"The Thiroe Family and Household is no more."
Athelei heard Hana say those words.
He heard it.
Loud and clear.
It rang in his ears like a lullaby, mesmerising him for a moment as he played with the weird object in his foggy hands.
When Athelei cut of his senses and figuratively closed his eyes, the world turned greyscale and he could see a faint black wisp somewhere near him. It beckoned him to reach out to it. To grab hold of it.
To bring it into his being and assimilate it.
Athelei walked towards it, without the need for light as he witnessed the world in greys, whites and black. He continued to carry the weird object he found, not forgetting about the little trinket and stood before that black wisp.
'What... are you...?' Athelei asked as he ran Inspect on what seemingly should not exist.
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???
- Unnamed Occurrence.
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'Unnamed...' Athelei took a moment to register what that could mean.
"Unnamed," Athelei whispered out loud as he reached out to grasp at the faint black wisp. When his fingers came into contact with it, images flickered into his mind. In the images, he saw glimpses of the rise of the Thiroe family.
He watched as a human male cleared the hill of dangerous beasts, and valiantly placed down a mark of ownership on the land. He then introduced others to the area, cutting through the tall grass that reached their chests and finding a place to settle down.
They started with a small camp, and it grew to a few houses. The houses were then turned into a small stone fort just before a pack of wild beasts ran through their lands.
The fort was then built higher and grander.
One stone brick after another was placed over the years.
Until a small castle lay where the small camp used to be.
More years passed as that small castle was fortified and improved. A tower was erected and walls were established as generations passed by.
It was then torn to shreds by monstrosities that dyed the land crimson and black.
But the light of a torch was still burning when those monsters retreated into the abyss of legends. Athelei saw a human female, bearing traits that he had seen in Sir Thiroe. Her face was gentle as she held a delicate scroll in her hands.
A blueprint was drawn there, and the lady used it to construct a castle that Athelei now recognised.
But then in but a few images, he recognised his presence. He watched himself as he lit a small fire that grew large enough to topple the castle and burn through the entirety of that [Torch] he once saw.
And then the images faded, and Athelei watched as the black wisp dissipated from existence.
'Wait!' Athelei called out in his mind, trying to grasp at the black wisp, but he was unable to make contact with it.
There was a wall he could not cross, a place he could not step into.
The black wisp slipped through his fingers, and the feelings that had initially drawn him there turned into a feeling of emptiness. It felt like he just missed something important and he could never witness it again in its raw, initial beauty.
Athelei was feeling human emotions he had never felt before.
'That... Those images depicted the rise of something new... then it's life as it grew...' Athelei pulled out those thoughts from his messy mind, 'As well as the end it knew...'
"...Beautiful," Athelei couldn't help but blurt out as he glanced at the now empty part of the greyscaled world. Vision returned to him as his senses did too. The black wisp that was there had truly disappeared.
Athelei sighed, a weird flurry of emotions churned inside him as he decided to walk away. He still had that weird object he had been holding onto; It was some kind of marble egg, and a unique signature of energy was leaking out of it.
It was the only thing that caught his interest among all of the Thiroe's belongings, and the only thing he could actually... commandeer.
As he was walking, Athelei kept sneaking peeks at the area he had been drawn to. He was hoping that the black wisp would somehow return and he could try his hand at taking that... stain in that mysterious greyscaled world.
"Stain..." Athelei mumbled, "That's a fitting word,"
To Athelei, that black wisp looked like a mark. It looked like a splotch of ink on a piece of paper. With the images he saw, it could be described as the records of the Thiroe family's existence... or perhaps it was the mark that they left behind on history.
It was a stain... A [Stain] of their abrupt end.
"A [Stain] that one cannot get rid of," Athelei glanced at his multi-coloured Cosmic Interface that had yet to disappear.
He then decided on something as he resolutely said, "It was a [Stain of Existence]."
And something truly magical occurred to the Cosmic Interface. The screen that displayed the results of Inspect shimmered as a change transpired before Athelei's eyes.
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??? -> Mystical Phenomenon
[ "Stain of Existence" ]
- Unnamed Occurrence. -> An occurrence born from specific and special circumstances.
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A curious flash zapped through Ahtelei's nonexistent irises as he let out a satisfied giggle.
'The honour from naming something unknown to all intelligent lifeforms in the universe... It has such a compelling charm.' If Athelei was in his physical body, he would've had a wide grin plastered on his face as he read through the changed Cosmic Interface.
Picture that, for a moment. With the gods who are not Gods, and the stars who gaze back, what requirements would you need to fulfil to discover something that none of them have witnessed? What would the probability have to be?
After a few seconds of this moment of admiration and relishing, Athelei then continued on his walk. He trudged down the slope of the Thiroe family's hills, walked through muddied trails, and passed under the branches of a few singed trees until his footsteps once more drummed on the public streets.
He then found a place to transform into a large bird of prey with a five-metre wingspan. With his talons, he grasped the marble egg and took to the skies without garnering the suspicions of any cynical humans. Whatever was happening back at the ruined Thiroe castle was no longer his business.
The little marble egg of blue and white was now his priority.
Inspect had already been run on it long ago, and the few details he wanted most had already been recorded in his mind.
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Weird Object
[ "Seed of Atlantis" ]
Mana: 967/1000
- "Through this, perhaps, we may rise once more."
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Something worth mentioning was that Athelei had discovered the Seed of Atlantis inside a box with a relevant document contained in it. The parchment had been ancient, brittle, and looked like it would turn to dust with soft blow.
Quite a bit of text had been written on that prehistoric document, and it contained writing that Athelei had found familiar.
'The natives of planet Oxhor...' Athelei thought to himself as the cold air blew past him as he flew, 'The text there was definitely the ancient version of their language. Irene should be able to read it. I hope she summons me soon... If not, then I will have to study Acivis myself. But my progress on the Illyasian tongue has not reached the goal I set for myself... Should I focus on Acivis for now?'
Athelei then recalled a few details that had caught his eye on the Cosmic Interface, the word [Seed] and the phrase, [rise once more].
Such a combination made for an exciting recipe.
'First and foremost, what's Atlantis? If I know what kind of concept, object, place, person, or event that is, then this guessing game would be easier to win.' Athelei wrote down a few possibilities inside his mind library.
He then grabbed some ink and a brush and begun crossing out different words one by one. He removed words like [person], [event], and [practice].
He had been left with things like [concept],[idea], [plant], and [object].
Athelei hesitated on things like [place], and [weapon], because of how a rebirth-like rise had been occurring throughout human history. The second coming of things seemed to always come with a bang, and people expected future second comings to happen in the same manner.
Just like how the monster surge that had nearly killed off humanity, everyone was expecting the second monster surge to be just as brutal, or perhaps even worse.
"Oh Atlantis," Athelei hummed to himself as he placed the marble egg in his balcony and returned to his physical body.
"Just what could you be?"