The air in the Boundary tasted of time—a dry, layered flavor of aged parchment, crumbling leather, and the hushed breath of centuries. Dust motes, illuminated by shafts of silver light from impossibly high windows, danced like forgotten ghosts in the cathedral-like silence. Rows upon rows of books, a silent army of spines, lined the walls from floor to vaulted ceiling. At least that how it was when eh first arrived. Trhough the months sense it had become much more lviely, eager, even desrpate minds searchign for watys to devlop, to grow.
To find their way through it all.
This was a place of learning for the Nine Families, a repository of their collective memory and power. But to Inari, it was a graveyard and a birthplace, the tomb of the man he was and the cradle of the man he was becoming.
His fingers, long and scarred, ghosted over the hard spines, the touch a familiar caress. He remembered the first time he’d walked these aisles. He had been a different creature then, his chest puffed out with a crude, fragile arrogance. He was so assured of the strength of solitude, so prideful in being different, in being alone. He had called it independence, a fortress built of scorn against a world he deemed beneath him. He didn’t see it for what it was: a curse of isolation, a machination of some forgotten trauma that allowed a festering rot to eat away at his potential, all while guised as strength. He had been blind to the Hellgate he was becoming, a conduit for a darkness he mistook for his own power.
How connected he was, even then. He just couldn't see the strings.
Separation was his shield and his sword. It was how he coped with the yawning void inside him, a chasm filled with things he couldn't even remember. The pain was a phantom limb, an ache so profound that though the mind’s grasp of it had slipped, the body… the soul recalled its amputation in screams only his blood could hear.
He had come here then, a boy playing at being a man, to learn about the Myotis. He’d found a singular, ragged book tucked away in a forgotten alcove, its title long since eroded by time. In his haste, a sliver of parchment had sliced his thumb. A single drop of his blood fell onto the page, and the ancient text absorbed it not like ink, but like a parched man drinking water. The letters had shimmered, rearranged, and revealed to him the first true words of his path, the first stepping stones away from the abyss.
A feat never accomplished, a destiny never to be realized, had it not been for the whim of one Vesta,
Nagase.
Her name was a quiet canticle in his mind. He had often pondered it in the dead of day, the shape of the life he would have led had they not crossed paths in forest, had they nto parlayed in this very irbary. Fought the Bone Golem,
Now, so painfully aware of the many scarlet strings pulling at his fate, he could see the other path with horrifying clarity. He could feel the phantom tug of the Scarlet Moon’s call, a siren song promising power in exchange for his soul. He could taste the cloying sweetness of the Fel Sovereign's dark gift. He would have become the Sovereign's vessel, a herald of ash and slaughter, killing everything in his path until he was utterly, truly alone.
He would have never known the Myotis as family. If by some stroke of cruel fate he’d found them, he would have dominated them. He saw the vision of it now: seeing their loyalty not as a gift, but as a tool; their trust as a chain to be pulled. He would have seen them as blades to be sharpened, as fangs to gorge on his enemies, mere paws and slaves to be subjugated to his whims. Not family to be fed, cared for, and mourned.
But… this had not come to be so.
As his hands leafed furiously, yet gently, through the litany of literatures before him, what bloomed in his heart was not hatred for the man he might have been, nor an agonizing disgust. It was… appreciation. A quiet, profound gratitude for his trek thus far. This place, this haven of knowledge, was not just a collection of stories. He was a part of its history now, his blood and hers intertwined in its silent narrative. He was bound to it. And now, he understood his role in its preservation, its evolution.
Which is precisely what he had come here to do.
This very same place that once helped him reach the power in his own blood would now prove to be his greatest asset in assisting the people of Muu. The request from their elders had been desperate. Their world was being encroached upon by the creeping undead, and their defenses were failing. To expect a bricklayer to become a force capable of felling a wraith, or a weaver to stand against a ghoul, would normally be beyond unreasonable.
But through blood, anything was possible. Through the memories we inherited, the echoes of greatness passed down in the very marrow of our being, the pieces of information the legacy of our essence carries on… even the smallest spark could become an inferno. So long as even a single hair of a heroic lineage existed in a person, a single drop of diluted blood, Inari could spark its growth, engorge its potential until it burst forth.
He needed but the thread.
His eyes scanned the towering shelves, no longer seeing just books, but genealogies, histories, annals of power. He was sure he would find them here: records of the notable mages, the brilliant minds, the unbreachable warriors of the Nine Families and their vassal clans. And, more importantly, the genealogy connected to them, the lines that had spread and diluted over generations, trickling down into the common folk of places like Muu.
He moved with a new purpose, a predator hunting not for flesh, but for hope. He sought the name of a forgotten hero, a legendary smith, a mage who could command the seasons. He sought their descendants.
He pulled a heavy, dust-choked tome from a high shelf. The Annals of the House of Cinder-fall: Warriors of the Forge Flame. His fingers traced the faded gilt. Somewhere, in a quiet town, a baker kneading dough might carry the last embers of that Forge Flame in his veins, entirely unaware.
Inari opened the book. His search had begun. He was no longer a solitary island, but a bridge to a forgotten past, and the architect of an impossible future.
An Unspoken Kindred
Re: An Unspoken Kindred
The Boundary was more than a library — it was the beating heart of Acrix Solara, the Hellgate stronghold and capital city. Its halls stretched endlessly, a labyrinth of tomes and tablets chronicling ages of triumph and ruin. Here, within these walls, time held its breath. The Boundary was a sanctuary of remembrance, one of the few places on Vescrutia where the record of its history remained whole, untouched by war or whim. Scholars, mystics, and wanderers alike revered it. To walk its corridors was to walk the memory of the world itself.
It was here that Nagase had first brought Inariel, when his search for the truth of his own existence had just begun. That journey, once born of obsession and confusion, had bound their fates together more deeply than either could have predicted.
Nagase returned now to the Boundary, a changed being. Once, she had been a demigod unburdened by empathy, a creature of pure intellect and cold precision. Her mastery of telepathy had made her omniscient in all the wrong ways — every thought within reach, every emotion dissected, every secret revealed. There had been no mystery left in life, and thus, no joy. She had grown detached, calculating, treating existence as a problem to be solved rather than lived.
But in the twilight of her own sickness, when her mind began to turn against itself, she found a strange and unexpected cure. Her father. He had raised her with patience, trained her with compassion, and loved her with a steadiness she could neither comprehend nor reciprocate. He had known that one day she would kill him — and still, he gave her kindness.
That act, that impossible mercy, had shattered something within her. It broke the mirror of her coldness and forced her to see herself as more than a sum of her power. Since then, she had vowed to change — to fight not for dominance or proof, but for something greater. Whatever that may be.
And so she returned to the Boundary.
To reflect.
To remember.
And perhaps, to speak with the only soul who might tolerate her.
Nagase drifted between the towering stacks like a shadow that had learned to smile, her footfalls silent against the polished stone. She found him easily — there were few presences in existence as loud to her inner sight as Inariel’s. He stood over a pile of tomes, hands restless, purpose sharpened to a hunter’s edge.
Of course she knew why he was here.
With her talents, very little was ever chance. Even less was an accident.
She noticed the thin line of blood glistening , the faint shimmer of magic in the parchment he’d just touched.
Nagase approached with a confident, mischievous curl to her lips — a smile that always suggested she was three steps ahead and enjoying the view. Without a word, she tossed a decidedly unimpressive book down upon the table beside him.
Cooking with Ki-Ya: The Complete Edition.
The cover was glossy and new, a reflection of Acrix Solara’s luxurious culture and privilege. It looked laughably mundane sitting beside histories of war and ancient bloodlines.
Inariel’s eyes rolled from the cookbook to her — unimpressed, unamused.
Nagase’s smirk only widened.
“I also know what you’re thinking now,” she said. “Not that I need telepathy to read those eyes.”
She pricked her finger — a quick, careless motion — and let a single droplet of scarlet fall onto the cover. The page drank it instantly, like stone swallowing rain. Her eyes flicked to his hand, gesturing for him to do the same.
“Antares went through great lengths to hide certain information,” she explained, voice low and quiet in the vastness of the Boundary. “It would’ve been easier to destroy the artifacts entirely but… one can’t override their own nature.”
Her gaze lifted to the endless shelves, reverent and resentful all at once.
“The Holgurd are protectors of knowledge at their core. So, certain books that appear benign or useless… are actually elaborate glamours. Sealed behind wards that require two or three different blood signatures.”
Her eyes glinted as she looked back at him.
“And as fate would have it…”
She tapped the cover lightly.
It was here that Nagase had first brought Inariel, when his search for the truth of his own existence had just begun. That journey, once born of obsession and confusion, had bound their fates together more deeply than either could have predicted.
Nagase returned now to the Boundary, a changed being. Once, she had been a demigod unburdened by empathy, a creature of pure intellect and cold precision. Her mastery of telepathy had made her omniscient in all the wrong ways — every thought within reach, every emotion dissected, every secret revealed. There had been no mystery left in life, and thus, no joy. She had grown detached, calculating, treating existence as a problem to be solved rather than lived.
But in the twilight of her own sickness, when her mind began to turn against itself, she found a strange and unexpected cure. Her father. He had raised her with patience, trained her with compassion, and loved her with a steadiness she could neither comprehend nor reciprocate. He had known that one day she would kill him — and still, he gave her kindness.
That act, that impossible mercy, had shattered something within her. It broke the mirror of her coldness and forced her to see herself as more than a sum of her power. Since then, she had vowed to change — to fight not for dominance or proof, but for something greater. Whatever that may be.
And so she returned to the Boundary.
To reflect.
To remember.
And perhaps, to speak with the only soul who might tolerate her.
Nagase drifted between the towering stacks like a shadow that had learned to smile, her footfalls silent against the polished stone. She found him easily — there were few presences in existence as loud to her inner sight as Inariel’s. He stood over a pile of tomes, hands restless, purpose sharpened to a hunter’s edge.
Of course she knew why he was here.
With her talents, very little was ever chance. Even less was an accident.
She noticed the thin line of blood glistening , the faint shimmer of magic in the parchment he’d just touched.
Nagase approached with a confident, mischievous curl to her lips — a smile that always suggested she was three steps ahead and enjoying the view. Without a word, she tossed a decidedly unimpressive book down upon the table beside him.
Cooking with Ki-Ya: The Complete Edition.
The cover was glossy and new, a reflection of Acrix Solara’s luxurious culture and privilege. It looked laughably mundane sitting beside histories of war and ancient bloodlines.
Inariel’s eyes rolled from the cookbook to her — unimpressed, unamused.
Nagase’s smirk only widened.
“I also know what you’re thinking now,” she said. “Not that I need telepathy to read those eyes.”
She pricked her finger — a quick, careless motion — and let a single droplet of scarlet fall onto the cover. The page drank it instantly, like stone swallowing rain. Her eyes flicked to his hand, gesturing for him to do the same.
“Antares went through great lengths to hide certain information,” she explained, voice low and quiet in the vastness of the Boundary. “It would’ve been easier to destroy the artifacts entirely but… one can’t override their own nature.”
Her gaze lifted to the endless shelves, reverent and resentful all at once.
“The Holgurd are protectors of knowledge at their core. So, certain books that appear benign or useless… are actually elaborate glamours. Sealed behind wards that require two or three different blood signatures.”
Her eyes glinted as she looked back at him.
“And as fate would have it…”
She tapped the cover lightly.
The team