Saintess Summons Skeletons

Immediately as Sofia touched the almost-complete mirror, she felt a sense of intense suffocation, like drowning and being crushed from all sides.

Then her memories began playing around her.

They flashed before her eyes faster and faster, like recounting her entire life from the start.

It stopped, Sofia was running down a mountain in Sovuln, hands bloodied, watching a cataclysm unfold under her eyes. She remembered at that moment, looking at the mountain her sister was still on. She could have stayed, she never wanted to leave Saria behind.

But she threw herself into the overflowing river instead.

The suffocating feeling grew stronger.

More memories flashed by.

The necromancy tome of Scripture showed up. Sofia remembered the day she was shown. It was the day she decided to become a necromancer.

For just a moment, the crushing pressure lifted a little bit, before coming back even stronger.

Sofia kept her hand pressed against the mirror.

More memories.

Sorrow’s riutal, stabbing her own heart, feeling like she had no other choice.

Sofia felt like her body was crushed under an entire mountain. She could hear her bones cracking louder than her own thoughts.

The pressure kept mounting until she could barely think. Her hand remained unmoving.

A sudden vision freed her from this hell. A memory so vast she could barely hold onto it. The day Ormoncleth freed her from Scripture’s Soul parasites. The pressure disappeared. Suffocating feelings continued as memories kept succeeding one after another, but Sofia was already out of it. Keeping her hand on the mirror was all she could think about.

With a very last memory that showed her advancing toward this mirror piece, the suffocation and pain all disappeared.

Sofia fell to her knees in front of the floating broken mirror.

It took her a long time to catch her breath.

Freedom… Of choice.

Not letting others… Choose my path for me…

Finally standing up, Sofia grabbed the four fused shards of the mirror, it was almost half of the complete thing. For the fourth time, words appeared in her eyes.

Anything your powers can surround, you can grasp.

“Just… A different version of the previous one.”

Sofia still sounded tired, but she pressed forward nonetheless. The next mirror frame contained the last, largest piece of the mirror. Bringing her piece to it, Sofia recreated the full mirror.

“The last freedom… Show it to me.”

Sofia placed both hands on the mirror.

First came absolute darkness and silence. The sound of rain, the crashing of waves…

Sofia couldn’t see, but she clearly remembered that feeling. This was her old recurring nightmare. Was she was now convinced was a prophetic dream.

She opened her eyes to the waves battering her body, the rain of glowing scripts engulfing the red sky. In between two waves, she noticed a battle ongoing in the distance. She could only see one ‘person’, their back turned to her. She blinked. The ‘person’ had changed.

Death.

Unbearable agony spread through Sofia’s body. It was something she knew, like Edrazeketh’s powers attempting to erase her. But she had nothing to defend against it this time. She felt her body disappear, slowly.

I will not– Stop here!

The memories went by slowly, this time.

She saw Curse reach through the planes to prevent Zerei’s death. Again and again and again. Her fate was sealed in this strange time loop. How long had she spent there? But after trying everything, she had still never given up. Her mouth opened in the memory. “Edrazeketh.”

The erasure slowed down. The pain eased. More memories.

She looked down at a system window after her second trial.

[Path of the Heat Death :

Description : Where fate ends.

All will fade, such is destiny. All but you.]

The pain was gone.

She saw Alith standing next to her, in her teacher room at the academy.

Alith tapped on Sofia’s shoulder. “Looming?”

“I am just as confused as you are…”

Memories continued.

The more she learned about Looming. The more she understood about the coming ‘cataclysm’, the more the pain mounted, and her body disappeared.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

It reached a point where she was barely alive.

Only the palm of her hands remained, pressed against the mirror.

[Available branches:

0 - DO YOU BELIEVE - 0TP

0 - IN PREORDAINED FATE - 0 TP

0 - ALL IS WRITTEN - 0 TP

0 - FREEDOM IS FAKE - 0 TP]

Aphenoreth’s voice cut through the pain.

This Is The Enemy Of All Things

Forget Its Lies

My Mark Makes You Free

More memories flashed by, faster than Sofia could even understand. She looked up from the devastated world in the dream she explored with Henry. A blinding light beyond her comprehension.

And the very last memory of all. Her own hand grasping half of a stone key, shimmering in the comforting colors of the Deep.

Sofia felt barely alive, standing in front of the completed mirror. Her arms fell limp to her sides, she watched her twisted reflection. Words etched themselves into her sight.

Imprint a mark of Reach. You can always reach for the mark.

Sofia stared at the words and the mirror.

Her voice shook as she forced out some words. “Is that it?”

“Is this truly… Your mirror, Father?”

“Is this what is supposed to help me… Against that?”

Light twisted in the strange place above the storm clouds. Sofia’s image in the mirror changed with every red lightning strike flashing below.

“This is not– What these efforts should lead to!”

“This doesn’t… Feel like you…”

“This twisted reflection… Doesn’t feel like me!”

Sofia punched the mirror; it shattered.

Without her even noticing, Sofia was plunged into a memory again.

As she opened her eyes, she saw the face of a lanky man, leaning over her. He looked at her with a thin smile. In his perfectly black eyes, she saw her own reflection.

The world shattered like a broken mirror, its shards rushing into Sofia’s eyes until there was none left. She stood above the dark clouds under the red sky again. There was nothing left. No frame, no mirror, no exit door. Just an endless expanse above the storm.

Words carved themselves into her retina, slower than before, letter by letter, word by word, like a lovingly handwritten letter.

One with yourself, always and forever. Nothing stands beyond your grasp.

Sofia felt something surround her body, and a presence making itself known behind her. She could not turn around but she heard his voice.

Daughter

Roam Free

“Father... I will.”

Aphenoreth disappeared.

Sofia looked down, the comforting thing draping her body was an elegant long black robe with a lace hem and sleeves. A garment including two attached gloves all made of a singular black thread. She could feel a warm crystal pressed against her back below her nape.

The philosopher’s stone… This robe is my glove…

You didn’t have to. Thank you.

And now…

Sofia looked around. She was still in the empty space above the clouds. Although her feelings were still in disarray, she already worried about how she was supposed to leave, now that the exit was gone.

Roam free…

*Ding*

[You have learned ‘Roaming Free’]

Space around Sofia seemed to ignite. She was bathed in golden, red and gray light, like engulfed by three vivid fires. The ‘divine’ bodies the Venerable Physique of the Primeval Void maintained with the essences she held. But Sofia barely noticed, since for the first time, she could see her own soul. From the inside, it looked like a taller, stranger version of herself, twisted, bloated, covered in scars, barely recognisable, yet undoubtedly in her own image, since she looked up, it looked up with her.

Mr.Scribe brought up an empty system window by himself. Sofia watched him write the description.

[Roaming Free]: ‘One with yourself, always and forever. Nothing stands beyond your grasp.’

You are always whole.

You may grasp what cannot be.

You may leave one Inquisitor’s mark.

WARNING: Essence of Aphenoreth required for any use.

It’s nothing like the other mirrors… No partial use without the essence.

You are always whole… So that’s why my appearances from all planes are stacked together like this… But with the appearance control from VPPV I should… Yes.

Sofia’s soul gradually turned more and more transparent, until it was fully invisible. She did the same for the divine lights. All that remained when she was done was a very slight red glow. She could not get rid of it no matter how she tried, it came from Aphenoreth’s essence.

“This… So my physical body can enter the spirit plane? And the divine planes, even? That is… Wait… Since my makeshift divine bodies will be with me in the physical plane… Wouldn’t that make [Mockery of the divine] a lot stronger? Is this actually displacing the gods’ divine essences?! This might bring trouble… Hopefully Sun and Death’s essences really keep each other in check.”

Is this potential chaos the essences could bring in the physical plane that the robe is supposed to help with?

Or was he just being nice?

“Then, the one inquisitor’s mark… Am I correct in assuming it’s the combined effects of the three marks from the shards?”

That would make ‘you may grasp what cannot be’ a combination of the other two effects. But that’s really not how I would describe that. Besides… I can instinctively feel that it’s not quite that…

Mr.Scribe opened another empty system window, his words seemed hesitant.

[I believe… We are to make our own exit. Activate the mirror. Reach. Grasp.]

Sofia activated the new mana circuits engraved in her body and mind. Aphenoreth’s essence began to react. The suppressed red glow around Sofia grew stronger, it gathered like a red veil around her hands.

What in the world…

Sofia looked at her hands, then at the empty space in front of her.

Reach.

The world seemed to freeze. The storm below grew quiet, the red lightning moving in slow-motion. Then, as Sofia’s hands reached further, everything but herself turned pitch black. Not just emptiness, a true boundless void.

The margin?!

She reached further, tearing through the planes. She could see it, she could grasp it, the physical plane was in her reach, the dark waters and rotten planks of the Defier of Fate, everyone else was there, unmoving, they could not see her. She was not there yet.

Sofia grabbed the physical plane, with both hands. She was still in the sanctuary, trapped above the red storm. She knew what she had to do, her hands pulled tore space apart, like forcing open two bars of a cage with pure physical force. Space resisted her.

LET.

ME.

THROUGH!

Giving it one last push to widen the opening, Sofia jumped through the hole in the planes she had torn open with her own hands. It closed back behind her, letting time regain its rightful course.