CHAPTER 62: AENOTH

They moved through the trees until the path opened into a shallow vale. There, faint light glimmered under the snow, traces of old stone buried by centuries. The pattern was unmistakable: a circular dais, engraved with crescent motifs.

"The Eclipsed Sanctuary. When was it abandoned, and why?"

Cecilia murmured, her voice piercing the silence of the once sacred place.

"Its popularity waned after the Age of Players, as people’s faith drifted away from the gods. But the trigger for its abandonment was Aenoth’s transformation. The details aren’t clear, as there weren’t survivors..."

’There weren’t survivors.’ Those words hurt Cecilia. Even if it wasn’t her who had caused it, if the cause was really Aenoth, she felt responsible for it.

The Eclipsed Sanctuary was one of the structures built by the Dead Nerds Society, with the goal of strengthening the influence of the guild over the territory, as part of Drakestadt’s first expansion wave.

It was a ruin now, the altar cracked and the moonstone tiles dulled by frost. Yet even broken, it had some faint, familiar resonance. It was a soft humming, as if the hymns of Ephemerys still lingered in the stones.

Cecilia knelt, brushing snow from the carvings. Her fingertips came away tinged with faint light.

Marya approached slowly, looking around.

"It’s... beautiful. In a sad way."

"Most holy places are."

Ephyrael had once told her that. The memory came unbidden, and Cecilia smiled faintly at the echo of his voice. Even if the Ephyrael at that moment was still an NPC and his words were just an LLM algorithm doing tricks, it still warmed her heart.

She rose and talked to him and Siraaeniel.

"You said she used to come here, before the change... Do you happen to know why?"

Ephyrael was the first to answer with his soft voice.

"In her mortal years, Aenoth would kneel at the Eclipsed Sanctuary before every campaign. She wasn’t praying for victory. She was asking forgiveness in advance. She swore that every life she took would one day bloom again through her hands."

Cecilia’s gaze lowered.

"She learned that vow from me."

It was just a flair thing that she added to her priestess character. To think that it would guide the actions of her follower even after she had departed made her heart ache.

Siraaeniel added with a measured tone, yet something in his voice betrayed the composure he was holding.

"Indeed. The Sanctuary was her fulcrum, the place where she balanced purpose against remorse. You consecrated her sword yourself, binding it to the moon’s reflection. A symbolic gesture, but she believed it to be literal: that moonlight could cleanse even a soldier’s hands."

Ephyrael’s expression darkened, thoughtful.

"And then came the curse. The irony was exquisite, in the cruel sense of the word. The Sanctuary she had built her soul around turned upon her. By being neither alive nor dead, she became the embodiment of blasphemy itself."

Siraaeniel’s tone had also gone dark.

"This place was meant to unite life and death, a holy place for the religion of Ephemerys. She built her own self-image around it. But the holiness of the place was broken by her very presence. The hymn of balance could not bear her paradox."

Cecilia writhed in agony inside. Her heart was throbbing in pain, thinking about Aenoth. She was the last follower she designed, and even the devotion to Ephemerys and the vow were things she wrote into the character’s background.

And now that character is a real person, with real emotions... and under a curse of vampirism. Not only a blasphemy to her faith, but the very thing she hated the most.

Sensing something was not right, Marya took Cecilia’s hand in hers. The touch of the girl’s little hands brought instant calm to her.

Cecilia turned her head north. Beyond the ruined altar, a narrow path vanished into fog. The snow there had melted in strange patterns, as though scorched by moonlight.

"That way."

They followed the trail upward, where the trees thinned and the wind carried whispers. Voices too faint to make out, overlapping, could barely be heard.

At first, Marya thought they were ghosts. But when she listened closer, she realized they were repeating fragments of familiar phrases.

"...initialize... ...faith... ...return... ...unauthorized access... ...bless..."

Her stomach twisted.

"Sensei... that’s-"

"Yes. The cycle here is broken."

A sudden pulse rippled through the air, bending the light. Snowflakes hung motionless for a heartbeat, then fell upward, vanishing into the mist.

"That’s mana reflux, Marya. That’s what happens when someone tries to use too much mana at once."

((How do I know that? That wasn’t in the game...))

Mina’s hand moved to her dagger by instinct.

"And us?"

"We keep moving."

They pressed on, the path winding higher through stone spires crusted with ice. Every step forward felt heavier, as though the air itself resisted. Marya’s breath fogged in uneven bursts; her mana channels burned faintly beneath her skin.

Then, through the veil of snow, they saw it: a faint red glow spilling from a crevasse in the mountainside. The light pulsed with a slow, deliberate rhythm, like a heartbeat but not quite human.

Mina squinted.

"That can’t be fire."

"No."

((That mana flow... it’s too familiar, somehow. Is my body remembering things from the game that weren’t noticeable to us players?))

They approached cautiously, then peeked through the entrance.

The cavern beyond was vast like a cathedral, its walls lined with veins of crimson crystal that pulsed like living tissue. At the center, rising from a pool of silver frost, stood a figure cloaked in shadow - motionless, pale, with the red glow forming a halo above her.

The air was thick with power, the same kind that made prayers crumble into silence.

Marya’s whisper trembled.

"Is that-"

"Yes. That’s Aenoth."

Cecilia answered the girl. That figure in front of her was unmistakable. Even if there wasn’t the mana signature, she would still have recognized her.

The figure stirred.

Her head lifted slowly, revealing a face both terrible and heartbreakingly familiar. It had the beauty of an elf tempered by the sharp hunger of undeath.

Her eyes burned faintly crimson, and when she spoke, her voice came layered, like two souls overlapping.

"Morielen..."

Her tone was cold. An acknowledgment of her presence, neither a threat or a welcome. And the word wasn’t the ’Master’ she used to say every time she would meet Cecilia. Instead, she used her character’s name.

"It’s been centuries. I’m sorry for taking so long to come back."

Cecilia said softly, her voice breaking just a little bit.

The vampire’s lips curved faintly, almost human.

"And still you look the same."

She ignored the apologies, and her gaze flicked toward Marya, curious, then back to Cecilia.

"You shouldn’t have come."

Cecilia took a step forward.

"You’re wrong about that."

Aenoth’s eyes shifted out of focus, as though she were staring through her rather than at her.

"They’re lost. All of them. They fall between worlds, half-born. They are screaming. I can hear them, Morielen. I thought I could guide them home, to make my part for the cycle, even though I’m now reduced to being... This."

"You’re guiding them to yourself. And it’s killing you."

Aenoth scoffed, the expression on her face wrong and beautiful.

"Killing me. I wish it would. That would be mercy on me."

Cecilia took another two steps forward, entering the cavern and closing the distance between them

"I understand what you feel, Aenoth. I truly do. But that’s not true. You don’t need all that suffering to come back to the cycle. You are not to blame for the curse that was imposed on you."

Aenoth tilted her head.

"Is that so?"

"It is."

For a long time, they simply stared at one another. Between them, the light pulsed faster, the crystals brightening until the whole cavern seemed to breathe.

Then, faintly, the interface flickered in Cecilia’s vision. Just one line, glitching across her sight.

[User: Aurenvaelir Kaeliraenel. Connection pending.]

She froze.

Aenoth’s eyes widened.

"You see it too, don’t you?"

That was the name of Helen’s character.

For the first time since she came to this world, Cecilia felt afraid.