The private chamber of Sera Valdrake was a secret chamber; it was completely intact, the way it had been when she had left it. It was located in the lowest level of the Valdrake family vaults, a place that nobody could easily find unless they had Valdrake lineage and a reason to explore the maze of tunnels that could not be mapped by the game. As I stared at the likeness of Sera on the parchment, I was overcome by emotion.
I had no tears to shed. There was nothing that I could do. I presume Cedric Valdrake's body doesn't possess tears either. I presume Cedric Valdrake's tear ducts were working correctly, but there was something fundamentally incompatible about what I was thinking with my brain and my eyes. The Valdrake bloodline appears to look down upon tears, believing that they are merely glitches to be removed from the overall design.
Yet I felt an unusual crack deep within me, situated directly behind the breastbone, an emotional crack that had nothing to do with the decimated Aetheric Core. The crack was something ancient and belonging to another time and another body and another brother who did not fulfill his role in helping his sister survive.
I remember Hana's illustrations of me, too. I recall when I used to see them displayed prominently on the refrigerator, decorated with fruit-shaped magnets. She illustrated me tall, as well. She drew me smiling, even though I had very infrequently smiled in the latter half of her life. She depicted me holding her hand.
After she passed, I removed the drawings from the fridge and threw them all away. They were too painful for me to look at any longer after her passing. Some of them included a record of what my sister saw when she looked at me — an image of a tall, smiling man who held her hand. Because of the immense amount of pain I felt, I did not keep the drawings.I had seen another sister's picture, another little hand trying to reach out to its creator, another misspelled message filled with the trust that had been violated by the very person it was intended for.
"He keeps me safe from everything,"
Except for the person who took your life.
I removed the picture from its location with care and precision, so that when the pin was removed, it did not damage or tear the paper; it was in fragile, but intact, condition. Once the picture was removed from the wall, I carefully folded it in half and tucked it inside my coat, close to my heart, where the broken Aether Core hummed with a fractured rhythm.
I justified this action to myself as gathering evidence to use in strategy for Sera's life and death.
But I was lying to myself, and the Villain's Ledger (which had an uncanny ability to show up at the worst possible time for me) knew it.
---
[ Villain Points Earned: +0 ]
Reason: No villainous activity was detected during this action.
Note: Keeping the drawing of a deceased child is not described in the Villain Handbook and, therefore, I cannot categorize this action. I have placed it under "anomalous behaviour" for future monitoring.
The system had no emotion while observing the event. The system does not have emotions itself. It was an unsolicited clarification from the system and, therefore, looks suspicious.
---
I ignored the notification on my screen. My hands were trembling again; this time it was not from the Void Aether but from something the system cannot measure and which has been passed through my bloodline.I took a step back from the wall and began to leave the room when I stopped and turned back to it. There was something else here, something that I missed because the drawing and the overwhelming emotions took my entire focus.
In the dim light coming from the hallway behind me, I noticed that there is a wall on the left side of the room that does not match its surroundings. The stone is of the same color and texture as the other stones; however, the Void Aether acts differently around the wall. It is strangely curved, unlike the ambient energy flowing evenly through every other surface.
It is possible that there is a seal under the stone.
I have come across,
In the game, I encountered Void Sealing Chambers that only opened with an appropriate level of Void Sovereignty. The game designates them with bright purple signs. However, the only visible element right now is the little warping of the Aether Flow, which I have only experienced because I have been working with Raw Void Aether through my Meridians nightly for a week, and now I know how the energy feels when it hits Resistance.
Without the training of the Void Meridian Reversal, I could not have detected this. The average Cultivator would not have detected this, no matter how powerful. You must be attuned to the Void Aether on the level of your meridian to have the sensitivity required to identify this. The standard core cultivation does not allow for this level of attunement.
Do you think it is a coincidence?Was it the intention of the Ancestor to write a cultivation text to provide exact knowledge for a Valdrake (whose Core is damaged) following the Meridian Path and developing sensitivities above and beyond what was available before on the normal Path?
I feel against the sealed stone wall with my hand. The stone felt warm; not hot, but warm like the warmth of skin, warmth that comes from something alive. The Void Aether I touched responded to my touch with a simultaneous vibration and resonance that travelled up my arm to my chest and deep into my very bloodline, into the dormant spark of Void Sovereignty that had once beat like a Heart.
Afterwards, there was something I was hearing through the stone wall that had been hidden and sealed for centuries.
Not a Voice. It was not a Voice. It was not quite the same as before. This Time it sounded more like a memory of a Voice. A Long ago whisper that had lost all of its substance, shape, and volume from the ravages of Time and Imprisonment. This too was a statement of pure intent; only One Word - "Hungry."
I felt the hair on the back of my neck raise.
I knew, without having played the Game, that there was something behind this wall. The Game had never given me the opportunity to access or see this Room, this Branch of the Vault, nor access it through the normal means. However, I have collected Data files from the DLC that point to the same recurring Asset Name, over and over, and it was referenced repeatedly throughout the various Incomplete Dialogue Trees and Incomplete Quest Scripts. The Asset Name is:
"NIHIL_SEALED_LOCATION."
This was referring to the Sword; the Sentient, Mythic-grade Weapon that feeds on the Void Aether and grows alongside its Wielder.This was an item that had been bugged by the game's developers. No player would ever have been able to acquire it.
I was wrong. This wasn't located under the Academy as I'd thought based on the game's information. Instead, it was located in the vault of Valdrake behind a sealed door located in a little girl's bedroom.
In her bedroom.
The possibilities of what this means hit me hard. The powerful weapon was sealed away in Sera's room. A small child had a powerful weapon hidden under her bed. Why? To protect it? Or was it to imprison it? Was it placed there because the room was sealed and forgotten? Or was the room constructed specifically to hold that weapon?
And what about Sera? Did she know? Did a ten-year-old girl know she was living above a sealed Mythic weapon? What if while drawing pictures of her brother, she heard an ancient, evil creature whispering just behind her wall?
I withdrew my hand. The warmth disappeared. The whisper — if it was indeed a whisper and not simply my mind filling the silence with its own ideas — became silent.
The seal was too far gone for me to open it. I could feel that certainty deep in my bones. No matter how much Void Sovereignty level I had, 0.3% access was definitely not enough to open this seal. I would need well beyond Stage 1, probably somewhere around Stage 2, before I could even attempt to open this doorway.
But I now knew where the Mythic weapon was located. I knew how to access it.I realized that the day I would finally unlock an item the game had classified as impossible to get would come soon. The item was hidden behind a wall in a dead girl's room, and it was whispering to me the only thing it had left to say.
After leaving the room, I closed the door and made my way through the maze inside the Vault. I passed by weapons, artifacts, and ancient books. The ledgers in the vault had an entry that listed the price of a child's death as eight Gold Imperials.
I climbed the stairs and through the entrance to the Duke's study. I stood there, breathing air that did not have the taste of age, secrets, and sorrow.
---
[ HIDDEN QUESTS - UPDATED ]
Quest - The Cracked Path
Progress - 14/100
New Quest Found:
Quest - The Hungry Dark
Description - There is something sleeping in a sealed space where once a child dreamed. It is very patient, very ancient, and very, very hungry.
Objective - Complete Activation Stage 1 of the Void Sovereignty and return back to the Sealed Chamber.
Reward - ????
Note - The system that generated this quest was not the same system that generated the original game content, and that system does not know what made it, and is anxious about it. It wants you to be anxious about it too.
---
Two hidden quests. Neither of which came from the original game. Both point to paths that players have never walked before me.
The time shown on the Duke's clock was 3:17 AM. The household staff would begin their daily routines in less than six hours. This was the time to train.
I removed the Ancient cultivation text I carried in my coat, being careful to not bend it, as I also had a drawing inside it of two siblings holding hands; and I walked to my bedroom.
I had now completed my 14th Circulation and have 86 Circulations remaining.
A dead girl's drawing against my chest.
A sword, ravenous and whispering through the wall.
I had twenty days until the entrance examination that would decide whether the villain would live long enough to discover the meaning of any of this.
I sat on the floor, closed my eyes, and reached through the broken core into the blood, through the blood into the bone.
The Void answered me.
My hands burned.
Still, I completed a Circulation.