With a sudden rising inside my body, my hands reach my sword reflexively, with the changing of expression of Lysandria's team, of my siblings.
I stand to take a look at the night sky which can't be seen from inside. As I try to walk, a sudden cramp rises inside my thigh, leading to an instant kneeling. It wasn't a wound nor a consequence, yet it was an intense pain, not knowing from what, but the raw feeling was more than I can ignore.
A sudden pain covered my chest; my blood seems to carry a degree of temperature my body ain't. Suddenly, I saw Seraphine, Eron, and the others start to tense, seeing the condition of me, rushing to give support and a heal. And with an intense and sharp pain rising inside my chest like a panic, the world starts to distort, like darkness itself starts to mutate it, and the voices of my siblings and everyone else start to fade.
And with a deep sigh and sweat all over my face, I wake up on the cold floor of stones and with the warm air currents of the bonfire. With it, I felt a sudden sharp pain in my head like a wave meant to collapse me—not too much to make me either die nor vomit, but to reflexively reach my hands for it. But my right one was numb and there was something that was blocking my hand movement
My distorted blur vision starts to return when I realize I was dreaming after falling, after the tournament.
AM I?
I can't tell. It's what I am; seeing distorted, lucid, and somatic dreams is what sleeping means for me.
The dry leaves were burning. The scents of ashes and iron were in the air, the different fragrances of different people, of bodies and sweat. Everyone was sleeping and I was covered and shackled with thick roots of plants, while Lysandria wasn't there. Alas, they were tight and mana-sucking, so there ain't a chance by mana, nor had I ever taken care of my body enough to break them.
And it was just me, shackled by the roots of a tree that wasn't there. My uncut black hair covering my ears, blue, ocean-like eyes that were calm but uncomfortable by the tightness of the shackles and the lessening of mana. Alas, the slimness of me that once I found pride in, now is the reason for my helplessness.
I questioned myself: should I try to use power to get out and awake those who didn't kill me even when they had a chance? What am I thinking? Who killed their own brother because he fights from the other side. Alas, I wish that should be the only thing.
The sucking of the blood of Seraphine... I looked toward the ceiling of the cave and asked, "Why this, Curse Weaver?"
She replied, "You will understand when the time comes."
I became quiet, not because it satisfies me, but I knew she ain't going to answer anyway. I can't find a single excuse to forgive myself, knowing even if I was threatened to either get blood or lose the vessel which the Curse Weaver, my current body, had granted me. Should I apologize to her, to Seraphine? But even before, has an apology ever solved a conflict? Even if it has, I don't remember.
As I saw all of them sleeping, resting like a person should... but why can't I? Alas, it might be a sort of temporal punishment for the things I do: to drink the blood of an innocent girl, to let demons win, to abandon my family when I had a chance to return, to not try to save Aeldir's parents, to...
The roots that felt tight start to loosen, like the spell itself was weakening. The roots that meant more than iron shackles now felt like loose ropes. I escape them and silently put them aside.
Finally, I can sit and walk. I can run from here, to run and try to escape the consequences, but I ain't certain what they will do to my siblings, to my sister, to my brother. If I can't run, I at least can walk and clear my thoughts. So, I walk out, and that's when I saw her.