Saintess Summons Skeletons

The sphere disappeared, and so did everything else. The moment they had crossed the boundary of the submerged gate, Sofia was separated from the others. She was sitting in the same position she had been, in a red space, on a perfectly flat, cold, but invisible floor. Below her, dark clouds raged, erupting with red lightning that she could barely hear echoes of, above, the sky was red, the entire horizon was red, getting darker and darker the further up one looked.

Is this above the blood sea, then? Above the storm?

But why can’t I feel anyone else?

As Sofia stood up, she watched as her flesh and blood reappeared. The living body she had been missing was coming back to her.

Urh. That felt strange. I still… Don’t have access to any storage though. Nothing to cover myself up with…

The wishing orbs and everything else she had been wearing had all disappeared, so she did not even have any spare bones. Just to be sure, she broke off the tip of one of her wings, but unlike what she hoped, the intense pain of the bones regrowing slightly twisted was still present.

Even Aphenoreth’s glove disappeared. That’s a first. Fine. I’ll just go naked, then. Nobody here anyway…

With nothing in sight, just a vast expanse of clouds under her feet, Sofia took a few hesitant steps on the invisible floor. Every step she took, she heard and saw worrying cracks around her feet, like glass on the verge of breaking, but they always disappeared with her next step.

After just a few steps, something appeared in front of Sofia. A tall, majestic mirror frame. But there was no mirror, only a single shard remaining, like a small glass knife, barely hanging onto the frame.

There it is.

I had my doubts but this is actually the place. And an actual mirror, this time.

But… This is not looking too good…

Did the last person here shatter it?

Sofia stepped closer, she tried to watch her reflection in the tiny shard, it was barely recognizable, distorted, a warped blotch of golden hair and pale skin color reflections.

As she got closer, the mirror frame scattered into a red fog, leaving behind only the broken shard, hanging mid-air in front of Sofia’s face, and farther away, another frame appeared, with a different, larger shard of the mirror.

So it being shattered is actually part of the design?

Then should I just walk through to the largest piece or? Well, no I want the entire mirror so…

Sofia grabbed the tiny mirror shard. Her vision turned black, she could no longer feel most of her body. All she could still feel was her right hand, and the sharp edges of the mirror shard digging into her flesh.

A scene from her past began to play before her eyes, as vivid as though she was reliving it, the rest of her body was like sent to the past, while her right hand still felt the cold mirror’s edges.

Kneeling on a glacial stone floor, she looked up through narrow bars.

The old basement? I spent so long looking at the street like that, watching the legs of people walking by. Too scared and weak to roam the streets, while Saria begged for some food just outside…

The mirror shard dug deeper into her flesh. The pain spread further through her arm, as though telling her to let go. She only clenched harder.

The bars of the basement’s vent grew thicker and longer, space warped, Sofia found herself chained like a dog in a cage.

The slave camp, now? This fucking cage…

Blurry figures walked around the camp, blurry children cowered in the other cages. The wind carried a smell of blood. Without her doing anything Sofia grasped the bars of her cage.

The mirror shard in her hand showed no reaction.

Again her vision shifted in an instant. She felt warmer, more comfortable, sitting with a book open in front of her. This was her favorite spot in the orphanage library. From there she could see through almost all the windows.

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I’m not even sure what–

Sofia’s thoughts were interrupted by a sudden jolt of pain. The shard dug much deeper into her hand. She could feel it disturbing the flow of her bloodlight, the pain reached her shoulder, heavy, numb. She did not let go, the scenery changed again.

My ‘room’ in the holy see, now?

I see! I get it!

I understand now.

Sofia clenched the mirror shard harder. It did not hurt more than before. Space and time warped again.

The first trial. Sofia guessed before the scene could even fully form before her eyes.

She was right. She was now in princess Aurelia Grandcourt’s bedroom, staring at her masterful paintings of the great outdoors.

I’m being judged.

Judged on my yearning for freedom.

The pattern was starting to be clear. The more she had felt comfortable in ‘captivity’ the more the shard would hurt, more and more each time. It was that simple.

The memories changed, again and again, getting trapped in Zangdar, in scripture’s trap with her students or in Peace’s domain. The theme was always the same, her inability to go wherever she wanted.

The very last vision saw her entering this empty space above the clouds. Sofia finally returned to reality. The mirror shard was still in her hand, but there was no trace of any harm done to her. She looked at it, and shifting words appeared in her vision, not from the system, more like knowledge getting inscribed directly into her retina.

Imprint a mark of Feel. You can always sense the direction of the mark.

Sofia noticed a red glow coming from behind just as she read the words.

A door?

An open door had appeared where she had first arrived. It showed a blurry scene of a skeleton bathed in a red glow.

That’s the admiral’s skeleton in the Defier of Fate ship. The entrance to the sanctuary.

So I could just leave now with the mark of Feel?

As if.

Sofia stepped toward the second mirror frame. She placed her tiny shard under the larger one, where it fit perfectly. The two shards fused together with a weak glow, and the mirror frame disappeared again like the first.

Then let’s give it another go.

Sofia reached out, but this time, the mirror fragment came to her. The smooth surface of the mirror flat against her open palm. Once more, time and space rumbled.

This time the memories were much weaker. At the start, it showed every time Sofia pretended to go along with someone she disliked. The mirror stung her each time, like a venomous insect injecting poison directly into her veins, but it was weak, but there was barely any pain. Then it switched to every time Sofia had to sacrifice someone for someone else. The very final vision was one of her losing her arm to protect Pestle.

It did not hurt at all.

Sofia’s perception returned to the mirror’s space above the clouds.

“So I had the first one wrong. It wasn’t just freedom. It was physical freedom. Going places. And this was… Freedom of association? It only hurt when it showed me doing something out of guilt or a feeling of obligation…”

Sofia looked down at the now fused mirror shards floating in front of her.

Imprint a mark of Find. You can always know the location of the mark.

It’s stronger. I assume if I had let go of the mirror shards, I would have been stuck with the mark of Feel instead.

I wonder how far everyone else got.

And how many more pieces of this mirror there are?

Sofia looked up at the next mirror frame that had just appeared, again, the shard inside was larger than both of hers combined.

At this rate… Two more after that one.

Three more freedoms. Go on, judge me.

Without hesitation, Sofia advanced and fused her shards with the new one.

The third shard never hurt Sofia at all. From the few memories it showed, she more or less had a guess as to what it was, but even that was blurry.

Freedom of… Identity, I guess?

Those were all moments where I had to hold myself back from doing what I wanted because of how others would see it but… They were all so minor… The mirror felt slightly cold, kind of?

I am never trying to act like someone I am not.

Let’s see this new skill…

Anything your powers can touch, you can touch.

Huh. It is no longer a mark?

This one is… Really good. If any bone my mana can touch counts as me directly touching it, then I can exercise full power on it. Then forget needing to expand my aura, I could just make a curse strong enough to reach bones, and bone-blend people even from outside of my aura entirely…

Considering how it lost the previous properties of the marks, though, it’s likely the next stage will have nothing to do with that.

But I can’t stop here.

The next mirror frame had already shown up. As Sofia expected, it was a larger piece again, with most of the left half of the mirror, leaving most of the bottom half and the center of the frame still empty.

Second to last.

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