Chronicles of the Untalented

Velira woke slowly, her eyelids heavy and sore. The floor beneath her was still cold, and her muscles ached from hours of stillness. The room was dark except for the faint shimmer of dying sigils, like dying embers refusing to go out.

In the dimness, she saw him—Silas, back from the medical post, sitting quietly near the circle, hands resting in his lap. He was watching her with a distant calm. The kind of calm that comes after almost dying twice in a week.

Silas: "How do you feel?"

Velira stretched her fingers, flexing them one at a time.

Velira: "Weird. Like… like I'm in two places at once. It's hard to explain. My effigy—" she paused, eyes darting to the shape seated quietly in the corner, "—feels like an extension of me. Like breathing through another set of lungs. It's confusing, but… manageable."

He nodded slowly.

Velira: "Anyway, let's not waste time. We should start your refinement."

Silas: "Are you sure? We could rest. You're still unstable, and… well, I'm an anomaly. We have no idea what'll happen."

She chuckled softly, shaking her head.

Velira: "I'm fine. A little tired, sure. But nothing out of the ordinary. Besides, if we don't do this now, you'll overthink it and talk yourself out of it."

Silas gave a quiet, bitter laugh.

Silas: "You might be right."

Velira: "I'm always right."

He stood up slowly, brushing dust off his clothes.

Silas: "Well, if things go wrong, and I lose it again… just make sure my mother stops working herself to death. She deserves better."

Velira: (quietly) "You'll be fine."

---

The ritual room still bore marks of her refinement—chalk smears, bone dust, faint stains from older rituals. But they worked in silence to clear it, brushing the stone clean, redrawing the faded circles.

There was something intimate in it. The way they passed materials to each other without speaking. The quiet rhythm of preparation.

Velira picked up the sword from earlier and placed it beside her own effigy.

Velira: "You ready?"

Silas: "Not really. But let's begin."

His hands trembled as he crouched to draw. Two circles again—one larger, one smaller—and the connecting lines between them. But this time, something was wrong. The materials he'd been given weren't unified—bloodwood, crystallized demon blood, water-infused moss, and shards of darkness-aligned bone.

Nothing matched.

He paused, staring at the incomplete sigils.

Velira: "Is something wrong?"

He didn't answer immediately. Then took a deep breath.

Silas: "The materials… they don't belong to one path. But maybe if I draw the sigils to match the chaos—mismatch them too…"

It wasn't supposed to be done that way. But then again, he wasn't supposed to be here either.

So he did it. A bloodwood glyph beside a dark-path loop. Demon markings etched into the core. He pressed the strange materials into the effigy's frame—its eyes made from crystallized blood, its heart from fused darkness and water essence.

It looked wrong.

But it was stable. Barely.

He stepped into the larger circle and took the meditation pose Velira had used before.

Velira's effigy gripped the sword, now standing guard.

The circles glowed—dim at first, then pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.

The world went quiet.

Then darker.

---

The weight of the soul-splitting process was immediate. Silas couldn't feel his body anymore. Couldn't hear Velira. Couldn't sense the sword or the stone beneath him.

He focused.

Breathed.

Watched the effigy.

It twitched.

And then everything unraveled.

His soul lifted out of him—half drifting toward the effigy—and in that moment, the refinement should have stabilized. But it didn't.

Soul beasts appeared. Just as expected.

Velira's effigy fought them off, keeping the blade flashing through their vaporous forms. But something was wrong.

The soul beasts… started to back away.

One by one, they hissed and fled, retreating from the circle—not in fear, but in revulsion. Something about Silas's soul repelled them.

Then it began.

His effigy moved on its own.

First a twitch. Then a full lunge.

Its body warped—limbs elongating, jaw widening, body bulging in grotesque bursts. It no longer resembled him. It resembled a monster.

Velira froze, unable to look away.

The creature shot forward and snatched a soul beast trying to escape, sinking its teeth into the vapor—but nothing happened.

It snarled. Punched the beast instead, dragging it back to the ritual circle.

And then the chaos erupted.

The circle pulsed erratically. Sigils twisted, lighting out of order. The creature consumed the soul beast like a flame devouring paper—absorbing it.

Velira stumbled backward, horrified. The other soul beasts vanished.

Then the effigy… stilled.

Its monstrous shape shrank. Slowly, painfully. Its form reshaped itself—matching Silas's, though healthier, stronger.

It sat, expressionless, back in the smaller circle.

But Silas wasn't there.

---

He was floating.

His soul… was being pulled. Somewhere deeper.

Through stone.

Through darkness.

Through the walls of the cathedral.

He passed unseen through the training chambers—where Cassian practiced, oblivious. Cass turned, as if sensing something—but saw nothing.

Silas kept sinking.

Down into the old underground. Through barred corridors. Until finally, he was pulled toward a sealed door:

"CLERGYMEN ONLY. DO NOT ENTER."

But souls have no need for doors.

Inside, strange artifacts shimmered in pale light. Relics. Masks. Vessels. And at the center, a scroll on a blackened altar.

As he reached for the scroll, his gaze fixed on the word:

> "Erbe."

Inheritance.

The letters looked burned into the parchment. Familiar in a way that made his breath catch.

It wasn't magic that made him tremble—it was memory.

Suddenly, something shifted in his mind. Like a fog thinning. Like a lock coming undone.

He could read it.

Not because of some translation magic—because it was his language. The one from before.

From Earth.

German.

He blinked as memories started to return—jagged, fast, painful. They didn't crash in like a wave; they bled in, slow and hot.

The taste of coffee.

The feel of cold subway poles.

A sister's voice?

A… job?

And then—

His father.

Silas froze mid-air.

He hadn't thought of his father once since waking up in this world sixteen years ago. Not once. Not during the chaos of transmigration, not when things settled, not even in moments of longing.

It wasn't just forgetting. It was like… he'd been made to forget.

His father's face blurred at the edges of his memory—kind, tired eyes, rough hands, quiet voice. Someone who wasn't loud but was always there. Until he wasn't.

The moment hit him like a scream without sound.

Why haven't I remembered until now?

But before he could reach deeper—

Before he could lift the scroll—

The seals flared, burning bright and angry, and his soul was flung backward violently.

---

He awoke to screaming.

Not his own.

Velira's.

She held him tightly, shaking him, her voice cracking with fear.

Velira: "Please—don't do this. I can't lose you too. Wake up. Wake up, damn it!"

His eyes opened. Her tear-streaked face above him.

He blinked. Thought for a moment.

Silas (rasping): "How wonderful… to wake from near death… in the arms of such an ugly woman."

Velira paused.

Then hugged him tighter.

Velira: "Thank the gods you're okay. And… you're calling me ugly? If you want to stay alive, I suggest you take that back."

Silas: "I will not."

Velira: "Tch…"

Silas (grinning faintly): "Anyway, I'm glad I'm okay too. Otherwise, we'd have to hold both our funerals on the same day."