The figure tapped its cane. The sound echoed through the room and snapped them back to the mountain where they had been standing.
Lina opened her eyes. She flexed her fingers as her senses returned. She looked around and saw that everything had shifted. It seemed the time-freeze had affected only her; what she perceived was not universal. Leopold was no longer where he had been, and even Halwen now stood in a different spot.
Most importantly, her friend’s spirit was gone from where it had been.
Suddenly a voice call over her.
“Linaaaaaaa…”
The spirit’s call stretched in a sing-song tone, like a child teasing a friend. For a moment, Lina didn’t realize it was her. The voice carried no echo, no growl, none of the pain of abandonment it once held. It sounded almost light, as if Lina’s presence alone had calmed it.
She looked closer. At first it seemed like the Vierna she knew, but the details shifted: the spirit was shorter, bellow her chin when Vierna’s real body was a bit taller than her. Its hair unchanged, silver like the moon but her face rounder, softer, childlike. Wounds marred her small frame, and she still wore the same clothes from the day she left home.
This wasn’t the Vierna who once called the facility heaven.
“Linaaaa…”
The spirit poked her playfully, as if trying to catch her attention. It couldn’t touch Lina directly, so the hand seemed to pass through her and settle in her stomach instead. She flinched and stepped back a little. A being that defied all natural laws behaving like a child was the last thing she expected.
It noticed her fear — the startled face, the trembling hands — and stopped. It stepped back, gaze sinking to the floor, hands fidgeting at its sides, a quiet shiver running through its frame as though rejection was already expected.
“Ah, sorry, Vierna. You glowed so suddenly it startled me,” Lina said quickly.
The spirit didn’t lift its eyes. It only stared at the ground, lips parted but no sound coming out. The air around it felt heavy, fragile. Whatever it had been through had hollowed something deep inside. The abandonment it once suffered had left a stain that would never fade; even the faintest sign of rejection seemed to reopen it.
Lina saw it then—the way the spirit’s hands fidgeted near its chest, the small, unsteady breaths, the trembling shoulders that looked as though they carried centuries of waiting. It wasn’t anger that filled the silence between them. It was fear. Fear that even now, it was still unwanted.
“Ahhh, sorry, don’t be like this…”
Instead, the spirit puffed its cheeks and turned away with a childlike pout. “Hmph.”
The sudden shift in its attitude startled Lina. One moment it had seemed wounded by her reaction, and the next it was sulking like a spoiled child. She couldn’t help but wonder—were all spirits like this?
Lina glanced helplessly at Halwen, but he only shook his head, as if to say, Yeah, I never read a manual on spirit parenting. This one’s on you.
She looked next to the Arkmarschall, but he wasn’t watching. His gaze was fixed on Vierna’s physical body, still strapped to the chair, brain exposed and eyes closed, as if in deep slumber.
“Ah, come on. You tease me all the time, and now you’re pouting like this?”
The spirit pretended to cover her ears, humming to herself as if she hadn’t heard Lina at all. It was unmistakably Vierna — the same psychological edge, the subtle manipulation, the need to control every exchange — only now wrapped in childish play.
“If you stop pouting, I’ll read your book. Two books every night.”
“Hmm…” The spirit tilted her head as if considering. “Three books or no deal.”
“But…”
“Lalalalalala…” The spirit began again, louder this time.
“All right, all right! Three books, but one of them has to have pictures.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The spirit smiled as if proclaiming victory. “Hehe… okay.”
Lina laughed sheepishly. She hadn’t realized that dealing with Vierna’s younger spirit was harder than expected.
“So what—”
“Lina, I’m sorry.”
As the spirit spoke, Lina saw it all: the trembling, the gaze that faltered into nothingness, the guilt and shame searing through her, a burden that felt like a hot poker pressed into flesh and branded across a lifetime.
The joyful banter, the teasing and pouting — all of it felt like it belonged to another life, an echo of someone long gone, stripped bare by the weight of a broken conscience. It was only a mask, a masquerade meant to keep her friend from worrying. But the effort was exhausting, the dance unending, and maybe she no longer had the strength to keep the act alive.
Then Lina realized it. This was exactly how Vierna behaved — hiding her pain, forcing smiles, pretending not to hurt so no one else would have to. For a girl that selfless to be abandoned by her own mother... it broke Lina’s heart.
And for the first time, she wondered—was the Arkmarschall right all along?
She looked at the spirit. “What, why?”
“It must be hard for you, right?” the spirit said. “Having to be friends with someone like me.”
And in that moment, it dawned on her. Everything Vierna had done in her life, every choice, every silence, was haunted by this same thought. Even when her memories tried to bury the wound of abandonment, the scar never closed. It was always haunted by a phantom — the feeling of being lesser, of deserving nothing but disdain and indifference. Not because of what she had done, but because of what others had done to her.
Left alone… wandering through a chasm of corpses, starving and parched, searching for someone who could shoulder a cross far too heavy for a child to carry.
“No, Vierna, no—”
“It’s okay, Lina. I’m fine now. Maybe after this I’ll ask the Arkmarschall to move my room. He won’t mind, I think.”
The spirit said it as if each word were a knife driven into her own gut, a quiet effort to erase herself so others would not be burdened. As if the earth should not lose its precious air simply because this foolish being kept breathing what she had never earned.
“…”
“You can focus on your preparation for Glashnacht. I don’t think I’ll be able to carry on.”
As the spirit continued speaking, Lina saw it: crimson liquid began to flow again from the spirit’s wounds.
“No, please—” Lina said.
“Hehe, even without knowing it, I seduced an older man. Even my own mother didn’t love me.” The spirit’s smile twisted. “So why would someone like you ever
“No it won’t be like that—“
“But it’s true, isn’t it? You said you only got close to me because you wanted to escape sadness. And now, every time you look at me, your eyes will change. You would pity me and then become sad.” The spirit’s tone grew somber. “Because I showed this to you, there’s no way we can go back to what we were.”
“…”
“And if you pity me,” The spirit continued. “You won’t use me. And if I can’t be useful, then one day, you’ll stop looking at me. I’ll be useless to you. And a useless person doesn’t deserve to be—”
“STOP!”
Lina cut her off. She tried to hug the spirit but couldn’t — a physical body couldn’t touch a spirit. So she circled her arms around it instead. And it was enough to make the words stop.
“Even if your mother didn’t love you, even if you cannot walk, talk, or see again, even if you become useless,” Lina said, tears streaming down her face, “I would never, never stop loving you.”
“But why? Even Mom didn’t—”
“Your mother never loved you at all, because true love is enduring and eternal!” Lina repeated what Leopold had told her, as if it were the truth.
She didn’t fully believe it, yet to save the girl who had been trapped for what felt like eons in a cage of rejection, she forced herself to say it.
The abandonment had rotted, twisted, and corrupted her until the pain tore through the boundaries of worlds. Out of that pain was born a being so innocent, so pure, and yet so full of sorrow that it could only cry out in lamentation, pleading to God for a single glance from a creator who had so cruelly forgotten how easily humans could weep and how deeply they could grieve.
Lina gathered her courage and spoke. “And I will show you—I swear with all my soul—I will show you what true love is.”
It was a vow, one she branded deep within her own soul. The words came out without hesitation, yet not without thought. She knew that by saying them, Vierna’s entire psychological state would become bound to her. And she had prepared for that. She had been accepted by Vierna—and she would accept her in return.
“…”
The spirit saw it. In Lina’s eyes there was no doubt. She meant every word. No lies, no deception — only an oath eternal, a love that seemed to reach through her cage of sorrow and lifted her up for the future.
The spirit could not reply. How could she? In all her existence, she had never felt anything like this.
“But Vierna, please, for my sake… Love yourself more. With me together we will love you. Forever.”
The spirit hesitated for a moment. Such true love—the kind she thought she had lost and would never recover—was now before her, found not in dreams but beneath the researcher’s scalpel and the scrolls of indoctrination. Could this even be possible?
And yet she remembered. She was in heaven, wasn’t she? This place, and all the things they had done to her, were supposed to be heaven and sanctuary. So was it really strange to find true love in heaven?
She smiled. As Lina declared her love, it was as if the moon cast its radiance upon her, lighting the barren, lifeless land and bringing back the warmth and vitality she had thought long lost.
Her reason for existing was rekindled by Lina’s promise, burning away the sins and mire that had stained her being—a beacon in the abyss, a hope in the wasteland, dew upon an eternal drought.
Not pity, but conviction. Not mercy, but love freely given and freely claimed. A love that was patient and kind. A love that did not envy or boast, that was neither arrogant nor ashamed of itself. A love that bore all things, believed all things, endured all things.
And in that love, the spirit found rest. Her whole being trembled with conviction reborn, Lina’s gaze reflected in her soul. The spirit echoed her savior’s vow with a single word:
“Forever.”
feel free to comment i would get back to you as soon as i could :D.
Cheers
What Lina did, is she right on doing that?
