Chapter 15: Threads of Fate

“Sometimes fates intertwine like threads on a loom. Sometimes they run parallel, sometimes they twist into a knot, and sometimes they simply break. But the most terrifying thing is when the threads vanish forever, without a trace.”

The day of our trip for the dresses arrived almost instantly, and I still had not fully recovered from my own internal state. The itch that had troubled me had gently dissolved as if it had never been, but I knew that the crack in my perfect structure could return as quickly as it had appeared yesterday. Peace—that small thing which I had perhaps not valued over countless years—sounded melodically in my soul, bringing a needed stability to my structure.

Catherine seemed calm and satisfied. Early on the morning of Yuvel, she spread a map of Eldenbridge on the table before me, marking several points on it with neat ink circles.

“Look, Arta,” she said, pointing a finger at the map, “first we’ll go to the dress shop ‘Madame Bella.’ A lot of the students order their gowns there. But if we don’t like anything, we’ll go to one of the professional ateliers on the other side of the Luren.” She moved her finger to two dots on the western bank of the river. “‘The Silk Thread’ is an excellent choice; they have the best fabrics from Arzanir. But if we want something original, we can go to ‘The Snow-White Sheen.’ They say they have not only local fabrics, but also some from distant Krisian.” Catherine lifted her finger from the map and touched it to her lips. “It would be interesting to see fabrics made from the rare ghost thread. They say they weigh nothing and you can’t feel them on your body at all, as if you’re walking around without clothes.”

I gave her a skeptical look.

“It seems to me that clothing should simply be comfortable. Why spend money on some rare fabric?”

Catherine leaned toward me and looked me directly in the eyes.

“I know! It’s just that sometimes you want to try something new. It doesn’t mean I don’t like the classics, it’s just…” She paused for a moment. “It’s just that I’ve had to deny myself a lot these past ten years and I want to, well, let’s say, spoil myself a little?” She smiled sweetly at me, not breaking her gaze.

“I can understand your desire, but I will be honest with you: I would rather not spend the money my parents send me on expensive purchases.” I tapped my fingers on the tabletop intentionally. “You know, there should be a rational necessity for everything.”

“I understand…” she said in a sad tone, then, without straightening up, asked another question. “And what are you saving for, Arta? Other students usually spend their spare funds on cafes, restaurants, various trinkets that aren’t forbidden by the academy rules, they even go to the suburbs on weekends.”

“It’s not that I’m saving money, Catherine. I just don’t see the point in spending extra. I only buy what I need. The wardrobe provided by the academy is quite sufficient for me.”

Catherine closed her eyes and bit her lower lip.

“You know, you’re pragmatic to a fault…” She opened her eyes and straightened up. “There’s always something to learn from you, but maybe you could be more open too?” She smiled. “I don’t mean your secrets, but something simple—like going to a cafe every weekend? Maybe even getting some body treatments? They say it’s very pleasant, and in Siltmaris, you can even take mud baths.”

I looked at her with an inner understanding of my own helplessness. What would happen if I refused her again? Would she get offended again, and then I would suffer from that incessant itch again? I had to act cautiously, defending every inch of ground I stood on.

“Catherine, I’ve told you repeatedly about my ascetic upbringing,” I began carefully. “So, I don’t want to upset you in advance, but let’s not rush into this, alright? I’m not against occasional trips. For example, soon we will go to your home, and there I am ready to go with you wherever you wish.” I paused for a microsecond to give my words more weight. “But let’s not rush this year, okay? We need to catch up on the second-year curriculum, and also continue our magic and sword training.”

Catherine shook her head and smiled.

“You’re so serious, Arta. You know, you’re right, we do have a lot to do, but promise me this,”—she leaned toward me again—“promise that next academic year we’ll go out more often, okay?”

I sighed, realizing I had walked into the dead end of my own vulnerability.

“Alright…” I said uncertainly and lowered my eyes, knowing that feigning a cold tone was useless. This was a complete surrender.

Catherine looked at me intently, and her gaze grew more serious.

“Arta, are you upset?!” she asked, her gaze becoming even more serious.

I just shook my head in response. I don’t know how to be upset; it was a chaotic emotion, although in light of my internal virus, I could no longer be sure of anything…

Catherine straightened to her full height and pressed a hand to her heart.

“I promise you that we won’t waste time on nonsense, only rest and a change of scenery, nothing more.” She looked me in the eye. “Don’t think that our training isn’t important to me; I’d trade any cafe or entertainment for it. I just wish we could spend more time without obligations.”

“Alright, Catherine, if you also promise me that, then next year we will approach this matter rationally, so that it is not at the expense of our main duties,” I replied, allowing myself a smile.

Catherine smiled broadly.

“See! Don’t be down, Arta! I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

“I understand,” I replied calmly, “and now let’s not waste time and go to the city. We need to finish all our business before curfew.”

“You’re right, we need to go, or else there might be a line of other students…” With these words, Catherine went to the wardrobe, took out a warm traveling cloak, and put it on.

I stood up and followed her example, and soon we were on our way to Eldenbridge.

***

Eldenbridge met us with a dense, humming bustle. The air, damp and cold, was saturated with a complex scent of wet stone, spices from open stalls, smoke from chimneys, and something elusively river-like. Catherine confidently led me through the narrow, winding streets, where the echo of our steps was drowned out by the clamor of the crowd.

The shop “Madame Bella” was a quiet harbor in the midst of the city’s noise. Behind a heavy oak door with a brass bell, we were greeted by the aroma of lavender, sandalwood, and expensive fabrics. Inside, it was warm and quiet. Catherine immediately immersed herself in a world of silks, velvets, and lace, her fingers reverently touching the heavy, flowing materials. I, however, remained by the entrance, analyzing the space: protection runes above the entrance, the placement of mirrors, the movement routes of the few customers—all of it formed a predictable and safe system.

“Arta, come here!” she called a moment later. Her voice was full of delight. “Look at this color. It’s almost like the night sky in Troysk.”

I came closer. The fabric she held was a deep blue, almost black, with the finest silver threads woven into it, which shimmered with every movement like distant, cold stars.

“What makes you think the sky in Troysk is like that?” I asked gently, understanding that she wanted to play with a metaphor. “You’ve never been there, how would you know?” I asked with a smile.

Catherine rolled her eyes and waved her hand. “The sky in Liranis is almost the same as in Troysk, I’m sure. The same sky, the same stars, and even the same silent star.” She smiled. “Tell me it’s not so.”

I shook my head. “In Troysk, there are often northern lights in winter. It’s very beautiful, you would like it,” I stated dryly, thinking of my mother’s cult, where I was destined to become the high priestess.

“Really? Then we must visit your home sometime. I’m sure I’ll like it.” She took a few steps forward. “So what do you think of the fabric?”

“It would suit you, but not for the ball,” I replied calmly. It was not flattery, but a statement of simple fact. The blue color would emphasize her fair hair, and the silver sparks—the steel in her eyes. “However, as far as I have heard, the rules for the ball forbid the use of any colors other than white, black, and silver.”

Catherine froze. “But this is almost black!” she exclaimed indignantly.

“Almost doesn’t count,” I replied ironically.

“You’re ri-i-ight, Arta-a-a…” she drew out the words, ironically mimicking me, and put the fabric aside. “Black means black.” And her gaze deftly fell upon the adjacent display, where black fabrics lay.

After another hour of searching, we had our dresses. Catherine chose a dress of a fabric similar to the one she had initially picked, only black, while I settled on a severe, almost architectural outfit of deep black velvet. It was at that moment, as we were paying, that the bell above the door jangled sharply and unpleasantly. They entered. Isolde, Brina, and Maelys. Their appearance brought a sharp, cutting dissonance into the harmonious space of the shop, like a false note in a perfect melody.

“Well, well, look who it is,” Isolde drew out the words, her voice as sweet as poison. She gave Catherine a disdainful look, deliberately lingering on her leg, shod in an elegant boot no different from the other. “Holu, with a new prosthesis come more expensive tastes? Or is your rich friend from Tarvar paying for everything? Has your merchant father finally saved up enough for his cripple daughter to dress in silk?”

Brina and Maelys giggled quietly, like a pair of loyal jackals awaiting the scraps from their mistress’s feast.

Catherine took a step forward, her face becoming an impenetrable mask. “First of all, my father is not a merchant,” Catherine’s voice was even, but it rang with steel. “And second, you should go buy your friends some dresses. You’re the only one walking around in silk, while they follow you like shadows.”

Brina and Maelys looked at Isolde, and she, angered, clenched her fists. “Think you’re so sharp-tongued, Holu?! Or do you think your friend from Tarvar will always protect you?”

I decided to intervene; this farce had to end. “Isolde, you had better leave, before you have personal problems of your own.”

“Oh, Artalis!” Isolde exclaimed. “You think you taught that loser Nova a lesson, and now you can do anything?” After her words, both her friends giggled quietly, covering their mouths.

“I repeat, it is better if you just leave. That is the most optimal option in your situation. I am stronger than you and your friends combined. And believe me, I do not like to joke.” I looked at Isolde coldly with an empty gaze, and that emptiness echoed in her soul with a chilling terror.

“Artalis, did I threaten you? Do you think I’m suicidal?” Isolde smirked. “We will soon be studying in the same year, and believe me, I know how to be a good friend. But seriously, why do you bother with this one?” She nodded toward Catherine.

“And why do you bother with your friends? Catherine is my best friend, and if you think you can insult her, you are mistaken,” I answered in an icy voice.

“Ah, alright,” Isolde waved her hand. She turned to her friends and said cheerfully, as if nothing had happened, “Let’s go to another shop. I’ll buy you silk dresses so that some upstarts don’t think I don’t love my friends.” She cast one last disdainful glance at Catherine and me and left the shop, slamming the door.

I looked at Catherine, whose face had turned white. “Pay them no mind, Catherine,” I said in a calm voice.

“I’m not,” Catherine replied, but I saw how her fingers were clenching the fabric of her new dress to the point of pain. “It’s just… now I know they won’t stop.”

“Then you will fight back. Or do you think we are training for nothing?” I asked, looking her directly in the eye.

“I would have fought back right now, Arta,” she answered confidently.

“I know, I have no doubt in my student.” I gently placed a hand on her shoulder, and she, in response, smiled broadly and sincerely, from which I felt an internal surge of strength.

On that note, we left Eldenbridge and headed back to the academy.

***

The next morning, there was a knock on the door at the crack of dawn, and although I was dressed, Catherine was still resting, still snoring softly. I slowly opened the door and saw an enthusiastic Eloisa, like a morning bird.

“Good morning!” she chirped.

“Good morning. I am sorry, but you will have to wait a little while for Catherine to get dressed.”

“That’s alright, I came early! I slept very poorly, practically insomnia.” She handed me a parchment with sheet music. “If you play even not perfectly, I think Madame Grunsier will approve anyway, and then we will bring you up to speed.”

I took the parchment and scanned the notes. Another composition to the victims, named “Duality,” another proof of this society’s weakness and a simple melody from which either sentimental idiots or beings with a washed consciousness could feel something.

Not much time passed before I asked Eloisa to wait outside the door, woke Catherine, and we all went together to the music hall, which was located in the east academic building.

The music hall, usually filled with the scattered sounds of tuning instruments and timid voices, met us with a resonant, tense silence. Madame Grunsier, the music teacher, a woman with thin, nervous fingers and a perpetually anxious gaze, looked at me with open skepticism. Eloisa, who had dragged me into this escapade, and Catherine sat in the front row, their faces full of expectation.

I calmly sat down at the old but perfectly tuned piano. “Begin, Miss Nox,” Madame Grunsier said in a frankly disappointed voice, and I, only for show, taking out the parchment with the notes, began to perform the sacrificial ode. The keys of yellowed ivory, cold and smooth as polished ice, obediently responded to my touch. The hall filled with the first sounds. They were not born—they manifested in the space, building into the flawless architecture of the melody. This was not just music, but a pure, dissected, distilled structure. A melody devoid of human emotions—passion, sorrow, joy. Only the sequence of notes was human; everything else was not.

When I finished playing, the first to applaud was Madame Grunsier. “Artalis Nox! You are a natural talent!”

Meanwhile, Eloisa, slowly opening her mouth, slowly turned to Catherine. “I told you…” she whispered. “I knew it right away, she has perfect fingers!”

Catherine did not answer. She looked at me, and in her gaze, I saw not only admiration, but also, perhaps, fear. She had once again looked behind my mask, and perhaps her conclusions were not reassuring.

“Thank you for the high praise of my abilities, Madame. What else is required of me before the ball?”

“Nothing special. If you are willing to participate, you will need to sign some documents and come to rehearsals every Entris and Rion. And another thing, Artalis,” she paused, “since we have no pianists, I must set a small condition for you: if we need your help, you must provide it.”

“Or I will not be able to perform at the ball?” I clarified.

“Exactly. Consider it my small ultimatum. But I assure you, I will not bother you without necessity. I know that you are Evelina Valtheim’s mage-guardian.”

I nodded, the documents were signed, and Catherine and I, in the company of Eloisa, went to our classes. The first year was approaching its designated conclusion, leaving behind only the ephemeral data trails that mortals refer to as ‘memories’.

***

That evening, Catherine and I were walking our usual route from fencing practice to the baths when I felt a dangerous surge of energy. Viscous, smelling of ozone and incense, sacred as the universe itself. It was, without a doubt, soul magic.

“Catherine, go on without me. Something has happened,” I whispered quietly.

Catherine shook her head. “If something has happened, then we will go together.”

I waved my hand; there was no time to argue with her, and I followed the traces of magic, which led me to the empty magical arena. Here, in the center of a trampled circle in the snow, lay she. Olivia Briggs. Unconscious, pale as a shadow, her breath a barely perceptible cloud of vapor in the frosty air. Around her was a circle of eleven special candles: wax, incense, gold. It was a ritual, and I immediately understood its price.

I knelt beside her, and a cold chill, having nothing to do with the winter air, pierced my essence. This was not just chaos. It was sacrilege. The air in the circle of candles was saturated with the smell of desecration—a thin, nauseating aroma of a soul that had been attempted to be burned on the altar of foolish human desire. Every soul is a unique, unrepeatable creation. A perfect structure, granted by the Origin Absolute himself. And this girl, in her blind egoism, had dared to put a match to this masterpiece. Within me, there was no human anger. There was only an absolute, crystal-clear realization: before my eyes, the most unforgivable sin was being committed.

“Why, Olivia?” I asked. My voice sounded unnaturally quiet in the ringing silence. It held neither reproach nor pity. Only the cold weight of a question to which there could be no right answer.

“I wanted to be strong, like you…” she whispered.

Her words were not an excuse, but a sentence. She had wanted to imitate Order, choosing for this the path of supreme disrespect to its source.

“Do you understand that your soul is a creation that you have no right to destroy?” I continued, and each word was like a shard of ice. “You nearly destroyed the one thing that connects you to eternity. You have committed a betrayal not against yourself. You have committed it against Him.”

“Yes…” she answered hoarsely, and desperation was reflected in her healthy eye. “The Creator… Does he even exist? Or is he an impersonal observer? If he exists, why does he allow… this?”

Her question, thrown into the void with the desperation of a heretic, struck not my hearing. It struck the very foundation of my structure. For a moment, I saw in her not just a foolish, frightened child. I saw in her a reflection of an ancient, universal blindness—the very one that had made the Primordials blame the universe for the consequences of the destruction of the first world. A soul is not a toy; it is the most valuable thing in the entire universe. And after this, they dare to speak such nonsense about the Origin Absolute? This was not just disbelief. It was the highest manifestation of a logical error, the most disgusting sacrilege of all.

The air around us seemed to grow even colder, even denser. My desire to help her evaporated, replaced by an icy, surgical necessity. It was necessary to immediately interrupt this stream of poisonous, order-destroying nonsense.

“Olivia, shut up and listen to me carefully. No soul magic for the next two years. Swear it now!” my voice did not rise, but it became so dense and heavy that the very air around us seemed to compress.

“Or what, I will die?” she said hoarsely.

“You will not die. Your soul will die, and the path to new lives will be forever closed to you, you idiot!”

Olivia looked frightened, as if facts she had not considered had collided within her, and a quiet, “I swear…” escaped her lips. She coughed and looked at me with difficulty. “Arta… a pity I cannot study with you further, since you have been transferred to the second year.” She smiled and closed her eyes.

Her condition worsened, and she was breathing with difficulty.

Soon Catherine ran in, bringing help, whose disappearance I had not noticed until now, and together we helped carry Olivia to the hospital.

When we finished and were heading back to the baths, there was not the slightest emotion on Catherine’s face. She only said, “That was soul magic, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. “Olivia does not understand what she is risking. A little more, and her soul would have completely burned out.”

Catherine stopped and turned to me. Her gaze was sharp, piercing. She saw not only the fatigue on my face. She saw something more. “Arta… when you spoke to her there… it was not just anger. I have never seen you like that. It was like… the fury of a priest whose temple has been desecrated. You spoke of the Creator. Do you… do you believe in him so deeply?”

I looked at her. Her question was not out of idle curiosity. She was trying to understand. To compare. To piece together the fragments of my essence.

“Do you believe in your mother and father?” I asked ironically. “Belief is a criterion that the Creator does not need. But what Olivia did—that is not just a mistake. It is a spit in the face of eternity.”

Catherine was silent, her eyes wide open. She looked at me with a new, almost reverent awe. She saw not just a strong girl; she saw something else, and this something else, it seemed, fascinated her even more. “I… I understand,” she finally whispered. “Now I understand everything.”

“Good, I hope Olivia understood it as well as you did,” I answered coldly.

“I hope so too, Arta,” she replied, sighing heavily.

We ended that day in silence. For the following days, the academy lived on whispers. The rumors, as always, were only a distorted echo of the truth: they spoke of “complex magical injuries,” a “nervous breakdown,” that Olivia had been taken to a capital hospital for the mentally unstable. No one spoke of the main thing. No one understood that they had seen a symptom of a much more terrible disease—the readiness of a soul for self-immolation.

I knew that Olivia would live if she kept her oath. But her fate was no longer in my hands. She had become only the first crack in the foundation on which the upcoming Duality Ball was to be held. The celebration, dedicated to sacrifice, was already stained with the blood of another’s despair. The chaotic shadows were gathering, taking shape. And I was ready to meet them.