The seal on the envelope was a weighing scale with a sheaf of wheat on one side and a bar of gold on the other. The wax seal was a perfect circle, though it had minuscule signs of being trimmed. Yuriko climbed to her floor and entered her room before she opened the invitation.

Inside was a delicate papyrus sheet with golden ink letters—not just coloured gold, but ink was real gold. Luxurious.

It read:

“Lilibeth Lawson,

 We cordially invite you to attend Emma Lawson-Daublin’s 25th birthday celebration this coming Earthsday, the 9th of High Earth, 610, at the Grand Ballroom, Daublin Hotel, Winderfield, Neo Prism City, Neo Prism. The Festivities will begin at 7 o’clock in the evening. Formal Attire is requested.

 Please send your confirmation no later than the 4th High Earth, You may send a message or call…”

Yuriko pursed her lips. Emma was Lilibeth’s eldest sister, but she wasn’t really sure what their relationship was like. There were mixed feelings in Lilibeth’s memories, but the latest ones were muddled or simply nonexistent. She wasn’t even sure if Emma knew of her estrangement.

“Should I go?” Yuriko pondered.

There was no need to and she thought that her identity might be questioned once she was there. Based on the ID pictures and photos in her phone, at this point, Yuriko’s looks had deviated enough from Lilibeth that people might not recognise her at a casual glance. The only thing remaining the same was that they were both blonde with blue eyes.

Emma shared the same features, but was a bit more…delicate? She somewhat reminded Lilibeth of Scarlett, but not as petite. She remembered Emma made Lilibeth feel so clumsy, with her gangly limbs and large feet. That was back when Lilibeth was just a bit less than ten years old.

She also remembered Emma leaving candies for her underneath her pillow when she got grounded. Read stories at night, tutored her in her weak subjects. She cried when Emma left for college.

She also remembered her coldness when Lilibeth chose a different path than the one laid out by their parents. The cold snub that lasted for the past couple of years, and the small glimpses of the woman’s true, manipulative nature.

“Should be fun,” Yuriko muttered as she pulled her mind away from the flood of memories. While she might be using Lilibeth’s identity, she was not that woman. The lingering Will had long since dispersed, leaving only a list of what the woman wanted to accomplish in her life.

Fame, fortune.

To be acknowledged.

Hmmm, even Lilibeth didn’t know who she craved to be acknowledged by. Was it her absent and cold parents? Grandfather? Elder sister and brother? Her emotions wiggled between all of them, but there was more to her family than the basic unit, and her feelings towards the rest varied between indifference, disdain, and…fear.

She was just about to send a confirmation to the number given on the invite, but she hesitated. It seemed that parts of Lilibeth’s memories still dwelt within her mind. Yuriko sighed as she put down the phone. It had been eight days since she arrived, and her body is nearly twenty percent of her true physique. It would take another Season to finish, but she constantly found echoes of the dead woman in her subconscious, influencing her actions, and decisions.

She didn’t want to wipe everything away, but she didn’t find the dichotomy pleasant either. In fact…even her thoughts, the words she used to herself, had changed to mingle Lilibeth’s and her true self’s…

No. She was Yuriko.

There was no false self or true self. There is only the true body and the incarnation, but both are herself. She could feel a slight dissonance between this body’s thoughts and the one currently meditating in Dragon Fall City. She could touch the partition between her minds. It was an odd state of being because there was no thread connecting this body to that. It there was, then the sheer distance would have snapped or attenuated the connection to uselessness.

No. Her consciousness dwelt within both minds, but she could feel the partition between them. Thoughts flowed freely across the partition, but each mind was capable of independent action. At times, she felt the strain of maintaining two bodies. It was why, sometimes, her true body continued its actions through sheer inertia. But she was getting better. Her Intent and Will were growing stronger by the day, and this was probably what the benefits the Eternal Tower gave to Ancients like her.

She had yet to truly ponder what the Tower Spirit said before it split her consciousness in two.

What was an Authority and why did she have one? Her initial thought was that the Authority was the final stage of Ennoias, but it wasn’t. Damien’s thoughts were clear, but in those memories, Authorities were also mentioned.

But those memories defied her understanding. Whatever she saw there would slip away from her own thoughts as though she held water in her bare hands. But droplets did cling to her fingers, and those little fragments of memories. Perhaps they would fill her pool of understanding in the future.

She sighed and went to the bathroom. The shower was never quite as hot as she’d prefer, but she could live with it. For now, anyway. Hmmm, maybe just a little more heat? It was so easy after all…

The next day, Moonsday, was mundane. She walked, well, ran the dog. Went to her classes, and went to Macy’s in the afternoon. In the evening, she did her class work, which was, oddly enough, quite novel. She’d only attended one semester in Sharom as a student before she got lost in the Sea. The Academy in Realmheart was really more a political cauldron where all the scions of the houses mixed than anything else, and she was a teacher in Bresia.

It was odd to think that Lilibeth spent most of her life studying in a school of one sort or another, and she was in the final set before she could be considered a functional adult. Though there was conflicting information about that.

In between bouts of reading, meditating, and writing her homework, she practised the Five Phases of the Sword. Her true body was not yet done with all the modifications, but just this morning, while she did her practice, she felt…a strange resonance.

She held a wooden sword, one shaped from a fallen tree branch, but also one that could cut through steel as easily as a hot knife through butter under her hands. The resonance was not to the Elements, but to something else. The Ennoia of Swords, she believed. It was a glimpse and one that she could barely make out the true form of, but it elated her and she could barely keep herself from abandoning everything else to practice. Her true body could not feel it. Whatever the resonance was, it was masked and subsumed by her Ennoia of the Radiant Flying Swords.

But she couldn’t. Not yet. She longed to focus on the insight, but…

Well, why didn’t she?

Why not?

For what purpose was it that her incarnation was sent here? Was it not to train?

No. To Live.

With a sigh, she returned to her room and her studies.

On Firesday, right after the useless Walking for Fitness, and just as Yuriko was about to leave for lunch, and then to her work, Jenna grabbed her wrist and pulled her away.

“What is it?” she asked curiously.

“You missed a club meeting last week!” Jenna hissed.

“Eh? What club?” Yuriko asked with a frown.

“What club? Where do you think—! Urk, come on, Lily, you’re the one who brought me there.”

“But, I’ve got work in a couple of hours,” Yuriko protested weakly.

“Come on, anyway, it shouldn’t take long.”

Puzzled, and somewhat troubled, Yuriko let Jenna drag her towards the College of Arts and Letters building next to Palmer Hall. Well, they came from across Trinity Park and Yuriko actually gave Jenna a ride on her scooter. The clunker nearly died with both of their weights.

“I’m not getting fat, am I?” Jenna asked worriedly while she pinched the doughnut ring around her tummy.

“You’re not,” Yuriko assured her friend. It was actually her fault, her weight had increased with the density of her muscles.

The basement and the ground floor of the building held the college library. They entered through the door next to the parking lot and Jenna led the way towards one of the basement rooms. The scent of ageing paper lingered in the dry air. The hum of the airconditioners was a bit loud, too.

The room was, just like the rest of the library, filled with books. They were tall tomes, hardbound and with strange lettering on the spines. The sign next to the room number: Occult Research Club.

Huh.

“Jenna, Lilibeth! Welcome back,” a mousy girl with large spectacles gushed. She wasn’t quite as petite as Scarlett, but she came close. Chloe Sinclair, Yuriko thought as the girl’s name surfaced from Lilibeth’s memory sea.

“Chairwoman,” Jenna said as she looked around. There was no one else in the room. “Nobody else?”

“It’s just us today,” Chloe said placatingly before focusing on Yuriko. “Lili! You…look different. You succeeded, did you not?”

The girl rushed up to her and pushed in close, making her reflexively step back. Chloe kept pushing herself into Yuriko’s space, her eyes had a manic look that was so different from what Yuriko expected that she couldn’t help but get backed up into the wall by the relatively tiny girl.

“You got taller. Your skin looks radiant! You…your face…prettier. Beautiful!” Chloe gushed as she got on tiptoes. “The website! It was true, wasn’t it? You did the ritual!”

“Website?”

“You don’t remember?” Chloe bit her lip. “A side effect. What others? But look at you. The ritual must have Altered you, just like we suspected. Oh! This would prove so many theories, I have to write and publish this!”

“Wait, Chloe! What do you mean?” Yuriko grabbed the smaller girl’s wrist just as she whirled around. “What website?”

“Dreamsmadereal[dot]com.” Jenna said. “We were investigating it. You…Lily, you did the ritual, right? You didn’t tell us you planned to do it alone!” Jenna growled. “I watched last week. You were ditzier than usual, but it’s really your appearance that changed. I sent the application to the website, too, and today, I found this in my purse.” She pulled out a sheet of paper with a runescript word written in red ink, not quite blood.

Yuriko snatched the piece of paper from Jenna before the other woman could blink. Hmmm, yup, it was nearly identical to the ritual anchor her previous body used, except it had not been activated yet and so wasn’t covered in blood.

“Are you planning to evoke the summoning ritual?” Yuriko asked, staring hard at Lilibeth’s friend.

“I, yes, I was. I mean, I am.” Jenna said, “Look at you, look how much you changed. Look at me, I want to look like you…”

Yuriko shook her head. “I don’t remember what happened, except that I woke up with my wrists slit and blood draining out of the wounds.”

“But you woke up and you changed!”

“Yes,” Yuriko admitted, “but there was an even chance that I would not have woken up at all.”

“I can’t stop.”

“Why?”

“I just can’t.” There was a desperate edge to the girl and madness behind her eyes.

“Do you seek beauty or…power?” Yuriko asked.

“I…beauty is power, Lily.”

“That is true, in a sense,” Yuriko admitted. “But this thing,” she brandished the paper, “will not give it to you.”

“That’s all very well,” Chloe interrupted, “but getting through the website’s checks wasn’t easy. I doubt you’d get the chance soon, Jen.”

“I…know.”

Yuriko sighed as she pondered. Jenna, Scarlett, and Nora were Lilibeth’s dear friends, and she felt a twinge of guilt that she hadn’t really done anything for them. Not truly. Hmmm. She could teach them. Awaken their Animus cores, or teach spell casting.

After a while, Chloe asked Yuriko if it was alright if she took pictures, and against her better judgment, she agreed. She was bad at trying to stay low-key anyway.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep