Soren awoke amidst a cloud of dust and smoke. An unspeakable chill ran down his spine as his senses remained elusive… It felt as if he had doven into an unspeakable darkness.
“Where… am I?”
Beyond the smog, darkness reigned supreme. There was no frame of reference for what had just happened or even context to where he was. What’s worse, his memories themselves seemed jumbled up.
No, he could still remember… They were just hidden behind a dense fog… As if an obstruction was blocking his path, which only made his mind heavier. The more he thought, the harder it became to lift his head.
Frowning, Soren stood up and tried to dust his clothes, only to realize he was naked.
Ah, no wonder it felt so cold…
Just as he was about to glance around, a golden window pane popped up before him.
Mission: Clear Away the Fog
What? The words were familiar—they were written in English. But due to his sudden memory loss, it was a bit hard for him to understand… It took a few more minutes for his jumbled mind to piece together the meaning.
Wait a second, this window is clearly a manifestation of [Fictionalization]... Is this the flame’s doing?
The last thing he could remember was… conducting a divination?
“Ah, seriously! What the fuck!!!” He screamed out, and yet no reply came.
“[Fictionalization] can only function in the Faerie Court. That should mean that I haven’t left that space… At least I think…”
He glanced back at the floating window pane—its golden glow reflected off his skin. He took a deep breath.
“Let’s calm down first… This window—the only other thing that can manifest it is the figment of my imagination. It’s either me or it—and I know for certain it wasn’t me. But that thing can’t do anything without my permission… Unless, it already escaped my grasp?
“Wait! Did I lose the bet? Is that why? Is it free to control the Faerie Court as it pleases now?” The question made him panic a little, but he quickly regained his composure. If that entity had truly taken over the Faerie Court, his existence should have already been erased…
After all, that was what Soren would do if he was in its place. Since the Figment of his Imagination reflected his personality, he was aware of what actions it would take. Because those actions were ultimately his to begin with…
His frown deepened as he stared deeply at the words being displayed. He needed more information.
“Clear away the fog…”
Sensing his contemplation, the window morphed, displaying new text.
Mission - Clear Away the Fog: Escape from this mind prison before you lose your memories.
“Mind prison? Did I enter my three layers?”
Without questioning it further, Soren sighed and sat down with his feet crossed.
“Let’s trust the instructions for now.” Not like there was anything else he could do at the moment.
However, he was able to gleam one thing.
After reading the description of the ‘Mission,’ the mysterious location he was currently in couldn’t be anywhere other than his Three Layers of Self. The words ‘Mind Prison’ also hinted at that conclusion.
But that did also pose its own problems. For one, he had no clue as to what layer he was currently in… It could be the Veil of Perception since his senses seemed to have been messed with. But it could also be the Heart’s Shroud—the fog surrounding him resembled the gray mist that shrouded that place.
Though if he were to be honest, none of these locations within the Three Layers had any connection to what he was currently seeing.
Still, there was one thing he could bet on—the mission’s name. Clearing away the fog… How would one do that? Logically, they would need to blow it all away. And since the description said that he needed to escape the mind prison soon, Soren quickly came to a logical conclusion:
The fog… It was responsible for his memory loss.
If he didn’t clear it away, his memories would continue to get sealed—worse, they might even be consumed forever.
And if the mission was expecting him to clear it all away, the only location within the three layers that allows for such control was…
“The Echo of Mind.” His amber eyes glanced up at the surrounding darkness. Like a typhoon, the fog slowly and mysteriously spun around him, ever so slowly reaching closer and closer, desiring to consume him whole.
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Soren, however, wasn’t worried. Because the Echo of Mind gave him a level of control over space similar to [Fictionalization]. It allows for a person to manifest their thoughts or even suppress them. During his practice sessions with Myrin when he first decided to walk down the path of a magus, the Echo of Mind was one of the most difficult trials out of the three that he had to clear—even with his innate talent for controlling his thoughts.
Now, however, such a thing no longer posed any issues. After unlocking more than a dozen Channels of Willpower, his ability to control his thoughts was refined even more. Even his Soul Realm which could only stay active for a minute or two could now last up to ten minutes, even in its most expanded form. His overall focus during his study sessions also saw major improvements.
And just as he had assumed, his theory was correct. After contemplating a force that ‘pushes’ the surrounding fog away, his thoughts manifested to reality. The fog flew back in all directions slowly, revealing more of the surrounding darkness.
But it was not enough.
The fog had its own mysterious power that seemed to resist against his mental strength.
“Focus. I need to focus more…” His cogitation reached deeper.
The force expanded once again. This time, it was akin to a continuous gust blowing the fog away from him. But even so, as if the mist was alive, it expanded its strength to match his.
Soren grit his teeth, “Is this thing… Playing around with me?”
He had no time to consider that thought further and expanded his focus even more. This time, if a gust of wind wasn’t going to cut it, then he might as well bring out a hurricane.
The silence of the halls loomed over Cassia as she walked back to her room. Her thoughts were in complete disarray.
What an eventful day…
First she had to deal with those fools from the Silver Vial Distillery, then there was the vigil, followed by Soren’s strange behavior and her embarrassingly revealing her past to him… And then finally, having to deal with her most hated enemy—the Silver Moon Church waltzing into her home on false pretenses to investigate one of her friends.
Not to mention, that same friend’s later disappearance…
It was all surreal to her, even after an entire hour had passed. How could a person who she had only seen minutes prior completely vanish like that? And without a trace? It was completely illogical.
And the fact that a Searching Mystery from a Silver Valkyrie in the Mystic Grade couldn’t detect even the faintest hint of his whereabouts also concerned her.
All of this pointed at one conclusion—a Mystery was at work, or something more powerful… Her dream divination did allow her to see his final moments in his room, but after that… Soren was gone, as if he had never been there to begin with.
The information one obtains from a divination—especially if the conduit being tapped into was the Records of Enigma—all originates from the Beyond. So in essence, the scenes she had previewed through her divination were all scenes of the past, forever marked in the history of that enigmatic dimension.
For it to not chronicle his movements after that scene meant that his later movements were outside the domain of the Beyond itself…
Soren had vanished from Yarian entirely.
“How is that even possible…”
It was certainly hard to believe, but knowing what she knew of his background, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. After all, Mysteries by their very nature defy logic all the time…
However, there was one other thing that led her to this conclusion.
A letter. Addressed to her specifically.
It was written in obsidian squid ink—an ink bottle she had gifted to him for helping her around in the lab and placed next to the candle of his nightstand. As for the message itself, it was a simple sentence of three words: “The Next Trial.”
To anyone else, the meaning would have been lost.
Cassia, however, understood the message perfectly.
Yesterday, she had discovered traces of a new material rune that could be useful to her progression into the 4th Circle, but the research behind it was still in the early stages, and she had projected the earliest experimental trial to be a week from now—something she casually mentioned to Soren the night prior.
She sighed, “He really is a bastard… Making me worry like that…” If she hadn’t found or understood that letter, Cassia would have panicked and assumed that the Whispering Dream had once again kidnapped him…
However, she had to applaud him for his meticulousness. The holy circle Ilythia casted was likely a Search Mystery capable of discovering any trace of a person’s existence. The letter was likely also found by her, but she must not have understood its meaning or simply glossed over it…
In all honesty, it terrified her to think of what could have happened if Ilythia had interrogated Soren…
Although he too was a victim of that incident, Ilythia’s investigation of him would have led her to discovering his status as a Vagrant Phantasm. In the eyes of the church, messing with the forces of nature—Abstract Runes—was one of the greatest taboos anyone could commit, right below blasphemy against the Mother of Silver Herself.
So no excuse, reason or purpose would have worked. There was nothing Cassia could argue in his favor, even if he truly had no connection to the Whispering Dream…
Whether his disappearance at that moment was a coincidence or not didn’t matter anymore. She was simply glad that he was planning on leaving for so long. Not only did that mean that Ilythia’s investigation would likely be put on hold indefinitely, but with the arrival of the mistress a week from now, Soren would likely have another card in his favor…
“I’ll beat him up if he comes back any earlier…” Opening the door to her room, Cassia readied herself for bed, blew the nightstand candle’s flame and closed her eyes. A new day awaited her with countless new trials…
Her fleeting thoughts trailed back to when she had first met Soren in the guild lounge. A brash young man with countless mischievous thoughts in his mind. And his snake-like amber eyes that screamed of fear and distrust clouded her own vision at the time… She had assumed him to be an opportunist—someone who was trying to use her mistress for his own gains.
But after working with him closely for so long, Cassia began to understand the layers beneath his guarded nature… His distrust wasn’t born out of opportunism, but from a deep-seated fear—of being used, of being discarded, of losing control over his own fate… She saw it in the way he flinched at unexpected kindness—how he hesitated to accept even the slightest gift, afraid of accruing unnecessary debts…
It took her a lot of effort just to make him accept a damn ink bottle for Serpent’s sake.
And yet, there was certainly growth beneath that layer. She had certainly felt so after that argument he apparently had with Myrin and Tina. Even this most recent antic of vanishing from the world and revealing a bit of his secrets meant that Soren was slowly beginning to trust the guild.
The journey somewhat reminded her of her own—after all, she too had spent countless years distrusting others after… that incident. And the time she wasted surviving off the streets certainly didn’t help either. It wasn’t until the Mistress took her in that she slowly began to lower her guard around others in the guild, and even that process took a while…
She yawned as her eyes fully closed, “I wonder what he’s up to right now.” She chuckled, “Probably something ridiculous.”