Chapter 32: Cautious

A/N= Edited out some mistakes from before and combined several chapters that felt a bit disjointed. Nothing else has changed.

"You remember this incident quite well." The reflection spoke, the second time it had ever spoken to me.

"You seem awfully chatty all of a sudden. Don't tell me I broke you with the beating just now," I spoke, but he simply looked past me towards Father's seat.

"Father went and stopped her after that. You remember how angry Ashe was, how disappointed father was." My reflection spoke.

"I was just protecting my sister!" I snapped out, surprising even myself. Where had that come from?

Putting my sudden outburst in the back of my head, I jumped up and swept my leg towards his face.

"Don't lie." my reflection spoke, easily dodging my kick. He then maneuvered around my body and grabbed my neck.

"If you were honest, then why did you pretend you were crying? Did you think Father didn't notice? Of course, he did; he was always one to look past your bullshit."

His grip around my neck began tightening. I tried to resist, but before I could even do anything, he drove his knee into my abdomen, knocking the air out of my body.

How was he doing this? Not only did he know my every move, but he somehow also knew how I was going to attack him.

"Ashe was never in any danger; she was strong enough to kill two of those things, and you knew that. You were just afraid someone like father would favor her more once she got that achievement under her belt."

A crack resounded in the room as my neck snapped to the back.

"Face it, you can't keep up," Ashe taunted, circling around me with a smirk on her face. I tightened my grip on the wooden sword and tried to steady my breathing.

People in the stands had already begun jeering, laughing with their faces hidden behind their palms. Not that I blamed them, I highly doubt they had seen such a one-sided show between two children of the same noble house.

Putting the contempt-filled eyes at the back of my head, I lunged forward, aiming for Ashe's shoulder, but once again, she sidestepped with a grace that made my movements look clumsy. At the same time, her blade whipped up in a quick, controlled arc, slamming against my arm with a crack that reverberated through my body. I staggered back, barely keeping my grip as she pressed in, relentless and unyielding.

Every time I moved to strike, Ashe was there blocking and countering, always a step ahead. After a while, my own attacks felt sluggish and predictable, while her strikes were swift and brutal, each one finding a weak spot and managing to drive me further back. It wasn't that I wasn't good; it's just that I was nothing when compared to a monster such as herself.

She was enjoying this too; I could tell—the way her eyes glinted with every successful hit, the way her smile widened as she chipped away at my defenses.

In a desperate final move, I swung wildly, hoping to break her rhythm, but she ducked and swept her blade against my legs, knocking me off balance. I crashed to the ground, and before I could even rise, her sword was at my chest.

"Fat load of good all that sabotaging did to you, huh?" The reflection walked out of the crowd into the arena and began walking in my direction.

"This tournament was during the festival of moon gatherings, right, where Father called upon the scions of all the noble houses to participate?"

I got up from the ground and lunged at him with my sword. "Do you think he purposely put you up against Ashe? See how you'll react? So he can confirm his suspicions about you?"

He snatched the sword from my sister's hand and attacked back.

I tried to break through his guard, slashing wildly, but he sidestepped, twisting his sword around mine and nearly disarming me in a single fluid motion. I stumbled back, feeling his blade slice across my shoulder.

"Look at you trembling, pretending to fight but only trying to survive." he taunted, smirking at my own face.

I lunged once more, using years of swordsmanship lessons I had been forced to endure, pouring everything I had into a powerful downward strike, but once again, he blocked it effortlessly, our blades locking for a brief moment. He looked at me, completely calm. "I know the truth; you only fight when you think you'll win. And when you can't, you use every dirty trick in the book, even if the opponent is your own sister."

At the same time, the crowd around us began to scream. "Kill him, kill him, kill him."

My breaths were coming faster, each one heavy, but I pressed on, throwing a series of attacks in desperation. Every one of them met with that same cold, unflinching defense, each counter pushing me further back until, with one final blow, he struck the sword from my hand. The crowd cheered as the sword flew through the air, landing on the other side of the arena.

I dropped to my knees, my reflection standing over me, blade poised at my throat. His smirk twisted into a dark grin as he looked down victorious.

"You call it being cautious, being strategic, when in reality it's just fear. You'd rather run and hide than face real danger, wouldn't you?"

I jolted awake, gasping for air. My chest heaved as my heart tried to burst out. That feeling of the wooden sword roughly penetrating inside my throat, my blood gushing out like a fountain. The bastard hadn't even shown me the courtesy of using the sword to make it quick but instead had let me choke and drown in my own blood.

I took me a couple of seconds before I forced myself to calm my racing heart. I could cry about it later, right now I needed to figure out where I was, or rather- when I was.

As the fog cleared away from my eyes, I found myself standing in front of a large-looking tree with one of my hands stretched outward, bleeding a stream of crimson blood. One of the tree's roots was stretching forward, coiling around my bleeding palm. Right in front of my very eyes, I witnessed a crimson-red flower bloom on the top of the tree's trunk.

"This, my lord…" The man beside me, dressed in priestly blue robes, spoke, his voice filled with hesitation.

"There must be some mistake, yes… perhaps we should perform the ceremony once more."

"There is no need," Father spoke and slowly walked towards the podium, carefully inspecting the flower.

Hearing the man basically cower, I looked down at the flower as well. Crimson red, the lowest of the talent identified from the Veinroot tree, with such talent I could have been given the highest grade of bloodline essence and I still wouldn't have been able to cultivate past Spirit Awakening.

I remembered this memory quite well; this, after all, was the moment my family had begun to neglect me, and my spiral into alcoholism began.

"Finish the ceremony," Father instructed the priest and simply walked back to his seat as if he had nothing to do with the current situation.

"I…" The priest hesitated, I could understand his predicament. The poor bastard had probably thought it would be a great honor to perform the awakening ceremony of a direct scion of House Valdrin. But now, since the results had come this botched, who's to say father wouldn't blame the entire "Order of Divine Flame" for somehow failing the ceremony and ruining his son's future?

Didn't that happen as well? The argument itself had been completely ridiculous; even so many superstitious nobles had decided to initiate ceremonies by themselves, staying away from the order.

"Uhm.." The priest coughed before proceeding to cut the flower with a silver knife. "Lord Roye Valdrin, son of…"

Ignoring the priest and his ramblings, I grabbed the root and yanked it away from my bleeding hand. This one moment had a lot of bad memories attached to it. Besides, Soren also bloomed a crimson red flower, and he did well enough for himself after getting a [Unknown] grade bloodline essence.

Freeing myself from the root, I looked towards the crowd of people gathered around the podium, searching for that bastard. And I found him sitting on one of the floating balconies, eyeing me as if enjoying my pain.

I wanted to charge straight in and rip that smile out of his face but stopped myself at the end moment. As much as I hated to admit it, that thing was the most formidable opponent I had ever had to face. Not only did it know my fighting patterns, but it could somehow also predict my movements even before I could make them. Duskwraith and Stormraven weren't here; even 'Deadly Intuition' had stopped working. I needed a plan to deal with this thing. Without it, I was going to be nothing but a mindless beast charging to its doom.

Unfortunately, he didn't seem very inclined to give me time to strategize.

Chuckling as if he already knew what I was thinking, he jumped down from the balcony and charged at me.

The battle was short, just like last time. I tried to attack, but somehow, he already knew my every single move, my fighting style, my patterns, weaknesses. And he used them to his complete advantage. In the end, he stood at the top of my impaled body, smiling as he watched life slowly fade away from my eyes.

I had never felt pain like this in all my life. He had used the very root from the tree to pierce through my torso, yet had somehow managed to miss all the vital organs. I had no option but to watch myself slowly lose consciousness as my body turned colder and colder with each drop of blood that escaped my body.

I didn't know how much time had passed, but one by one, the reflection began pulling me into one memory after another—some sad, some happy. Yet each of them had the same outcome: no matter how much I brainstormed, how hard I tried, I could never come up with a way to even land a blow on the thing.

Yet that wasn't even the worst part. I had felt it before, but I was certain now. The bastard, he was preying on my soul. Every time he killed me and took me to a different memory, he somehow managed to weaken a small part of my soul.