The air hung heavy with the scent of ash and iron as Altha leaned against the door to the chamber.
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[Profile]
[Attributes]
[Aspects]
> [Remembrances]
[Inner-Existials]
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Not a living flower, but one forged from some rustic, timeworn metal, its petals etched with faint scars of battles long forgotten. Its surface gleamed dully, pulsing with a quiet, ominous energy.
"This must be what I got from the Rusted Rose Butcher," Altha murmured, his voice low, almost reverent, as if speaking too loudly might disturb the relic's slumber.
He tilted his head, studying the rose's intricate details—the way its thorns curled like claws, the faint veins of ember-red threading through its petals.
His curiosity piqued, he reached out with his mind, focusing on the Remembrance.
The rose shimmered, then dissolved into motes of glowing ash that swirled and coalesced into a new form.
In his hands materialized a cracked metallic ring, its surface rough and pitted, as though it had been forged in the heart of a dying star.
At its centre, a rustic flower pulsed with an eerie amber glow, its light casting faint, wavering patterns on Altha's soft palms.
It fell into his open hands, and almost instantly pain lanced through his palms.
He let it drop to the floor.
"Ah—cinders!" he hissed, dropping the ring. "Burns like heated—well, metal. Not that surprising now that I say it out loud. Metal flower, metal ring, heat—I really should've seen that coming."
He waved his hands in the air, cooling them off, then crouched to inspect the artefact where it lay on the stone floor, pulsing faintly with ember light.
He then turned to the ethereal words and took a read at the Remembrance's name and description.
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[Petalbrand Ring]
[Description]: A Promise To Return
The battle had been long. The battle had been hard. The battle... the battle...
Yes, it was a battle. Wasn't it?
Definitely.
A battle fought and lost.
Blossoming from the wreckages of war, a maddening sickness bloomed within, writhing inside until cinder and gold rusted to yellow death.
Thus, possessed by the maddening urge to sunder the filth of falsehood.
The lonely rose chased a storm of fire and crossed to an unknown land. Where it fought and died, felled by Fate's Other.
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Altha frowned at the text.
Altha stared, unmoving. The words settled into his spine like snowfall—quiet, heavy.
His gaze drifted to the ring, its ember glow flickering like a heartbeat. "Right," he said, his voice barely audible, "I'm a monster too." The admission hung in the air, sharp and bitter.
He continued reading.
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[Attributes]
[Licked By Fire]:
While wearing this ring, the flames you produce burn hotter, fiercer, bending to your will with unnatural precision. These fires cannot hurt you.
[Fire Of The Sòl]:
You can feed the ring Soul Fract and Mirror Fracts that it will break down and turn into energy. This energy can then be expelled as fire similar to that of Pyro-Storms.
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He let the words drift into the silence, savouring the thought of weaving those ancient, volatile runes. He could already feel the heat of them in his veins, the way they'd singe the air and bend it to his will.
"Finally, an excuse to practice the Runes of Ash and Fire."
He let the words drift away and disappear as he slowly stood up and stretched.
"How lucky. To imagine I'd receive a Remembrance on my first solo fight. I should count my luck."
Remembrances weren't prizes. They weren't earned through courage or tactics alone.
They were left behind—echoes of what someone was… or what they could not stop becoming.
Cecily and Isolde had explained as much:
When an Astral falls… or when an Outer-Existial is finally broken… sometimes, what remains behind chooses to remember itself.
Sometimes, it refuses to die completely.
What no one could explain was why some gave Remembrances… and others gave only silence.
The ring lay still on the floor beside him.
Waiting.
He leaned down to pick it up.
The heat singed his hand and spread throughout his body. The further it spread the more it lessened.
Every muscle, every senew, every molecule of blood coursed with a torturous but renewing heat that eventually dwindled to a halt.
"No beautiful rose without its share of thorns, I suppose."
The metal was cool now, almost comforting—until it wasn't. Thorns, sharp and cruel, sprouted from the ring's inner band, piercing his flesh with a sudden, vicious sting.
He clenched his jaw tight.
He yanked his hand back instinctively, but the ring held fast, its thorns drinking deeply of the blood that welled up. "I was being metaphorical, gosh darn it. I curse my big mouth."
The blood dripped onto the thorns, each drop vanishing into the metal as if consumed. The thorns pulsed a deep, arterial red, and a low hum vibrated through the air, resonating in Altha's bones.
Words shimmered into existence before his eyes as he heard:
[Remembrance]: Rusted Rose (Butcher)
[Attunement: Complete]
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Altha flexed his hand, wincing as the thorns retracted, leaving only faint pinpricks of pain and a lingering ache.
"For all the pain it takes to even attune to this thing. It better be worth it."
He glanced at the Soul Fract of shifting reds and greens on the floor.
"Do I use that or?" He thought.
"No," he decided, shaking his head. "I should save it. A core this powerful deserves a better purpose than a test run. There'll be weaker foes to burn through first."
With a thought, he focused on the ring, willing it to vanish.
It fractured into panes and dissolved in a shimmer of ash, leaving his finger bare, though the faint sting of its thorns lingered like a promise.
Altha turned his attention to the bracer on his left arm, its silver surface gleaming faintly.
He pressed the Soul Fract against it, and the bracer seemed to drink the core, the reds and greens sinking into the metal like ink into water.
A faint ripple pulsed across the bracer's surface then stilled. "Safe for now," he murmured, satisfied.
"Time to get to work, I suppose." He straightened, casting one last glance outside peeking out from a creak at the door.
He walked into the library.
He settled on one of the long elegant tables and summoned the three books from the bracer, and placed them on the table.
He pulled the Eidolomancy Script toward him, its weight familiar in his hands, and flipped it open, the pages crackling softly.
He brushed up on many of his previous lessons.
Hours slipped away as he pored over the text.
He revisited the 24 Standard Runes, their shapes burning into his mind like brands: Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and many others, each a key to bending reality.
He studied Runic Placement, the art of aligning runes to channel their power, and Runic Combinations, where the wrong pairing could unravel flesh as easily as stone.
As he read, his eyes traced intricate diagrams and annotations, scrawling them in the empty pages of his Inscription Tome.
His fingers twitched, itching to trace the runes into new incantations, but he forced himself to focus, committing each detail to memory.
When his eyes began to blur and the moonlight had shifted across the table, Altha leaned back, stretching until his spine cracked. "Enough," he said, closing the Script with a decisive thud.
With a final glance at the silent library, he rose and made for the cathedral, his sneakers leaving not even an echo in the empty halls. With two books in hand.
As he left he was careful to keep quiet and stick to the shadows in fear that a certain six armed knight may be lurking.
The night air was sharp as he crossed the stone bridge, the wind carrying the distant rumble of thunder. Below, a chasm yawned, its depths lost in shadow.
Just ahead stood the Golden Tree, its branches shimmering with an otherworldly light that pulsed in time with Altha's heartbeat.
Reality fractured around his hand like broken panes as a grey hybrid weapon of spear-sword actualized in his grip.
Channeling Psyche into the blade. The energy hummed through him, a tingling current that sharpened his focus and steadied his hand.
He opened the Eidolomancy Script to the bookmarked page, as well as his Inscription Tome, its margins cluttered with his own cramped notes, and glanced at the diagram of runes he'd memorized a hundred times over. Still, he double-checked, unwilling to risk a mistake.
With slow, deliberate movements, he pressed the blade's tip to the stone, carving an incantation into the floor.
Each stroke was precise, the metal scraping softly as it etched glowing runes into the unyielding surface.
He never paused, letting beads of sweat stream down his brow, and occasionally consulting the Script to ensure the runes' shapes and placements were flawless.
Hours passed, the cathedral's silence broken only by the rhythmic scratch of blade on stone and the occasional rustle of turning pages.
Altha's knees ached, his fingers cramped, but he pressed on until the final rune.
He leaned back, exhaling a shaky breath, and surveyed his work.
"Moment of truth," he muttered, flexing his fingers. He extended a pulse of Psyche into the incantation, a gentle probe to test its resonance channels. The runes flared briefly, their glow steady and unbroken, humming with a low, resonant frequency like waves lapping at the shore.
A grin tugged at his lips.
"Not bad for a simple barrier," he said, satisfied. The incantation was basic—a protective ward, nothing elaborate—but its stability was a small victory, proof that his hours of study hadn't been wasted.
He stood, brushing dust from his knees, and turned his attention to the strange altar surrounding the golden tree.
He walked into the strange altar.
Altha knelt before the Golden Tree, its radiant branches casting a warm, almost liquid light across the pale stone floor, the bridge and the cathedral walls.
"Why would a Pyro-Storm appear in a place like this? I thought they were drawn to blight, to defilement—places rotting with corruption." He shot the tree a wary glance, its golden glow suddenly less comforting, more enigmatic. "How very strange."
He walked on the pale stone floor trying to investigate where the incantation started and where it ended.
He began to pace the altar's perimeter, his sneakers whispering against the pale stone.
He traced the pattern with his eyes, searching for where the incantation began and ended, hoping to unravel the altar's purpose.
Before he knew it hours slipped by, his pacing forming slow, deliberate circles around the tree.
He flipped through the Eidolomancy Script, cross-referencing its pages with his notes, but the runes carved into the altar's base defied explanation.
Their geometry was alien, their placement chaotic, diverging from the structured logic of the 24 Standard Runes he'd studied so diligently.
"This doesn't make sense," he muttered, frustration creeping into his voice. "These aren't in the Script. Not Volume 1, at least."
He tapped a finger against the stone, tracing a rune that vaguely resembled Barrier but was warped, as if drawn by a hand that didn't understand its purpose. "What are you?"
He was stumped. And it seemed it would be a while before he could get anything done here.
The cathedral remained silent, its shadows deepening as the moonlight outside waned. Altha's mind raced, grasping for a thread to unravel the mystery, but every theory slipped through his fingers.
He stood, rubbing the back of his neck, and let out a sharp sigh. "I'm stumped," he admitted, the word bitter on his tongue.
"Looks like I'm not cracking this tonight." But the effort hadn't been entirely fruitless. As he studied the altar's runes one last time, a faint pattern emerged.
A few symbols—Ward, Seal, Bind—suggested a barrier, though its scope and purpose eluded him. "So, you're meant to keep something in," he said, addressing the tree as if it could answer. "Or keep something out." He glanced at the where the Petalbrand Ring had once been.
He gathered his things—the Eidolomancy Script, his notes, the spear-sword—and cast one last look at the Golden Tree.
Its branches seemed to beckon, their light pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
"I'll be back," he promised, his voice firm despite the uncertainty gnawing at him.
Moving to the other side side of the bridge he carved another incantation into its stone surface.
Using his finger, he coated it in Psyche and carved shallow runes across its surface then left it in the middle of the bridge.