In Hugo’s parent rented house.
Late at night, Oliva couldn’t help but think of certain matters.
Her husband is out and hasn’t returned home.
She is worried and hopes that Conner will just give up on his current job and try for a new one.
His current job just isn’t working out.
He had told her last night that everything is going worse and worse.
There isn’t much hope for workers to get what they want.
Only hope is to follow the company’s offer or the strike has to go on for few more months.
He is also thinking of changing job.
It is a risky choice though.
She is also as worried as Conner.
But they need to take risk and hope to get a better job.
Current financial situation of her family is fine.
However, after a month she would need to try to get new work for herself.
Her current job, at Mr.
Michel.
will end as the time has been set by her employer and there are rumors that soon the foundation will be closed.
It has something to do with Madam Tallia’s past life.
Or some other rumors that has been going around.
She never paid much attention to these.
It is best not to pry into other people’s life.
While thinking of these matters, she suddenly falls asleep and has a dream.
In the dream, she is old and her body is wrinkly.
Everything around her is spacious and clean.
Beside her, Conner is sleeping in the bed.
He looks just as old as her and wrinkly.
She stares at him for few minutes and smiles.
Having her husband with her is enough to give her strength to keep on going in this world.
She is happy and satisfied.
Even in her old age, she isn’t scared because she has Conner by her side.
Hugo, her precious child, has studied well enough to bring both his parents out of poverty.
They live in their own house and doesn’t have to worry about money or food anymore.
This is like a dream.
Well, it is a dream.
But she does wishes to make this dream into a reality.
She has high hopes for her child’s future.
Soon, she hears a knock at the door and a handsome man walks inside the room, this is Hugo.
He has grown so much.
Even though it is just a dream, she does think that he would become a handsome.
However, in this dream she can’t help but wonder a little.
Why does her child, Hugo, doesn’t look like Hugo at all.
She doesn’t think much of it.
As it is just a dream.
In the bathroom, Hugo is being careful to not disturb his mother’s sleep.
He has brought the candle in the bathroom and a sheet a paper.
He is going to try the fire domain ritual of the branch; burning depth.
This is to see if his affinity is fire.
He is tiring this first because he suspects that he had fire affinity in his previous life.
There are four branches of fire.
According to the book, these are Burning depth, scorching flesh, controlling of fire heart and Agni.
However, it shouldn’t have too much of a difference to the overall result.
He should sense some result from the ritual.
Another reason that he chose this ritual is because it is the simple.
Also, he has everything available to perform it.
For this reason, he can hope to gain something out of this ritual.
Even a little understanding of it can be helpful.
He knows the danger and has been warned by Mel. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
But he has no choice as his existence itself is complicated.
He has already been traumatized from his past life.
So, he wants to gain any advantage to keep himself alive in this life for as long as possible.
In simple terms, he doesn’t want to die.
‘Calm down.
There is nothing to be scared of.
It is just an affinity ritual and it shouldn’t harm me… too much’ With this thought in mind, he set up the ritual.
He draws the fire like symbol from the book on the sheet and then places the candle on it.
He makes sure that the candle is at the center of the paper.
It just makes sense to place it at the center and it feels right too.
After doing this, he uses a matchstick to lit the candle wick.
This brightens the dark washroom and creates an atmosphere that is a little warm and oppressive.
He swallows the saliva in his mouth and gets ready to move to the final step.
With his dominate hand, he pinches the wick.
This action burns his finger tips a little and after just three seconds.
He removes his fingers and finds out that the flame is gone.
He sighs and looks at this burnt finger tips.
The soft skin on his two finger tips is peeling off.
It hurts a lot but it isn’t as bad as the burning sky of last life.
However, even if he compares it to that catastrophe.
He still can’t help but be disappointed.
‘I didn’t do anything wrong.
So, does this mean after being reincarnated my affinity changed?
It makes sense…I guess but I am still disappointed.’
He knows that the affinity rituals are not as dangerous.
But to a child of his age, this still hurts like hell.
Not to mention, his first attempt is also a failure which is like rubbing salt on the wound.
‘There are three more fire affinity rituals.
But trying them is little difficult for the current me.
And according to the book, even if you didn’t do the correct ritual on your own affinity.
There should be a little sign that says that you fall into that domain.
However, these burns tell me that I am not from this domain at all.’ He sighs and cleans the place.
For now, he would just put some ointment on the burns.
In the morning, he will tell his mother that this happened because he was playing with fire.
That would be a good enough explanation.
‘Wait, do we even have any ointment?’
***
In the Mr.
Michal’s house.
Hugo sits all alone with bandages on his finger tip.
He had to hear a little lecture for playing with fire.
The pain of burns was so much that he couldn’t bare it anymore.
So, he had to wake up his mother and pretend that he just burnt his fingers.
She was very mad at him but didn’t do or say anything excessive.
She uses some desi home-made ointment on his burn wounds.
It hurt a lot but at least he wouldn’t get any infection on them and now it doesn’t hurt as much as before.
He sighs inwardly and thought of something.
‘The gaze of the alive darkness that I felt in Mr.
Michel’s house must be of a person of Dark domain.
Mel is also from some dark domain or maybe something that is close to Dark domain.
But I am sure that this creature or entity is someone who had done some dark domain rituals to completely blend with the darkness.’ He nods to himself as he thinks that this theory of his is correct and makes the most sense.
The gaze of alive darkness could either be someone who had suffered some excessive backlash of a ritual.
Or he is a captive of Mr.
Michel.
That man is starting to sound more and more shady by the day.
He is just happy that that man never interacts with his mother.
He doesn’t want a shady man like that around his mother.
Hugo had thought to himself if he should try dark domain rituals and its ability rituals. This story is hosted at g.com.
However, later he gave up on that.
The book only showed one single ritual of Ability in dark domain.
However, the ability ritual is much simpler than he had thought.
This ritual only requires you to sit in a dark room for an hour or two.
Then if you had done the affinity ritual for the dark domain.
The individual will develop the ability to see in the dark.
Dark domain within the body will grow sightly more which results in the night vision.
That’s the explanation of the night vision.
There isn’t even a need to draw a symbol.
However, the affinity of dark is required.
Otherwise, the result would just be a failure.
Hugo sighs in disappointed and curse his bad luck.
He doesn’t belong to fire and he is sure that he isn’t in the dark domain.
If he was then he would subconsciously be used to darkness.
However, as he isn’t.
It would be a waste of time to even check with an affinity ritual.
Of course, he could be wrong.
Maybe he does belong in the dark domain and he would never know.
The ritual for dark affinity is silly.
Doing the ritual requires him to cover his entire body with thick sheets to prevent any light touching his body for a day.
He also needs to draw a symbol with soot on his body.
The symbol looks like a blank eye with two spirals as its pupil.
Doing such a ritual is impossible for him as there is no chance that he can convince his mother.
What does he even suppose to say?
Lie to her that he has a fever?
That can’t work as she won’t leave him alone for a day.
So, checking for that affinity of dark is just not possible for now.
Perhaps in the future.
Hugo’s eyes wonder towards different places of the Mr.
Michel’s house.
He has tried to see if he can see any signs of a ritual that had happened in this house.
It is fair to say that he failed.
Either because he doesn’t know much about magic rituals.
Or that man has hidden the aftermath well.
He continues looking around the place and then suddenly stops.
He still doesn’t want to look at the room where he sensed the gaze of darkness.
But now that he knows some info about this stuff.
He can feel a little safe.
Just a little.
So, he takes a little risk.
With a little glance in the direction of the gaze of darkness, he experiences it again.
Something stares back at him and the frequency of it feel stronger than before.
‘Does that guy have nothing else to do?
Why not stare at something else.
Like another dark corner.’ He makes a silly remark in his head and continues looking at it from the sides of his eyes.
Then with a little bit of bravery, he waves his left arm at it.
Maybe hoping to see some difference or a response.
However, nothing happens.
Hugo isn’t sure if he should feel relief or disappointed.
Soon, his mother’s work for today is done.
So, they left.
Throughout all this time, he felt like the intense gaze of the darkness has lighten up a little.
It didn’t feel too intense and even disappeared for few seconds or so.
This made Hugo wonder if he should try to contact this “thing”.
However, he doesn’t plan of doing anything like that.
He rather keeps his distance form anything that is related to that man, Mr.
Michel.