Chương 4: Bad influences

Vera stomped a few times on the gray ground, taking a moment to enjoy the strange, springy resistance under her boots—the way the stone yielded under heavy force but barely shifted under a light step. So this was how ashstone behaved in this world. No wonder it was used in arenas everywhere. She bet her parents would've loved this stuff when she was a kid. Slap a layer of this on every playground around the country, and the number of children coming home with limbs in casts would've plummeted.

Might've even shaved a couple of years off her dad's early graying. Then again, maybe just one. She'd been a bit of a rambunctious scamp. She really hoped that wasn't hereditary.

"Mommy! Look at me!" Serel called from the raised circular platform in the center of the chamber, bouncing up and down and trying to get the stone to shift under her weight. It barely gave way—only flexing ever so slightly every third or fourth jump—but she still seemed utterly delighted. Vera wasn't quite sure what to make of the warmth that stirred in her chest watching her. It was hard in general figuring out where to stuff these new emotions and sensations, to be honest.

They didn't fit neatly into any box she had. She wasn't exactly built to feel all... sappy.

"Mommy!" Serel called again, and Vera shook her head, pushing those thoughts aside and walking over to the girl.

"Having… fun?" she asked, stopping in front of her. Serel nodded eagerly, jumping one more time and managing to reach a frankly impressive height of about a meter. The kid was clearly far from normal. Then she stopped and lifted her arms up toward Vera.

"Throw me!" Vera blinked.

"No."

"Pleeease?" Serel wiggled her fingers in the air, her face full of hopeful, sparkle-eyed mischief. Before Vera could even finish thinking it through, Serel was already in her arms—and then in the air. The little tyke let out a gleeful squeal as she soared upward, easily clearing three meters. She looked down at Vera with pure joy, then began waving her arms like a startled duck as she started to fall. Her smile turned into a disappointed little pout when Vera caught her before she could hit the ashstone.

"Mommy, I wanted to bounce on the stone…" she mumbled, sulking.

"I'm sure you did," Vera said, adjusting her hold.

"But I didn't feel like losing what little imaginary parenting credibility I just got issued by letting you stamp your face into the pavement. I'm afraid that trumps your reckless fun this time." She hadn't meant to throw the girl like that in the first place. She really hadn't. It was just that face. It did something to her brain. Overrode all logic and had her acting before thinking. It was scary, was what it was.

"What's 'pavement'?" Serel asked.

"Sidewalks. Or roads. Or just flat, hard surfaces not designed for head-butting. Take your pick. Not where your dangerously cute face belongs, anyhow." Vera pinched one of her cheeks in an action that felt far too natural, earning a tiny giggle and dramatic squirming in return. And it made her feel awkward.

"Now," she continued, trying to pretend it never happened as she shifted Serel to one side and walked toward the chamber's edge, "be a good little goblin and wait here while I shake off the rust." She set the girl down next to a rack of training weapons and padded armor that was there more for aesthetics than anything.

"Okay…" Serel pretended to be disappointed, but excitement already glowed on her face as Vera stepped away. Vera walked back toward the center platform, letting her eyes sweep across the chamber. It wasn't the flashiest part of the estate, but that was by design. The Trial Chamber was meant for duels and practice. Or at least to appear like it were. The room was wide enough to fight without needing to worry about clipping a wall or hurling yourself into furniture.

The walls were carved straight from the obsidian bedrock beneath the Ember Gallery—smooth, slightly concave, and curving inward to give the space a crucible-like shape. The floor beneath was all ashstone. Overhead, a broken oculus opened into an illusion of endless sky, casting down angled beams of colored light that shifted throughout the day. Five raised platforms were spread throughout the space—one large circle at the center, and four smaller ones in the corners.

Each held a single glyph: a charred sigil-circle known as the Mark of Accord, which once let Vera conjure duel simulations. Shadow-forms of enemies she had fought or trained against. In the MMO, it had just meant practice dummies with flair. Here, she supposed it was a bit more. But before she messed with any of that, there were other things to test first. Up until now, she'd been so wrapped up in chaos and questions that she hadn't had time to really explore what it meant to be Veralyth Mournvale.

That was about to change. Cracking her knuckles, she let herself enjoy a good, long stretch—a smooth, almost fluid motion that made her realize how long it had been since her body could even do something like that. Back as her old self, anything beyond the basics had been a coin toss between discomfort and a pain attack, so physical activity had mostly been a no-go for the past three years. Now, she was planning to make up for lost time.

Starting out, she extended her left hand, inspecting the pale, sigil-scarred skin for a few seconds before letting her gaze settle on the silver-gray ring resting on her middle finger. Set into it was a faceted, smoky-blue gem. A Vaultring. In Ashen Legacy, Vaultrings were rare spatial rings. Pocket-dimension storage items.

They were slot-limited, had capacity restrictions, and were far from cheap, but in a game where hoarding hundreds of materials was the norm and inventory space always felt just a breath away from madness, even one extra slot could be a game-changer. Vera's Vaultring, of course, was a cut above the usual ones players managed to get their hands on.

And besides, while lugging around dozens of 99-stacks of obscure crafting mats was just another Tuesday in-game, real life probably wouldn't require constant access to seventeen varieties of alchemical mushrooms or a backpack full of enchanted bone shards. The Vaultring's space would probably be more than enough to cover the essentials, and then some. She focused on the ring, trying to see if she couldn't will it to respond.

It'd be a huge disappointment if it turned out to be nothing more than glorified jewelry here. She'd fiddled with it a bit while exploring the estate, but she hadn't really tried. Now, she did. Her brow furrowed as she narrowed her thoughts. She wasn't quite reaching for anything logical. Rather, it was like she was chasing an instinct that she only suspected was there. Trying to tune into a frequency she didn't know if she could hear. A few quiet minutes passed, her concentration tightening.

She was starting to think she might be chasing a phantom—when suddenly, the gem on the Vaultring flared with a low, silvery light. Something just clicked. She felt a strange mental pull, like a tether had been secured in her mind. And with it, a faint shimmer sparked in her hand as an object phased into existence. A chunk of dark metal, warm to the touch and veined with a subtle red glow.

Vera raised her eyebrows, then smiled faintly and tossed the ore up and down in her palm, letting it settle into her grip with a satisfying weight. There wasn't any system window or tooltips, but she didn't need them to know what this was. She recognized the material as Emberroot Iron. One of the rarer crafting metals dropped as shards from the Wyrmkin Reclaimers in Scorven Reach.

She'd gathered a whole cache of it and smelted them in Vellthorne just before waking up here, so it looked like her inventory had made the trip with her. With a simple thought, the ore disappeared. Now it was time to try this for real. She stretched her hand to the side, and a sudden weight settled into her palm like an old friend returning. A halberd shimmered into being in a flare of cold silver light, its form heavy and solemn.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. The haft was long and smooth, forged from marrow-bright metal that gleamed like ancient bone under moonlight. Its blade swept out in a crescent arc, sharp and clean—part axe, part war-spear—counterbalanced on the opposite end by a tapered grounding spike, made for either planting or piercing. Above the blade, the weapon's crown rose in a twisted cage of cathedral spires.

Cradled under that crown was its centerpiece—a pale hand, palm up, fingers frozen in a halted reach. It didn't look carved. It looked preserved, as if the metal had simply grown around it during forging and never let go. Her lips curled upward further. Stillwake. A Legacy-tier weapon. It felt perfect in her grip. Far beyond comfortable—more than intuitive. Like she'd been wielding it since birth. Without consciously deciding to move, she stepped forward, and the halberd flowed with her.

Stillwake swept out in a wide, clean arc, pivoting naturally from one pattern into the next. She turned with it, letting muscle memory guide the motion. Slash to spin. Guard to lunge. A downward sweep, reversed into a mirrored crescent. Her movements resembled a dance, each pattern giving way to the next as if choreographed by instinct more than thought. Eventually, she stopped. Breath steady. Halberd held low, trailing faint white motes of light in its wake.

That had been nothing like executing an ability with a hotkey. Or triggering an animation to combo into the next move. She'd just done it. The knowledge was there, she realized. Not just in her mind, but woven into her very nerves. All the combos, the transitions, the subtle timing cues she'd spent thousands of hours perfecting. They were hers now, etched into muscle and bone. No longer bound to pixels and code but living in truth and flesh. And god, it felt good.

She had been worried she'd end up stuck in a new body without a clue how to use it, flailing around like some awkwardly possessed marionette. But apparently, whatever force had tossed her into this situation had at least bothered to translate something resembling muscle memory along with her consciousness, instead of leaving her high and dry. Now the next question was if she could still use her Forms and Marks.

She gave Stillwake a short spin, the air cracking slightly as its crown angled down to the ashstone floor. Then, she closed her eyes. Ashen Legacy had all sorts of gameplay systems layered atop each other—some simple, some deliberately obtuse. States, cooldown timers, stance meters, and the rest. But beneath it all, most abilities ran on one of two core resources: Stamina or Resonance. The first was basic. Stamina governed heavy attacks, dodges, parries, and the like. It refilled quickly and drained even faster.

Any halfway competent player learned how to manage it well before hitting level 200, or got chewed up and spat out by dungeon parties before the second boss. Resonance, on the other hand, was Ashen Legacy's version of mana. Everyone just called it 'RP,' short for Resonance Points. It was more flexible than Stamina and easier to ration in theory… but in practice, often proved trickier. It didn't regenerate during combat, at least not on its own.

You either carried Echophials to restore it, banked enough for the whole fight, or ran dry and got flattened. Vera always stocked plenty of high-tier phials. Her RP pool wasn't anything to scoff at, and she was intimately familiar with nearly every enemy in the game. She usually knew exactly how much RP she needed to clear a fight and rarely overspent. PvP duels were trickier, but even there, experienced players had their rhythms—and she had hers down to an art.

What she didn't know was whether that instinct—that feel for the cost of a battle—had come with her, too. She reached inward the same way she had with the Vaultring. Not with logic or with reason, but with instinct. Chasing a phantom of intent she still hoped was more than imagination. This time, she was surprised by how easy it came. It was like a low, molten wellspring cracking open behind her ribs. A pressurized surge of heat and hot coal unfurling beneath her skin. A resonating spark. Her eyes flashed open.

Mark of Ember Flame. Cinders seared through her blood. Power flooded her limbs. The sigil-scars across her knuckles flickered to life. Stillwake carved a burning pattern in the air before her. A fiery glyph burst into existence. Then, with a shudder of heat, a swirling tornado of flame erupted, roaring up from the platform's center in a tower of scarlet embers.

The blaze raged for a breathless second, engulfing nearly a third of the platform before collapsing inward, leaving only drifting motes suspended in the scorched air. Vera blinked at the heat-hazed space, lips parting. Behind her, Serel squealed.

"Whoa, Mommy! So cool!" Vera glanced up at the ceiling. Some of the obsidian had darkened where the flames had licked it. … And this was supposed to be a First Seal Mark? A baby Mark. One of the first you learned. Most players only kept it in their loadouts to bait dodges or stagger weak mobs. Also, the flame tornado it summoned wasn't supposed to reach past a standing man's height. Definitely not the ceiling several meters above. If that was what a First Seal looked like now…

she didn't even want to imagine what her Fifth Seal AoE Marks could do.

"Do it again!" Serel cried. Vera turned to see the girl bouncing in place, arms moving like she was at some fireworks show. Vera raised an eyebrow, then pointed Stillwake forward. Mark of Ember Flame. Another blaze erupted. More cheering. More delighted praise from Serel about how cool Vera was. And honestly? Yeah. She felt pretty damn cool.

She ended up invoking a few more fire tornadoes just to indulge her excited little spectator—it didn't even make a dent in her RP pool—before deciding it was time to stop playing fire juggler. Serel's energy was impressive, and it was good to know she had a fallback entertainment plan in a pinch, but there was still a lot she wanted to figure out. She doubted she'd been thrown into this world just to become a glorified pyrotechnician.

Serel pouted when Vera told her the show was over, but her disappointment vanished the instant Vera mentioned she'd be summoning an actual opponent. Vera stepped toward the edge of the platform, Stillwake loose in her grip, its crown angled down at the ashstone floor and its butt-end rising behind her shoulder. Her gaze fixed on the charred sigil-circle carved into the stone at the platform's heart. Despite the earlier chaos, the Mark had remained untouched.

Closing her eyes, she reached inward again, searching for the flow of smoldering Resonance in her blood. She gathered that sensation, guiding it through her body and into her feet, until it reached the sigil embedded in the platform. Lines lit across the surface in deep, glowing red, branching outward and converging on the Mark of Accord. She'd taken a bit of time earlier to figure this part out. The moment the Mark flared to life, she felt the mental pull—similar to the Vaultring.

A tether connecting to her mind, as Resonance met resonance within her soul, and a fragment of divine remembrance briefly echoed the memory of something older than flame. The air at the platform's center rippled. Coal and ember twisted into form. A creature emerged, its body coalescing into the shape of a large, wolf-like beast. Its fur was a ghostly gray, flowing like smoke, and its teeth gleamed like fractured glass. An Ashfang Wolf. Vera narrowed her eyes, watching the beast solidify.

Despite the faint prickle of nerves at her spine, the sheer excitement surging in her chest drowned out everything else. She was finally going to fight. Not as a player behind a monitor and keyboard, but as Veralyth Mournvale. The wolf moved first. It charged, snarling. Vera pushed off the ground, air rushing past her ears as she flipped cleanly over the creature and landed behind it—unexpectedly light on her feet.

As the beast skidded past where she'd just stood, she spun Stillwake in a clean arc and severed the wolf in two, cleaving through snout and midsection in one smooth motion. It dissolved into ash before it even hit the floor. Vera blinked. That was it? She hadn't even used a single Form or Mark.

"Again, mommy!" Serel called from the sideline. Vera smiled slightly, then funneled her Resonance into the Mark of Accord once more. This time, a full dozen wolves erupted from coal and ember, forming a tight circle around her—spectral shapes of muscle, fang, and fury. All of them lunged. Cinders surged through her bloodstream like a live wire as her body moved without thought, instinct pulling strings that no longer required conscious control. The Third Seal Form executed itself. Binding Coil.

Stillwake whipped outward in a spiral, carving a wide circle as its momentum drew her into a controlled spin. The halberd blurred into a vortex of steel and force—a storm with Vera at its center. Wind howled around her, and the ashstone platform flared crimson as the Mark of Accord responded, erecting protective translucent walls of sigil-light at its edge. Caught in the swirling maelstrom, the wolves were hurled backward, slamming into the light-walls like ragdolls.

When the vortex stilled and Stillwake came to rest at her side, humming faintly, the platform was littered with a tangled mess of stunned, whimpering bodies. Vera eyed the results. That had also been stronger than expected. And she'd even tried to hold back this time. Binding Coil might be Third Seal, but it was only a defensive Form—meant to repel projectiles and stagger close-range enemies for a second.

She'd only risked using it because she knew the platform had protections built in, and the Form wasn't designed to do real damage. In the game, it barely extended beyond her halberd's reach. But here? The radius had ballooned—three, maybe four times wider—and the force behind it was insane. And those wolves were definitely stunned for more than a second. She wondered how intense it would've been if she hadn't held back? To their credit, despite their injuries, the wolves rose again, slowly at first, then steadily.

Growling, saliva hissing between fangs, they refocused their attention on her. No fear in their eyes. A grin crept across Vera's lips. Good. The first wolves came from behind. Stillwake snapped up in response, and her stance flowed into a First Seal Form. Crescent Severance. Her halberd swung in an overhead cleave, like a descending guillotine. Three luminous afterimages followed behind it, arcing down like silvered moons. Two wolves were sliced clean through mid-pounce, dissolving into ash.

Vera stepped back lightly, the motion carrying her farther than it should have—just enough to evade the third's snapping jaws. She pivoted. Another strike cleaved through a fourth wolf. Stillwake's haft met the snout of a fifth with a hard crack, jabbing into its glowing eyes. She twisted, flinging it sideways into a leaping sixth, sending them both skidding across the platform in a blur of tangled limbs. From there, the fight became a waltz.

Vera moved between the wolves with a kind of brutal elegance, every swing of Stillwake fluid and precise. Crescent Severance flared again and again, the blade singing with the hum of Resonance. She sidestepped bites, dipped under swipes, and redirected momentum with reflexes that she could only have dreamt of in the game. It was everything she loved about Ashen Legacy —and more. So much more. One by one, the wolves fell as she played with them. Until only one remained.

It paced at the far edge of the circle, a limp in its hind leg, eyes burning. They watched each other for a heartbeat. Then Vera stepped forward. Deliberately slow, almost inviting. The wolf lunged. She slipped sideways, drove her boot into its ribs. Something cracked. It flew, legs flailing— Vera planted Stillwake into the ground, vaulted up, spun through the air— Crescent Severance.

This time, not one or three, but seven glowing moon-arcs spiraled down in rapid succession, each one slamming into the wolf with a thunderclap. It didn't even have time to touch the ground. The final impact cracked the ashstone beneath it. Deep, jagged gashes tore through the floor. The wolf burst apart, fading into gray motes. Vera landed lightly, halberd in hand, feeling giddy as her grin widened into something closer to a snarl. She paused. Wait… She brushed hair from her eyes, frowning slightly.

Had she always been this much of an adrenaline junkie?

"Mommy!" Serel's voice rang from the edge of the chamber, practically glowing with joy.

"That was the coolest!!" Vera turned to find the girl bouncing up and down again, shadow-swinging an imaginary weapon with far too much enthusiasm. She mimed the vault, the slash, even the wolf's dramatic crash. Vera couldn't help but stare.

"Oh no," she muttered. Was she raising a combat maniac? Was she… being a bad influence? It was a legitimate concern—but one she'd have to consider later. She turned her gaze back to the platform's center. The Mark of Accord still pulsed beneath her boots. Waiting. Calling. She was pretty sure she could summon something much stronger. And god, she wanted to.