POV - Morgana
Memories do not arrive in an organised fashion.
Hitherto, in those memories considered happy for Azra'il, each had arrived like a door; I would pass through, observe, and await the next in the silence between them. But this time was different. This time they came as a tide once more. Several at once, too swift to inhabit, yet slow enough to feel. As if Nagakabouros had decided that certain things need not be told one by one, but must be felt in sequence, in the rhythm of their occurrence, without the luxury of a pause.
And I was dragged along.
Then, suddenly, red.
It was the first thing. Red everywhere: in the banners hanging from pillars, in the lanterns swaying like fruits of fire suspended by invisible threads, in the ceremonial robes of hundreds of cultivators gathered in a courtyard so vast it made the one from the first meeting seem like a backyard garden. Gongs sounded at intervals with the weight of a decree. Incense rose in columns so dense that the air possessed texture, as if breathing were akin to chewing.
Cultivators from every sect. From all the twelve realms. Human, yes, but not only; I saw forms I did not recognise, features belonging to races this world cultivated alongside its Qi. All were gathered there, not by affection, but for policy. For curiosity. For the spectacle of watching the 'Grand Elder of the Celestial Sword Sect' wed; for when one of such power binds themselves to another by vow, the entire continent pays heed.
Azra'il was composed. The absolute calm of one who has endured too many ceremonies to be impressed by another; and I saw, deep within those blue eyes, the subtle boredom only a mother recognises. Dressed in ceremonial red robes that made her hanfu from the previous memory look modest, with golden embroidery climbing her sleeves like flames captured in fabric. Beautiful in a way that likely unsettled half the guests present. Entirely indifferent to it.
And Anastasia.
I saw her for the second time, and her beauty was still an impact, like lightning that loses no intensity for having been seen once before. Red bridal robes that seemed to have been sewn for her by someone who understood that dressing Anastasia was akin to dressing a storm: contain it if you can. Black hair held in an elaborate arrangement that already showed signs of rebellion at the stray ends. Her face perfect and still as a porcelain mask.
And on her fingers, nearly invisible beneath the long sleeves, sparks. Discreet. Contained. Yet present. Even here. Even now. Even on her own wedding day, the body was writing in the diary the mistress had not authorised.
The memory passed before I could hold it.
A cut.
A room. Red lanterns hung like small domestic suns. Petals on the floor. Petals on the bed. A bottle of ceremonial wine that seemed to have been placed there by someone who confused marriage with a botanical garden. Everything excessive in a way that shrieked of tradition and whispered of expectation.
Anastasia sat on the edge of the bed with the rigidity of one sitting upon a judgement throne. Back straight. Hands in her lap. Violet eyes fixed upon some point on the opposite wall as if the survival manual for situations such as this were written there.
Azra'il stood in the centre of the room, looking around with the expression of one appraising war-decor.
"This is a bit... excessive."
"Sleep on the floor."
No hesitation. No room for negotiation. Without even the courtesy of turning her face toward her whilst speaking.
Another cut.
Azra'il on the floor. An improvised pillow. Her ears drooping in a way that, in any other circumstance, would have been comical.
The memory dissolved before I could manage a laugh.
And then the tide brought me to a house I recognised.
I knew it even before seeing it whole, by the scent. Tea. Ancient timber. Damp soil of a well-tended garden. And beneath it all, like a ground bass of music that never stops, the scent that lives leave in places when they are lived with honesty: simplicity cultivated by choice, not for lack of options.
Faruk's house.
I had been here before, in previous memories with a younger Azra'il. I had seen this roof when Azra'il was a teenage cultivator in training. I had seen these walls when Faruk sat on the veranda and sipped tea whilst his disciple trained in the courtyard with a determination that startled even the instructors. I had seen this garden when the master and disciple took tea.
And now my daughter brought another person into this space. The house was spacious, with well-tended gardens, a sturdy structure kept up by hands that clearly performed regular maintenance. But it was not ostentatious. It lacked the power-aesthetic of the Patriarch's Palace or the grandeur of the wedding hall. It was a home where someone truly lived.
Azra'il showed the rooms with the casualness of one presenting the obvious. Anastasia observed in silence, and I could nearly see the recalibration happening behind those violet eyes: the sect's most powerful cultivator, the woman who could have had multiple palaces, living in a simple house smelling of tea.
"You could reside at the sect's palace."
"Yes."
Silence. The kind that exists when someone awaits an explanation that does not come.
"But I like it here."
Few words. And within them, everything Azra'il would not say: that this house belonged to someone who mattered. That the walls held the memory she did not wish to forget. That remaining here was her way of keeping Faruk close, even after the tombstone was already overgrown with moss.
Anastasia did not know this. She saw only a simple house and a strange woman who liked it.
But I knew. And something in my observation tightened, for my daughter was opening the door to her most personal place, and the courage of it was so silent that it hurt.
Then the subsequent memories came like seasons. Quite literally.
Spring arrived at the training courtyard with cherry blossoms falling like coloured snow, and in the midst of the petals: Anastasia. Sword in hand, violet lightning racing along the blade in arcs that sliced the air with the fierce elegance of one training her body as if tuning an instrument of war. Each strike was a choreography, the sword tracing elaborate sequences, the lightning following the movement as an extension of her body, serpents of light coiling around the blade and leaping with each cut. It was not brute force. It was devastating precision. The lethal beauty of someone who made combat an art form and refused to execute it with anything less than perfection.
Azra'il watched from the veranda. Tea in hand. Ears alert.
"Your third strike opens your guard."
Lightning crackled on Anastasia's knuckles.
"I did not ask for an opinion."
Azra'il took a sip of tea. Offered the extra cup that seemed already prepared.
Anastasia did not look. She did not accept it.
Summer brought dense heat and the sound of cicadas, and with it, a scene repeated with variations: Azra'il in the house's kitchen, preparing tea with a care bordering on the ritualistic. Heating the water to the exact temperature. Choosing leaves like someone choosing words for a poem. Measuring the steeping time with the patience of one who has learned that certain things cannot be hurried without being destroyed.
Anastasia observed from the door, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed. The posture of one who refuses to show interest in what they are clearly interested in.
"You treat tea leaves as if they were sacred artefacts."
"They are more useful than many artefacts."
Azra'il served two cups. Pushed one toward Anastasia.
Anastasia looked at the cup like one eyeing an elegantly disguised trap. She left the kitchen without touching it.
Autumn painted the gardens in tones of amber and rust, and the leaves fell with the slowness of one bidding a leisurely farewell. Dinners. Silent at first, the sort of silence between folk who share space but nothing beyond it. Azra'il eating with the naturalness of one who cares nought for an audience. Anastasia eating with the impeccable posture of one raised at tables where cutlery held a hierarchy.
But the memories showed the silence changing. Shortening. Not because they began to converse, but because the spaces between words grew smaller. A question about training. A comment regarding the weather. The distance between them at the table diminishing without either appearing to notice, as if the seats themselves were moving toward one another when no one looked.
Winter arrived with frost in the courtyard and breath turning to mist in the cold air. Anastasia training. The lightning more intense against the white of the ice, bolts cutting the dark morning like veins of light.
Azra'il from afar, perched on the veranda with hands cupping a hot mug. Observing.
"Your elbow is two centimetres above the ideal."
Sparks. A sharp look toward the veranda.
"When I desire your appraisal, I shall ask for it."
Silence. Three strikes later, the elbow lowered two centimetres.
Azra'il did not comment. Sipped her tea. Her ears moved in a way that, had I not known my daughter so well, I would have mistaken for indifference. But it was not. It was the equivalent of a tucked-away smile.
And I realised, watching the seasons pass like pages of a book turned by the wind, that something was shifting.
Anastasia's sparks. I watched them as one learns to read a new tongue, and the vocabulary was transforming. In the beginning, at the courtyard of the first meeting, the wedding, the first weeks and months, the sparks spoke a simple language: rage. Rejection. The body screaming no in every way pride allowed.
But now, now the sparks said something else. They appeared when Azra'il commented on training and Anastasia knew not whether she was annoyed or impressed. They appeared when tea was offered and refused, yet something in the refusal's gesture seemed no longer so automatic. They appeared in moments of silence that lasted a second longer than comfortable, as if the body knew something the mistress did not yet admit.
It was no longer a defence. It was confusion. The irritation of one feeling the ground shift beneath their feet and refusing to look down and confirm it.
Then one memory pulled me with more strength than the rest. The tide dragging me stopped. The current deposited me, with the delicacy of someone placing something fragile on a surface, upon a specific morning.
Cold. Silent. Smelling of tea and frost.
The courtyard of Faruk's house. Another winter dawn. The sort of morning that exists in shades of grey and silver, where the cold has a physical presence and the silence is so complete that one hears the frost crackling on the leaves.
Anastasia training.
The sword cut the air with surgical precision, each movement a declaration. Violet lightning accompanied the blade in controlled arcs, illuminating the frost around her in flashes that made the courtyard seem a stage for a contained storm. These were elaborate sequences, the sword shifting angle between strikes with a fluency speaking of years of obsessive practice, the lightning intensifying with every transition like miniature peals of thunder.
Azra'il sat on the engawa, the wooden veranda surrounding the house. Teacup in hand. Her ears tilted toward the courtyard with the relaxed attention of one watching something that is now routine. And it was; I could see it in Anastasia's loose shoulders, in the absence of tension when Azra'il's tail flicked at the edge of her vision. This was no longer an invasion. It was a habit. Anastasia trained, Azra'il watched, and neither commented upon the arrangement, for to comment would be to admit it existed.
The sequence intensified. Anastasia accelerated, swifter strikes, more potent; the lightning responding to the surge in energy with snaps that cracked the morning's silence. A descending vertical strike, the sword bringing an arc of violet lightning that turned the frost around her into mist...
And something occurred.
It wasn't lightning.
Space distorted. For an instant, a single instant lasting less than a breath, the air around the blade vanished. It didn't move; it didn't dissipate. It vanished. Sound failed as though someone had snatched a piece of the world and forgotten to replace it. Light around the stroke was swallowed, it didn't grow dark, it was removed, leaving a void that was neither darkness nor light nor anything I could name.
And I felt it.
Within the memory, observing as I always did, something trembled in my perception. Like ground disappearing beneath one's feet. Like a root seeking soil and finding air. For a fraction of a second, the space where I existed as an observer hesitated, as though the memory itself knew not whether it was still real there where the void touched.
It was brief. An instant. Unstable. Dangerous.
Space mended itself. Sound returned. Light resumed its place.
Anastasia froze.
Not with fear, but something worse: the rigidity of one caught out. She knew what had happened. She knew because it likely had happened before. And she knew that Azra'il, perched on the veranda with her cup halfway to her lips, had seen it.
The sparks on Anastasia's fingers vanished. Completely. Not due to calm, but the shame of one seen in a flaw they had tried to hide their whole life.
The courtyard went quiet. The frost crackled. The mist from the previous strike still rose, slowly, like a ghost of what had transpired.
Azra'il lowered her cup.
"That wasn't lightning."
Anastasia did not reply. She resumed her training stance. Raised her sword. She feigned that nothing had happened with the skill of one trained to ignore things a lifetime.
"It was void."
The sword halted. Not the stance, but the movement. Anastasia remained motionless with the blade in the air, and I saw her shoulders lock in a way that wasn't training or posture. It was the reaction of someone hearing a name for something that had never been correctly named before.
Silence. Three seconds. Five.
"I know not of what you speak."
The lie came out perfectly. Casual tone. Firm posture. Any person would have believed it. But the sparks, the sparks that had vanished, returned to her knuckles, small and nervous, and I already knew how to read that diary well enough to recognise the page that spelt fear.
Azra'il did not press. She took a sip of tea. And she said, with the naturalness of someone commenting upon the weather:
"The elders must have told you it's unstable. That it hinders. That you ought to ignore it."
The sparks exploded at Anastasia's wrists. The sword spun toward the veranda, not an attack, a reflex. The reaction of one touched in a spot they knew not was exposed.
"How do you—" She stopped. Her jaw locked. Her violet eyes burned with something akin to rage and fear and wounded pride, all mixed into a cocktail the sparks translated as snaps against the stone. "Who told you?"
"No one." Azra'il set her cup on the veranda. "I saw it. Now and at other times. When your lightning hits a certain threshold, the void escapes at the edges. You try to suppress it, yet it returns. And every time it returns, the elders likely say the selfsame thing: ignore it. Control it. Smother it." Her ears tilted slightly. "Because they know not what they are looking at."
The courtyard was still. Anastasia did not move. Her sword still suspended, the lightning dead upon the blade. And I saw, in the slightest jaw-tremor, in the way those violet eyes narrowed not from rage but something more fragile, the toll of those words. Not Azra'il's words. The ones Anastasia had swallowed for years. Every time the void appeared and she heard 'defect'. Every time she suppressed something that was part of her because she was told it didn't belong.
"It is a secondary affinity." Anastasia's voice came out controlled, yet I could hear the seams snapping. "It interferes with lightning techniques. Destabilises sequences. Appears when it shouldn't and—" She halted. She locked. For every phrase was an admission, and admissions cost, and for Anastasia, it seemed they cost more than for most.
"And they commanded you to ignore it," Azra'il completed.
"It is standard protocol for unstable secondary affinities."
"It is standard protocol for things they don't understand."
The sparks hesitated. Anastasia looked at her, really looked, not with her previous cutting gaze, but like one assessing if the ground ahead could bear a footstep's weight.
"And does the Grand Elder understand?"
Azra'il rose from the veranda. She descended the steps into the courtyard with her usual casualness, but I saw the difference: ears erect, tail still. The total attention she disguised as laziness.
"Lightning is energy. A sword is movement. But what I just saw was neither." She stopped several paces from Anastasia, looking at the space where the void had appeared, as if she could still see the outline of what had been missing. "It was absence. Not destruction, destruction still leaves remains. Residual energy. Fragments. What you did was remove. Space, sound, light... for an instant, they simply ceased to exist there."
Anastasia did not reply. But her sword lowered. Slowly.
"Void is not a secondary affinity, Anastasia. It is not a defect. It is a principle. And cultivating it is the opposite of everything cultivation teaches; it isn't about accumulating, strengthening, or expanding." Azra'il looked at her with something in her eyes I recognised: fascination. Genuine and unfiltered. "It is about learning to cease existing for an instant."
The ensuing silence had a different texture. It wasn't the tense silence of the beginning, nor the awkward silence of being caught. It was the silence of one processing something that shifts the shape of a truth they've carried a lifetime.
"How do you know this?"
The question came out lower than anything Anastasia had spoken thus far. No edge of a blade. No disdain. The voice of one asking a real question and hating themselves for the need to ask it.
"I've lived a long time," Azra'il said, casual. "Met many folk. Seen things that—"
She stopped.
Her ears shifted. Not her habitual processing, but something else. As though searching for a sound that should have been there yet wasn't. Her face changed for an instant, a furrow that appeared and vanished quickly, but I caught it, for I know every variation of that face after seeing so many lives.
"—things most cultivators don't see in a single lifetime," she completed. But the pause had existed. Brief, nearly invisible. And something in it bothered me in a way I could not then name.
"The void is a principle that exists beyond any sect's cultivation system," Azra'il continued, her voice returning to its previous tone: firm, fascinated. "It doesn't belong only to this world. It is universal. Formlessness within existence. The space between things. The silence between two sounds."
Anastasia listened. No longer with her previous resistance, but with the fierce attention of one recognising valuable information and refusing to lose a single syllable.
"Cultivators with a void affinity can interact with this principle: dissolve energy, neutralise attacks, erase spiritual presence. But almost no one advances, for it requires something that goes against everything a cultivator is trained to be."
"What?"
"Absence of intent." The corner of Azra'il's mouth curled. "To someone who trains before dawn out of pure hunger to be stronger, I imagine that sounds like heresy."
Sparks snapped at Anastasia's fingers, but this time they seemed more of a reflex than rage.
"You are saying that to use the void, I must... not wish to use it."
"I am saying the void responds to absence. Of intent. Of ego. Of interference. The more you try to force it, the more it eludes you. That is why it appears in your strongest strikes, because in those moments, for a fraction of a second, you cease thinking and only the movement exists. And the void finds that gap."
Anastasia went quiet. I could nearly see the cogs turning behind her eyes, an elite cultivator's sharp mind recalculating all she knew regarding her own power.
"And if I master it."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement of intent. The pure competitiveness of one who hears 'almost no one advances' and interprets it as a 'personal challenge'.
Azra'il looked at her. The fascination in her eyes mingled with something more earnest.
"If you master it, if you truly master it, not control it, not suppress it, but 'master' it, you go beyond the void." Her voice lost its casualness. "From what I know, when someone achieves true mastery of the void, something happens. One is... noticed. By something greater."
"Noticed?"
"There is a principle beyond the void. Deeper still. If the void is absence within reality, this principle is the absence of existence itself." Azra'il chose her words with a care I rarely saw in her. "It is called Inexistence."
The word fell in the courtyard like a stone in a still pond.
And I felt it again. Weaker than before, but present: that tremor in my observer's perception. As if naming that thing disturbed the very memory I inhabited. The sensation of something that shouldn't be said aloud being spoken, and the world around it adjusting, uncomfortable, to the concept's presence.
"Inexistence," Anastasia repeated. The word came out neutral, measured. But the sparks around her flickered.
"Those touched by this principle cease merely to undo energy. They begin to be able to erase things from reality. Techniques that cease to exist. Attacks that never come to pass. Not destruction; destruction leaves remains. Inexistence removes. So completely it is as if that thing had never been."
The courtyard was quiet. Anastasia did not move. I knew not what she was thinking, but the sparks around her did something I had never seen: they alternated between presence and absence, lighting and vanishing as if the power itself were responding to what it heard.
"There is a price."
Azra'il's voice changed. Lower. Heavier. The tone of one delivering a warning that is not mere rhetoric.
"Everyone who achieved that level, in any place, paid the consequences. Everyone."
Anastasia lifted her chin. The posture of one who hears of danger and does not retreat.
"What price?"
And Azra'il opened her mouth to answer.
And halted.
Her ears locked. Her whole face changed, not to its previous casualness, nor the subsequent earnestness. To something I had never seen. Confusion. Real, deep, unsettling confusion. Her eyes narrowed, not looking at Anastasia, but looking within. Searching.
"I know there is a price," she said. Slowly. Each word testing the ground. "I know I have already... seen it. Or known. At some point I—"
She stopped again. Her face crumpled. Her ears moved in opposite directions: the search. But not her habitual search of one processing information. The search of someone opening a drawer that should have something inside and finding only a void.
And then she murmured something. Low. Nearly inaudible. But I was close enough in the memory to hear:
"...why can I not remember? This... shouldn't be here."
She didn't murmur it to Anastasia. Nor to the air. She spoke looking at a fixed point in space with the expression of someone conversing with something that is not there, or not visible. And the strangeness of it hit me like cold water, for my precious daughter was talking to herself with the face of one who had lost something that should be impossible to lose.
And the irony, a cold irony that made me feel something akin to fear. A memory regarding the void. Erased. As if it had never existed.
Anastasia observed with narrowed eyes. Not with disdain, but with the attention of one who had perceived something is wrong and is cataloguing it.
"What is it?"
Azra'il blinked. Her face recomposed itself with the speed of one who has practised control for millennia, yet the gap had existed, and Anastasia saw it.
"Nothing relevant at present," Azra'il said, and the casual tone returned like armour. "Certain memories grow... nebulous with time."
"Nebulous."
"It's what happens when one lives hundreds of years as a cultivator. The library grows too large, and the librarian is lazy."
Anastasia arched a brow. And what came from her mouth was no longer hostility; it was something sharper and more intimate: the blade of one who had learned exactly where to cut so that it stings and amuses simultaneously.
"I see. It must be hard at your age. They say after a certain stage in life, lapses are perfectly normal. Even expected."
"My memory is perfectly functional."
"Save for the part that's vanished."
"Save for that specific and statistically insignificant part, yes."
"Quite. Statistically insignificant." The corner of Anastasia's mouth shifted. It wasn't a smile. Not exactly. But it was the closest thing to one I'd seen on her face, and the sparks at her fingers snapped with something resembling... amusement.
The moment passed. The mystery remained. Hanging between them like an unanswered question, like a door that neither opens nor closes.
Azra'il squared her shoulders. Her ears returned to a position of attention.
"Let's test something."
Anastasia lifted her chin. Immediate resistance in her shoulders; the reflex of one who doesn't accept orders.
"I didn't ask for your help."
"I'm not offering help. I'm curious." Azra'il looked at her with that irritating honesty that was her hallmark. "I want to see what happens when you stop fighting against it."
Anastasia's sparks snapped. Violet eyes narrowed. And I saw the conflict play out in real-time: the pride that shrieked 'I need no one' battling the curiosity that whispered 'but no one ever knew how to name this before'. The warrior refusing to accept help against the cultivator recognising a chance to grow stronger.
The cultivator won.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Nothing." Azra'il sat upon the courtyard floor, crossing her legs with the naturalness of one who had done so for centuries. "Literally nothing. No energy. No technique. No lightning. Just you, still, feeling the space."
"Still."
"Still."
"You want me to stay 'still'."
"I understand it's a radical concept for one who trains until exhaustion, but yes."
The sparks protested. Anastasia's entire body protested, I could see it in the stiff shoulders, the locked jaw, the way her fingers gripped her sword's hilt. Staying still was against all that she was. Every instinct, every year of training, every fibre of the pride keeping her upright screamed that inaction was weakness, and weakness was unacceptable.
But she sheathed her sword.
Closed her eyes.
And stayed still.
The courtyard went quiet. A real silence, no wind, no birds, no distant crackle of cultivators training in the sect fields. Only the frost. Only Anastasia's breath, visible in the cold air like small clouds being born and dying.
"Don't try to call it," Azra'il's voice said, low. "Don't try to control it. Just perceive the space between things. The gap."
Anastasia's shoulders were tense. The sparks wanted to return; I saw the static on her forearms, the power struggling to answer habit's call.
But she held it.
Seconds. Ten. Twenty. Her breathing decelerating. Her shoulders yielding half a centimetre. Her jaw unlocking a mere trifle.
And then, light, fragile, like the first ice forming upon a lake's surface, the void appeared.
Not as before. Not the unstable and violent rift that had escaped during the strike. Something more subtle. The air around Anastasia's hands grew still in an unnatural way. Sound diminished. Light softened at the edges. As if the world there, in that square metre around her, had accepted being a little less, a little more empty, for an instant.
I felt it. Softer than before. Like a breeze rather than a blow. But present. The sensation that something in the memory's fabric grew thin there, more fragile, like worn cloth letting light through.
It lasted three seconds. Perhaps four. And it came undone when Anastasia opened her eyes with something resembling astonishment, and astonishment is intent, and intent undoes.
The courtyard returned to normal.
Anastasia looked at her own hands. The sparks returned, small, almost shy.
Azra'il said nothing. But her ears were completely erect, and her tail, the tail betraying everything its owner tried to hide, swayed slowly with the contained energy of one who had just seen something extraordinary and is striving hard not to show excessive enthusiasm.
"Again?" Anastasia said. And the word came out before pride could intercept it: the raw voice of one who felt something real and wants to feel it again, and who hated themselves an instant later for sounding so transparent.
"Again," Azra'il confirmed.
And Anastasia's face closed back into its habitual mask, but it was too late. The word had been spoken. The "again" already existed in the air between them, far too honest to be retrieved.
They trained further. I watched. Each attempt a little longer, a little more stable. None perfect. None even near what Azra'il described as mastery. But enough. Enough for both to know that there was something real there, something that wasn't a defect, wasn't instability, wasn't the error the elders claimed it was. Something belonging to Anastasia as completely as the lightning bolts and the pride and the violet eyes that refused to ask for what they wanted.
Azra'il returned to the veranda.
She picked up the teacup left forgotten there. Grimaced at the sensation of cold liquid. Sighed, that theatrical and specific sigh I already knew very well, the one meaning 'humanity underestimates the tragedy of wasted tea', and began to prepare another.
The water heated slowly. The herbs' aroma spread through the cold morning air, rising in thin spirals mingling with the mist of breath. She made the tea with her usual ritualistic care: water at the right temperature, leaves chosen, time measured by patience instead of haste.
Footsteps.
Anastasia approached. She climbed the veranda steps and sat on the wooden floor, on the other side of the kettle, not near Azra'il, but not at the far end of the veranda as she would have months ago. Her sword rested beside her. The sparks finally quiet, like embers after a bonfire.
The silence stretched out. Comfortable in a way that wouldn't have been possible a few seasons past.
Then, without looking at Azra'il, in a tone that tried to sound indifferent yet failed in a way likely only I perceived:
"Are you not going to make tea for me as well?"
Azra'il blinked.
She remained silent for a second, a whole second, which for one who always had an answer ready was nearly an eternity.
And she smiled. A small smile. Followed by a low laugh escaping before it could be checked, the sound of someone caught off guard by something good and failing to hide it in time.
Without comment. Without provocation. Without turning the moment into something greater than it was.
She picked up another cup. Poured the tea. Placed the cup between them, within Anastasia's reach.
Anastasia took it.
She didn't say thank you. Of course she didn't.
But she brought the cup to her lips and took a sip. And she stayed there. Sitting on the veranda floor with the kettle between the two of them as a border and bridge at once. The distance still existed, it was still real, but near enough.
The silence returned. But it was a different silence. The sort occurring when two people stop fighting long enough to realise they didn't need to.
And I, within that memory, observing two women sipping tea on a frozen veranda after something neither would know how to name for a long time yet, kept that moment with the care of one guarding fragile things.
Because that cup of tea was the first Anastasia accepted. The first moment Anastasia chose to be there. Not due to marriage. Not due to arrangement. Not out of obligation.
Out of will.
The memory dissolved with the tea's steam, rising, unravelling, taking with it the courtyard and the frost and the two women sitting in silence. And I was left with what I always am: with what I saw, what I felt, and the silent certainty that something had shifted there, and it cannot be undone.
Some changes are thunder, violent, announced, impossible to ignore.
But the ones that matter are the others. The ones arriving in teacups offered without asking. In silences that shift in texture. In requests that feign being demands.
In all that occurs in the absence of everything we expect.
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💬 Author's Note
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This chapter was really important for developing not only Azra'il and Anastasia's relationship, but especially the concept of Anastasia's power.
Her power is a bit more complex than it seems at first glance. For those who know Honkai, especially Honkai Star Rail, you've probably already noticed some inspirations there 👀. When I created Anastasia, I already wanted a character with a lightning affinity, but I felt like something was missing. And at that time I was completely addicted to Honkai Star Rail.
The main inspiration ended up coming from the game, more specifically from Acheron, who is an alternate version of Raiden Mei. That whole theme involving Nihility, Aeons, existence, the void, and things that honestly melt your brain at 3 AM watching lore on YouTube ended up influencing her concept a lot 😂.
(And yes, I still need to get back to playing it. I stopped at the Amphoreus arc. College and work defeated me before the Aeons could.)
About Inexistence... let's just say Azra'il knows more than she should. And maybe less than she used to.
She has had contact with this principle before. But as you saw in the chapter, there is something wrong there. The moment she stops to think and simply can't remember wasn't a "normal forgetting". It's not like forgetting a cousin's birthday or what you ate for dinner last night.
Even Eos can't access this information properly.
When it comes to the void/inexistence, even she has something akin to "corrupted files." There are gaps. Erased spaces. Information that clearly should be there... but isn't anymore.
So I think you can already tell this wasn't a natural memory loss.
Someone. Or something.
Removed that information from Azra'il.
And the fact that this affected even Eos makes the situation considerably more concerning.
I'll leave certain mysteries in the dark for now because part of the fun is exactly that uncomfortable feeling of "there is something very wrong here."
For those curious about Anastasia's appearance, I left some images of her in the drive too.
Now... moving on to a less fun part.
I have some bad news.
You guys probably noticed my posting frequency started to drop a bit in the last few weeks. Unfortunately, my routine is getting pretty hard to juggle. Work, college, my English course, and writing all at the same time are starting to take their toll.
And as you know, I currently write two fanfics at the same time: the Runeterra one and the Fairy Tail one. That's two chapters of each per week, totaling 4 weekly chapters... and long chapters on top of that 😭.
But honestly? It's starting to wear me out a lot.
Especially because on top of all that, I'm also involved in college projects. One of them actually involves me developing an AI assistant for the college's virtual platform, so my sanity has officially been sacrificed in the name of technology.
So unfortunately I'm going to need to cut the frequency in half for a while.
The idea now is to release at least 1 Runeterra chapter and 1 Fairy Tail chapter per week.
I don't intend for this to be permanent. It's mostly until I can survive these college projects without turning into a vengeful spirit fueled by coffee and sleep deprivation.
I hope you guys understand... and keep following my stories anyway. And seriously, thank you for the comments and the constant support. You really help more than you can imagine.