As soon as my mind cleared, I noticed Cael's presence in my room and my broken door.
Aurelia was still holding the place where I had bitten her on even if I healed it, Cael was looking at her with a strange expression and I was still elaborating what had happened.
"I will apologise again for biting you, but my pranks never caused real pain, so that's on you."
She nodded with flustered face, but even she knew that I didn't cross lines while tricking people.
"Here… this is the real cultivation you'd need to practice for your mind to expand… just call me if there's something you don't understand…"
After throwing a new book on my table she hurriedly run away through the broken door leaving me alone with Caelum.
"Crow…"
"Stop. This is not a prank."
He looked dejected, so dejected I almost believed him. Clearly, even I was a novice in the art of deception.
"At least tell me what I've done wrong…"
"You have done nothing wrong, it's just that gettin used for y'all's plans without knowing shit is boring. Now leave, I have a door to repair."
My words seemed to have struck something in him since his face morphed from dejected to angry in a second, but before he could even speak up, I held up my hand.
"Leave on the table what your mother requested for me to translate. I'll send you a bill based on the contents."
His eyes shot open, pupils shaking and I could eve see cold sweats forming in real time.
"You… you heard."
I nodded and walked towards the door without sparing him a single glance. Only after a few moments of silence he decided to leave and finally peace returned to my room.
There were a lot of things I needed to do and translating whatever the fuck Cael wanted was dead last on my list.
The first thing? Holding the blood purification ritual.
_____________________
One beautiful thing about this academy was that attendance in classes was absolutely optional, as long as your grades were perfect, both physical and theoretical, you could even decide to not attend, so my absence of 2 days would not be a great problem.
The ritual to purify my bloodline was a lengthy bastard since it was completely generic and I didn't even give hints of what my bloodline really was.
Not that I'd know much more besides "ancient high human" and that wouldn't help for sure.
However, the list given to me with both instructions and ingredients made complete sense. Even my intuition told me it'd work.
The ritual was to be held during the night and finished right at dawn inside a forest to let the natural laws of the world activate the potion I'd need to drink as the epitome of the ritual.
The potion itself also was made of ingredients I didn't really want to know the price of, thankfully, father was wise enough to prepare everything for me to at least quell my disappointment.
•3 leaves of Holy Basil
•5gr of Mandrake root
•10gr of Obsidian dust
•150ml of Moonwater
And finally
•1 tear of a unicorn
This list scares my bank account in ways I didn't know it was possible, but thanks to daddy big pockets the first ritual could be held for free.
_____________________
In a clearing of the forest surrounding the academy, my doppelgängers and I where drawing formations and wards with unmatched focus.
It wasn't that the forest housed terrifying monsters, but more then monsters I was afraid of people interrupting my ritual.
The wards were there to confuse the people trying to approach and make them change directions without realising it, to cover everything I was doing with the illusion of continued forest and to erase the sounds I'd be making.
The circles instead were completely drawn with salt and held all the runes necessary for my purpose.
The precision of the ritual was truly outstanding, but it was clear that this magic had a prior framework to depend on.
After all, who would think of the tears of a unicorn as an ingredient for anything that wasn't a healing potion?
Either way, as soon as the circles and wards were ready, I dismissed the doppelgängers and entered the ritual circle.
The instructions were easy to follow from here on out.
"Crow, high human, Error."
"Crow, high human, Error."
"Crow, high human, Error."
Exactly. I needed to repeat my name, my race and the Path I was walking from the moment I entered the circle to the moment the first ray of sunlight entered the sky.
I couldn't lose focus, nor could I be distracted by whatever would happen during the ritual.
Those were the instructions, but I didn't really know what to expect.
I should have been more careful.
And I definitely shouldn't have read the result of the research for the Thylarion name I asked of my father.
Thylarion was the name of a lost clan. A clan that lived at the edges of the world up north, but what really freaked me when I read it, was that they were called False Velied Prophets. That alone almost convinced me that they came from the beyond.
The problem was what was happening during the ritual.
Not long after I begun chanting, my mana started to move freely, building illusions I wasn't creating, playing with my own sanity.
All around me, 13 high human emerged, all looking at me, all chatting among themselves in Laithath but two of them, although still looking at me, held something that wasn't scorn in their eyes.
The very first high humans I consciously met, the one's whose mana I absorbed to inherit memories that were still unlocking with my growth in strength.
"Kraën Myrion Thylarion."
"Kraën Myrion Thylarion."
"Kraën Myrion Thylarion."
As soon as the two high humans said that name, everyone else started repeating it, chanting it with reverence. The impact was so strong that even my chant started to change.
From the common tongue, I started using Laithath, and that name…
I felt it.
That was the name meant for me.
The name I'd carry if things didn't go batshit crazy.
"Kraën Myrion Thylarion, High Human, Error."
When my chant changed, I felt another kind of reaction within me.
The primal spark, that usually just existed, grew inside my consciousness, its flame were brighter.
My body was reacting on its own, the only thing that I could rule over at this point, was the chanting.
And I even had doubts regarding that.
The chant continued nonetheless, but my body? It was trembling.
Tears started falling down and those illusions… they felt so real. Their eyes so soft, their touch so warm.
My mouth didn't stop, but my everything else was wavering.
"The last son. The lost heir. Kraën Myrion Thylarion."
"North, north, north."
"It still stands."
"Find it."
Everyone was asking me to go north, to look for something that probably didn't exist anymore, but their feelings were directly affecting my heart, a heart I didn't think I still had.
"Kraën Myrion Thylarion, High Human, Error."
…
Then the two high humans I was the most familiar with, spoke again.
"Crow, it exists. Follow our traces. Up north, the lost continent."
"It may be lesser that it was. But we made sure of it. It still stands."
"The false prophecy has been forged, they know but pranks."
"Reality stands in the hands of those that recognise mistakes."
"Crow, our dearest Crow. Stop escaping."
"Closing the heart is the worst thing an Error can make."
"Face them."
"A broken heart for an Error is still safer than a closed one."
At this point, my tears had completely become rivers. My eyes couldn't stay opened anymore from the strain, yet I chanted.
And they were right.
I was filling myself with things to do, subjects to study and exercises to build up my physical combat prowess.
All to run away.
To escape the possible reality that the people I was starting to get close to, all held ulterior motives.
I already knew they somewhat saw me as something untouchable, yet necessary to each of them.
But the risk of hearing it from them, or even if they lies being able to see through it.
It was terrifying.
I never had friends, let alone a family or a partner.
And in the span of just a few months, I was getting everything I've ever wished for and more.
But the simple doubt that everything was staged, it paralysed my brain altogether.
If Yom saw me as nothing but a mean to clean his family of suspicions, I'd break.
If dad, really only cared of whatever was that was keeping me alive, I'd break.
If the others saw me as nothing more than a ticket towards success… well, I'd probably just kill them all.
But they, my -with all possibilities- parents were telling me to open my heart.
To stop escaping.
And I was terrified.
Yet still chanting.