Magnus Academy: The Cursed Blood Continuance

Special Interlude Act

Immortality of a Soul That Longs

She could have had been a lot of things.

They call her a villain, a monster-something that lied only on the surface of what she showed the world. She was cruel, evidently so. She was twisted in a way that she drove herself towards self-destruction. She kept going despite how much the world had truly made her suffer. She was violent even to herself, like a poisonous nightshade flower-she was like the thorns on roses, or even the voice that would lead anyone to their demise.

She was many things, she could have been a lot more. But she had enough of them. It was an act of giving up, an act of running away from responsibilities that pushed her to the point of that madness exhaustion. She could not handle the responsibilities, she was powerless against her fate so she ignored everything and lived her life away from the battlefield, away from the people that dragged her into pain and misery.

But she couldn't completely escape. Wherever she went and hide, no matter how much she tried to refuse her fate-the world would drag her back to where she was needed. So she fought. She shed blood. She cried. She begged. She did everything and yet, her humanity had prevailed. Her humanity was weak, her humanity could not keep up with the burden, the exhaustion overwhelming her. Thus, she did the only thing that could save her.

"The Empire had ceased all my resources." She told me back then, her back slumping over the wall, her palms gripping her long black hair as though it would stop her recurring headache. "That could have been my chance to settle everything."

She laughed with her tears streaming down her face but still, she was laughing like her life depended on it. "Alberich decided it was time to cast me out. They didn't trust me, took away all my men and said they would handle the war themselves."

Then she screamed, all alone in that old, broken down shanty she had taken shelter after running away from the Empire for days. It was cold, the storm outside the night muffling the grief she was letting out. Her heartbeat had been racing, so fast that it blended in with every strike continuous strike of lightning that illuminated the dark skies.

"I..." She trailed off, her pale blue eyes blankly staring at the floor. "I wish I had done things differently."

Her fingers began drawing runes on the wooden floor, ignoring the soft dripping of rain from the holes apparent on the ceiling. She had no expression upon her face, like all other emotions had left her, all the pain leaving her dull and numb to everything. Even with the cold, she refused to get herself some warmth, heavy sweat falling from her forehead onto the multiple layers of circles she had covered the entire floor of the small shanty with.

She stopped realizing she had reached the corner most of the room, her fists clenching so hard her nails had dug deeper enough to draw out blood in frustration. Her eyes darted around. She stood up, continuing her runes over the wall, drowning even my presence. She spent days, weeks-she did not stop even for a minute. She would constantly erase some equations then replace them with another. Sometimes she would get stuck, gripping her hair tightly with another scream when she didn't know what to do.

"No. I can't stop," she muttered to herself absentmindedly. "There must be some other way to connect these outlines to the epicenter..."

She found a way. She always did. She did not stop drawing magic circles even with the constant exert of energy slowly depleting her own life force. Months went by, seasons that changed-she never noticed them. Her focus never left the spell was she creating. She got so thin some could even say her bones were already showing. She refused to eat, rest, nor sleep. Her energy was enough to keep her mind running even with her body already failing her.