Chapter 27: The Forsaken

Chapter 27: Chapter 27: The Forsaken

Amelia’s voice cut through the air as Seris stepped into the corridor of House Arclight. There was a loud sound of furniture crashing to the floor, and more noises followed in time.

What Seris heard wasn’t your typical noble speak. It was like something burning with anger at someone. She already recognized the speaker and the person she was glaring at; it was her father, the lord of House Arclight.

Seris slowed to a stop just inside the door and listened to the heat of the argument for a moment.

"...and you didn’t think to tell me before the ink was already dry..."

Her father’s voice came lower. "It was the sensible arrangement. And it wasn’t yours to approve, dear daughter."

"Sensible?! You think that was sensible?!"

"Amelia..." Amelia’s father started to say, but was silenced once again by Amelia.

"Don’t. Just don’t. Saying my name like that won’t fix anything. You told Cedric to send Elena. You told him she’d make the stronger link to Oakwood. And you let the whole thing seal shut before I even got to hear about it."

The door opened easily. There were no guards posted at this part of the corridor. Maybe the Lord of the House didn’t want to alert anyone to this row.

Seris entered, and before her, Amelia stood tall, her knuckles white as she gripped her fists. Meanwhile, her father sat at his desk, surrounded by the scattered papers of their argument.

If it wasn’t sure from her voice, now looking at Amelia’s face, the red skin and scaly burn of anger so clearly visible, it was now confirmed.

Her father looked up from the papers and scowled at her. "Lady Seris... This is private."

"Then I picked a terrible time."

"Indeed, so please, go back, and give my regards to your lord."

Seris didn’t budge, her eyes locked intensely on the Lord. "I’m very sorry for this disturbance but... what happened?" she asked.

"Haaa..." her father continued before Amelia could get a word out.

"...The alliance has been signed and the negotiation of the terms was a purely business matter.

The terms of the alliance were discussed with Cedric before I ever sat down to discuss terms with Allan, as Oakwood is rapidly becoming the largest commercial force west of the capital, and it’s obvious that Elena would be the better person to carry on this strong house of yours."

"Obviously..." Amelia’s jaw looked ready to crack.

"I am not the evil man here, you know that."

"Am I?" Her voice dropped, and for a moment, something other than anger flitted across her face.

"Or did you decide it was easier to give Elena to Allan while I’m here, running around like a headless chicken, trying to hold together this house?"

After a moment, her father spoke, his words barely audible. "I decided to hand Elena over to Allan while you were telling me you had no interest in him for reasons of alliance. I took you at your word, Amelia. That’s the whole of my crime."

The mark on Amelia’s wrist went black.

Lines of dark ink began to spread out from the center of the wound like a slowly uncoiling rope, spreading outward from the center of her wrist to resemble for a moment the look of tangled black veins before vanishing completely into black. She took a shallow breath.

Seris moved before she knew she had risen from her seat.

"Lady Amelia."

"I’m fine."

"Obviously, you’re not."

As Seris clutched Amelia’s hand, the black lines streaming out from the center of the curse began to crawl up her forearm, delving between her skin and Seris’s, a tight rope uncoiling as they went, reaching up past her wrist bone.

The crack of anger in Amelia’s face turned to fear for one heart-wrenching second before it reverted back to anger.

"Look at me."

Amelia didn’t.

"Lady Amelia. Lord Allan, he was worried about you. That’s why he sent me..."

Slowly, she raised her eyes.

"Really?... What did he say?"

"First breath, my lady. Breathe."

"I... I am breathing."

"Properly, please."

The black lines slowly retreated from Amelia’s wrist as her breathing returned to normal. Then they stopped just short of her wrist bone and seemed to tie themselves into a knot and hang there.

"Do not think about Elena. And whatever your dad just said, don’t think about anything for the moment. Just focus on this. Breathe in, breathe out."

Slowly, the black lines that had been spreading stopped doing so and began to pull back, inch by inch, toward the mark. Her breathing evened out and the pressure in the room began to drain.

Only then did Seris let go.

Silence.

Amelia stared at her own wrist as her father said nothing.

Meanwhile, Seris watched Amelia’s face fall, but Seris didn’t wait long. She asked a question that had been lurking in the room all along.

"Do you love him?"

"...wh...what?" Amelia went still.

Her father looked away as he got up from his seat and left the room. It seemed that was his answer.

Amelia kept looking down, not speaking another word, her cheeks red again, but not from anger. Her fingers clutched the edge of her sleeve; she felt a physical pain.

"I don’t know." Then, quieter: "I really don’t... know...

Maybe... I do."

It was said so softly that her father could have ignored it had he wished to, but Seris heard every word, though.

"Then move faster," Seris said, her arms folding over her chest.

Amelia blinked. "...What?"

"Whatever excuses you have now, he isn’t going to wait for you to grow up enough to make a decision here.

He’s working tirelessly to build something. A group of people are doing nothing but waiting around for him to take action, and they’re lining up to take his side.

If you want a spot next to him, then you go after it. You don’t get handed something for sitting silently and waiting for it to be handed to you. You already know that."

Something shifted in Amelia’s face, the uncertainty still there, but something harder rising under it now.

"Elena’s already at the estate," Seris added. "Has been since last night."

Amelia’s eyes went wide. "And you’re only telling me this now?"

"I’m telling you the part that matters. How fast can you leave?"

Amelia straightened. For the first time since Seris had walked in, she finally woke up. Her eyes blazed with a clear goal.

"Now."

Seris almost smiled. "Good..."

***

By the time Allan reached the place Elena had described, the sun was already dropping behind the hills.

It sat well past the working mines, far enough off the road that no ordinary traveler had any reason to come this way. A narrow track cut between the rocks toward a mining structure that was supposed to have been shut for years.

He slowed his horse and sat looking at it. Something at the back of his neck wouldn’t settle.

He dismounted at the edge of the road. The gate hid behind a half-collapsed timber frame, old carts rusting under years of dust. The Emberwind seal had been pried off, and someone had nailed fresh wood over the gap where it used to sit.

That told him enough.

He crouched at the treeline and found the footprints before he found anything else: several sets, most soft with age, a few sharp-edged and fresh. Boots. Heavy ones. More pairs than a dead mine should need.

He touched the edge of one print. It was still damp.

Someone had been here today.

He went in.

The moment he did, the air changed a few steps past the gate: a thin metallic note under the wet stone.

He followed it to a storage room, most of the crates broken open and empty, but one wasn’t. Inside, glass vials of something dark and thick, packed in straw.

He didn’t need to open one to know what it was.

The storage building. The poison. The false Emberwind colors on the road. The missing miners. One thread, and he’d been pulling different ends of it for two days without seeing that they tied together.

He kept moving, and the recognition that had been nagging him since the gate finally found a name.

The Forsaken.

He’d run this. Years ago, screen, controller, nothing at stake but a loot table. He remembered the boss fight at the bottom. He remembered complaining about the drop rate.

He hadn’t remembered, until this exact second with real dust on his real boots, that the quest text had called this a cult, and that the cult had a name he’d never bothered learning because the game never made him.

He kept walking, and as he did, he remembered more and more.

Witch’s Awakening, in the game, one of the NPCs gave a clue that a devious cult was behind it. He’d never connected the trigger to anything, just followed the marker and finished the mission. Hence the forgetfulness.

He stopped walking, as something finally clicked.

He hadn’t put it together until right now: Amelia, the stone room, the chains, the three circles, and also... Lira’s memory.

I was thinking about how Amelia had gotten her hands on blood magic spells...

The tunnel narrowed. Wood gave way to older stone. He reached a chamber whose walls were carved with symbols he knew before he saw them clearly.

Three circles.

The exact shape from Lira’s memory. The exact shape on Amelia’s wrist. Incomplete may it be.

He stepped closer. The carvings were old. When he brought his hand near it, the mark on his wrist answered, and pain shot up his arm hard enough to jerk him back.

[Shared Curse Bond: Reacting.]

[Multiple Fate Routes Converging.]

He stood there with his hand throbbing and made himself look at the room instead of the words hanging in front of it.

He knew what this cult would eventually do. He knew which city fell. He knew, roughly, what happened to Lira, what happened to Amelia, and what would eventually happen to Diva.

He’d known all of it for weeks, the way you know a book’s ending before you reach the page.

Crack!

A scrape of sound echoed, deeper in the tunnel. Then another, closer.

His hand found his weapon before his brain caught up, and for one full second something old and stupid in him lit up anyway.

Hidden dungeon, maybe another secret boss, haaaa...here we go again.

He knew whatever was down there wasn’t going to drop loot when it died. It was going to be a person he hadn’t reached in time.

He breathed until his hand stopped shaking on the hilt, then made himself walk forward instead of standing still with it.

He didn’t know who’d built this or what had built this, but he wasn’t going to find out standing in a doorway.

So, without wasting any more time, Allan stepped into the dark.