The muffled sound of bones rattle and fall with a thump, kicking up oven ash and who knows how many decades of dust. The owner of said bones, a well-dressed skeleton, sits tangled within the confines of clothing beneath the kitchen oven it fell from, posed with an expectant look and an outstretched arm waiting to shake the cloaked figure's hand.
"Uh, hi. I'm Aki. Nice to meet you?" The cloaked figure removes their hood. Her dirty blonde streaked hair falls free around her face, and her pointed ears twitch at the sudden cold. "Oh, skies. I'm talking to the dead easier than I can talk to the living now."
Her ears twitch at the sudden eerie wail that drifts into the kitchen.
"Just the wind," Aki sighs. She looks South, her eyes scanning the rather large kitchen. If it weren't covered in layers of dust and the damaged areas were restored, it would be a lavish room, befitting the manor it resides in. "Those villagers said there was a shadowgeist here, but all I've found is a bunch of wandering spirits."
She looks down at the skeletal remains again. "Since you're here… I'm definitely missing something." Aki crouches beside it and pulls out a smooth, palm-sized stone. Pointing the stone at its skull, she channels her mana. "Minor Heal."
A pop-up window appears right in front of her eyes.
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[Minor Heal Lv.0 -> Lv.1!]
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"It's been two years, and I still can't get used to that."
The stone glows a faint blue, but nothing happens. The skeleton appears to look at her as if saying, 'What were you expecting?'
"So you're not undead or living dead, huh? Then you won't mind if I…" Aki slowly undoes the skeleton's cloak and begins to loot its belongings.
Aside from long rotten food and an empty water sack, she finds a small stack of papers, a few tiny vials of coloured liquid, a short bent wand, and an oddly shaped metal fork. She also finds a torn coin bag with a handful of leafs, the country's currency, stuffed under its arm.
She pockets the smaller finds and tests the wand's grip. It feels a little itchy but otherwise fits her hand well. The papers, on the other hand, turn out to be blueprints to the manor.
"If only I'd found you earlier," Aki sighs and pulls out her own hand-drawn map from her satchel. "I wouldn't have had to do all this work."
Placing them next to each other, she compares the two against each other, looking for any anomalies. Surprisingly, she finds the first-floor blueprint has another room drawn into it with words in a foreign language written into the margins. Set between two rooms in the long hallway just outside the kitchen, Aki guesses the note pointing to it means the room is blocked by a hidden door. A labelled sketch of the fork points to a miniature sketch of what is presumably the hidden door.
"So that's it!"
Cautiously but excitedly, she runs out of the dimly illuminated kitchen towards the middle of the dark hallway.
She places her hand against the wall and starts tapping, feeling for the edges of a door. A difficult task seeing as it's nearly pitch black where she is. Her determined search yields quick results as she slips the edges of her fingernail into a razor-thin gap in the wall.
"Found you!"she thinks triumphantly. She manages to feel out the rest of the doorway with some difficulty.
It takes some back and forth trying to decipher the notes on the blueprint and searching the hallway before she finds a loose piece of wood that hid the keyhole. The key slides in and unlocks the door surprisingly easily. Now unlocked, the section of wall next to it swings noiselessly open.
The sudden moonlight streaming into the pitch-black hallway makes her recoil. She raises a fist, holding her stone defensively in front of her but nothing comes. Hesitantly, she steps inside, sidestepping the light to get a proper look at the room.
"A TV?? A game console??" Pain spikes through her head, white noise flaring to life as her thoughts rage inside her like a hurricane. She grits her teeth and tries to suppress the empty thoughts before opening her eyes again. "A blackened painting and an old jewellery box… damn it, whenever I think I'm used to this world, something like this happens!"
Her vision blurs for a moment as things manifest in her sight.
She turns her attention to the corners of her vision where three status bars hover, much like the RPGs she could hazily remember. Four different colours made up the contents of the three. The top bar had a silvery-white colour moving like water on the left side. Separated by a thin black line, next to the shining white was a deep red. Beneath those two is a blue bar, while the third is a vibrant green.
Focusing on the status bars caused a small, transparent window to open up before her eyes.
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Aki Title: Witch
LE: 55 HP: 200
MP: 250
SP: 50
[Adjusted to Darkness: 10% increase in vision when in dim light or pure dark]
More : ⟲
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"I can't get used to that… like a game, but why? This world is nothing like one." She mutters, urging it to close. "C'mon Aki! Focus!"
She slaps her cheeks together and closes her eyes. Even with them closed, the status remains visible.
"Soul Sight: Close."
By her command, the status slowly faded, returning her vision to normal.
Back to... reality.
*
Unlike the rest of the manor, this room is quite bare. The curtains don't appear moth-eaten, nor does Aki find any rat droppings. In all actuality, the room doesn't have much in the way of dust. Had she not known better, she would have guessed the room was currently being used by someone who hadn't bothered to dust that week.
Not that there was much to clean up. A small, tidy bed sat pressed against the far wall. A small nightstand holding a thick, half-used candle on its metal tray stood guard next to the bed. Next to Aki was the blackened painting, and beneath that was a small dresser. A lone jewellery box sitting dead centre.
Lastly, a small vanity desk sat next to the window, right before her. Strangely, this vanity looked clean. Cleaner anyway. A very light layer of dust coated the wooden surface of the desk and chair, but the mirror itself appeared to be in pristine condition.
"Oh man, I smudged my face," she said, stepping closer to the mirror.
Aki brushed a blonde lock of hair back over her ear and tried to wipe the smudge off. Her dark eyes reflected the moonlight, contrasting her pale skin enough to make it look like she glowed. The brown roots of her two-toned hair only highlighted her strange appearance.
"It's really not coming off!" She whined. Her black eyes shifted around the room's reflection, careful to not make the movement too noticeable.
Her ears twitched as the wind outside strengthened. She glanced around the room, her jaw clenched and her hand gripped her river stone. She was convinced that she heard voices in the wind.
No. A voice.
Coming from right in front of her.
Aki turned back to the vanity and found a teenage girl with black hair and a frilly white dress staring back at her.
The girl's hair obscured half her face. Her dress was yellowed and dirty but otherwise, she looked like any other person.
"You are very pretty." The girl said. Her voice sounded layered - as if several filters had been overlapped - and echoed through the room. "What are you doing in my room, little girl?"
Aki grimaced before politely addressing the mirror girl. "I'm not a little girl, and I'm here to-"
"Not a little girl? You look younger than I. How old are you then?" The girl in the mirror's tone was sincere. Polite.
"I thought shadowgeists were monsters? Is Shur's bestiary wrong? Unless…" Aki frowned, as she wondered about her answer. "Well, uhm, no! How old I am here doesn't matter. I was hired to take care of a ghost problem, so that's what I'm doing."
"Ah. Mistake."
The light reflected in the mirror rippled. The images shifted with the movement perfectly, allowing little visual interruption from either shadows or the light.
"Gotcha!" Aki spun on the spot, closing her eyes and raising her stone defensively before her. "Illuminate!"
A bellow of screams assaulted her ears when her spell lit up the room. She raised a hand to shield her face as her spell dimmed. Before her writhed a mass of condensed shadow, its tendrils whipped about its body violently. A cacophony of voices from the vanity made Aki jump closer to the burgeoning mass of shadows.
The young girl in the mirror no longer looked sweet. Her hair whipped about her as if it were alive. Her skin had greyed while her face had truly become monstrous. Aki watched as the girl pulled its arm back and smashed through the mirror. The sound of breaking glass rang through the room as the girl crawled from the vanity.
"Illuminate!" Aki flashed the monster right in the face before it could get past the top of the desk. "Speech, physical shadows, light manipulation, and getting stunned by a light spell. Is it an elder shadowgeist?"
"You will not banish me! No!!" wailed the shadowgeist. "Their fault, their fault, their fault! Monsters!! FLATS!"
"What? What kind of shadowgeist is this? It can talk in its true form?" Aki gathers mana within her fist and swings at the shadowgeist. "Healing Touch!"
To her surprise, her healing spell has no effect on her foe. In fact, her fist goes straight through its cheek. Aki barely has time to react in surprise when a tendril slams her against the wall. She gasped in pain, thankful her passive shield spell remained intact. She looks up from her spot on the floor, preparing another light spell. "You can talk, aren't hurt by healing spells, and didn't leave this room even after all the noise I made earlier tonight. What kind of shadowgeist are you?"
In response, the shadowgeist releases a ghastly wail, its face somehow contorting its features into a more monstrous visage.
"I. Will. Not. Be. BANISHED!" The shadowgeist lashes with its tendrils from the darker side of the room while its humanoid form launches itself off the wall toward Aki.