The Veil’s Mark II: Beauty in an Age of Chaos - Chapter 2 Who We Are

Sophia did not urge us.

She simply waited—waited for us to say the words we are ready ourselves, and then bear the consequences of having said them.

The three of us nodded.

Silence first.

Sether next.

And finally, me.

In that instant, Sophia's gaze became clearer, as if she had restored a necessary rule to its proper place.

"Listen carefully," she said.

She did not raise her voice, yet I felt forced into focus.

"You will enter overlapping memories."

"But you will not be able to control your earliest selves."

My chest tightened.

"Not control?" Sether asked. His tone wasn't sharp, but carried his habitual instinct to dissect.

Sophia nodded.

"You will retain your memories from the present world."

"You will see, you will feel, and you may even believe you can choose."

She paused, as if deliberately making the statement more cruel.

"But the earliest version of you—the one who made the choices—will not listen to you."

Silence's fingers moved slightly, then stopped.

He had known this already.

He was simply being forced to acknowledge it.

"There is one more thing," Sophia said.

She looked at me, then at Sether and Silence.

"Your names will change."

"You will be called by different names."

"Not because of disguise," she continued,

"but because—in those memories—you did not exist under your present names."

This unsettled me more than not being able to control anything.

Because this was not stripping away our agency.

It was stripping away the final shell of I am still myself.

I wanted to ask: then what is left of us?

But Sophia did not give me time.

"If you accept this," she said,

"then once you enter, do not try to pull yourselves back using your present selves."

She looked at us, as if confirming we were not here to play at a safe dream.

"Because this path is not about walking into memory."

"It is about crossing beyond—the shell of your present selves."

Only then did I understand why she used the word cross.

It wasn't ritualistic.

It was a boundary.

My present self was a shell.

And shells cannot be taken across.

Sophia did not reach out.

She did not even step closer.

She merely lowered her lashes slightly, as if allowing a process to begin.

The next second, my consciousness lost gravity.

I did not fall.

I was not pulled away.

It was as if—I had let go of myself.

I saw a river.

Not of water.

But of countless fine points of light, like stellar sand flowing through an invisible current.

It was too quiet to feel real, yet too absolute to deny.

You must cross.

I did not step into it.

I jumped.

My bodily sensation was instantly stripped away, replaced by something more primal—

as if the idea of who I thought I was were being peeled away, layer by layer.

Starlight brushed past my skin like cold illumination.

I reached out, trying to grasp something.

My fingers touched only movement.

Sether was to my left. I couldn't see his face, only hear his restrained breathing.

Silence was farther ahead—utterly soundless, as if he had always belonged to the far side of this river.

There was no shore on the other side.

Only a sea of red spider lilies.

Not passionate red.

Not seductive.

More like—a reminder preserved over a long time:

You have crossed.

Above the flowers, countless fairies danced.

They were as small as light-specks, yet impossibly clear.

Each flutter scattered faint stardust, carrying fragments of the river onto the blossoms.

The scene was beautiful—almost unreal.

Instinctively, I wanted to believe this was some kind of gentleness.

But then I noticed—

their movements repeated with suffocating precision.

Not rehearsal.

A loop.

I focused on a few of them, and my heartbeat faltered.

Their outlines…

resembled someone.

Rosa.

Not identical.

But certain angles. Certain turns. Certain curves of hair—close enough to dry my throat.

I dared not say it aloud.

Because the moment I named them all Rosa, I would be turning her into an explanation.

An answer.

I could only admit this:

I saw too many of her shadows.

One fairy stopped and flew toward me.

Her pace was steadier than the others, as if she had been waiting for us from the start.

She said nothing.

She landed on a spider lily petal and pointed ahead.

I followed her finger.

At the boundary between red and light stood a group of the Undead.

They had not appeared suddenly.

They had always been there—like administrators in a database, mid-level gatekeepers at an access layer, standing calmly within the process, waiting for travelers to arrive.

Their eyes held no hostility.

No welcome.

Only function: verify, record, pass, or reclaim.

I understood then—

this was not inside the memory.

This was the entry structure of memory.

The layer you must pass through after shedding the shell of the present world.

The fairy flew ahead, guiding—or escorting—us.

As we approached the Undead, I finally saw her clearly.

Her face was not fully human.

Yet in her eyes, for a brief instant, I knew—

she was not like Rosa.

She was Rosa.

But she did not look at me.

Or rather—her gaze passed through me, settling somewhere deeper.

As if her existence had not yet been permitted to become the Rosa I knew.

I tried to call her name.

No sound came out.

The next moment, the Undead stepped forward.

They did not ask for our consent.

They did not announce rules.

One of them raised a hand.

A thin red thread extended from his fingertip, drawn from the air like a filament of fate.

He looped it around Silence's wrist.

Then Sether's.

Finally—mine.

The instant it touched my skin, it did not feel warm.

It felt—fixed.

As if I finally understood I was not here to observe.

I was here to bear something.

I tried to pull my hand back.

The thread did not tighten.

Yet my movement froze midair, as if a higher rule were calmly reminding me:

You may struggle.

But you cannot leave.

I understood what the red thread bound.

It was not a blessing.

Not a lover's bond.

Not a romantic symbol tying us together.

It was insurance.

To prevent us—before true pain began—from escaping.

The Undead tightened the line with administrative precision.

Then they stepped back.

Sophia's voice did not appear.

The world did not explain.

Only the red thread remained—

a calm verdict:

We were not entering memory.

We had crossed beyond the present self.

And what awaited us next was not a story.

It was ourselves.

The one who had already made choices.

The one who would not listen to our pleas.

When white light surged up, I did not close my eyes.

Not because I was brave.

But because I knew it would make no difference.

When the light receded, I stood in a foreign place.

Cold, even stone beneath my feet.

The air was thick with the lingering scent of incense burned for ages—not sharp, but heavy enough to make time itself feel stagnant.

I looked up.

Before me stood a statue.

Not the weathered, masked figure at the entrance.

This one had been deliberately preserved, repeatedly restored.

Its posture was neither giving nor judging.

It simply stood.

That face—

I recognized it instantly.

Sophia.

And yet, at the same moment, I knew:

This was not her.

This was how people understood her.

The statue radiated solemnity.

Not oppressive divinity.

But the weight accumulated from countless gazes over time.

Sacred.

But not gentle.

I looked around and realized I was inside a temple.

Towering vaults rose overhead, sharp and elegant lines crossing like faith carved through reason.

Stained glass fractured light into colored fragments, falling upon stone and pillars like emotions permitted to exist.

This was not the realm's entrance.

This was—

inside order.

"Your Highness!"

The voice came sharply from the side.

Before I could turn, someone rushed to my front.

She was unmistakably elven—long pointed ears extending openly backward, no trace of mixed blood.

Her breath was hurried, her face filled with youthful, direct concern.

"Princess Sessanna, why are you standing here in a daze?"

She lowered her voice, yet spoke faster.

"Today's prayer rite has already ended. The elders are waiting for you to return to the hall."

Sessanna.

When the name settled upon me, I did not resist.

Not because I accepted it—

but because this name already belonged to this body.

I looked down.

Slender fingers.

Skin pale, closer to plants than flesh.

On my ring finger rested a ring.

Unadorned, yet engraved with a familiar pattern.

A rose.

In that instant, memory did not rush in.

It unlocked.

Yes.

Our elven people—no, all life of the Fantasia Continent—

were children of the Rose.

Not ruled.

Defined.

The Rose was not a god.

But it recorded, classified, and preserved all forms permitted to exist.

We prayed to it not for mercy—

but because we did not know who else to pray to.

I clenched my fingers. The ring was cold. Real.

Only then did I fully understand Sophia's words.

This was not returning to the past.

This was standing once more—

where I had always stood.

I raised my head and nodded to the elf.

No hesitation.

No objection.

Because at this moment, I was not Jiang Hanna.

I was Sessanna.

And Princess Sessanna,

after the prayers ended,

was always meant to walk back

into the destiny that belonged to her.

ns216.73.216.10da2

Reading Theme:

Font Size:

Line Spacing:

Paragraph Spacing:

Load the next issue automatically