Cassian was in the kitchen.
She had rummaged through the dusty cupboards and found something to eat.
It looked like the group had left a few things behind while settling in here.
Bread that was still relatively fresh. Hard cheese. Dried fruits in a jar. A few metal cans.
Not much, but enough.
She gathered some food in her arms, then went to sit at a large solid-wood table.
The table was enormous. Easily ten people could sit around it.
But she was alone.
She slowly looked around.
The manor. Huge. Empty. Oppressively silent.
The walls were high. The ceilings decorated with ancient, eerie frescoes.
She looked out the dirty window.
Outside. Dense, dark forest. Threatening gray sky.
She was bored to death.
Literally.
How the hell was she supposed to keep herself occupied while waiting for the group to come back?
The manor was literally devoid of any possible distraction.
No books. No games. No music. Nothing interesting.
Cassian stood up and went back to the kitchen to grab even more food.
Eating was currently the only thing even vaguely interesting to do.
The only available activity.
She took a shriveled apple. Another piece of bread. A big chunk of hard cheese.
Now that she really noticed it, she had always had something concrete to do before.
Training with Lena. Fighting monsters. Traveling to destinations. Fleeing dangerous creatures.
Now that her only task was to passively rest and patiently wait, it felt downright strange.
Almost psychologically uncomfortable.
Cassian slowly returned to sit down, her gaze completely blank and lost as she stared out a window while mechanically and tastelessly chewing a piece of dry bread.
She lazily raised her hand in front of her.
She easily created two perfectly spherical floating water orbs.
She made them race in an epic and intense chase around the large table.
Spinning. Accelerating. Slowing down.
Then she made them crash spectacularly in the center.
SPLASH.
Water splashed everywhere.
“Maximum absolute boredom level,” Cassian murmured with a deep sigh.
She dropped her head onto the table.
Finally, after an endless hour, she firmly decided to go for a walk outside.
She couldn’t stand being inside anymore.
It was really weird and oppressive to be completely alone in such a huge, sinister manor.
She opened the heavy main wooden door.
The hinges creaked horribly.
The fresh outdoor air hit her immediately.
Cold. Damp. But liberating.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
The entire manor property was bordered by an old, completely rusted wrought-iron fence.
Cassian roughly estimated the total distance.
A kilometer perimeter? Maybe a bit less. Maybe nine hundred meters.
There was absolutely no staff to properly maintain the manor.
The grass grew completely wild and uncontrolled. Knee-high. Invasive.
Even the metal fence was totally overrun by aggressive climbing vegetation.
“It’s… calm,” she awkwardly reassured herself out loud. “Very calm. Too calm, even. Shit. That’s not reassuring at all.”
She slowly walked along the rusted fence surrounding the entire property to stretch her numb legs.
Walking slowly. Regularly. Constantly looking around with suspicion.
She completed several full laps of the perimeter.
An hour passed slowly.
Then another.
Then she suddenly noticed something really abnormal.
Mana was accumulating very slowly in her body.
All by itself.
Yet she wasn’t currently consciously trying to increase her mana reserve at all.
She wasn’t meditating. She wasn’t focusing at all. She was just walking.
It was so faint and subtle that she hadn’t even noticed it at first.
Cassian gave a small, surprised smile.
“Interesting…”
She had been trying for so long to create magic that would make the tedious process of absorbing mana much easier and automatic.
But it seemed her body had simply naturally learned on its own to passively absorb ambient mana.
Without her needing to do anything.
“That’s awesome.”
It used to take her so much painful time and intense concentration before.
Hours of meditation. Absolute focus.
It must have been the constant, obsessive repetition that finally produced this unexpected result.
But right now, it was still far, far too weak to be truly useful in combat.
For the moment, the best thing to do was clearly to continue with the old manual method until one day she wouldn’t even need to go through it at all.
“If I had known it was that simple, I really wouldn’t have busted my ass for weeks trying to find a complicated magical solution.”
She shook her head.
Besides, she also had the strange feeling that her overall control had significantly increased during her sleep.
It felt much more fluid and natural than before.
As if mana moved from one end of her body to the other much faster and more easily.
“What exactly happened to my body while I was bedridden for three weeks?”
Cassian then noticed something really weird beyond the rusted fence.
She stopped dead in her tracks.
An opening in the loose soil.
Stone stairs leading straight underground into darkness.
Cassian found it extremely bizarre and suspicious.
“Why is it outside? Outside the protective fence? That makes no sense.”
It was way, way too shady and unsettling.
Plus, the opening was currently much too small.
Impossible for her to fit through. Even by twisting.
“I’m never going to check what that is. Never. End of story.”
It didn’t really look like a secret passage because it was far too visible and obvious.
Anyone could see it.
She quickly continued on her way, picking up her pace.
“If something is weird and completely unknown, never, ever get close to it,” she muttered like a mantra.
She sighed deeply.
She had come out for a walk to escape the scary, oppressive atmosphere inside the manor.
But now she had stumbled directly onto something just as scary and mysterious outside.
Maybe even worse.
Cassian sincerely and desperately hoped she was just being paranoid.
That her imagination was playing tricks on her.
But her suspicions about this manor were slowly but surely being confirmed.
“But I really don’t want my suspicions to be confirmed… Please, no.”
She really hoped she was just having stupid ideas.
Then she passed in front of the large main iron gate again.
She pushed firmly to test its solidity.
It was open.
Completely open. Unlocked.
“Shit. That’s not normal.”
Cassian did her absolute best to close it properly, pulling with all her strength.
She grunted with effort.
But no success.
The ancient locking mechanism seemed completely broken and rusted.
The growing unease swelled dangerously.
She nervously looked beyond the open gate.
A long, straight, sinister path. Dark and threatening. Lined with menacing trees.
“I’ll only be here a few days,” she awkwardly reassured herself out loud. “Not that long. Three, four days maximum. Totally manageable. Nothing serious.”
She forced herself to believe it.
---
It was now completely dark.
Pitch black night.
Cassian was locked in her room.
She had carefully closed the door and pushed a heavy solid-wood piece of furniture against it to avoid taking unnecessary risks.
The thick curtains were hermetically drawn.
During the day, the manor was already seriously frightening.
But at night it was absolutely incomparable.
Utterly terrifying and oppressive.
“If I hear a single footstep that isn’t mine,” she joked nervously to herself, “I’m having an instant cardiac arrest. Right away.”
She cautiously lay down in the large bed and got comfortable under the thick wool blanket.
She already felt much more emotionally safe under the protective cover.
But the sinister, constant howling of the wind outside did absolutely nothing to reassure her.
Branches scratched violently against the windows.
SCRATCH. SCRATCH. SCRATCH.
She firmly told herself that she had already slept here while bedridden and unconscious and yet nothing bad had happened.
Nothing.
“That was mostly because I was never completely alone in the manor at that time…”
Hiro, Lena, Lucia were there.
A horrible sound brutally yanked her out of her anxious thoughts.
A sound she unfortunately recognized all too well.
The fucking sound of a mosquito.
BZZZZZZ.
It buzzed aggressively around her, forcing her to scramble out of the comfortable bed.
“Someone’s dying tonight,” Cassian said, deeply irritated by the absolutely unbearable noise. “And it’s going to be you, you filthy BASTARD.”
---
The next morning.
It was very early.
The sun hadn’t fully risen on the horizon yet.
A young man in his twenties was on horseback, riding a brown horse.
He was on the long, dark, muddy path, slowly approaching the eerie manor.
The horse was laboriously carrying several heavy sacks tied to its sides.
The man was talking to the horse to pass the time.
Of course, the horse didn’t answer at all.
“I really don’t want to deal with this stupid delivery at all,” he said, yawning loudly. “But they specifically assigned me to this annoying task. It’s so lame.”
He irritably scratched his head.
“I woke up way before sunrise for this.”
He looked at the manor in the distance.
Dark. Imposing. Dilapidated and sinister.
“Do people even really live in there? It seriously looks completely abandoned for years.”
As he approached the large open gate, he carefully dismounted to drop off the food.
He was immediately surprised that the gate was wide open.
“Huh. It’s open. Weird.”
The young man sighed deeply and nervously entered to place the food right in front of the massive main door of the manor.
“I seriously doubt anyone lives here. This is probably even an address mistake. Yeah. Definitely.”
He set the heavy sacks on the ground.
Then he suddenly saw something move distinctly in one of the second-floor windows.
His body froze completely and he stared intensely at the spot.
A blurry, indistinct shadow.
In another nearby window right next to it, he saw more suspicious movement.
A dark, blurry silhouette.
The young man instantly panicked.
His heart pounded hard.
He desperately sprinted back to the horse and fled at full speed without looking back.
The horse neighed violently and galloped away.
Cassian, standing at a second-floor window, genuinely wondered why he had run like that.
She also had absolutely no idea there were regular scheduled deliveries.
No one had told her.
“What the hell was that exactly?”
Cassian was currently extremely physically and mentally exhausted.
She had fiercely battled the mosquito for a very good part of the night.
Around four in the morning, the noises had finally stopped.
Victory.
But she had absolutely not been able to fall back asleep afterward.
“Okay. Let’s see exactly what he delivered.”
She slowly went down the stairs.
She went to check what had been left in front of the main door.
Food. A lot of fresh food.
Fresh warm bread. Colorful fruits. Green vegetables. Dried meat.
“Cool. I was seriously worried about the supplies.”
After carefully checking what had been brought, she headed toward the open gate.
It was wide open thanks to the careless delivery guy.
She firmly tried to close it properly.
Pulling. Pushing. Grunting.
But of course, impossible to lock the entrance.
The mechanism was definitely and irreparably broken.
“Great. Just absolutely great.”
As she slowly walked back to bring the food inside the manor, she inevitably passed in front of the mysterious opening in the ground she had seen yesterday.
She stopped abruptly.
Her heart stopped.
It was… much bigger.
Much, much bigger than yesterday.
Just big enough for her to fit through now if she wanted.
