If those people aren’t all human-looking… That changes things a bit. So it’s probably not that they have a full working civilization here… And more that it’s people from outside who end up here sohow…
That lady from earlier, maybe she could have understood ancient human instead of the common language…
Hmm? Why’d the music stop?
Sofia looked down, the man playing the piano had suddenly stood up.
… Is he looking at ?!
It was hard to really tell just from the man’s pitch black silhouette but Sofia really felt like he had stopped playing just to stare at her.
The people on the other balconies were the sa.
Ah.
Am I in trouble?
Sofia was considering trying to say sothing in ancient human, only to see the dark people all suddenly kneel toward her.
I see. Well, that makes sense, if they live under mother’s protection.
Sofia jumped down from the balcony. The scent of Ihuarah’s candles being ever so slightly stronger down there.
This door.
Confirming where the scent was coming from, Sofia walked up to the kneeling pianist.
Her ancient human was unnatural and choppy but she tried speaking it anyway.
“You should keep playing. It was beautiful.”
She got no response, save for an imperceptible twitch of the dark figure.
Well, no reason to linger.
Sofia left the silent hall behind. She was getting a bit impatient, and now that she had properly caught onto the sour herbal sll of the candles, she ran through the corridors. There were more dark people the deeper she ran into the mansion, many seed surprised, but none said anything or tried to stop her.
She only stopped when she stumbled upon a strange sight, a street food stall carved into a corridor’s wall. Four dark shadows on tall stools were eating the blurry food a bear-eared cook was preparing behind the counter.
The cook in question, clearly a bear beastman, was much shorter than normal.
So there really are kids here.
Only the cook facing Sofia had noticed her sudden appearance, freezing behind the grill.
“Slls nice,” Sofia said in the common language with a nod, before resuming her run.
Now that I think about it, there were already many people in Sorrow’s palace. Sure so of them might have been nothing but props of Velania imagination… But there were also clearly real people. Or what remained of them. So maybe… This is just the place for those who are not beyond saving. And those too far gone, too deep into their own Sorrows, are just guarding the palace to test the future apostles?
I’ll have to visit the palace again soon.
The scent of the candles grew clearer and cleared until Sofia found a hole in the depths of the manor. Just a dark hole surrounded by lit candles, its depths unknown, and a beating black heart suspended by a hook above said hole.
How nostalgic. Do I need to eat this one as well?
Walking over the empty chasm, Sofia unhooked the black heart.
Can I even eat like this? I can talk but I don’t think I have a proper mouth.
Sofia felt her demonic face, she was, as she could tell, one homogeneous block.
Hmm… I suppose there is still a hole in this body.
Sofia placed the beating black heart in the hole of her chest. The black heart settled there naturally, its arteries stretching to connect with Sofia’s inexistant ones.
I don’t quite get it… But this feels right.
Cancelling [Dodge-] Sofia fell into the black abyss.
Such a recurring the. Do I also need to dig a hole under the new temple? The guardian fae will get in the way if I do. Well, no need for guesses anymore. I can ask in person now.
In the room Sofia had appeared in a few hours earlier, a tall man stared at the fog outside, leaning over the windowsills.
Stolen story; please report.
Another figure appeared behind him, sitting down on a chair without a word.
“So you did, in fact, notice, brother,” the man at the window said without turning around. His long white hair billowed behind him from the howling wind.
I Have Long Known.
“Ahahah. I expected nothing less. So, what do you think? Do you like her? The mark I picked especially for you.”
Your ddling Was Unnecessary.
I Chose Her As She Chose .
You Accomplished Nothing.
Only Drawing Fate’s Gaze.
The man at the window closed his eyes, happily letting the wind flow around his face.
“Perhaps. And yet, I cannot shake the certitude that this is the correct move. Accepting our roles. Playing in Fate’s hand… And when the ti cos…”
You Accelerate Your Downfall.
“I know, I know. I am very well aware. But Ti was right, unbound. I inherited that side of him.”
I Wish Not To See You Follow In His Footsteps.
“Nether do I. But who is to say? Mayhaps this ti… As I stand here. Free of consequences…” the man said, before abruptly turning around. “Have you brought the books?”
No. They Are Long Gone. And Yet Incomplete.
Only The mory Remains.
Motives Inscrutable As Ever.
“Fate…”
…
Sofia let herself fall down the lightless chasm for a surprisingly long ti,a gentle blue glow eventually piercing the darkness below. Her fall slowed down, totally out of her control, and she gently landed in a field of faintly glowing blue flowers, standing in contrast against the gray sky and the gray graves littering the surrounding plateau.
A familiar vision.
So this is what the graveyard of flowers in the palace tried to recreate.
Such an eerie feeling.
Sofia looked up, but she couldn’t see any traces of the hole she had fallen from, only the perfectly gray sky lood above, like an unending blanket of clouds.
I can hear the sea…
Sofia looked around, but couldn’t see anyone. She approached the nearest gravestone.
‘High Priest Ifnit Lore, 4705-4984’
… High priest.
Sofia approached another gravestone.
‘Devout Sister Lihanah, 7552-7573’
This confird Sofia’s hunch. These graves were not for random people. All the graves here, it seed, were for religious figures. It was not too hard to connect the dots.
So many graves…
Although the graves were well spaced-out among the field of blue flowers, this open-air graveyard extended in all directions as far as the eye could see.
If I ever fail… One more grave…
So sad…
All the more reasons to stay alive.
Instinctively, Sofia walked toward the sound of the waves.
The long walk felt like it went by in the blink of an eye. As the sound of the waves beca louder, she saw the end of the flower field. It was a small stony outcrop, the tip of the cliffs overlooking a vast gray ocean.
Two figures sat at the end, their back facing Sofia, legs dangling over the ledge.
A tall veiled woman with long straight pointy ears, that were neither that of a Vampire nor an elf, was sitting on the left. She was different from what Sofia rembered, yet there was not an ounce of doubt in her mind. Finally they t.
Mother…
But, stranger than that, another figure, the sa height but with narrower shoulders, sat on her right. One of the black silhouettes of Sorrow’s domain. She seed to have a frail fra and long wavy hair, head slowly tilting left and right along with the coming and going of the waves.
Sofia stopped walking. Still hundreds of ters away from the two figures.
Sohow, her gaze was locked on that dark silhouette on the right.
She couldn’t look away no matter how much she tried.
On the surface, she was frantically trying to understand what was happening to her. Hypnosis? Mind control? Clearly sothing was extrely wrong.
Yet, deeper in her thoughts, the silent inner voice beyond her inner voice, kept repeating the sa thing. A single word occupying the entirety of her brain like a parasite.
Mother…
Mother…
Mother…
An angry voice could be heard through a worn wooden door.
“She just collapsed! Her health was already bad, but the Baron still–”
“Shhh,” another voice shushed the first one, “Are you tired of living?” the second voice whispered, “We always knew it would end like this. What can we do about it? We all need these jobs to survive.”
“But still… rise… The kids…”
The second voice sighed, “Just let it go… If we do anything it will be us in that bed next ti. The doctor is coming, but I think it’s too late… Calm yourself and steel your face when the head butler cos, if he notices… It won’t end well.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do?!”
The second voice fell silent, followed by the soft sobs of the first. After a mont of painful silence, the two won left with weak steps.
Unbeknownst to them, the woman they were speaking of was not quite dead yet, on the dusty infirmary bed, hearing them leave, she desperately clung to life and to her sheets even as she felt her eyelids grow heavy.
“Saria… Sofia…” her pale lips mumbled, her voice filled with sorrow.
As she felt the end coming close, her mind and vision suddenly grew clear.
Was she hallucinating?
A tall man with strangely long limbs stood next to her, slightly bent over her bed, his face was blurry, yet she could sohow tell, it bore the fake grin of one who hides their emotions with a smiling mask.
His cascading white hair fell around rise’s head like a divine cocoon isolating her from the world.
The man’s blurry lips lightly parted.
He softly asked a single question.
“Mortal. Are you satisfied with your Fate?”
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