Charlie held the pin in his hand, suddenly a few bright golden spherules came out of the petals of the flower pin and flew to his chest and entered. A mixture of sadness passion and hope appeared in his heart accompanied by the past memories all at once, that make the heart yearns. He gave the pin back to Razel, "Thank you. My family... How is... Forget it. I just walk straight ahead right?"
"You will be deeply missed and fondly remembered. Not just your family, but also your friends, the teachers, the kids you taught...", Alan followed the instruction in the book and handed the card to Charlie, "Take this, you have to walk to the end of this path and when you find a gate just hold the card high and it will open."
And just like that, the deeply cherished and loved violin stayed in the room waiting for its owner, slowly becoming less brighter, deteriorating and losing its tonal quality. The wood drying out and turning brittle and the newly changed strings rusting and losing their tension, but the owner never got the chance to play it again.
Alan rode the Maloney back to the realm of resented souls, and Razel looked just floating on the side.
Razel tried to contact Jacob but failed, so he sent a letter to Grace. 'Where should I drop off the dim soul?'
Grace responded instantly, ' There is a temporary residence beside the castle; drop him at the door, the guard will lead him to his room. '
Razel told the Maloney the destination, and explained to Alan, "You will go back to rest for a while, I have something to do, don't forget to completes the paper work. I will send the Maloney when we need to go down again."
"Are you flying ? Why does he look like a child when he is almost twenty years old? Alan let go of the repressed questions in his mind.
"Of course I am flying you just can't see it, there is chance you will get frightened when you see me, in order to avoid wasting time or refusing to work anymore I chose the easy way. As for the soul, souls appear how they vision themselves, who knows you may be an old man but in your memory, you were always young. One last thing, your training time had officially ended; so I expect you to help more in the next missions rather than just being a standby. And most importantly, be less verbose."
Alan kept thinking about Razel's words while filling the papers. The room he was guided to had a simple decor; a large comfortable bed, a desk he is writing on, and a closet full of clothes with a mirror on the door.
He finished the filling and put the papers aside, walked to the mirror and looked at the reflection. Based on the information Razel gave, this may not be his real appearance. He touched the pale youthful skin and looked at his crimson eyes, the reflection of the eyes seemed to look back at him and a sense of familiarity rose in his heart like he had done this hundreds of times before until it became habit.
He lay on the bed, trying to link any experiences of the soul they got back to the road of blooming, to his blank memory to see if there is any similarities but failed.
As time passed by, his eyelids became heavier, a vague image of the road of blooming appeared in his mind before his eyes completely shut down.
Alan was walking slowly, but he didn't know where he was heading; his vision was blurred and could only see red surrounding him. His figure was strolling unbothered by his drowsy mind, in a long path that seemed to never end. This continued as a loop; sometimes he is walking by himself in silence with a great calmness in his heart enjoying the view he couldn't really see, walking on the side of someone and having a conversion he can't understand a word of it, standing in an eerie silence with slight of pain in his heart in front of a gigantic gate surrounded by mist...
This situations repeated again and again but each one was different every time; until a heavy knocking on the door wake him up. He opened his eyes in a daze, trying to figure out who he was and where and what is happening. His gaze fell directly on the mirror then he regained his consciousness; he is Alan... and that is all, he is in the room he is going to reside in until he finishes the agreed upon mission, and someone has been knocking on the door for a while.
He got up but the sound from the door disappeared, he opened it and found a box on the ground, he got it and turned back to the room. An eye catching small wooden box beautifully engraved with complex patterns that complete each other, making the box looks mysterious and the mind wondering what precious treasure it could be hiding.
Alan caressed the engravings for a while before opening the box, his bracelet was put on a white silk with a note. He read the note first, ' Simple yet so powerful, don't let the the tiny loops deceive you. When properly used; no soul is hard to capture. '
He turned the note and found the instructions of how to use the weapon, 'Wear it normally, when time of fighting or capturing comes, send a bit of your energy to it. Think of it as a part of you, and it will obey. It can turn to any size; following the target and imprisoning it making it unable to move. As for the blades, better to use them with souls' attacks. With repeating, using it will be as easy as moving your arm. '
Alan held the bracelet and noticed the newly added ornaments; on opposite sides of the bracelet, two miniature curved blades were attached with tiny handles adorned with even tinier shiny gemstones.
He put in on his wrist, and tried to feel the energy within him. While concentrating, he sensed a fine string appearing from inside his heart and slowly branching to the rest of his body.
The body it self is just an image created by the radiation of the energy core; so what he has to do is to learn how to get stable waves of energy out of the core at will, then send it to his right wrist to enter the bracelet.
He repeated the same thing again and again, the waves come out of the core and branch to the rest of the body, he tried to keep the waves as long as possible. It is a matter of time; if the waves retreat on the middle of a fight then he will be an easy target.
After trying multiple times, he succeed to reach a few minutes but with a lower frequency; he concluded that the frequency decrease when the time increase since the waves that last a few seconds seem stronger. He repeated the same thing, but thus time he finally send the energy to the bracelet while intensely focusing on it to detect any changes.