Julia opened her eyes, only to realize the view was the same as when they were closed. She was in total darkness. No—that wasn’t right. It was…deeper than that. This wasn’t the absence of light—light had never existed here at all. This was nothing—nowhere.

  Yet, the longer she gazed at the nothing, the more it was. The more it became. The longer she looked at it, the darkness—

  The darkness—

  The Darkness—

  ThE DarKNess—

  T?H?e? ?d?A?R?k?N?e?S?s?—

  t???H??????E????? ??????D????A????r????K????n????e???S????S?????—

  A flash brought her attention away from—what was she looking at? She couldn’t remember; the memory was there, but she couldn’t grasp it. It slipped out of mind like oil through her fingers.

  The flash made the memory slip. The flash was to blame. She hated the flash. The flash should disapp—

  Another flash, this time tugging Julia’s gaze to the left—sort of. It was pure darkness and nothing, so what did a concept like “left” matter?

  She gazed upon a gigantic, horrifying eye. It was vaguely purple-red. What was the word, the color? Violet—that’s it. The violet eye had a great iris ringing a pupil in the center, but it wasn’t the only pupil.

  There were several pupils within the iris as well. They formed a ring around the central pupil. It was similar to if she had dug a circular hole and placed smaller, circular stones in a ring around it.

  It was disturbing, that eye. However, Julia also felt a strange sense of comfort from it. It was horrible, wrong, and strange, but also familiar, comforting, and warm. It gazed at her with what she knew was affection—how she knew, she was unsure.

  The eye flashed again, this time a warmer, richer color. This flash had intent. It was…exiling—no, that wasn’t right. It was dismissing her. It was sending her—

  Julia shot upright, disoriented at having awakened so suddenly. Her breath came quickly, as though she’d been running. She realized she had her sword—still sheathed—in her hand as though to defend herself. Trixy mewled and nuzzled her neck, likely both annoyed and concerned at being awakened so suddenly.

  Julia petted her head as she took slow, deep breaths. She was still in the shelter they’d created—not much time had even passed, considering it was still dark outside. When the sun was up, she could just barely see it through the several breathing holes she had fashioned into the roof of the shelter, but it was currently so dark that she couldn’t even see the holes at all.

  Taln?r had grown a small patch of vines around the circumference of the shelter that clung to the wall of hard-packed dirt and emitted a soft, warm glow. It was just bright enough to see shapes and outlines within the shelter, but soft enough to—hopefully—not be visible from the outside.

  This amazed Julia, as once he cast the spell, it no longer required his will or mana to function. It was as though he’d grown a real vine from his magic. As far as she was aware, this was not how magic worked, so she was immensely curious about it.

  Julia had plied Taln?r with questions until he was so tired that he was falling asleep mid-answer, but she hadn’t managed to get much more out of him. Most of what he had to say revolved around things being, “not my answers to give.”

  She understood this, as no matter the circumstances, Julia was someone he’d only known a day at most. It was too much to expect him to share insider information about his home and its magic.

  That didn’t stop her from being disappointed, though—especially considering what little she did get from him was so cryptic that he might as well have said nothing. Everything boiled down to “dancing” or “singing” to or with the Song’s rhythm or melody.

  It was flowery nonsense that frustrated her—she would never express that, obviously. The way he spoke so reverently about it showed he clearly felt strongly about his words, so it was a frustration she’d have to suffer with in silence.

  Leaving Taln?r to get some rest, she had lied down herself. She must have been more tired than she realized because she barely remembered even hitting the ground before she was dreaming. And that dream—what a strange dream. It was already fading, as dreams did, but she could still remember the feelings it evoked.

  There was a feeling of desolation and fear, followed by feelings that felt foreign to her. She felt those feelings, but she wasn’t sure they originated with her. They felt invasive in a way that made her skin crawl now that she was examining them while completely aware and cogent.

  The feelings at the end were a mixture of familiarity and relief, as though something had freed her from the invasive feelings.

  She tried to recall as much as possible, but it was slipping away quickly. She switched to trying to maintain memory of what she had already recalled; Julia wasn’t sure why, but she felt the dream important enough to remember.

  Regardless, her mind was stirred enough that she’d not be getting back to sleep anytime soon. She might as well make use of the time rather than lying still and hoping to sleep. She had yet to consider her gains from the previous day’s combat, and there had been quite a few.

  Oh, her birthday had come and gone, apparently. She’s seventeen now. Memories of previous birthdays with Braden started bubbling up, but she pushed them back down gently. She knew grieving was not a one-off process, but she’d spent enough time on it today (or yesterday, depending on what time it was) already.

  Shifting to what else was on her Status, she examined her new Skills. She was already aware of at least some of the benefits that Perfect Control provided, but there had to be other use cases, particularly for combat purposes. Actually, was that why she felt the Dispersal Skill suddenly became more useful?

  If Perfect Control was all about her body and mind being perfectly in-sync with each other, wouldn’t it make sense for something as unnatural and abstract (to a human, at least) as dispersing one’s body into the environment to suddenly become more intuitive?

  Whatever the case, her Subclass Skills were more straightforward and useful—or easier for her to imagine using, at least. Will Anchoring in particular had a few immediate uses but also contained endless possibilities, she thought. It was all about adding a degree of separation and stability to a caster’s spells.

  Essentially, the technique involved invoking a construct of some kind into a spell’s creation that represents the caster’s will and intent. This construct—almost like a temporary enchantment engraved into the spell itself—provides stability to a spell’s purpose. This could be used to cast a spell and leave it running autonomously for a period afterward, or it could simply be used as an extra layer of stability for the spell.

  Some obvious uses here were traps—magical traps. Julia imagined casting her Lightning Field trap and letting it sit to trigger on its own when something stepped on, perhaps even hours later. Of course, that wasn’t necessarily the case—the spell would still require the mana to stay active that long, even if destabilization was no longer an issue. Which, it still was—just less of one.

  The option to add stability to her spells was also powerful. This would be particularly strong when combatting another caster. Braden had warned that one of the dangers of casting a spell whose origin is at a distance is that it could potentially allow another skilled caster to disrupt—or even dominate and capture—a spell.

  Another caster throwing your spells back at you would be disastrous, considering you had fueled them with your own mana—or with mana drawn from the environment. In either case, the spell would be essentially free for the other caster to use against you.

  Any Skill that increased her spells’ stability and reduced opportunity for natural decay or interference from other casters was powerful indeed.

  Mana Shielding was even more straightforward. It was not too dissimilar from her existing Water Shield spell, though this was a shield of unattributed mana at base. It had the added benefit of being able to switch elements at will, whereas Julia’s Water Shield was always made of water.

  She figured this was likely why it was a Skill rather than a spell: the Skill provided a base of unattributed mana for the user to build off of with their own spells.

  She wasn’t immediately sure how useful this would be considering her Water Shield was already likely stronger than any shield made of other elements—save maybe earth, but it could work to reinforce the Water Shield, at the very least.

  Her Attributes had increased accordingly with her Level—no surprises there. She was also not shocked to see her Level rising so rapidly. True, the second threshold slowed down leveling dramatically, but considering the strength of her current enemies, their numbers, and their (likely) Ethereal origins, it made perfect sense to her.

  The only downside she could see from her Status was that Trixy’s was unchanged. This was unavoidable, though. She couldn’t consume the undead, not that Julia would be keen for her to even if she could—yuck!

  Trixy had actually tried to bite one of the skeletons they’d run into, but not only was it difficult for her to eat bone, Julia was having to kill them by consuming the dread mana that animated them. This meant she had to destroy their animus before the corpus would fall—without the animus, there was nothing left for Trixy to use to advance her evolution.

  Julia also wasn’t sure what eating mana from another time—when the rules of reality were different—would do to Trixy. Granted, Trixy herself was from a time like that, but it was simply a situation with too many unknowns for her to be lackadaisical.

  They weren’t comfortably at home in Striton, where she could experiment freely, knowing Braden was close enough to undo any of her mistakes.

  Speaking of not being home, she had to consider what to do from here. She knew for a fact that the elves were going to try and breach the undead line. Julia had the option of doing any of the three options she had come up with before encountering them: heading the opposite direction of the marsh, continuing down the biome divide and hoping for the marsh to end and reveal the water source, or attempting to breach the blockade into the marsh itself.

  This wasn’t much of a choice for her anymore. She wouldn’t leave people behind that needed her help—not when she could help. It didn’t have anything to do with being curious about the elves’ home, either. Nothing at all.

  The only question in her mind was whether they would accept her accompaniment, or whether she’d have to follow them invisibly. She was going with them, one way or another.