"Arvi is dead."

  "No -"

  "Didn't you see that bitch face of hers? She fucked her own teacher. Her perishing is a blessing to our humanity!"

  "Shut up!" She screamed, her nervousness rolled down her heated skin in chilled beads, serving as a reminder that her nightmare had haunted her for three months straight now.

  Thunder cracked outside, and a similar agony went through Ellissae's heart. She wiped off her perspiration and stared at her reflection in the bronze mirror. In the dim light she saw herself after the heaven knows how many days - hollowed cheeks, protruding bones, tiredness wearing down her pale skin in rag-like curtain.

  _______________________

  Villaira looked back once more before entering the secret chamber of the Great Library. Maybe it was because of the exhausted condition of her Institution, or maybe it was because of the exhaustion of the Masters of the Institution that she could reach here so easily, but either way, she had breached past her limits. One bowl of Liquid Amber, ten minutes of her rigorous sketching of runes and spells on the ground of the Secret Chamber, and she was ready to call upon the dead spirits. "Forbidden Magic" - she knew she was breaking the rules. But did Arvi not matter more than the potential punishment that was about to befall upon her?

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  She sat within the centre of the intertwined runes, slashed her palm, closed her eyes and began to chant. The storm that roared outside was nothing compared to the agony that kept wailing within her heart.

  ____________________

  Darkness filled the vision of her soul. Screams rattled her bones. But the most severe was the Stench of Death that surrounded her like a night veil. Pain struck through her chest like how blade cuts through mud. And her vision dimmed. "Villi!" She heard being called by a voice, the same voice that filled her up with an agonizing ecstasy, the same voice that she had avoided for years, the same voice that had just now pulled her out of the trickery of the Dead.

  "What are you doing?!" Villaira opened her eyes only to find Ellissae bending down nearby, her face contorted in a mixture of disbelief, concern etched across her tired features.

  "Ella-" Villaira spoke, her throat extremely dry. She could taste the metallic stench of blood on her taste buds, the liquid oozing out of the corner of her mouth. "I saw her."

  Several thunders cracked outside, splitting the sky into pieces. Villaira noticed Ellissae's face. It took her time to register what she had been told right now. And then a tremor crossed her entire body, turning her cold heart colder. "What did you say?" She asked, slowly, carefully, as if she was handling such a delicate glass piece that could shatter just by a mere noise.

  Villaira waited, remembering what she saw just now in the Spell, the Spirits, the Ghouls, the miasma of Death. She looked up at Ellissae's face, her emerald eyes reflecting back the dim light like lost moss on a forgotten tree.

  "I found Arvi."