A surge of heat started deep in my gut and pushed outward, curling along the inside of my ribs and cwing for space beneath my skin. My muscles tightened under the strain, every nerve twitching with raw heat, each one straining as the pressure climbed higher. I felt sweat bead along my brow, the air thickening around me as each breath caught at the back of my throat.

  Ellie screamed beside me, her voice raw and splitting the air, body tensed and drawn in by the force hammering through her. She was already on the floor, curling up. Her hands cwed at the rug, fingers digging in, knuckles whitening as she braced against the pain. Each sound that left her seemed to build in volume and desperation, climbing with every pulse of shared torment.

  A link coiled and tightened in the space between our bodies, not seen but unmistakably real, thrashing near the edge of my reach. The bond yanked back and forth, surging with wild, directionless energy that jumped from my core to hers and back again. I clenched my jaw, fighting to stay present as the intensity threatened to drive my senses into bnkness.

  After a moment, the chaos inside that link began to shift, pulled by a force outside our grasp. The agony lost its sharpest edge, shifting from an overwhelming flood into slow, throbbing waves that I could finally ride out. My chest loosened with every passing second, the tension unwinding until my body stopped convulsing and settled into a shaking aftermath.

  Her breathing came in shallow bursts, rough and trembling at my side. I rolled toward her, arm dragging across the rug until my palm nded on her thigh. Heat radiated from her skin, muscles twitching as my hand pressed in. A tremor ran through her, breath stuttering as she stayed pressed against my hand.

  I pulled myself closer, my weight sinking against her side as exhaustion fought to drag me down. She pressed into my hand, eyes closed tight, lips working through broken breaths. The air between us felt heavy, each small movement drawing out the ache that lingered under our skin. Her body trembled, aftershocks running beneath my palm while heat pulsed inside me.

  I spread my hand along her back, stroking slow to steady her, each pass raising a shiver that ran through her and found me in return.

  Silence held the room. We stayed tangled, sweat drying between us, our hearts pounding until pain faded from our bodies.

  I forced my eyes open, light burning the edges of my vision as I tried to gather the room into focus. The tome y open on the low table, its pages lifting one by one in a steady, measured rhythm. My hands still trembled as I watched, but the book’s movements never faltered. No wind brushed the pages, and neither of us reached out. The turning belonged only to the book itself. A faint glow spread from it's spine, seeping outward and tracing thin lines of light across the tabletop. I watched the foliant pulse, the light shifting in sync with the flipping pages, both movement and glow converging on the connection that tied us.

  As I focused, I could sense the bond no longer cut directly to Ellie but now diverted through the tome, making a strange detour before it reached her again. Relief mingled with caution; the redirection smoothed the raw edge of pain, but I sensed the outcome could have turned disastrous if the book hadn’t caught it. My mind painted the result—bodies seizing on the floor, jaws locked, eyes rolled back, limbs twitching in helpless panic, every line of muscle lost to convulsion.Ellie's voice snapped me out of that trance. “Master, your chest...” I followed her gaze and looked down, catching the faint outline of a glow beneath my bathrobe, right where the fabric pressed over my ribs. Light pierced through the worn cloth, shifting and pulsing with a rhythm that echoed my heartbeat. I untied the knot at my waist and let the robe fall open, exposing the skin above my sor plexus.

  There, a mark glowed—shaped like a handle at the base, nine thin strings spreading outward from it, fanning across my chest. Only one of the strings shone with a pinkish-purple hue, the other eight remained dark, barely visible in the dim room. Ellie leaned closer, eyes wide. “It looks like your family crest,” she said, voice hushed with uncertainty.

  I studied her, tracing the line of her body under the thin, almost transparent nightgown that clung to her skin. A soft, pinkish-purple glow shimmered between her breasts, just beneath the fabric. “You also have a mark,” I told her, nodding to the spot where the light gathered. Her head jerked up, startled; she followed my gaze, then pulled the gown down with trembling hands.

  My gaze flickered to her firm breasts, pale skin flushed, nipples hard from lingering tension, stealing my focus before I forced myself back to the matter at hand. Above her sor plexus, a different pattern revealed itself. At the base, a box shape anchored the design, thin strings wove in and out from every edge, disappearing within, connecting the box to the skin in a web. A single, thicker string shot upward from the base of the shape, pulsing with the same pink-purple light as my mark. The main figure and central string glowed, while the smaller ones faded to a shadow against her chest.

  Something about her mark stirred the edge of a memory, but the shape stayed just out of reach. Ellie pressed a hand to her chest, studying the mark as her breathing slowed.

  “Something happened to us just now, after you finished your story,” she said. “We were extremely lucky to have taken that book with us.”

  I nodded, gaze fixed on the patterns fading and brightening across our skin.

  “Lucky, huh? I’m not so sure about it.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. “Whatever happened, we need to figure it out as soon as possible. I know what our first step should be.” Before I could finish, the tome on the table stilled; its pages finished turning, then snapped shut in a single motion, cover facing upward.

  At the same moment, I felt the string that linked me to Ellie through the book break. The light on our bodies started flickering, leaving no mark. Only faint warmth lingered on my chest. The glow vanished within seconds, but the heat remained as proof this was no dream.

  I slumped back into the sofa, searching inside for any trace of what might have changed. To my surprise, I sensed something new, a subtle pressure behind my sor plexus that pulsed with a rhythm of its own. Nothing in my old body ever felt like this.“Ellie, can you feel anything inside your body, right where that mark appeared?” I needed to confirm if she sensed the change as I did, to make sense of the new presence moving behind my ribs. She pressed her palm to her sternum and nodded, brow furrowing in concentration.

  “You mean the soul core?” The words nded with more weight than I expected.

  “What?” My voice slipped out sharper than I intended, surprise tightening my throat.

  She traced the shape above her sor plexus and answered softly, “It’s an organ everyone is born with, but only a few ever awaken it. Magic comes from there.”

  The truth bnked my mind for a few moments. This was a magical world. It shocked me, because in two days since I arrived nothing had given the slightest hint that magic existed.

  Our trip to the auction felt routine. There were no glowing mps in the street or strange artifacts in the house. Even at the sve auction, with nobles everywhere, I never saw a sign of magic or artifact use.

  "I didn’t think Master had forgotten about this fact. You didn’t show any trouble with your body functions, despite your amnesia."

  "I wonder why," I replied, not really paying attention.

  Ellie tried to expin what she knew about magic, though it was pieced together from rumors and stray lessons. She told me magic was real, but women weren’t taught more than whispers, and commoners got even less.

  The Empire and Church condemned public magic use unless the situation was dire. The demon invasion killed most magic users, since nearly all came from noble houses and fought on the front lines. A few commoners awakened their soul core, but almost everyone who did ended up serving the Empire, Church, or a noble. Hardly anyone remained in the capital who could use magic at all.

  I made a mental note to study magic theory ter, then fixed my attention on the foliant lying in front of me, quiet as if it were just another old book. Its outer cover looked unchanged, worn and heavy in the mplight. I opened the book near the center. Bnk pages met my eyes. I flipped forward and back, searching both ends, but every sheet stayed empty. When I turned to the first page, finally, there was a difference.

  The message read:

  Pleasure bond registered. To access the terminal, validate yourself.

  The words held its pce, final and unchanging, as if daring me to guess what counted as proof.