XI

  Inheritances

  I stood in front of the mural for a while, just staring at it. With her skin and hair the same as mine, the woman was almost a mirror image of me.

  ‘Is she an ancestor of mine?’

  I turned back to the front of the room, where the cindertree loomed over the valley. It may be an artistic interpretation, but that cindertree had been summoned into the real world. The thought to do so had never crossed my mind. But had the cindertree not already shown it could enter this realm? The energy cost was simply ridiculous. And that was for a single branch. I frowned. How strong was that woman? D-grade? She was fighting dragons and other mythical creatures I’d never caught wind of. To become that strong…I eyed the battlefield. The number of corpses which were still being dragged towards the tree. The blood which covered the earth like a red curtain.

  ‘The Eve of Communion...what a soft term for the destruction they sowed.’

  My attention turned back to the woman. Her expression was steely.

  Its keeper longs to see it grow into heaven, the words came back to me.

  The visage of the creature attached to her spear reflected in the woman’s eyes. I laid my hand on the spearhead. If there was a single message, it was clear: for the tree to grow, it must feed on its enemies.

  You have witnessed the Eve of Communion. Carve your way through the multiverse.

  +10 Fortitude

  A warm glow entered my arm and travelled into my core, then a wall off to the side opened up, showing another wooden doorway.

  I didn’t enter. Not yet. ‘Carve your way through.’

  Now that I’d found proof of my past so quickly, I didn’t doubt the realm held more of my heritage. Perhaps even at this Castle Shield. But to make it through the rest of the realm I needed power. And so what lay ahead of me was the same as the depiction. This path of Communion.

  My mind wasn’t as clear as the road ahead. Beasts were not mindless creatures. Especially not those of myth and legend.

  This Eve of Communion was nothing short of a massacre.

  Could I do that? Could I murder other beings in cold blood just to become stronger and find pieces of my past? Was that truly the only path? I didn’t know and the Hall had no answer for me—or perhaps it’d already given one.

  The sound of blazing leaves followed me as I headed for the exit.

  Black rushed to his feet and growled before Shivan heard the footsteps exiting the entrance.

  Shivan’s iron collar rang as he too shot to his feet.

  Enough time had passed for darkness to slither between the snow. Except for the steady fall of feet, the girl remained unperceived. Her boots exited the shadows cloying within the tunnel and stepped into the soft moonlight.

  Shivan pulled two axes from his belt and squared his stance. His head grew light.

  ‘Breathe, you idiot.’

  He forced his breathing into a semblance of rhythm.

  The girl stepped fully into the light. She was looking at the ground. Her distinct hair was fastened into a tail, but her bangs curled and shrouded part of her face. Up close, she was taller than Shivan had assumed and her aura even thicker. She looked up and fixed him a stare. It was the stare of a person who couldn’t be bothered to deal with a pest.

  “You may go. I will not chase you.”

  Black stepped back, his posture hunched and tail tucked. Shivan swallowed. All that talk of being ready, now look at him. He was scared of a lvl. 3 girl who couldn’t be older than eighteen despite her size. Didn’t he say he was going to become stronger? That he was going to claim a powerful inheritance of his own and lead his clan to new heights?

  Shivan’s grip on his axes tightened.

  The girl paused. An unknowable light flashed in her eyes, and her lips curved ever so slightly. The visage was almost sad.

  Fire flourished in the air, shaping into a gate next to her head.

  Shivan and Black rushed forwards. Her summons were slightly bigger than an eagle, so Black wouldn’t be able to take them two-on-one. But they were only a problem if they ever got to spawn!

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  His core revolved, pushing essence into his legs. They swelled. Two steps became one, and Shivan ate the distance between him and the summoner. A quick flash of metal challenged his axe head on.

  ‘Idiot.’ He was going to blow straight through her.

  The jagged axe head slammed into the glowing blade…and got stuck.

  Shivan frowned. She has a body-enhancing art as well as summons?

  But she only had one blade. He had two. The axe in his offhand descended, so the girl was forced to jump away.

  ‘Like I’m letting you!’

  The birds had already shot out of the portal towards Black, but his companion would be able to hold out for a bit.

  Metal descended in a flurry and drove the girl closer to the rocks. Before Shivan could push her up against the hard surface and cut off her escape, she kicked the ground.

  The beast tamer cried as the dirt got into his eyes. He blindly swung in an arc in front of him to ward off any attack. But when he blinked the majority of the grime from his sight, he saw the girl was only standing still, just watching him.

  “I have a question if you don’t mind.”

  His mind was too shocked to properly respond. She took that silence as her cue to go on.

  “You followed me out here to kill me. Why?”

  She was buying time.

  “Because it benefits me!” he screamed and launched himself forwards.

  His instincts screamed and he interrupted his lunge mid-movement.

  A slice of fire passed right in front of his nose, carving a line in the snow. Strands of his hair fell to the floor.

  Shivan whirled towards the source…and stilled. A bird of prey big enough that it reached the girl’s waist and just under Shivan’s chest lounged on top of Black. The bird’s golden talons dripped with blood. Pieces of Black’s neck were skewered onto it. Shivan felt it then—how hadn’t he done so earlier?—his bond with his spirit beast thinning.

  A sharp whisper of metal drew Shivan’s gaze back to the girl.

  Her blade entered its sheathe. “I’ll repeat myself. You may leave.”

  His controlled breathing made way for erratic huffs. He looked at her level again, which still showed lvl. 3. A breeze carrying the scent of Black’s corpse sent her bangs tumbling, revealing both of her eyes. That’s when Shivan heard them. Wails. Screams. Bestial roars that echoed from a place deep within those orbs, which looked upon him so unfavourably. The next thought crashed into Shivan so assuredly that he’d never known anything more certain in his life: She was wrong. The kind of wrong that the mystic realm would shape into an abomination before the trials were over. The kind of wrong that a disciple like him had no shot challenging if the infant drake had been crippled and fed poison. Yet he also knew that Black’s screams would soon join the cacophony. That of his only partner, trapped for eternity.

  His axes raised. The girl looked down.

  The inheritances were like a night sky full of stars.

  Kazzio sighed in admiration. ‘I’ll never tire of watching them.’

  As he sat in his chair, the scripts of the room shrouding him in impenetrable darkness, some of the stars winked out. They were spread into tiers, and it was one of those at the lower levels that had vanished. Paltry, when compared to the available inheritances. However, even one of the lower inheritances could set a middling disciple up to reach the peak of F-grade.

  Three quick knocks on his door.

  “Come in.”

  Light pouring from the opening of the door didn’t break the veil of darkness in the room and was swallowed. Tribune Mine, his attendant, stepped inside. Her long, dark robes billowed over the ground in an unseen draft coming from the ceiling, which filled the room with the cool scent of lemon.

  “Lord Kazzio,” she bowed over the notepad in her arms.

  “I told you that Kazz is fine.”

  She pushed up her glasses. “I come to inform you that the elders of the Pillars have invited you for dinner.”

  Kazz shook his head. Though he loved Silver, his mentor, for getting him assigned as the head Custodian of Everwinter, the job had its cons.

  He flicked his hand. “Give them an excuse. I’m not interested in their pompous gatherings.”

  While there were some among them that should be taken seriously, like that weapon empire and the dark…fallen?—he couldn’t quite remember—immortals, the rest of the clans were but specks of dust before an approaching storm, yet thought themselves palaces. He’d entertained them the first few decades, but having an elder hint they had a beautiful, peerless niece ready for the scooping got old quick.

  ‘They can’t even get the gender right.’

  With a sigh, he turned back to the flowing constellation and found his gaze straying to the top, where less than a dozen stars shone. Their presence in the darkness was incomparable with the inheritances below them. Those he called the ‘arcane inheritances’. There were thousands of inheritances spread throughout the realm. Some were tribute the Riftwardens collected from other clans, others treasures found in dying pocket worlds or straight up stolen from other sects. There were even those which were ‘gifted’ and put inside this realm to be hidden, their patrons left an enigma on purpose. Kazz knew them all by heart. The lower realm inheritances. Of the arcane inheritances, he had not a single clue as to what those held, only guesses. Yet they were not the most of what this pocket world had to offer. Kazzio’s gaze strayed upwards, as it had done so many times before, towards a pair of stars at the zenith of the constellation.

  “Do you think we’ll ever have the privilege of seeing one of those inherited, Lord Kazzio?” Mine’s voice was soft and reverential. Within her, Kazzio sensed that same respect and desire for knowledge he himself had.

  ‘With time, she’ll make a fine Custodian.’

  He huffed. “This mystic realm has operated for over a thousand years. Only a single arcane inheritance has been claimed since.”

  Coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, it was also the year the previous Custodian, Crestina, had slain a disciple and fled the realm. That’d been quite the fiasco, and many of the clans had wriggled out compensation from the Wardens. The official statement was that no one knew why Crestina had struck down an F-grade.

  Kazzio chuckled.

  Life for cultivators was surprisingly set in stone. A single misstep, lack of fortune or family support was enough to doom one for eternity, forced to watch the stars overhead as hegemons and legendary cultivators did battle and changed the scope of the universe.

  Kazzio understood. One would think: ‘If I could just get a chance…’

  An inheritance at the lower rungs winked out.

  The faint scent of lemon entered Kazzio’s lungs as he breathed deep. Inheritances needn’t be singular. Some were a family of heritages that belonged to each other, and if one claimed one, the others weren’t unfeasible to lay their hands on. And though the inheritance which had just winked out wasn’t high up in the tiers, Kazzio gazed at the stars connected to it.

  His chin turned upwards to follow the thin red line, which passed through an arcane inheritance, then continued further up.

  ‘…then the universe would be my oyster.’

  Mine dropped her notepad.

  Kazzio got to his feet and adjusted his robe. “Change in schedule, Mine. We will be joining the clans for dinner after all.”

  If you want to support Ashborn, please check out my , where you can read up to 18 chapters ahead.