"Hey! You're awake."
Bambi skipped through the rubble and entered the ruined cabin, only to find Luciel staring blankly at the spot where the wall had been.
"Luciel?"
Hearing her voice, he turned and hurried to her. He didn't care anymore that she'd disappeared while he was in the Soulscape. Now wasn't the time to point fingers.
"Bambi."
His voice was low and serious.
She looked at him, confusion plain on her face.
"Something wrong?"
Luciel pointed at where the runes were casually floating.
"Do you not see that?"
Bambi squinted her eyes toward the direction his finger guided, then turned to him.
"See what? Luciel… it's fine if you failed to find the Soulscape. You can always try again, you know. You don't have to resort pretending to have hallucinations…"
"No… what?"
Before he could even clarify, Bambi pulled him into a hug and rubbed his back.
"It's okay. I know you're impatient about becoming a Resonator, but trust me. Usually, you have to spend months to familiarize immersing yourselves in the subconscious, but you did it in just three days! Hell of an achievement."
"Bambi, that's not what I… wait. Three days? It's been three days?"
She nodded.
Luciel did lose track of time somewhere along the journey, but he didn't expect three days had passed since then.
"What about the job?" he asked.
Bambi sighed.
"I requested a transference. Someone snatched it right away."
Luciel rested his chin on her head. For someone who loved money, the fact that she abandoned a job with a high payout was anything but ordinary, and since she was a Guardian, it would have been swift.
"Thanks."
"And before you blame me for not being here, I only went out to grab the food."
He slightly flinched.
"How did you know?"
"Because I know you."
Bambi released Luciel and set the carefully packaged food on the bed. She sat down and motioned for him to sit beside her.
"Okay. What are you trying to show me?"
He followed and sat beside Bambi, eyes fixed on the runes above.
"Thought you said I have hallucinations or whatever."
Bambi nudged him.
"That was a joke, dummy. I know you are an Awakened now. It's easy to tell."
Luciel thought about it, and remembered the Stigma that was still glowing dimly. Anyone with a sharp eye could see it.
"Right. It slipped my mind."
In any case, how could he explain it to her, that living inside him was a fire that could create runes and record information about a soul?
As he was deep in thought, Bambi burst out a chuckle.
"Looks like you're having a hard time. It's a rare sight to see."
Luciel looked at her with defeated eyes.
"It's something you have to see to believe."
The moment he finished the sentence, a small spark leapt from his Stigma. The ring around the scarlet star lit up. He noticed Bambi's Stigma glowing brightly as well and swiftly connected the dots.
"Bambi. Accept my intent."
"Huh?"
"To show you what I'm seeing."
She gave him a weird look, then nodded firmly quickly after. She must have understood his intention.
"Show me."
Immediately, as if a magic word had just been spoken, the spark darted to her Stigma and gradually settled there.
Bambi's eyes widened soon after.
"What in the world…?"
She didn't say anything for a good couple of minutes. For a moment, the only movement in the room was her eyes tracking up and down steadily.
Meanwhile, Luciel was unwrapping the box of fried rice with pork she had bought for him. After three days of not eating, he thought he would be extremely hungry, but that wasn't the case. Still, he needed to put something in his stomach. Good nutrition and diet could go a long way.
As he ate the delicious fried rice, Bambi finally spoke after a long silence.
"You have a freaking cheat code. You know those stories with a status screen? The ones that shows stats and skills? It's exactly that!"
Luciel tried to recall whether he had ever read those kinds of stories before. Since he mostly indulged in more profound topics, none came to mind.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Her head snapped toward Luciel, eyes widened.
"What!? You are seriously telling me you've never read those comics before? It's pretty popular in Narae."
He put down his bowl of fried rice and sighed in disappointment.
"Comics? At your big age?"
Bambi clicked her tongue.
"Shut up. I don't wanna listen to a geezer who reads philosophical books for fun."
Then, she hit Luciel in the arm, chest, then thigh.
He tried to block it, but she was too fast.
"Argh. What's your problem?"
"At my big age, I can punish you whenever I want. You're the junior here."
Bambi switched her attention back to the runes.
"Those square brackets… I feel like you can read more into it."
Luciel nodded while rubbing his thigh.
"I was waiting for you so we could look at it together. Tell me what you see, because all I see are runes."
"Really. Mine's basic Latinian alphabet. You can understand runes?"
He shrugged.
"Somehow."
Luciel beckoned the runes to come closer. Now that he vaguely knew how his Stanza worked, controlling it was much easier. It was always about the consciousness and intent, aspects that he felt confident about.
He focused on the Soul Aria where [Agnihara] rested. In an instant, the name started to write its description.
Soul Aria: [Agnihara]
[A soul born of flame and bound by an ancient promise to destroy it. You burn to expose the deepest of sins, to judge falsehood, and to shield what remains true, even if your blade goes against the heavens themselves.]
Bambi gasped.
"Sounds heavy. You might be the protagonist of this world."
"Stop being dramatic. You read too many comics," Luciel said, deadpan.
She grinned.
"But your fire's naming sense is kinda good, no? Aria is generally a solo musical piece, so it's about your identity. Fits what the description is telling us."
Luciel agreed with her. Musical terminologies were also used by the runes, just like in everyday life, and they made sense to a satisfying degree. The one who coined the term Stanza was cool and all, but the runes took the cake.
'Definitely no bias here.'
Eager for more, he continued down the line.
Soul Chorus: Symphony No. 1 — [Scarlet]
[The first awakening of the divine fire. When your God bled for the first time, mortals saw a scarlet hue streak across the skies. Some called it an omen, others called it a blessing. With every prayer, the clock ticked down toward the same Scarlet, the one that adored mortals the most.]
"Damn."
"Damn."
Both Luciel and Bambi looked at each other stiffly. They didn't understand a thing about [Scarlet]'s description, but they felt the weight and intensity of its words. It was exactly how symphonies told its stories through elements such as tempo, dynamics, and orchestration to evoke emotion.
And [Chorus], by definition, is a repeated part of a song with a purpose of embodying its core message. [Scarlet] was the first symphony, and its chorus expressed the main theme of his soul.
"Now I wanna see my Symphony."
Luciel chuckled at her words. There weren't much to be said about the Chorus, so he moved on to the next.
Soul Resonance: [First Movement]
[A flame that knew no equal and needed no witness. In the silence before complete devotion, Scarlet burned alone, unaware of the weight a single choice would carry.]
Bambi studied the description and said:
"A symphony has four movements, correct? Doesn't it correspond to the Aleph Scale?"
Luciel nodded.
After contemplating for a while, she added:
"There are seven symphonies then. Matches the BSM's seven ranks."
Her theory made sense.
The Collective Union of Resonator Affairs — or Heerser, a metonym based on the region they were headquartered in — created the Berend Sequencing Model by reverse engineering a Relic in 42 AS, short for After Shattering. Its purpose was to measure the capacity of Encores, the potency of one's Echo Essence, and the power and potential within a Stanza.
When a Resonator channeled their Essence into a measuring device with BSM calibration, it would manifest a color and letter corresponding to your Rank and mastery on the Aleph Scale.
Each Rank was displayed in one of the rainbow's colors, and they were: Red for Awakened, Orange for Attuned, Yellow for Maestro, Green for Guardian, Blue for Harbinger, Indigo for Palatine, and Violet for Paragon.
Within each Rank, similar to Movements, there used to be four letters in the Aleph Scale, in order of increasing refinement: Daleth 𐤃, Gimel 𐤂, Beth 𐤁, Aleph 𐤀.
However, Heerser tweaked the model and added the fifth letter to prevent overclassification. Officially, Maestro and below would be assigned to the letter He 𐤄. The decision was made because the gap between each refinement at Maestro and below wasn't large enough to warrant the usage of the original Aleph Scale.
Luciel glanced at Bambi, a Daleth-Guardian, and compared her to himself, a new Awakened. He still had a lot of catching up to do.