Liang Lai’s fingers tightened slightly around the drawer handle, her knuckles turning white.
She took a deep breath, and the corners of her mouth curved into a gentle smile.
“So late, and you’re still not asleep?”
Delucia bounced over and dove into her arms, the Six-Pointed Star Pupils in her eyes sparkling with innocent light under the candle glow.
“I want to hear a story from Mommy~”
She lifted her little face.
Asterys stood quietly at the doorway, the Toy Bear in her arms now had its left eye turned blood red at some unknown moment.
Her shadow, cast by the candlelight, was unusually deep and thick, with subtle wriggling at the edges, as if countless tiny black tendrils were swimming within the darkness.
“All right.”
Liang Lai bent down to pick up Delucia, and with her other hand, she took Asterys’s hand. The moment her palm touched Asterys’s, she felt a bone-chilling cold.
The corridor wall lamps stretched their shadows long and thin.
Liang Lai deliberately slowed her pace, catching a glimpse out of the corner of her eye—Asterys’s shadow had a strange bulge at the head, shaped eerily like a person wearing a pointed hat.
“What story do you want to hear tonight?”
Liang Lai pushed open the twins’ bedroom door, and the scent of Rose Scented Incense greeted them.
The bedroom was warm and exquisitely arranged, with Star Lamps they had made together hanging by the bedside. But at this moment, every “star” held a curled-up black shadow within.
“We want to hear stories from when Mommy was young!”
Delucia rolled into the fluffy Goose Down Quilt, a flash of gold suddenly glinting in her Six-Pointed Star Pupils.
Liang Lai noticed a strangely shaped brooch pinned to the collar of her pajamas: a Reverse Cross entwined with a Crystal Vine Brooch.
Asterys silently climbed onto the bed, setting the Toy Bear neatly by the pillow.
When she turned around, Liang Lai clearly saw that her shadow still faced the doorway, as if another “person” was still standing there.
“When I was little…”
Liang Lai sat at the bedside, gently combing Delucia’s white hair with her fingers.
“I loved playing hide-and-seek in the monastery’s back garden most. One time, I fell asleep hiding in the rose bushes. When I woke up, I found…”
Her voice was soft as the night breeze, while her gaze quietly swept the room for anything unusual.
In the reflection of the Dressing Mirror, Asterys’s shadow was slowly raising a “hand,” pointing toward the desk drawer.
That reminded Liang Lai of the Parchment she often kept in her study drawer.
“What did you find?” Delucia asked eagerly, her small hand unconsciously tightening on Liang Lai’s sleeve.
Her fingernails had, at some point, become Crystal Fingernails, glowing with a faint blue light in the moonlight.
“I found that in the heart of every rose, there was a little star hidden.”
Liang Lai tapped Delucia’s nose with her fingertip, letting a wisp of golden light flow into the child’s brow. This was a trick she’d learned from the Parchment Scroll—a Joy Sleep Spell woven from “joy” emotion.
Delucia’s eyelids soon grew heavy, but Asterys suddenly grabbed Liang Lai’s wrist.
“Mommy, my bear’s eye hurts.”
She raised the Toy Bear; black viscous liquid was seeping from its blood-red right eye.
Liang Lai’s heart tightened. She took the Toy Bear, pretending to check it while secretly channeling Purification Intention. Crystallization spread from her palm, but as soon as it touched the Toy Bear’s left eye, it was tainted a murky purple.
“I’ll give you a new eye tomorrow.”
She kissed Asterys’s forehead, this time deliberately infusing Tranquility Emotion into the kiss.
The child’s shadow shuddered violently, and the pointed-hat figure shrank into a ball.
Once the twins finally fell asleep, Liang Lai tiptoed back to the study. The moment she locked the door, her legs gave out and she knelt to the ground, coughing up a few shards of crystal laced with black threads.
The side effects of overusing Emotional Crystal had begun to show. Her left pinky was already half-crystallized—she had no idea how long it would take to recover.
“Still not skilled enough…”
She shakily took out the Parchment Scroll.
The pages flipped themselves to a new chapter, the title written in Blood Crystal Script:
“Resonance of Emotion: Mirror of the Soul”
- Under moonlight, gaze at the Crystallization in your palm
- Recall the target’s most intense emotional fluctuation
- Silently chant “Reflect” and break the Crystallization
- Note: Empathic Backlash may trigger the target’s memory recoil
Liang Lai hesitated.
This ability was clearly far more dangerous than the previous ones, but the presence lurking in Asterys’s shadow left her with a lump in her throat.
She bit her index finger, letting a drop of blood fall on a note in the corner of the Parchment Scroll:
“Claudious needs a Medium to parasitize through shadows. Find and destroy it.”
The blood was suddenly absorbed by the Parchment, and new words appeared:
“A Medium is usually an item bearing the host’s strong emotions, and its form will change according to the host.”
Liang Lai suddenly remembered the Toy Bear with the strange eyes. She tried to keep reading, but her vision blurred.
The backlash from overusing her Crystallization ability was attacking her body.
“I’ll deal with it tomorrow…”
She barely managed to hide the Parchment Scroll in a secret compartment, and staggered toward the bedroom.
Lying in bed, she stared at the ceiling, unable to figure out how she had provoked Claudious in the first place.
Could it really be because she brought Dolosa back, and helped her turn over a new leaf and become a good child? If so, then that False Pope was truly petty.
“Sigh~”
Liang Lai let out a soft sigh and shook her head.
“I suppose that can’t be it. Even though I still don’t understand this world, from all the novels I’ve read, villains never go crazy over a trivial matter. It’s probably because he wants to bring down Pope Alphonse VII or something like that… So he’s targeting people like us, who are easier to deal with, first.”
That explanation did make sense.
Dolosa was probably just used by Claudious—because she was young and easy to manipulate and bully, he made her do a lot of bad things.
Thinking of this, Liang Lai’s heart ached even more for that frail little girl.
But there was one thing that was strange. Claudious and Asterys, Delucia were complete strangers, and those non-human beings who believed in the False Pope were called “Darkspawn.” Claudious and the Shadowborn basically had nothing to do with each other, like two rivers that never crossed. So, what did he want to use them for?
“But no matter what he tries to do, I will never allow anything that threatens the safety of my children.”
As she said this, Liang Lai’s eyelids grew heavy, and she drifted into a deep sleep.
In Asterys and Delucia’s bedroom.
“You noticed it too, didn’t you, Sister?”
Delucia lay on her side, staring straight at Asterys.
In the darkness, Asterys nodded. “Mm, my shadow feels heavy. There’s something else mixed in, but… I can’t catch it.”
Delucia licked her lips.
“It’s all right. We have our ways, but…”
A fanatic light flickered in her eyes.
“I want Mommy to keep saving us!”
Asterys’s eyes grew round as well, a suspicious blush rising on her cheeks.
“That’s right! Mommy is our savior! She’ll always save us!”
She tore at the Toy Bear in her arms, and the stuffing began to spill out.