Across the dimly lit room, Seraph and Riven stood before a rack of ancient tomes, their leather-bound covers adorned with faintly glowing sigils that pulsed like a quiet heartbeat. The air around the books was tinged with a subtle hum of energy, a barely audible whisper that made the hair on the back of one’s neck stand on end. Seraph’s silver eyes gleamed with curiosity as her slender fingers brushed against the gilded spine of a particularly ornate book. The lettering shimmered in the low light, delicate yet commanding, as though daring her to uncover its secrets.

  She carefully lifted it from the shelf, its unexpected weight surprising her. The dark leather was cool beneath her touch, the sigils glowing faintly brighter as she held it. With a deep breath, she opened it. At first, the pages seemed blank—pristine sheets of parchment unmarked by ink. But as her fingertips skimmed the edges of the page, faint shapes began to form, ink spilling forth in an ethereal dance. Words emerged in glowing script, curling and weaving like tendrils of light, their formation as fluid as water. They didn’t just appear—they grew, alive and deliberate, as if the book was deciding what to reveal.

  “What’s this?” Seraph murmured, her voice tinged with wonder.

  Riven stood beside her, her arms crossed, clearly less impressed. “It’s a book,” Riven said flatly. “Looks fancy, I guess.”

  Before Seraph could respond, Soren’s voice came from just over Riven’s shoulder, startling her. He had appeared without a sound, his presence as subtle and sudden as a shadow shifting in the light.

  “A living journal,” Soren said, his tone both casual and reverent. He gestured lightly toward the tome in Seraph’s hands, his long fingers elegant and deliberate. “It reveals truths only when the reader is prepared to understand them. A rare artifact, and one that requires patience. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

  Seraph turned back to the book, her fingers tracing the edges of the glowing text. The letters were written in an intricate Helian script, the elegant swirls and sharp angles forming words that seemed both foreign and familiar. Her mind told her she shouldn’t understand them—she was certain she didn’t know this language—but as her eyes swept over the words, their meaning blossomed in her mind like a memory just out of reach. It wasn’t translation; it was comprehension, sudden and whole.

  “This is…” she whispered, her voice trailing off as she leaned closer to the text. “This is incredible.”

  Riven peered over her shoulder, squinting at the glowing script. “It’s just a book,” she said dismissively, “except the words can pop in and out like some parlor trick.”

  Seraph shot her a look, her lips quirking with amusement. “You have no appreciation for history, do you?”

  Riven shrugged. “If it doesn’t explode or pierce something, it’s not really my thing.”

  Soren’s soft chuckle drew their attention back to him. “Ah, but history does have a way of sneaking into the present when you least expect it,” he said, his voice a low, melodic hum. “And a journal like this is far from ordinary. Its truths are tied to the soul of the reader. What it shows you will be unique, shaped by your own experiences, your own desires. It will only reveal what you’re ready to see.”

  Seraph’s fingers trembled slightly as she turned another page. This time, the words that formed seemed to glow brighter, a soft silver that matched the light in her eyes. She couldn’t help but feel that the book was responding to her, almost alive in its awareness.

  “It’s written in the Helian tongue,” she said, her voice quiet but filled with awe. “I know I shouldn’t be able to read this, but... I can. It’s like I’ve always known it.”

  Soren inclined his head, his veiled face tilting as though studying her. “That is the magic of reincarnation, isn’t it? Knowledge you don’t yet realize you possess. This book is merely a guide to what already resides within you.”

  Seraph’s gaze lingered on the page, her thoughts a mixture of intrigue and unease. “If it’s tied to the reader’s soul,” she asked softly, “does that mean it could show something... dangerous?”

  Soren’s smile was faint but enigmatic. “Danger and truth are often two sides of the same coin. But rest assured, dear Seraph, it will never reveal more than you can bear.”

  Riven snorted, leaning back against the shelf. “Yeah, well, as long as it doesn’t explode in our faces, I’m fine with it.”

  Seraph shook her head with a smile, returning to the book. For a brief moment, the world around her faded away, and it was just her, the glowing words, and the sense of an ancient wisdom unfolding within her grasp.

  Soren stopped beside Darius, who stood before a towering display rack, his scaled fingers resting thoughtfully on the handle of a massive battle axe. The weapon’s silver blades gleamed faintly, casting a soft, ethereal glow that seemed to push back the shadows around it. Intricate runes were etched along the edge of the axe, their delicate lines pulsing in rhythm with a silent heartbeat, as if the weapon were alive. Darius’s dark green eyes traced the glowing sigils, his expression pensive.

  “And you?” Soren’s voice broke the silence, low and smooth, like the whisper of wind through ancient ruins. “Have you found something that calls to you?”

  Darius exhaled deeply, his gaze shifting to the vampire. “Not yet,” he admitted, his voice carrying a hint of frustration. He glanced back at the axe, his claws tapping idly against the haft. “Nothing feels... right.”

  Soren’s lips curved into a slow, enigmatic smile, his sharp features half-hidden by the veil and the faint flicker of light in the room. “Take your time,” he said softly, his tone almost reverent. “The right choice is seldom obvious. Often, it is the weapon that chooses its wielder, not the other way around.”

  Darius chuckled, though there was a trace of skepticism in his tone. “Sounds a little dramatic for an axe, don’t you think?”

  “Perhaps,” Soren replied, his veiled face tilting slightly, his bells jingling faintly with the movement. “But weapons are more than tools, Darius. They are extensions of will, of intent. Trust me when I say the right one will make itself known—when you are ready to wield it.”

  As Soren moved away, his shadow stretched unnaturally across the room, dark and sinuous, like a living thing. It lingered for a breath longer than it should have, curling at the edges as though reluctant to follow its master. Darius caught the movement from the corner of his eye, his scales bristling slightly. But when he turned his head, the shadow had already dissipated, leaving only the faint glow of the axe’s silver blades behind.

  He shook his head with a wry grin, muttering to himself. “Of course his shadow’s weird, too.” Then, with a final glance at the axe, he stepped back to search the racks again.

  Magnus and Caelus stood side by side, their attention drifting across the room, each captivated by the strange and intriguing artifacts that lined the shelves. But Magnus’s gaze was drawn, almost magnetically, to a harp nestled in a dim corner. Its frame shimmered with an ethereal golden light, its strings taut and delicate, almost alive in the soft glow. With a quiet reverence, Magnus approached it, his slender fingers brushing across one of the strings. The note that resonated was soft, yet haunting, a melancholic melody that seemed to echo from deep within the harp’s wood, like it carried the weight of ancient sorrows.

  “It sings of sorrow,” Magnus murmured, his green eyes distant, fixated on the instrument. The music wrapped around him, pulling his thoughts to places unknown, as if the harp had a story to tell that only the most sensitive souls could hear.

  Caelus, standing a few paces away, glanced at his companion, his brow furrowing slightly. "Hm." He gave the harp a fleeting look before turning to survey the rest of the room. “Do people really come here just to buy instruments, too?” he mused aloud. “Well, I guess people would come here for rare items too.”

  Magnus didn’t answer immediately, his mind still haunted by the melody that lingered in the air, but his attention soon drifted, drawn by a strange, almost palpable unease that filled the room. His sharp green eyes scanned the space with growing wariness, noting the oddities that clung to the edges of his perception.

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  Across the room, darkened cages lined the walls like forgotten relics, each one containing a creature that seemed almost too alien to be real. The bars, thick and rusted, cast long shadows across the stone floor, the dim lighting barely touching the contents of the cages. Inside, the creatures barely moved. Their stillness was unnatural—unnerving, like the eerie calm before a storm. Some of them simply stared into the emptiness, their eyes wide and unblinking, fixed on nothing and everything at once, as if their minds had long since abandoned their bodies. Their gazes were vacant, hollow, devoid of the spark of life that should have been there.

  There was a lingering sense of despair in the air around them, an oppressive weight that seemed to crush any hope of understanding. The creatures' skin—if it could even be called skin—was mottled and strange, shifting in hues that didn’t belong to any natural world. Some were covered in slick, iridescent scales, their bodies elongated and twisted in grotesque contortions. Others had limbs that were too many or too few, like a mockery of nature’s design. Their eyes, however, were the most unsettling. Massive, bulbous, and unblinking, they stared out from their cages with an intelligence that seemed distant, unreachable, and profoundly tragic.

  A few creatures shuffled in slow, agonizing movements, dragging their bodies along the cold stone floor with a sickening, scraping sound. Their legs, uneven and spindly, twitched spasmodically, as though they had forgotten the rhythm of walking. They moved with no sense of purpose, just mindlessly traversing the same small patch of their confined world over and over. The only sounds in the room, aside from the faint hum of the harp and the distant clatter of Soren’s movements, were the soft, wet noises of their slow, dragging steps.

  One cage contained a creature with a massive central eye—unblinking, grotesque, and completely disproportionate to its spindly, arthropod-like legs. It was motionless for the most part, yet its single eye tracked every movement in the room, swiveling with an eerie precision. As Magnus gazed into its eye, a shiver crawled down his spine. It was as though the creature was looking through him, not at him, seeing something deeper, something more than he could comprehend. A quiet, unsettling thought gnawed at him—had this creature always been like this? Or had it once been something else entirely, something that had been broken, warped by whatever twisted force had placed it in this cage?

  Caelus’s breath caught as he caught sight of another creature—this one hunched and deformed, its limbs at odd angles, covered in sickly, translucent skin that stretched tight over bulging veins. The creature rocked back and forth in its cage, its lips moving, though no sound emerged. It was muttering something, but the words were lost in the thick, oppressive silence. Its eyes were shut tight, but its head twitched with every word it mouthed, as if it were fighting to recall something.

  The whole scene felt wrong—something was deeply amiss, a sensation that crawled under Magnus’s skin like insects in the dark. There was no life here, no warmth. These creatures weren’t just trapped—they were forgotten. In a place so full of strange artifacts and wonders, these broken, empty beings were the true anomaly.

  Magnus felt an unsettling tug at the back of his mind, his instincts screaming at him to turn away, to leave, to not stare too long into the abyss that these creatures represented. But even as he turned his gaze toward Caelus, something in the room seemed to shift. A presence that was more than just the objects, more than the creatures—it was the weight of the place itself, the sense that something watched them from the shadows.

  Pip, who had been hopping around, paused, its little body trembling. It gave an uneasy squeak, as if it, too, could feel the oppressive air that hung like a fog around them.

  His gaze paused on one particularly grotesque creature—a huge, bulbous eye at its center, surrounded by spindly, twitching spider-like legs. It seemed to regard them with unblinking curiosity, its lone eye tracking their every movement, yet it made no sound, no motion beyond the occasional slow shuffle of its legs.

  “This is…” Magnus began, his voice trailing off as he took in the unsettling sight, his tone uneasy.

  Caelus, still eyeing the strange creature, felt a sudden movement beside him. He blinked, startled, as Soren appeared as silently as a shadow, standing right next to him without a hint of warning. His presence seemed to ripple through the air, unsettling in its suddenness.

  “This was what you used to spy on the king?” Magnus asked, his voice laced with quiet disbelief, as he turned to face Soren.

  Pip, nestled on Magnus’s shoulder, turned its head curiously, its large round eyes fixing on Soren as if trying to piece together the vampire’s intentions. Soren’s gaze drifted toward the creature in the cage with an almost absent air, as if he was considering something far beyond its simple existence.

  Soren hummed in response, his pale fingers lightly tapping the edge of a nearby shelf, his veiled face unreadable. “It wasn’t cheap, you know,” he said, his voice a quiet whisper, like a breeze through the trees. “But it served its purpose well.”

  Magnus’s green eyes narrowed slightly, his gaze flicking toward the caged creature again. “The king shot straight through it with a spell, didn’t he?” he asked, his voice more accusing now, though it lacked real anger—more curiosity than anything else.

  Soren’s lips curved upward into a faint, knowing smile, his head tilting slightly to the side. He didn’t respond immediately, allowing the silence to hang between them, before his voice broke through again, soft and unreadable. “Perhaps. But a tool is only as good as its user. The king was far more... efficient than most would have anticipated.” He leaned in slightly, his shadow creeping further across the floor, extending far beyond where he stood. “A predictable move from someone so predictable.”

  Caelus felt an involuntary shiver crawl down his spine, his hand instinctively reaching for the hilt of his sword. "And the others...?" he asked, his voice low. "Are they all spies like that one?"

  Soren’s eyes gleamed behind the veil, though his expression remained as unreadable as ever. "The Veil ensures that nothing is left to chance. You’d be wise not to underestimate the lengths we go to ensure balance."

  As the champions continued to browse, Soren observed them from a distance, his veiled gaze calculating. The faint jingling of his hat accompanied his every movement, an omnipresent reminder of his watchful presence.

  As Lorian and Cheese wandered into the next room, they froze in their tracks. The cozy, shadowy atmosphere of Soren’s shop felt suddenly distorted, as if the air itself rippled with something unnatural.

  Then, their simultaneous scream shattered the silence.

  “Why are there three Sorens?!”

  The exclamation, in Lorian’s voice and Cheese’s peculiar high-pitched echo, was enough to send Caelus spinning on his heel. His blue eyes widened, locking onto the sight before him. There they were—three Sorens, identical in every detail, standing at different points in the room. Each held the same casual posture, hands clasped behind their back, their veils hiding their expressions.

  “By the gods,” Elira muttered, stepping closer, her amber eyes narrowing in suspicion.

  Caelus wasted no time. He drew his sword with a sharp, metallic rasp, the blade catching the faint light of the shop’s glowing artifacts. “What’s going on here, Soren?” His tone was tense, the muscles in his shoulders taut.

  All three Sorens turned their heads in perfect unison, tilting them at identical angles, as though amused by the outburst. “Relax,” the three voices said together, creating an eerie, harmonized echo that sent a shiver down Lorian’s spine.

  Elira took a step forward, her hand resting on the hilt of her axe. “Yeah, ‘relax,’ he says,” she muttered under her breath, her sarcasm sharp enough to cut through the tension.

  In an instant, the Sorens moved. Not toward them, but inward—like ink dissolving into water. The three forms flowed together in a seamless blur, merging into one. Now, the singular Soren stood before them, adjusting the veil over his face with deliberate precision.

  “Happy now?” he said lightly, his voice carrying a hint of dry humor. “I had to speak to all of you at the same time, so I used my clones. A bit unconventional, but effective.”

  Lorian stepped closer, still clutching Cheese, who trembled slightly in his arms. “You could’ve just... I don’t know... said something!”

  Soren tilted his head again, the faintest jingle of the bell on his hat breaking the silence. “Where’s the fun in that?” he replied, his voice carrying a mischievous lilt.

  Cheese made a quiet, gurgling sound, its round form quivering as it peeked out from Lorian’s chest. Its tiny appendage pointed accusingly at Soren.

  “Even Cheese agrees with me,” Lorian added, trying to steady his breath.

  Riven smirked from her corner of the room, leaning against a shelf. “At least he didn’t pull that stunt while we were fighting him.” she said dryly.

  Soren’s lips curled into a faint smile beneath his veil. “I assure you, my dear champions, I’m full of surprises. Consider this one... harmless.”

  “Harmless?” Magnus raised an eyebrow, folding his arms. “You nearly gave Lorian and Cheese a heart attack.”

  Soren chuckled softly, his fingers tracing the edge of his pipe. “Then perhaps I should give you all a little more credit for your nerves. Still, the clones served their purpose, did they not? Now, shall we move on, or do you need a moment to recover?”

  Caelus rubbed his temples, exhaling slowly. “Just... try to be less dramatic next time, Soren. We’ve got enough to deal with already.”

  “I make no promises,” Soren replied with a playful tilt of his head. “But I’ll try to keep my theatrics to a minimum. For now.”

  The group exchanged glances, some shaking their heads in exasperation, others stifling laughter. As they began to move again, Lorian cast one last wary glance at Soren, as if expecting him to split into three once more.

  Cheese nestled closer into Lorian’s chest, letting out a soft, indignant chirp, and Lorian muttered under his breath, “You and me both, Cheese.”

  Caelus sighed, his grip on his sword loosening as he put it back in its sheath. “Give me a warning next time,” he grumbled, sheathing his weapon with a measured movement.

  For a fleeting moment, Soren’s eyes widened in recognition, the faintest crack in his composed demeanor. It was gone in an instant, replaced by his usual enigmatic smile, as if the reaction had never existed at all.