A ragged gasp tore out of my throat as I jerked upright, my fingers flying to my neck, searching for the cut that was not there.
My shirt was soaked, clinging to my chest as my entire body heaved, my heart thrumming hard against it.
Noticing finally that my head was still attached, I brought my hands in front of me, seeing the tremble in them.
"Fuck this shit..."
Another nightmare.
I let out a sigh as I pushed the covers off me, now slightly damp with my sweat.
Ever since that cursed trial, this had been the reality for me. Getting a good sleep was now a luxury. Whenever I closed my eyes, those very moments returned, the very misery that I tried pushing down coming up all at once.
I pushed myself to my feet, reaching to open the window for fresh air.
My entire room was now bathed in the dull crimson radiance, the cold air now slightly calming my heart.
It had almost been a week since the trial, and from then on I had realised that night had easily become the worst part of my day.
The mornings were still fine: wake up, work on this damn useless body, spar against Arn and get beat up, then work on my abilities and my blade.
But at night, the thoughts and memories finally caught up, and I became helpless under their onslaught.
Fuck it.
I turned around, pushing my soles into the matted slippers before stepping out of my room.
It was eerily quiet now, the Ichor orbs dim against the crimson dark. For the only time, this place really did look like a house.
I had not even decided where to go yet, but my feet were already moving, the image of the courtyard clearly in mind.
The past week had honestly been a blur. I had done nothing but focus on honing my skills with the blade. And now, after countless hours, I had finally been able to overcome the shackles of my mind.
I had noticed it in the first spar against him. I carried all of this body’s technique, but it was my mind that simply refused to move along with it. But now, after eating dirt against Arn quite a few times, I was finally able to keep up with it, almost as if my mind had carried that technique as my own.
In fact, I was even refining it further rather than solely relying on what Yun had left me. Every day it was like a part of the puzzle fell into place, every defeat teaching me one of the ways to improve further.
And the whole feeling was, quite simply put, euphoric.
I had also figured most of my Aspect out well. My Anchor had been the most straightforward. It was almost as if I had been blessed by Fate itself, attacks that should have landed missing me by a hair’s breadth more times than I could count.
Then there was my Burden. While I had not understood the weight of it yet, I probably had an inkling that as I grew stronger and used my abilities more, the hold it had on me would probably increase.
And ever since the trial I had noticed a change in me, though it had been sitting quietly mostly, almost dormant but it was without a doubt there. A sort of strange coldness that sat within, a feeling that all those around me were nothing but irrelevant.
Nothing but puppets for me to control.
But what really worried me was distinguishing that feeling, whether it was my Burden having done that, or that being the real me, the author of this world, not knowing whether everything around me was even supposed to be real.
And I knew for a fact that this thought was a dangerous one to have.
But what had excited me the most was my Imprint, Spun. I had now gotten fairly skilled with using the thread that I could materialise.
For now I could only materialise one, and that honestly was a real limitation, but the practicality of it was indeed versatile.
And somehow there was not even a limit to how much of it I could spin, the only limit being the amount of Ichor that sat within me.
I had gotten quite decent at using it in my spars against him, using it to slow his attacks, bind his legs, even pulling myself out of harm’s way.
And I had even learned to make it sharper on instinct when I needed it to, and strengthen it when the situation called for it, enough that even Arn had to strain slightly to break it.
But all of that really did have its cost, in the form of running my Reliquary dry. The source of this chapter is g.com.
But without a doubt I was quite happy with it, knowing just how useful it could prove to be, and just how well it aligned with the fighting style I was now developing.
But what I was not happy with was my goddamn Act.
I opened my Ledger, my eyes moving toward it.
ACT
THREAD’S WARNING
A fatal ending may be lived once before it comes due, then undone, leaving only the memory of dying behind.
Sounds really fucking ominous.
A fatal ending, damn, does that mean my death? Is it like a goddamn foresight?
But wait, isn’t that totally useless unless I am actually dying?
What the hell, my Act is supposed to make me stronger, not act like a goddamn death monitor.
What if I don’t even get close to my death in years? Does that mean I’ll never even get a real ability to use?
I let out a sigh of annoyance. Some part of me wanted to believe that maybe I was wrong and the words carried some other meaning, but knowing how nothing had changed in the past week I was sure I was not.
The wall finally opened up around me, a few short trees covered in lush greenery shielding me from my sides. It was indeed one of the most serene places, or probably the only one, in this damn house.
It was quite calm even, the stars visible in the night sky bathed in crimson.
I found the same bench that I had come to more than once now in the past week, as I let my back lean against the cold iron, letting out a breath I had not known I was holding.
I let my left hand come up, the thread already materialised as it moved around me, spinning in circles, hovering in the air like a serpent.
I tried moving it around, spinning it faster, at times letting it go taut before tugging on it harder.
Letting more of the Ichor leak from my Reliquary into my arm, I let it run through the thread, reinforcing it, as I let the thread move a fair distance beyond me, coiling around a tree, before I wrapped my fingers around the end of it, pulling it taut.
And then, I let the Ichor out, only thinner this time, as I noticed the thread thin under my hold, sharpening as it caught the crimson glint.
As I did, I watched it dig into the tree bark, the wood easily cutting under it as the thread dug deeper and deeper.
A grin found its way onto my face as I pulled the thread back before I could cut the whole tree down.
My eyes moved around the courtyard before stopping on a window in the distance, now open against the night.
It was on the second storey, sitting a fair distance from me now.
Faint light trickled from the inside, the curtains moving slightly against the wind.
My eyes paused on a batch of books lying by the window, atop a desk that I could hardly make out from my angle.
Without even a second thought, I let the thread spin, reaching for it, wanting to test the limit of it.
I let it wrap around the side of the book, the book moving slightly as I did.
With a tug, I let the thread up, allowing the book to levitate above, from this distance almost looking as if it were floating in the air. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
Pulling the thread back, I tried bringing the book toward me as I heard a yelp on the other side, almost shrill and hurried.
Wait, that was...
The book fell into my lap, the thread around it coming undone. However, my eyes remained on the window.
Her head finally bobbed out of the window, her eyes frantic.
Wait, why is she...
Her face for some weird reason was entirely red.
Her eyes found mine, and I watched the red drain right back out of her face, replaced by something considerably worse.
Then I realised it. Her eyes had gone cold.
"You bastard, what are you doing..."
Her voice rang out, cold, and despite it being well past midnight, she did nothing to keep it down.
"Wait, wait, I did not kn..."
"Don’t you dare look down," she threatened, her voice laced with venom.
Wait, what does she mean, don’t look down?
And then my eyes fell on the book, and in that moment all I could wish was that I had followed her advice.
I knew I should have kept my mouth shut then, but this damn mouth clearly did not know any better.
"Kissed by the Frost Prince..."
The words left my mouth before I could even understand them, and then I finally realised what I had done.
Fuck...
And as I raised my eyes, knowing what awaited me, my eyes widened to find her standing in front of me, barely a few feet away.
Right. Evolved.
I looked down at the book again, almost curious now to open it.
Well, you could not blame me. I was an author; it ran in my blood.
"Put that down." Her words were cold, almost making me shiver underneath them.
Wow, she really had an absolutely murderous expression.
"I saw nothing."
Her eyes did not move even slightly.
"Look, dear sister-mine..."
Her head turned, leaning to her side as her eyes bore down on me.
"I did not see anything," I muttered out, raising my arms before me in surrender.
"Oh, do not worry, you will tell me exactly what you saw."