"You've been in there for ten minutes," Tristessa heard Cyela's voice on the other side of the bathroom door. "Are you waiting for the Twin Moons to come wipe your fat ass or what?"

"…"

Tristessa would have told her that a girl her age shouldn't talk like that. She would have told her to shut up. She would have said anything just to give a reply, but her voice was muffled.

Suffocating, she suppressed the sound of each inhale of cold air that she then forcefully expelled, in a vain attempt to calm the tremors that had taken over her body. She held onto the sides of that sink filled with room-temperature water, afraid of falling because her legs wouldn't stop shaking.

In front of the mirror, almost in the dark, Tristessa could see her face tainted in red, moving back and forth, in step with her torso. A low-spirited countenance, staring at herself as if the reflection were about to make a different move, just like with the mysterious doppelgänger in her room's mirror on Earth.

"…"

In her attempt to prove she could maintain her balance, she let go of the sink and looked at her hands, as shaky as the rest of her body. Clenching and unclenching her fists did nothing.

Submerging her head inside the dark waters of the sink helped a little. Her troubled mind was hard to appease, much more breaking out of that state of panic that had taken hold of her.

Panic deriving from the very moment Master Caius told her about the Shadow Queen and how she possessed Divinities of the Three Gods.

Just like her.

"Ugh…!"

The urge to vomit was very strong. Tristessa closed her eyes and placed a hand on her chest, feeling both her heart and her Baptism in Ruins beating. A wild, frenzied dance on a collision course.

"This isn't the time to freak out, you idiot! Think about Jin…about Lucahn…about that bitch Tiara…" she repeated inside her head and ignoring the knocking of Cyela's knuckles against the door. "There will be time to think about the Dark Lady and the Gods! Now I must find Severus…! Find Severus… Find Severus…"

The gap between her mind and her mouth narrowed so much that soon she was whispering that phrase, spitting out the drops of water that trickled into her mouth. She repeated it as many times as possible until she regained some physical and emotional stability.

She only left the bathroom once she had dried her face and hair of all that water with a towel and was certain she wasn't going to lose control of her legs, or worse, faint. She could breathe fine, she could walk fine, and, having that brown-haired girl standing like a statue on the other side of the door, she could speak fine.

"I told you I needed a moment alone," she scolded her.

"Who is Severus? You were repeating that name like a madwoman in there."

"It doesn't concern you."

Tristessa hurried through the halls of Sanctuary, almost running past the main hall and reaching the vestibule. That anteroom served as the dividing line between the permanent gloom of the hall and the daylight that streamed through the entrance. Its two doors were wide open in a sign of welcome to any citizen.

It was there that Master Caius was waiting for her, both hands clasped behind his back, looking to the outside deep in thought.

"Ah, I see you're ready, Miss Tristessa," the tattooist told her, inclining his head slightly with a smile and stroking his beard with the long nails of his right hand. "I hope to see you soon, if you need further advice regarding your Divinities, or if you wish to manifest a tattoo of your soul on your skin… Also, before you leave, I want to thank you."

"For what?" she asked with curiosity.

"Well, for giving me the opportunity to witness a soul with three Divinities. Very few mystical tattoo artists can boast of having observed such a spirit blessed by two Gods," was his reply, and he gave her a friendly squeeze on the shoulder. "Go home, I'm sure your parents must be very worried about you. Give them my congratulations."

"Yes… Thank you, Master Caius," she said, giving him a smile that hid the melancholic emptiness that arose inside her at the thought of Selene Irandell and a father whose name she couldn't remember. "And thank you too, Cyela."

The girl was watching her from the hall, peeking her head out and glaring at her.

"Don't ever come back, genocider of flowers."

"Don't say that, you little shit! She donated a GSJ to us, think about the business!"

"It's a miracle that you only think about money, you dirty old man."

"What did you say?!"

Leaving master and apprentice arguing among themselves, Tristessa left the Sanctuary. It took her eyes a while to adjust to the light after a few hours immersed in darkness, and it was fortunate that she decided to stop until her vision normalized. Otherwise, she would have been hit by a green-furred Vilecross and then run over by the finely polished and carved wooden coach the submissive demon was pulling.

"I almost died in the stupidest way imaginable…"

The street, unlike the night before, was being traveled in both directions by those demons, in their various colors and sizes, pulling coaches by chains with a chauffeur guiding them. The sidewalks were occupied by people dressed in antiquated ways -relative to the pre-modern era on Earth-, in suits and ties or dresses with long skirts for civilians, and in uniforms with light armor for soldiers. Some were going to work, others were returning home, and others were patrolling and ensuring everyone's safety.

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By day, Entrana was a lively, industrial city with an urbanization that surpassed Tristessa's primordial idea, having assumed the architecture would be like the style seen at the Mercer-Archeos house and the surrounding area.

"Paved streets, fine brick sidewalks, three-story buildings made of wood and cut stone... Very advanced compared to the Middle Ages on Earth," the girl thought as she walked, dodging passersby and looking around with interest. "There are even streetlights on every block... Now I understand why Auron said soul-jewels and power crystals were indispensable."

The application of thaumaturgy was to almost everything she saw, from lighting the ovens at the food stalls to creating ethereal barriers that allowed or denied pedestrians and traffic on the streets.

Tristessa was the type of person who, out of her voracious curiosity, would have spent the entire day exploring the city. Under other circumstances, she had no doubt she would enjoy everything Entrana had to offer, but now…

Her focus was the mission she had decided to carry out.

With Entrana being too large and unfamiliar a place for her—essentially a labyrinth—Tristessa had to turn to the most obvious and perfect point of interest, located in the very heart of the city.

A few minutes of walking brought her to the perimeter of the [Evil-Warding Pillar].

A white stone tower that simply couldn't have been created by human hands, given its circumference that occupied a city block and its length that reached to the heavens. There were millions of glyphs etched on its surface, impossible to number them. No streets allowed free passage, but rather a large circular expanse of black stone bricks that spanned at least a kilometer in diameter.

Halfway to the Pillar, there were permanent military guard posts. Soldiers armed with rifles patrolled, some mounted-on cannons glowing with the power crystals that powered them, and, to Tristessa's surprise, large, intelligent, bipedal, gray-skinned creatures wearing metal plates protecting their sturdy torsos, arms, and legs.

"Trolls?!" she screamed inside her head, stunned. "Unbelievable! They're cooperating with humans to guard the pillar..."

Tristessa got closer to where some civilians had also decided to visit the pillar. Some were meditating in silence, others were praying, and the rest sought to be in the presence of that tower and feel it's warm, protective aura.

Being in its mere presence made Tristessa feel the hairs on her body prick up at such a massive amount of supernatural power.

She could hear countless voices coming from that Pillar… Voices she could only detect with her [Divinity of Whispers in the Dark], now with the knowledge that it was Kantrus, not Vel'Moran, the god who granted her that ability aligned with the fundamental law of Power.

But there was a difference: she couldn't reach or understand those voices within the Pillar in the same way she had with the echo of Viktor Enma.

"I wonder why…," she thought, at the same time that a voice of a very living person distracted her.

"Thirty years of living in this city, and not a single day goes by that I don't stop to appreciate such a masterpiece of thaumaturgy."

Beside Tristessa, who had been dumbfounded by the superstructure, stood a woman dressed in a refined black robe with gold details, which almost covered her shoes, and a pointed hat in the same style.

But what caught the girl's attention most was the cane she held in her right hand, with a power crystal embedded in the tip.

Without fear of being mistaken, she assumed that this woman was a thaumaturge.

"How was it possible to build something like that?" Tristessa asked, following the woman's gaze as she stood beside her to admire the pillar in her company. "And not just this one, but all of them across the Empire."

The woman giggled, though not in mockery of her ignorance.

"It is in the face of adversity that we humanoid beings show our imagination and potential to overcome obstacles, miss," the thaumaturge told her, as if she were in a school class. "One of those obstacles is Ithrendyl, the Princess of Sin who, along with her terrible black dragon, attacked city after city every time the Evil Dream fell upon Imperial territory."

She glanced once again towards the gigantean construct, smiling with pride.

"For that reason, thousands of ancient thaumaturges sacrificed their souls to erect the twenty-five Evil-Warding Pillars across the nation, which have protected us from all that indiscriminate evil for centuries…"

After nodding in understanding, Tristessa closed her eyes for a brief moment. To the woman beside her and any other passersby, it seemed as if she were meditating, but she was using her Divinity to once again hear the voices of those heroes.

True heroes. Martyrs who had left a legacy that, in the literal sense of the word, protected the Empire to this day from the evil of the Shadow Queen and her minions.

"What I wouldn't give for a bit of your courage… Ever since I arrived on Nekrom, I've done nothing but run and escape," she thought, opening her eyes again. She didn't feel worthy of being in the presence of that Pillar. "How pathetic…"

"Are you alright?"

"Y-yes, yes," Tristessa said quickly, wiping away the pitiful grimace on her face. "Excuse me, I assume from the catalyst you're a thaumaturge, right?"

"Exactly. I'm from the Magnum Gravitas Academy. Fourth-grade thaumaturge, Urias Janus," she replied with a friendly smile. "You're not from around here, aren't you? Is this your first time in Entrana?"

She nodded, smiling back.

"I'm Tristessa Irandell, and I'm looking for a friend, his name is Severus Malak Drakan. He's a thaumaturge, just like you. A blood elf, very striking and…well, quite handsome," she said, her cheeks flushed. "Does that sound familiar?"

According to what Severus had told her, Blood Elves weren't abundant in population due to their terrible and tragic history. She didn't know how many of them lived in Entrana, but someone like him had to be etched in the minds of those he met.

Someone with his charisma, his appearance, and his crumbling legacy… After all, minorities -like blood elves- were inevitably marginalized by others.

Out of racism? Out of indiscriminate hatred? Neither. It was out of fear. Fear of ending up the same way they did.

"Oh yes, of course I know who you're talking about! The elf Severus! Oh, it's been a long time…"

The thaumaturge, Urias, crossed her arms, nodding to herself at the resurfacing of her memories. Something Tristessa envied with passion.

"Since his expulsion from the Academy, I haven't seen him again. He was such a joker, and that's why he was always getting into trouble with the other students!" she commented, laughing. "It won't be difficult to find him. I recommend using the Plaza of Remembrance as a reference. Once you get there, just head east to reach the slums."

"Slums?" Tristessa repeated, confused. She was already dismayed by what she'd heard about the elf's academic life, but given his mannerisms and elegance, she'd assumed otherwise about his social status.

"That's right. Ask anyone about him, and they'll direct you to his workshop for sure."

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