Chapter 38: Brothers By Blood Strangers By Blood

Aden rested against a damp brick wall with heavy breaths. Droplets of sweat fell from his forehead and landed on the iron ledger held in his arms.

He forcefully stabilized his increasing heart rate by taking deep breaths.

His mind went back to the guard with the compass. He could have killed him easily if he wanted– especially since he was distracted at the time, but that was obviously not an option.

Aden had a fair understanding of the mechanics of the compass from his study sessions with his Master and bits of memories from Daren.

It could sense the directionality of notable Resonance signatures using a complex sensory mechanism embedded in it’s core. The arrow would then point in the direction of whatever frequency it was tuned into.

In his case, the compass would work in the opposite manner.

He slid down the wall with an exhausted look. He had less than five minutes left on the passive effect the Hannya mask gave him and he could feel the searching eyes of the Anchor in his general direction.

After much thought, he realized he only had two choices:

He had to find a way to make his Resonance energy the most dominant energy in his body or continuously hide from the probing eyes of the Anchor and the Princess.

Aden’s eyes fell on the ledger and the ring that had clung to his finger since his reincarnation registered in his vision.

’The entity has been awfully quiet since then,’ he thought. ’Maybe that’s a good thing…’

He cleared his head of those thoughts and opened the ledger. A list of names in columns and their role in the medicine production progress rate next to them was presented to him.

’Neat,’ he thought.

As he went through the names of Alchemists in charge of synthesizing the cure from the shard, the predetermined distributors, their home addresses, and families or organizations that could pose a threat it its progress, he realized that he’d severely underestimated the reach of the bartender.

His eyes froze on the last name on the list.

“Dariel and Vaviel Bodywn. Role: Worshippers of the Silver God and Head of Operation: Silver Salvation.”

He facepalmed. ’What kind of god hides in an alleyway?’

He groaned as he took to his feet, his head turned upwards with a squint. The mask only had an estimate of two minutes left before the Resonance mimic effect would wear off and he could feel the Royal Procession heading in his direction.

“What’s her deal with me anyway?” He grumbled.

Placing the ledger in his empty storage ring, Aden ran ahead of the Procession at a normal pace in hopes of finding a suitable hiding place for the time being.

The angry crowd had been forcefully dispersed by the efforts of the Shadow Guards and the leaders of the town, leaving the streets only half filled.

Elara stared out the window with searching eyes. The pendant on her chest hummed as a small eye opened in the center, it’s irises glittered golden and faint pulses invisible to the naked eye spread outward from her location.

Her left eye glowed purple as it synced with the eye.

The people dissapeared and were replaced by faint blue outlines– stable, rhythmic and boring.

She passed by the spot Aden rested against a few minutes ago.

“Stop!” She ordered.

The beasts thumped to a halt, the flying birds circled the skies and the leading knights kept the crowd controlled.

“What is it, my Lady?” Vane asked as he assisted Elara down the carriage.

Elara’s eyes narrowed. She moved briskly to the alleyway, the purple hue shining more intensely.

Vane scratched the back of his head with a wrysmile and trailed behind Elara after giving instructions to the envoy.

At the helm of the envoy, the soft click of a tongue could be heard.

A knight gripped the arm of his spear tight enough to break it. Beneath his mask, his expression twisted in anger.

“I should have been in there with Elara, not standing here with these fools acting as a mere bodyguard.”

He angrily removed his helmet, ignoring the warnings of the other knights close to him.

Silver hair that flowed down to his neck, deep blue eyes accompanied by a pale white skin that only served to heighten his beauty.

But that beauty was tainted by the livid expression he had on.

“Calm down, Kaelen,” another knight warned, his tone flat.

“Don’t tell me that, you piece of shit,” Kaelen spat.

The knight wanted to say something but decided to keep his opinions to himself.

Kaelen left his post, stomped to the back and shoved his way past the envoys and beasts carelessly.

’Acting like a slave for my own wife! I don’t care what Father says, I’m still a man!’ he reasoned.

He didn’t care about the consequences of going against the Royal Decree or possibly offending his wife. The endless dust he was forced to inhale and the amount of gross contents he’d stepped into ever since he arrived in this god forsaken town, had made his reasoning burn in the flames of his anger.

He walked in the direction where his wife had followed while mumbling something under his breath.

As he walked, he radiated a high-frequency Resonance that screamed for attention. To him, the slums were a personal insult.

He reached the mouth of the alley just in time to see Elara crouched near the wall where Aden had been resting.

“Elara!” Kaelen barked, his voice echoing off the brick. “Enough of this. This place is a cesspool. We have the scouts for this! Why must you let your curiosity degrade your status?!”

Elara didn’t turn around. Her left eye was still pulsing with that predatory purple light.

“Kaelen, you’re interfering with the frequency and your existence disgusts me. Leave.”

Kaelen’s face flushed a deep crimson. In anger, he reached out and grabbed Elara’s shoulder.

A mistake.

Vane’s spear point appeared at Kaelen’s throat in a heartbeat.

“The Princess is working, Lord Kaelen,” Vane said, his voice like grinding stones. “Step back.”

Kaelen let go, his chest heaving. He looked around for something to vent his rage on, and that’s when his blue eyes caught a flicker of movement that was too calm in the bustle of the town.

A man in sackcloth, limping into the textile district two streets over.

He didn’t care he that it was a sick man, he just needed to vent his anger in any way possible.

He’d thought about dueling the knights, but he instinctively knew they’d be too scared to truly hurt him.

“I’ll be back,” Kaelen hissed.

Instead of staying with his wife, or rather, his fianceé, he leapt onto the side of a building, his silver hair a streak of light as he sprinted across the rooftops toward Aden’s location.

Aden passed through a shop covered with textile with an increasing sense of urgency as the timer on the mask ran down to forty–five seconds.

’I have to learn how to make my Resonance and Void energy coexist or make my Resonance take over completely and hide my Void from the world.’

’…Such an impossible task that is—’

He snapped his head backwards and upwards at the spike of Resonance energy that was heading in his direction.

The former owner of the body recognized the life signature to be the same as that of his brother.

’Did this guy’s brother find his signature? Fuck, I didn’t know he would come!’

The beating of his heart was the only thing he could hear. Cold sweat drenched his sack cloth as he moved more briskly.

’Did Elara follow him? No, I don’t think so. She’d be too focused following a trail of my Void Blood to another dead end,’ he added internally.

He would’ve been proud of his ingenious plan of spilling his blood and infusing it with Void energy for it to mimic a leakage, but his Elder brother who was only diffferent from Daren in terms of age and height, he couldn’t just bring himself to be.

’But my Void energy should have at least distorted my Resonance, so there’s no way this guy would’ve known.’ Aden reasoned deeply.

Hearing the shouts of the people, Aden threw away all forms of thought. The Hannya mask stopped it’s passive function and the sickly element he was forsaken with was alleviated.

A sigh of relief left his lips before he ran forward with enough speed so as to not alert the others.

His brother on the other hand, had no need to stay under the radar for the rest of this expedition and possibly become a toy for a bored Princess as he rapidly closed the distance with him

“Should I just kill him and end all this?” Aden thought.

He turned at an intersection, his eyes fixed on a path to where he’d been staying all this while.

The sewers.

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