"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
A young man bolted upright, screaming as he was torn from a restless sleep.
His chest heaved in rapid gasps, sweat clinging to his pale skin, his dark hair plastered against his forehead. His deep green eyes were wide, the nightmare still fresh and vivid in his mind.
"You're finally awake! I thought I'd lost you!"
The voice startled him. He turned sharply to find a girl with tangerine hair and vivid blue eyes standing over him, and before he could say a word she threw her arms around him in a tight, desperate embrace.
"Janika?" he murmured, his voice hoarse.
She pulled back just enough to look at his face, concern written clearly across her features. He didn't give her a chance to speak. He pulled her close again, buried his face against her shoulder, and sobbed, his whole body trembling.
"What's wrong?" she asked softly, her voice careful and quiet. Her cheeks flushed as she tried to make sense of what was happening.
'Could it be? Is he finally falling for me?' She felt her heart pick up. After all these years, could he finally be seeing her the way she had always seen him?
But his thoughts were somewhere else entirely.
'Never. I will never let it happen again.'
The dream came flooding back in sharp, ugly fragments, not everything, but enough. Enough to know exactly what could be taken from him, what had already been taken, in another life he couldn't fully explain but couldn't shake either.
'I won't let you steal what's mine. Never again.'
His jaw tightened. The image of another man surfaced in his mind, and the anger that came with it was immediate and consuming. That man had destroyed everything. He had taken the women he loved, humiliated him, left him with nothing.
The worst of it was what he had done to Janika. What he had put her through. How she had died because of him.
'The moment we meet, Amael, I'll kill you.'
...
...
Artrious. The god of plausibility.
It might not sound like much at first, but it really is. Liliana doesn't just have the ability to make the impossible literally possible, she can also render certain abilities completely useless by bending the laws of plausibility around them.
Right now, we were deep inside the Arten, far from the gates. The reinforcements that had been flooding the area earlier were gone, drawn off somewhere else, which meant we could actually move.
'Stem, why won't you just tell me what's going on?'
[She's an ally. That's all I can say.]
I let out a slow breath. That wasn't good enough, but I wasn't going to get more out of him.
'Is she at full power?' I asked, glancing at the figure walking ahead of us.
[No. She hasn't undergone her second awakening yet.]
So why was she already this strong? In the game she was powerful, but not like this, not even close. And if she went through her second awakening on top of everything she could already do, I didn't want to think about what she'd become.
I reached up and adjusted the mask covering my face, making sure it was sitting right. It was better to keep my identity hidden out here, because if word got back to the Arenfords they wouldn't wait around to ask questions.
I looked over at Lily, walking beside me. Her hand was holding mine, her grip firm, and she was wearing a small, quiet smile that she didn't seem entirely aware of.
We'd reached the busier part of the city now, streets full of people moving in every direction. I scanned the district for the Adventurer's Guild, it had to be somewhere close given how active things were here.
"What's that?" Lily asked, pointing toward a small mat laid out on the ground nearby.
We walked over. The mat was covered in an assortment of trinkets and old oddities, most of it junk. The vendor behind it smiled up at us like he'd been waiting all day.
"What can I get you?"
I looked over the items without much interest until I noticed a hairclip, and noticed at the same moment that Lily's eyes had settled on it.
"How much for this one?" I asked.
"Three sephas."
I paid him, picked up the clip, and turned to Lily. It was simple, a small floral design, nothing elaborate. I reached out and fastened it into her blue hair, then stepped back to look.
It suited her. The contrast was striking in a way I hadn't expected, and she looked almost otherworldly with it in.
Her cheeks went pink. She touched the clip carefully with her fingertips, her smile growing wider.
"Let's go," I said, taking her hand again. She held on tighter than before but didn't say anything, and we kept moving.
A little further into the city, a sign outside a small tent caught my eye. Fortune-telling. I watched someone step out of it with a look on their face that said they hadn't liked what they'd heard.
"Let's try it," I said, glancing at Lily.
Her cheeks were still flushed, and she was still smiling, her fingers drifting back to the hairclip without her seeming to notice.
'I feel like I just made a mistake,' I thought, and I pulled her through the tent flap anyway.
Let's see what fate had to say.