The payment has been made. Three questions for three answers. I have already answered one, and two remain. I await your queries, Honored One.
Endless questions swirled in Laemno's mind, pounding with more and more fervor as they increased in number. He caught his throbbing forehead, massaging his temples while recollecting his thoughts. If he didn't take his time to ponder clearly about this, he might really go mad.
There's magic in this world? Or at least something that resembles it. It doesn't give me any fantastical feel. Instead, I felt stuck in a horror segment for a moment. Hm... Right. For now, I'll use the term "magecraft" to refer to it. It corresponds to the real Laemno's memories.
Laemno lowered the triangular mirror while raising his back, sitting cross-legged on his bed. Taking a comfortable posture, he closely inspected the writings on the glass surface, a frown gradually appearing on his ethereal face.
This language doesn't remotely resemble anything I've ever encountered on Earth. The streaks are irregular and don't seem to follow any kind of logic, but weirdly enough, I can comprehend them.
Illusory flickers of knowledge zapped past his eyes as fragments of the real Laemno's memories surfaced in his mind.
Heriperan! That's it. An archaic language mostly used in written form to perform religious rites. Is it also used for magecraft? No wonder it didn't match my initial impression of the common tongue here. My mind and his body must still be harmonizing right now, so Laemno's knowledge is only coming back in scattered bits.
Preferring to stay on the cautious side, Laemno didn't ask a question to the triangular mirror and silently stood up instead. He walked back to the silvery marble table, looking at the tray of berry-looking fruits. Once again, he felt a lingering, bitter taste in his mouth, perhaps a subconscious reaction coming from his fogged psyche.
These don't seem like elderberries. They're too small, and... it feels like my body is warning me that they're dangerous.
He carefully plucked one tiny fruit from the thick clutter, rolling it down to the middle of his palm. A flash of realization swept his wits as if remembering the sensation, making him drop it.
Hemlock fruits... This is poison! So that's the origin of the bitter taste in my mouth... Did the real Laemno mistakingly eat one of them?
Following that, Laemno noticed a slip of light brown papyrus protruding from underneath the tray. He took it out and flapped it open to read its content. Two sentences were written in awkward calligraphy, this time in the common tongue:
Everything is meaningless.
It ends at twenty.
As he read them, a sense of despair washed over his body, nearly making his legs buckle. However, unlike in the previous instances, he could not associate these feelings with a particular memory.
What's the meaning of this?
He cast his silvery gaze on the cracked table mirror right beside the tray.
I sense faint anger beneath the overwhelming misery. The real Laemno was anguished but also furious at something. It made him punch the table mirror, explaining the cracks and my bloody knuckles.
Laemno's eyes suddenly widened as he glanced at the triangular mirror in his hand.
It said that two questions out of three remain. Was it the real Laemno who asked the first one? Then the answer it gave must have driven him into despair, which is why he ate one of the hemlock fruits. Yes, this makes sense, but...
Chills went down his spine after he connected the dots.
What kind of answer would make an eleven-year-old boy commit suicide? This mirror... It hides something evil, I'm sure of it. No individual with common sense would view a device requiring blood payment as good. Plus, that eye...
Laemno shivered and prepared to throw the triangular mirror away when he suddenly froze, sensing something amiss.
I have a nagging feeling that I shouldn't do this. Is it the memory of Laemno's body? Throwing this mirror away will have bad consequences?
His attention subconsciously turned towards a particular corner of his chamber, where an elegant silver-and-white bookcase stood against the pristine wall. Beside it, a sculpted bronze tablet lay diagonally, displaying a cluster of years akin to a calendar.
The year 1911 was circled with black ink.
Above, he saw the painted effigy of a magnificent woman, her face veiled by a cloak of stars and constellations. Nebulae swirled around her body, forming a lavish dress that perfectly reflected a starry night.
Laemno couldn't help but feel intense reverence when he glanced at her, and his heart throbbed with two conflicting emotions: adoration and betrayal.
Shaking his head, he approached the bookcase and quickly reviewed the different titles displayed on the thick spines. None of them were in Heriperan. Soon, one caught his attention, prompting him to stand on his toes to pick it up. Its weight nearly made it slip from his weak grip, and he roughly threw it toward the silvery marble table.
Come on. I can't even hold a book? Laemno inwardly sighed, a grimace creeping on his face.
Taking a closer look at the book, he briefly paused when he saw its gorgeous brass-colored binding, ornamented with gold and bronze swirls on either side. The title, Tale of Sacrifice, was written in elegant strokes on the main cover, though the author wasn't mentioned.
He had never owned anything as fancy as that on Earth, making him rather wistful.
Keeping himself from losing focus, he opened the first page, catching a whiff of its slightly sweet, musky scent. A sentence was faintly inscribed on the nearly empty paper:
To the Kingdom of Stars and Astrologers, a tale never to be forgotten.
Laemno jolted as past knowledge suddenly flooded his mind, coming directly from his slumbering memory.
As he had assumed, they came in batches and responded to stimuli—mainly familiar figures or phrases, though he couldn't recover the events preceding his death for some reason.
Nevertheless, he managed to learn something valuable this time.
I was born in Hierapetra, the Kingdom of Stars and Astrologers.
He turned his gaze towards the magnificent silver-and-white city outside the window.
This is the nation's Divine Capital, Priene. The real Laemno must have been pretty important if he resided in such a sublime building. If I'm to stay and blend in, I must know why.
A tinge of excitement flared in his eyes while he flipped the pages, half-scared and half-curious. Skimming through the content, Laemno soon grasped what the book was about.
In short, it narrated the mythical story of a pious man from the end of the Fourth Era, also called the Heroic Epoch, roughly three thousand years before the start of the current calendar.
He had watched humanity dive into hubris and blasphemy, desecrating the name of the divine and daring to raise profane kingdoms without their consent. In the end, they even held the ambition of challenging the Gods Beyond and claiming their throne, ultimately meeting their demise.
But it didn't stop there.
Disappointed at their creation, the Gods Beyond unleashed one catastrophe after another to punish the surviving humans until the pious man couldn't bear to watch such horror anymore.
A saint in both mind and soul, he offered his body to the Gods Beyond as a sacrifice—to appease them and to serve as an anchor for the future of his kind.
To ensure that the oath of piety would be remembered, he even pledged his spiritual descendants to be sacrificed for this cause.
That was the first Celestial Offering.
Henceforth, and since the legendary oblation of the Nameless Saint, a Celestial Offering would be born every centurial and sacrificed to the Gods Beyond once of age, staying as an eternal punishment for humanity's depravity, but also their last hope of redemption in the eyes of the divine.
Having lost trust in their creation, the Gods Beyond even sent seven representatives to the physical realm to act in their stead, each ruling one of the seven nations and safeguarding the sanctity of the Sacrificial Ceremony.
Known as Hallowed Sovereigns, they were deities in the flesh, presiding over their respective domains and keeping an ethereal leash on human baseness.
Their descent marked the Year 0 of the Hallowed Calendar, and their dominion continued through the Fifth Era and well into the Sixth Era, which was the current Epoch.
Laemno reached the end of the book, noticing some scribbled notes on the last page. The number 1911 and the words "Sacrificial Ceremony" were written with the same awkward style typical of an eleven-year-old. Beneath them, a term was inscribed in archaic Heriperan, hardly decipherable due to the fresh ink having been mixed with an unknown clear liquid.
After some time and a lot of effort to recall his hazy lessons in this language, a swirl of fear, confusion, and pure terror appeared in his silvery eyes.
The Heriperan word crudely translated to Deathdate.
Following that, another wave of memories surged in his mind, nearly stifling his wits. At that moment, he remembered.
"I am... a Celestial Offering."