[Canonical Threat: Calamity]
[Canonical Fate: Slain by Hero Roland]
[Investment Compatibility: 99%]
Of all seven Villainesses I could have stumbled across this early, Sable Laurent was probably the last one I wanted standing within twenty feet of me.
Seraphina had become the Fallen Saintess because the world broke her faith. The Dragon Tyrant was violent, arrogant, and absolutely fucking addicted to fighting anything strong enough to entertain her.
Even the Blood Witch, for all the terrifying shit I’d eventually written her doing, possessed a certain cold logic. Her obsession was calculated and manipulative. She could smile at someone while quietly arranging their entire life so there was nowhere left to go except back to her.
Sable was different because Sable was fucking insane.
Not cute insane, either. Not the kind of quirky yandere bullshit readers spammed heart emojis beneath while commenting that they wanted her to step on them. I had written this woman with actual, serious fucking mental problems.
The future Necromancer Empress loved with the same warped permanence she applied to death. If she became attached to someone, she wanted them completely, and somewhere along the way Sable had stopped recognizing death as something that necessarily ended a relationship.
One of her former lovers had learned that the hard way when she’d believed Sable no longer loved her and tried to leave.
Sable killed her, raised her skeleton, and fucking kept her.
The worst part was that she hadn’t done it because she hated her. That would have been considerably easier to understand. In Sable’s beautifully fucked-up head, becoming undead meant her lover could never leave, grow old, abandon her, or disappear again.
She could keep her forever.
And I’d written that shit.
At the time, sitting behind a computer on Earth and watching readers collectively lose their minds over my psychotic silver-haired lesbian necromancer, I’d thought she was a fantastic character.
Standing ten feet away from her while she had both hands inside a centuries-old corpse made me reconsider several of my previous creative decisions.
’Why the fuck did I make her a yandere?’
Actually, I knew exactly why. Readers fucking loved her, and apparently, future me had never considered the possibility that I’d someday have to meet the woman.
My eyes traveled back up the translucent panel, and another line hit me considerably harder now that the initial horror of her identity had settled.
[Race: Undead]
’What?’
That wasn’t right.
Sable Laurent was human, or at least she had been when I introduced her in the original novel.
I remembered describing her unnaturally pale skin, the faint chill that followed her, and even characters joking that the Necromancer Empress looked more dead than the creatures serving her. But those had been aesthetic choices. Sable was supposed to be a living woman who commanded the dead, not one of them.
Yet the System wasn’t ambiguous.
[Race: Undead]
My gaze snapped toward her.
Sable was still kneeling beside the Guardian, oblivious to the existential crisis she was causing several feet away.
Her silver-blue hair had slipped over one shoulder while she carefully separated another strip of blackened tissue from beneath the Guardian’s armor.
Her skin was pale, her gray-blue eyes were focused entirely on her work, and now that I was actually looking for it, I couldn’t see the slightest movement of her chest.
’Wait. Have I actually seen her breathe?’
I genuinely couldn’t fucking remember.
She moved like a living person, talked like one, and negotiated like one. She owned a business, repaired magical equipment, complained about damaged merchandise, and apparently had enough money to maintain a shop in a merchant settlement.
But she was undead, and I hadn’t known.
That bothered me almost as much as everything else because this wasn’t another forgotten detail buried somewhere inside nearly two million words. I hadn’t written it.
At least, I was almost certain I hadn’t.
’Then what the fuck happened to you?’
Seraphina had already proven that I knew the destinations of these women considerably better than I knew the roads that carried them there. I knew Sable Laurent became the Necromancer Empress.
I knew she’d eventually wear a crown surrounded by an army of dead creatures, become brilliant enough to revolutionize necromancy, and grow unstable enough to turn love into something horrifying.
But apparently, I didn’t even know what she fucking was.
"Kira?"
I blinked and realized Sable had stopped working. She was staring directly at me, which caused every terrible memory I’d just replayed to become considerably more vivid.
’Don’t look suspicious.’
"You’ve been staring at me for forty-three seconds," she said, tilting her head slightly as her gray-blue eyes studied my face.
Of course she’d fucking counted.
"Have I?"
"Yes." Sable shifted the bloodstained instrument between her fingers, her gaze lingering on me for another moment. "You appear nervous."
My eyes dropped to the sharp piece of metal in her hand before returning to her face. "I’m standing inside an ancient tomb beside a woman currently dissecting something that tried to kill me. Nervousness seems healthy."
She considered that explanation before glancing down at herself, seemingly noticing for the first time that one hand was covered almost to the wrist in blackened remains.
"Oh."
That was all she fucking said before wiping her fingers across a cloth with absolutely no embarrassment. Then she extended her clean hand toward the open instrument case beside me.
"Pass me the narrow silver probe on the left."
I stared at her hand, then at the case, before looking back at the future psychotic yandere Necromancer Empress patiently waiting for me to hand her a sharp object.
’Absolutely fucking not.’
Unfortunately, refusing would have been considerably more suspicious than cooperating, so I crouched beside the case, picked up the requested probe by the end farthest from anything sharp, and carefully handed it over.
"Thank you," Sable said as she accepted it.
"You’re welcome."
She immediately returned to the Guardian while I remained beside the case, watching her work as my brain attempted to reconcile the woman in front of me with the monster I remembered writing.
This Sable wasn’t that Sable. Not yet, anyway.
There was no crown resting above that silver-blue hair, no kingdom of corpses stretched behind her, and no obsessive lover chained to her side by affection, necromancy, or some horrifying combination of both.
Right now, she had two skeletons, a merchant shop, D-rank Current Potential, and a Death Empress Bloodline that hadn’t even awakened.
Whatever turned Sable Laurent into the woman I remembered hadn’t happened yet.
That should have made me feel better, but it didn’t because now I was standing close enough to watch it happen.
And knowing my fucking luck, I was probably going to be the one who caused it.
Sable removed another section of dead tissue and placed it inside a glass container. One of her skeletons stepped forward without instruction, holding a metal tray beneath her hands as she leaned deeper into the Guardian’s exposed chest.
Then she suddenly stopped.
"No..."
Seraphina crouched on the opposite side of the corpse, curiosity overcoming her obvious discomfort as she tried to follow Sable’s gaze. "What did you find?"
Sable didn’t respond immediately. She pushed aside a layer of blackened tissue, her gray-blue eyes narrowing as she studied the mana channels beneath.
"No, no, no..."
I glanced toward the entrance because, after everything that had happened in this fucking place, I wasn’t taking chances. "Is that the good kind of no, or the we’re-about-to-get-murdered-by-another-undead-abomination kind?"
"The good kind," Sable answered distractedly as a slow smile spread across her face. "A very good kind."
That smile was considerably more concerning.
She carved through another section of tissue, exposing blackened mana channels still carrying faint traces of gold.
"The necromantic matrix didn’t destroy them."
Seraphina leaned closer. "You already established that."
"I was wrong."
Her eyebrows rose. "You were?"
Sable looked almost offended by how pleased Seraphina sounded.
"My initial conclusion was incomplete." She traced one of the channels with the tip of her instrument while reaching into her case with her other hand. "The necromantic matrix didn’t merely form around the original channels. It preserved them."
She pulled out a narrow crystal needle and pushed it into the exposed tissue. Pale light immediately crawled through the transparent shaft.
"Traditional necromancy replaces biological mana circulation with an artificial necromantic matrix. That’s why raised creatures lose the most sophisticated magical abilities they possessed while alive."
I actually remembered writing that limitation, mostly because I’d needed an excuse for why every dead mage couldn’t simply become an undead mage with their entire spell list intact.
"But this creature retained its divine affinity after death."
"Because it was sanctified," Seraphina argued, her expression tightening as she gestured toward the faint golden traces beneath the dead flesh. "That’s the entire purpose of creating a Martyred Guardian."
Sable finally looked up at her. "You’re focused on where the mana came from. I don’t care where it came from."
She tapped the exposed channel with the end of her instrument.
"I care that the corpse kept it."
My attention sharpened as Sable looked toward one of her skeletons before returning to the Guardian, excitement steadily creeping across her features.
"If the process can be reproduced..."
"An undead could keep the magic it had while alive," I finished.
Her head snapped toward me, and for one uncomfortable second, she looked genuinely delighted.
"Exactly."
What followed was considerably more disturbing to watch than the explanation.
Sable repositioned the Guardian’s severed arm, embedded three crystal needles into the remaining mana channels, then pushed death mana through the tissue.
Nothing happened.
Rather than becoming discouraged, she adjusted the needles and tried again. Two dead fingers twitched, causing her eyes to widen as she immediately changed something I couldn’t see and sent another pulse through the corpse.
This time, a faint thread of golden light flickered beneath the blackened skin.
Sable laughed.
Not a quiet chuckle or amused breath, either. She actually fucking laughed, the sound echoing through the ancient Sepulcher as Seraphina slowly moved closer to me.
"She’s insane," Seraphina murmured, keeping her eyes fixed on the silver-haired necromancer.
I watched Sable excitedly reposition one of the needles. "You have no fucking idea."
Sable glanced over her shoulder without losing her smile. "I can hear both of you."
Seraphina straightened without the slightest hint of embarrassment. "We know."
Sable wasn’t offended. If anything, she looked happier as she returned her attention to the corpse.
[INVESTMENT SUCCESSFUL.]