The Wordless Mage
Chapter 38: Memories That Refuse To Die

Chapter 38: Memories That Refuse To Die

"Where am I?" Liora questioned them, looking back and forth between the two.

In front of her was a large sofa that stretched to cover almost a third of the room’s length, topped with dirty brown mattresses and pillows.

Seated on top of it were two individuals, the one on the left having a scalp fluffed with a familiar white, settling down along his face like roughs of snow were heaped atop his head.

However, the one on the left was unrecognizable, and not because Liora hadn’t met them before.

No, the reality was far too unreal for her to admit she saw.

There was an obscure black ribboning in front of her face from ear to ear--like the wild sketches of an imaginative four year old.

It served to obfuscate not only her face, but also her hair, flecks pointing out from the scribbles to reveal a resemblant white.

Liora raised her brows from neither party properly responding to her question, their conversation moving unabated.

"I don’t know, Rowan, but that’s not for you to worry about. Leave these things to the adults, and continue on with your games, alright?"

The voice resounding through the room came from the woman’s mouth, the scattered baritones of voices belonging to both man and woman concealing her sound and tone.

There was a slight gleam in the child--Rowan’s eyes, a fine trail of water ebbing along his cheek, just to be followed by several others as their eyes narrowed more and more.

"Hey, hey, don’t cry, we’ll work through this," the woman consoled, wrapping her arm around his shoulders to embrace him into a hug, "I’ll work through this."

Even though the random movements of the black hid her face, Liora could sense that whichever force made her appearance inconspicuous couldn’t quite hide the pain in her voice, a slight trill tainting her words.

Liora reached her hand out, stepping toward the sofa with haphazard pace. She hadn’t fully understood the extent to which she was disconnected from her surroundings, but she wished to find out.

Fwoooo...

Her arm passed through both the sofa and Rowan, the trajectory of her touch missing his shoulder.

"Hm," she hummed, looking down at her grimoire.

Pulling in the same arm, she gripped its cover, feeling the protruding silver eye that represented the ’Oracle’ as Selzahar mentioned when she’d first come to this world, although its meaning was still lost to her.

"It looks like it’s just you and me." She smiled, stepping back to listen more attentively to the conversation ahead of her.

"Why are you here?"

The demonic voice’s grumble brought about an uncomfortable atmosphere.

Liora stepped back from the sudden shift in ambiance--both in body and spirit--as the air grew deep, black, and viscous, like grief taking form.

The before tepid scenery drooped along with the air itself, their blank colors of white and brown combining into a homogenous solution of black.

There were harrowing screams in the background far from where she stood, breaching her eardrums and jolting her hands up in the short-sighted desire to defend her hearing.

"What... are you talking about?" Liora questioned the voice, biting through the sharp ringing in her ears from clenching her eyelids shut to best take her mind off the sheer terror bleeding into the air.

"I mean, why have you come here, the one place that I, myself, avoid?"

The voice wasn’t as deep, although its bluntness still stood just as strong.

Liora opened her eyes momentarily to look up at the source, Rowan’s white hair bleeding a dark red that dripped off onto his brow.

His eyes were now forced open, demonically grinning at what was playing out in front of him, uncaring to the liters of blood oozing from his scalp.

Without so much as a beat of hesitation or worry, the blood viciously shot out from his eyes and mouth like a burst artery, only maintaining its strength for a second before following the blood on the top of his head with a slow descent.

Liora’s eyes widened in horror, the fear in her chest personifying as a hollow scream across the endless void peeking through collapsed walls.

There was nothing, just infinite black and the floor beneath her that didn’t bother to resist the mass liquifying occurring across all else around her.

"Yes, despair, and come to know your sins."

Her left leg fell in an open gap where the liquid fell into the void, the rest of her body only supported by her hands and her bent right knee.

She clawed for the floor, gripping onto its hard wood, but this would not be allowed--not by whichever presence filled the room.

The demon-Rowan pointed their hand to the floor that Liora had attached herself to, a single spark of flame ensuing a great flame.

Instantly, the black turned violet from the flame, filling the room with smoke.

It was agonizing, the white-hot pain radiating from her palms that contacted the ground, the flame jutting out to eat away at her skin.

Once again, she screamed, her most internal instinct stealing her hands of their strength.

There, she fell, the void below welcoming her with open arms.

"Ahhh!"

Her screams reached far from her mouth to extend into the black, her growing velocity pulling her limbs above her with her mouth agape and her fingers curling as if to reach for something to hold onto.

"Repent, and learn your ultimate sin."

The voice didn’t have an origin, coming from everywhere around her all at once.

Despite this, she looked around, searching for the person speaking, her eyes bloodshot from her stress.

She didn’t have the time to shift her gaze.

Similar to her intrusion into the living room, the polarity of gravity flipped on itself, her ’down’ becoming ’up’.

Her chest slammed into the ground below--no, that was inaccurate.

She gently fell into the warm comfort of soft material, their white wiping away the sweat that poured from her face.

The mattress bounced from the force, but it didn’t give way.

It was a bed, and she was in a bedroom, posters hung all cross its wall.

"Hey, grimoire, think we’re any closer to finding Rowan--"

Stress clenched her lungs as she turned to find nothing attached to her hip, the complexion of her skin far more pale than typical.

"What...?"

She frantically reached for her hair; broken strands clutched between her fingers to confirm her suspicion.

White. They were white.

Hastily, she reached for the mirror hanging atop the dresser on the other side of the room, looking at her own reflection.

Pale skin, even paler hair, and a girly facial structure. She was Rowan, or trapped in his body, anyway.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.