Chapter 108: 108

Annoyed and frustrated, Anastasia returned to her room to rest, not wanting to think about anything anymore. She was curious about her past and why Kieran and the rest didn’t want to tell her, but she knew that, with how headstrong they were, they wouldn’t tell her even if she pressed them about it. In the end, when she asked Kieran about it, he didn’t even brush her off. He just directly told her that she had to find it out herself.

“So I’m on a scavenger hunt for my own past…” she sighed as she lay in her bed, looking at the gray raven feathers adorning her forearms. “And… they definitely won’t tell me how close I am to the truth… Or it will be much later…” With another sigh, she closed her eyes. If they wouldn’t hand her the truth, she would take any hints that existed to investigate. But she was still unhappy. The longer she lacked memories, the more questions appeared in her mind.

The questions were rapidly changing and twisting, drawing an image in her mind, but one question, or a doubt, maybe hope, remained. She was hoping that what she found out once she started investigating wouldn’t piss her off. She didn’t want to lose the friends she had made since she lost her memories. She valued the friendships.

Turning onto her side, Anastasia frowned. She didn’t like the fact that Michelle, Kieran and Ivona had already decided not to tell her anything, but despite the irritation curling in her chest, she didn’t hate them for it. At least, not yet. She didn’t know what was about to come. She had no way of knowing.

Her three friends had ways to guess it, but she was clueless. She didn’t know what memories she was missing or how their relationship was before she lost her memory.

Also, she never ruled out the possibility that she had not lost her memories. She might have had her memories altered or wiped. It wouldn’t surprise her that much if it were true. Michelle was the only daughter of Archduke Philip Grace, who was originally from the upper realm, so how could Anastasia know that he didn’t give Michelle a tool or skill for memory wiping?

With a slow exhale, she traced the feathers on her forearms. Her Soul Leash. Michelle promised to train her to hide it, but the power she could feel from it just deepened her guess that the Archduke could have given Michelle an artifact for memory wiping. When just the speck of untrained soul energy she had was able to radiate power comparable to what she felt from Kieran, just what power could the Archduke have when he was from the upper realm, where he trained for decades, maybe even centuries?

Finally, she closed her eyes, forcing her thoughts to the corners. The next day, she would start putting the pieces together in her mind, but at the moment, she needed to rest. As Michelle had told her the evening before, she was exhausted from training her soul energy so much, so she needed to rest if she didn’t want to faint. Michelle had told her that after overusing her soul energy, she had to sleep for about a month, and Anastasia had no need to go through that.

The next morning, Anastasia woke up feeling better, and tied her hair in a high ponytail, changed into her training clothes, and went to the training grounds. The sun was barely peeking from behind the horizon, but she was guessing that Michelle was already there. Though Michelle didn’t tell her the time they should meet, Anastasia knew her well enough. She liked to get things done as soon as possible, so she could laze around the rest of the day. Or take care of something else.

As expected, Michelle was already sitting on the ground in the middle of the training grounds, using the alone time to get a better grasp of her own soul energy and Soul Leash. So when Anastasia entered, she saw thick black chains dancing around Michelle, with each black chain having a thin, nearly translucent golden chain coiled on its surface, looking more like a mark than a real chain. That was Michelle’s Soul Leash, keeping the soul energy in check.

“You came earlier than I expected…” Michelle opened her eyes when she felt Anastasia’s presence in the training grounds. “Did you rest enough?” she asked.

Nodding a bit, Anastasia walked over to Michelle. “So, how do we go about this?” she asked. “How do I make the feathers disappear?” she added.

“Close your eyes,” Michelle instructed. “Focus on your Soul Leash. Feel the energy connected to it and try to control its flow.”

Anastasia did as she was told, shutting her eyes and focusing on the power lingering just beneath her skin. She could feel it—it was there, like a current running through her, just waiting to be harnessed. But the moment she tried to grasp it, it slipped away, like smoke dispersing in the wind. That made her frown.

“Right now…” Michelle started explaining. “You can sense your soul energy, and your Soul Leash has manifested, but to control the soul energy using Soul Leash, you need much more than being able to sense it. Soul energy isn’t like spirit energy, which you can just use according to your will. Take soul energy as a living being which you have to coax into obeying you. And once you succeed, only then will it submit to you like spirit energy, letting you control it as you like.”

Michelle continued: “Listen, I can’t tell you, step by step, what you should do, because every single person’s soul energy is different. You have to figure it out yourself. I can just give you some advice and explain to you how soul energy works. To tame it, you have to work alone.”

Taking a deep breath to calm down, Anastasia adjusted her approach. Instead of trying to grab the power of the soul energy, she let it move around as it liked, even though it started painfully raging around her body, making her grit her teeth a bit.

Little by little, her body got used to the rampant power, and the pain slowly faded. Then, she could once again focus on the power. Slowly, she tried to understand the way it moved, flowed around her body, when it slowed down or sped up, when it changed direction, and when it went straight ahead, even though its path wasn’t clear.

After a long while, she understood a part of the path, and tried to grasp the soul energy there, but it recoiled at her, and struck her hard, making her feel the pain she had felt in the beginning again. The soul energy clearly didn’t want to be controlled. Yet.

Clenching her jaw, Anastasia balled her hands into fists, her nails digging into her palms as pain surged through her. It was like fire searing through her veins, burning her from the inside, an unyielding force rejecting her control. It didn’t accept her yet, so it refused to let her control it.

But Anastasia wasn’t prepared to back down. She took a deep breath, adjusting her approach again. Instead of trying to take control, she focused on synchronizing with it, following its natural rhythm. She let the soul energy move around, but here and there, every now and then, she nudged it with her consciousness, coaxing it into moving into her veins, so she could feel the flow without any interruptions.

Seconds passed, and then minutes, but the soul energy was still resistant. But finally, something shifted. The resistance lessened, and the soul energy slowly moved into her veins, flowing along with her blood through her body. And there, Anastasia could easily align it with her will.

A faint warmth spread through her body, as her soul energy gave in to her will, but she still couldn’t control it. Because for that, she needed to grasp her Soul Leash, but she hadn’t tried that yet.

Encouraged by the progress, Anastasia opened her eyes for a moment and drank some water before sitting back down on the ground. She focused on the gray raven feathers, her Soul Leash. If her soul energy was like a living force inside her body and soul, her Soul Leash was a bridge between her will and the soul energy. But though the bridge was already built, she didn’t know how to get over it. And she had to figure that out.

She closed her eyes again, at that moment focusing on the feathers. They were soft, but carried a gruesome and nasty aura, clearly showing how dangerous they were. Though they were just powerless Soul Leash, meant to bind soul energy, their color, shape, and aura carried the dangerous allure of a scavenger, warning anyone against coming closer.

Each of the feathers pulsed with life, but she couldn’t control them. It was a part of her, but it didn’t acknowledge her. A funny situation, but not hard to take care of. In the process of gaining control over her soul energy, Anastasia was already over the hardest part.

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