Alira cradled a beating heart within her palm. At least, that was what the artifact felt like—alive, reactive, and full of vitality.

  A reassuring warmth, one like the evening sun, spread from it as the scent of summer enveloped her. Summer that belonged to those special holidays where her family of four visited her mother’s hometown village: rice fields, muddy footpaths, palm-leaf fan and popsicles to fight against the borderline unbearable heat. She could almost hear the looping sound of cicadas and taste the nostalgia of cheap snacks from the village’s only store.

  Then, everything went still.

  Alira gripped onto the artifact and tried to pull it out when half-familiar screams and wails pierced through her eardrums, spearing into her brain. She gritted her teeth and ignored the cries to yank her hand out of the statue’s chest.

  She lost her balance as the stone released her, falling backward onto her butt. A pair of hurried footsteps rushed toward her. Alira looked down to find a flat, round object on her palm, fingers wrapped tightly around it.

  A silver-framed mirror. It was half as wide as her face. Without the reflective glass inside its frame, it couldn’t technically be called a mirror anymore. The broken pieces of glass made up the other half of Two Soul which were in the second protagonist’s possession, Shattered Fragments.

  The artifact was light and fragile. It looked absolutely worthless. Yet for this piece, the cultists killed the entirety of First Class with the exception of Raine who made it out only because he was the protagonist.

  Almost two dozen students. Seventeen were found dead, with one missing. All young children killed for this artifact.

  Two curiosity-colored faces stared down at Alira. Lillian, who was no longer invisible for some reason, seemed curious simply toward anything related to this ancient-looking underground hall. Raine’s curiosity regarding the artifact came from his epiphany. He had a ‘so, this’s what you’re after’ kind of enlightenment flashed across his face, his eyebrows raised with ‘show me what’s all the fuss about’.

  Alira immediately put away the artifact, which faded out of existence, crumbling to smoky dust. The artifact had successfully bonded with her soul, allowing her to store the mirror-less mirror somewhere within it.

  Raine scoffed audibly. Seeing him displeased about Alira’s action, Lillian opened her mouth, most likely to score some points with him. Alira spoke before either of the two could give her a piece of their mind.

  [This Soul of Staywes asks for Judgement,] she said. The words now rolled easily off her tongue, having called for judgment so many times.

  ※

  Character Name [Alira Ravon]

  Will Favorability [Upper Gold]

  Mana Affinity [Lower Bronze]

  Soul Quality [Upper Silver]

  Soul Corruption [15.2% ^]

  Alchemist Ranking [0]

  Alchemic Casts []

  Mage Ranking [2]

  Elements []

  Artifact Bound

  Hollowed Mirror [Myth] {34%}

  Role

  Unreliable Narrator [Myth] (Unique)

  You are the final wall of Staywes, the Filter of all its tales. Your lies are their Truth.

  Role Aspects: [???], [Narrator’s Influence], [Narrate], [Curtains down], [Mirror]

  ※

  Alira hissed at her rising Soul Corruption stat. It must have been from the brief moment she had the cultist’s blood rod in her shoulder. The wound had completely healed, but its effect lingered.

  “What’s the artifact’s name? What’s its rank?” Raine asked the moment he deemed Alira had finished reading her judgment scroll. Alira didn’t doubt that if he could read the words right off her scroll, he would.

  “Hollowed Mirror. Just a common rank.” Alira blurted out without a thought.

  Raine pressed his lips flat, looking like he was mentally rolling his eyes. “Right. An artifact from a hidden hall under Vesper Reign, with thousands of years of history—one no one was aware of—is a common rank. Right.”

  Alira acted deaf to his displeasure.

  There was a problem. In the novel, Raine’s initial harmonization percentage was as low as 2%. Alira had a much, much bigger number in comparison, for some reason, but it still wasn’t enough.

  Two Soul’s artifacts had three stages. The first stage was for any harmonization percentage lower than fifty. Above that and below a hundred was the second stage. Only when the percentage got to a hundred would the artifacts reach their final stage.

  From Raine’s numerous attempts in the novel, Alira already had an almost complete understanding of Two Soul. More specifically, the person who had the other half—Xia.

  Alira had hoped her number to be higher than fifty, even if it was just by 0.1. At the second stage, the Two Soul allowed its two owners to switch places. If Xia had been here, he could have roasted all the cultists and dish out a pile of fried ants. It took Raine approximately two years to reach the second stage to unlock the overpowered cheat named Xia.

  Alira’s ears shot up straight, flicking toward the entrance of the hall adjacent to them. “Lillian, go back to being invisible. Stay out of the way, and leave this place if you can without getting noticed. You must stay hidden until Professor Sigor or anyone else from the Academy finds you.”

  “Huh?” Lillian gasped. Then, she heard the footsteps and familiar metal clashes of despair. She nodded once, firmly, before walking away to fade out of vision in the background.

  Alira met Raine’s eyes. “Do you know what a Lock spell is?” she asked. That was all it took for him to grasp the severity of their situation.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “You go hide, too,” he said.

  Alira shook her head. “I can fight. I think.”

  Raine frowned, opening his mouth to argue. A loud clang interrupted him as shadowed figures stepped out of the tunnel into the hall.

  Only four of them. Each of them was covered from head to toe under a black cloak. Their hand-shaped masks exposed nothing but their feral eyes burning with venom. That was still one too many men to go against still, but it was way less than the number of cultists there had been originally in the novel.

  “Lucky day,” the man at the front croaked, his voice sounding like he needed cough drops. He was the first cultist, the only one with Mother’s crest on his chest. “All thanks to you three—oh!” He waved his gloved hand, pointing a long finger at Raine, then at Alira. “One... Two... And no three? Where’s your little friend?”

  Alira fisted her hands, the mirror emerging within her left fist hidden from sight. “Fellsworns,” she warned Raine, “they belong to an Evil God. Be careful of getting Corrupted, and try not to get too close to them. They can turn their body parts into weapons. Nails and blood, as you saw.”

  Raine gave a curt nod. “Stay behind me.”

  “No, leave two to me. I told you I can fight—”

  “HA. HA. HA.” The cultist leader cut her short with a laugh that couldn’t get any faker. He raised his hand again, black steel-like nails cutting through his glove to extend nearly a foot. “Whisper... Whisper...” He drew the blade of his nail at the edge of his ear, cutting through the flesh as brownish-red blood gushed out. “I can hear you, you know. Little kitty-cat seems to know a lot about us, my brothers. Two... Two...! You heard her, brothers. She wants two! So, Youngest, you accompany me. The other two take good care of that brat. Mother blesses us with bountiful feed today.”

  Alira didn’t waste a second. She dashed toward the opposite corner of the hall, going as far away from Raine as possible while praying Lillian wasn’t hiding there. The hall was as wide as a football field—it looked like it was. Alira wouldn’t know, as someone who hadn’t gone anywhere that reeked with sports and physical activities.

  She stopped, boots scraping against the rough floor. She stood between a tall, black moss-covered wall and the two cultists, really regretting not taking any fighting or self-defense classes when her father suggested.

  The cultist leader stood around five steps away from where she was. Youngest—the hooded man who was a head taller than the leader and also with arms twice as beefy—loomed right next to him.

  Alira tightly clutched onto the mirror in her hand, almost surprised that the flimsy thing didn’t crumble from the force.

  “Now. Now. Little kitty-cat. How do you plan to scratch us?” The cultist leader laughed, a real one this time. Then, he side-eyed at Youngest, glaring for the briefest second, which Alira would have missed if her eyes weren’t following every one of their tiny movement. Youngest joined in the leader’s manic laughing episode, his laugh as awkward as he looked.

  The cultist leader cleared his throat, silencing Youngest once again. “I have veery sharp senses. You don’t stink of magic or alchemy. Your little school hasn’t taught you much about either yet, am I right? Too bad you won’t get to learn them...is what you would think. It’s a blessing, really! You will return to Mother untainted!”

  “Hey!” Alira yelled to the men’s amusement. She wasn’t trying to entertain them or buy time, however. “You’re listening, right?”

  The artifact had been dead silent from the moment she’d bonded with it. If it wasn’t for the novel, she wouldn’t have been able to guess that the two owners of the artifact pieces could actually share their senses at will. She could feel that the Bridge was lowered. That guy was deliberately keeping quiet, watching everything unfold in silence.

  The air hummed. A lazy response. A ‘prove you’re worth my time’. Cocky men truly are the worst.

  “Are you trying to play with us, little—”

  “Xia! Stop being a dick, and help me out. If I die, I will make sure my half will be destroyed, too. Then, your sad, dry life would have one less fun plaything.”

  Artifacts were rare. Not because there were few of them, but because once they bonded with someone, they died with their owner unless the owner decided to pass them on to someone nearby. Not that Alira could die, but he didn’t know and didn’t need to know.

  { Oh~ }

  A smooth voice, almost a purr, rang directly inside Alira’s soul. A shiver crept up her spine, reaching the tip of her ears with a twitch. The novel had described Xia’s voice as a bitter pill coated in honey. Alira agreed.

  “Don’t ‘oh~’ at me, and stop resisting!” Alira gripped onto the artifact until her knuckles turned white. The cultists were looking less and less amused by the second.

  { ...You’re the first to tell me what to do, sweetie. Alright. Have it your way. I’ll see how you plan to involve yourself in my sad, dry life. }

  When the Bridge was lowered, the two could share more than just their senses so long as both were willing. Alira felt the exact moment Xia stopped his resistance against her.

  Warmth seeped into her palm, not a gentle one but rather the kind that gave her a small taste of what it meant to be burned. Alira almost dropped the mirror out of instinct, but she caught herself quickly. She could handle it. She had to handle it.

  This was Xia’s flame. The same flame that saved Raine from dozens of cultists who had successfully killed all his classmates. The same flame that burnt everything and everyone down—Raine included. It was all thanks to Water being his first element that he managed to barely survive. The burn scars on his body had also survived through the novel to symbolize his and Xia’s relationship.

  Clashing of metal and breaking of ice echoed in the background from Raine’s battle. Alira had a fleeting thought about whether his protagonist’s aura was actually enough for him to win against two experienced cultists.

  A flash of grey shot up with a grotesque crack. The cultist leader’s blade nails scythed downward, aiming to split Alira’s collarbone. She barely dodged to the side, the nails drawing deep scratches on the floor instead of her body. It was all thanks to her improved reaction time since she became half a cat. She could see their strikes coming just a few seconds earlier.

  “Are you done with your boring tactic? Not talking to yourself anymore?”

  Alira took a quick step backward, trying to stay out of range of the leader’s nails and the youngest, who still hadn’t attacked yet. She wasn’t worried about whether she could kill them. Her main concern had rather shifted to the fact that she might kill them, herself, and both Raine and Lillian. The fire would eat all in its way.

  The artifact burned into her flesh, heating up with impatience. The untamed fire shared to her through the Bridge threatened to gobble everything up.

  “Who said I was talking to myself?” Alira sneered. Then, under her breath, she said, “Hey, it’s too hot. Tone it down.”

  { Of course. It’s fire, sweetie. You’re its master for now. So tell it yourself. }

  Alira ignored his unhelpful remarks and the way he rolled the word ‘sweetie’ off his tongue. She watched the cultist leader’s face twist behind his weird mask as he whipped down his nails toward Alira. She dashed out of the way yet again fairly easily.

  “You!” Cultist leader’s steel-hard nails painted deep groves on the stone as he lashed out, only to miss.

  Alira’s vitality was no longer that of a drained student with coffee for blood, but of a well-fed cat that could bounce off anything. She imagined she had enough stamina to slip away from the cultist’s claw all day long.

  “Youngest. Hold this bad cat down for me, won’t you?”

  Youngest took out a dagger from his cloak. In one steady move, he sliced his arm open, tearing through his clothes. Muddy blood gushed out from the opening as if each drop was rushing out to be fed. A lot of blood. Within a few blinks, a puddle formed around his feet. The blood trailed outward and slithered to Alira at a speed even she couldn’t escape from.

  The blood reached her fast, crawling up her thighs like liquid vines that couldn’t be rid of. They pinned her down in place, feet tied down to the ground. The bloody limbs applied a heavy weight she couldn’t push away to free herself.

  Dual Point of View! He'll be staying with us as an occasionally helpful voice inside Alira's head.

  A hundred! Thank you so much for reading so far; I hope you've been enjoying the story.