
Then, before any of us answer:
“Has the cycle ended?”
The chamber goes quiet enough that I hear the faint hum beneath the throne again.
Bella is the first to recover enough to speak.
“The cycle depicted on the murals?” she asks, careful now.
His brow furrows.
For a moment he simply stares at her, as though the words mean nothing.
Then recognition slowly spreads across his face.
“Oh.”
His gaze drifts past us, toward nothing at all.
“The murals.”
He says it softly, almost to himself.
Then one corner of his mouth twitches faintly.
“Yes. Those… she did those herself, you know.”
His voice softens further, distant now.
“Tiny little thing. Barely tall enough to reach half the walls even with the ladders.”
A strange warmth touches his expression, turning it almost fragile.
“Insisted the gods needed better faces. Said mine looked too stern.”
His beard shifts as though with remembered amusement.
Then the warmth fades.
“Shame she fell asleep.”
The last words leave him so quietly that for a moment I almost think I imagined them.
Then the meaning hits me at the same time Seraphine gasps with horror.
They killed her.
A few breaths pass before his eyes sharpen again, focus snapping back so suddenly it feels like watching someone wake inside their own body.
“Ah. Right. I asked you something.”
He leans forward as far as the throne allows, silver lines brightening beneath him.
“The cycle.”
His voice lowers.
“Did it end?”
I glance briefly at Bella, then shrug when no one else speaks.
“Probably not,” I say carefully. “The last Undone Age was… a little over a thousand years ago.”
For a heartbeat, nothing happens.
Then the chamber hum changes.
The silver channels beneath him flare brighter.
His expression cracks, but not with madness this time.
It's something sharper. Something... wounded.
“A thousand—”
The word dies halfway through.
Then anger rushes in so suddenly it almost feels borrowed.
“Only a thousand years?”
His voice rises, old parchment tearing into something harsher.
“Have we failed that badly?”
The throne groans faintly beneath him as his fingers tighten against its arms.
“Not only did we fail to keep them from his grasp, not only did the ritual of vigil utterly shatter the meaning of life as we know it—”
His eyes sharpen with sudden fury.
“But Bluebell failed?
Another pulse of mana rolls through the chamber.
“And Laftala too?”
The last name leaves him almost incredulous.
“Impossible. Absolutely impossible.”
I freeze.
Bluebell. Laftala.
The names catch instantly, his rant fading into background noise as my mind whirls.
Not because I understand why they matter here, but because I know them.
Bluebell is obvious to me. She’s been dipping her toes into my fate for a while now, if my past experiences have anything to say about it.
But Laftala… that one takes longer.
A second passes as I shift through my memories, leaning heavily into my Intelligence stat.
Then another.
Until a memory catches like a spark.
Agora Laftala.
That’s her tribe name.
The realization hits hard enough that I speak before fully thinking it through.
“What do Bluebell and Laftala have to do with this place?”
His gaze snaps to me immediately, and for a moment I feel like he might attack.
Then the anger drains from his face almost as quickly as it came, leaving behind something tired beyond its years.
“They were meant to defeat him,” he says, voice quieter now.
He waves a hand and grimaces. “Or banish him, I should say. Defeat proved… ambitious."
Another breath leaves him, long and thin with weariness.
“We thought waking him would weaken him, but that was very, very wrong. He only became aware of what he was doing, and gained direction…”
His answers only raise more questions, but before anyone can ask them, his expression changes again.
His eyes widen, the exhaustion vanishing so quickly it feels like watching another person step into place right behind his face.
“Oh!”
He leans forward as far as the throne allows, silver lines brightening beneath him.
“The healing.”
I blink.
“What?”
“The healing!” he repeats, delighted now, as if we had all somehow forgotten the obvious subject. “That marvelous little correction you performed when everyone began leaking.”
He strains harder against the throne, chains pulling taut with a metallic groan.
“Do that again.”
Seraphine shifts immediately, spear rising half an inch.
The moment she does, mana crawls down the weapon’s edge—thin, sharp, and wrong in a way that makes the mana in the room recoil from it.
I recognize the skill as the very same thing she used to destroy my Blood Bursts before I could detonate them during our duel.
The old man freezes, then his head snaps toward her so quickly that even Nyx tenses as if to leap to her defense.
For one long second, the old man simply stares.
Then his grin returns, wider than before.
“Oh.”
The word leaves him almost reverently.
“Oh that is different.”
His clouded eyes sharpen with almost frightening focus.
“That one cuts.”
Seraphine does not lower the spear.
His grin somehow widens further.
“No, no, not merely cuts—oh, how delightful—”
He shifts, beard twitching with visible excitement.
“You taught mana to deny itself.”
Bella frowns.
“That is not how magic works,” she huffs.
“Of course it isn’t!” he says brightly, as if she has said something ridiculous. “That’s why it’s interesting.”
His gaze flicks between Seraphine’s spear and me.
“Your lattice repairs damaged tissues.”
A finger twitching weakly toward me.
“While your lattice… severs other lattices.”
Another twitch toward Seraphine.
“And both are flawless,” he says, awe lacing his tone.
“Flawless?” I repeat.
“Yes!” he snaps, suddenly impatient, then immediately softens again. “Well—not flawless in outcome, obviously—that would be absurd. But structurally? Astonishing.”
He studies us like a man starving for information instead of food.
“How did you learn to cast such perfect spells?”
Only Bella seems to understand what he’s trying to ask.
Her eyes widen with shock and disbelief as she asks, “You mean Skills?”
He waves her off with a scoff. “Of course they have skills. Natural talent aplenty, as well, I’m sure—but—”
“No, I mean Skills. System Skills,” she interrupts.
Suddenly I realize what she’s getting at.
He pauses, his gaze locked with hers for a long moment.
“System?” he asks, seeming genuinely confused. “What’s that?”
“You don’t need to concern yourself with that.”
The feminine voice comes from everywhere and nowhere all at once, ethereal and powerful… and recognizable.
The old man immediately recoils, then glares at the ceiling.
“Bluebell,” he huffs, suddenly irritated.
“Keeper,” she responds.
Then she’s there.
Not with light or sound, not with a flare of power or any dramatic arrival.
One moment the space between us and the throne is empty.
The next, it simply isn’t.
She’s tall enough that even Seraphine seems slight beside her, though that somehow feels like the least important thing about her.
The first thing I notice is the mana, but not because I can see it.
Because suddenly I can barely think through it.
The chamber had already been thick with power from the throne, its old enchantments humming beneath every stone and silver line carved through the floor.
But now those currents change.
Not violently, or even quickly.
Just inevitably, as though every loose strand of magic in the room has remembered where it belongs.
And for one terrifying second, so do I.
The pull isn’t physical, yet my body moves anyway.
One step.
Then another.
“Wait, Emilia!” Bella hisses, reaching for me.
But I’m already gone.
Behind her, Seraphine makes a strangled noise and half-steps forward, spear lifting—only to stop when Bluebell’s tails begin to move.
Before my mind catches up enough to object, I’m already before her, arms wrapping around her middle like some deeply buried instinct had simply taken control.
“Oh,” she says softly, startled more than alarmed.
For half a heartbeat, I’m terrified that my gods-forsaken instincts have finally gotten me killed.
Until she giggles. A tinkling, ethereal sound that worms its way into my mind, injecting joy and enthusiasm not entirely my own.
Then all nine of her tails move in sync.
They sweep around me in one impossibly soft motion, white fur layered with faint prismatic strands that look less like color and more like mana made solid. Each tail settles around me until warmth surrounds me from all sides.
A low rumbling purr rises from her chest, quiet but deep enough that I feel it through where my cheek rests against her chest.
My chest answers before I can stop it.
The sound of my own purr leaves me abruptly aware of every person watching, but the warmth around me only deepens as her arms fold gently around my shoulders.
Bella has gone completely silent, just staring at me like she can’t decide whether to drag me away or start flinging ice.
I don’t know either, Bella! Why am I even here… gods, her fur is impossibly soft.
For one strange moment, it feels familiar. A distant memory peeks out from the corner of my mind—small hands buried in my mothers tail while winter winds rattled our windows, her warmth and softness imparting a certainty that nothing bad could reach me there.
It fades almost as quickly as it comes, leaving only longing behind.
The mana in the chamber surges harder now, though it no longer feels oppressive.
It feels… warm.
Behind her, Bella’s flare gutters outright before shrinking into something smaller and strangely subdued.
The silver channels beneath the throne brighten in answer, every loose current in the chamber bending subtly toward her.
But… not commanded.
Welcomed.
White fur brushes against me in slow motion, each tail shifting with specks of prismatic light that appear and vanish like tiny fractured rainbows caught beneath the surface.
Even her robes seem touched by it, their pale fabric edged so faintly with drifting color that it nearly disappears whenever I try to focus directly on it.
When I finally gather enough of my wits and courage to look up, her eyes catch mine.
They’re clear enough that looking into them feels like staring into something deeper than sight should properly allow, but I know what I see within their sparkling depths.
The Weave.
Every instinct I have screams Fae, but the word suddenly feels far too small.
Behind me, the old man watches, shifting with open irritation.
“If you’re done coddling your kin, some of us have spent millennia waiting for context.”
Only then do I realize I’m still wrapped in nine tails and entirely failing to convince myself to move.
Bluebell’s purr deepens faintly, as if she has noticed too, and I bury my face once more as my cheeks redden ever so slightly.
“You remain as difficult as ever, I see,” she says softly.
For some reason, I feel as though those words are directed at me more than him.
She sighs. “Don’t fret your weary bones, Keeper. I’ll be taking you from this place soon enough. It’s taken me long enough to find you in the first place—I don’t intend to lose you now that I have.”
Her arms squeeze my shoulders gently.
“Though first… we will ensure this one gets a deal she deserves out of you as a reward.”
Then she glances back at the rest of my party.
“And them too, I suppose.”
He scoffs, instantly annoyed by her proposal. “As if I’ll just allow you to squeeze me dry. You recall what happened last time?”
I feel her sinister grin more than I see it, her tails tightening faintly around me.
“This time, dear friend, you will pay what you owe.”
******
Authors Note:Hehehe... Agora's name once more touches these pages... and Bluebell herself makes an appearance proper.
I'm so excited for the reveals that are coming haha