Yuer stood in the middle of the Temple’s plaza, uncomfortable and confused. His mark had reacted strangely, more so than it did earlier. The intensity of the heat was stronger and the pain around his skin almost made him want to tear off his own flesh.

But, why now?

Not enough time had passed for it to act up. The undefined third Echo within him shouldn’t accumulate this fast, certainly not according to the rules of the Divine Echo and not according to his previous lifetime’s experience with the two other attributes.

The only logical thing he could link to the timing of this flare-up was encountering…Ivak of Kersa? But why would his mark react? That didn’t make sense. This second son of the Rezas had neither Echo nor a blessing mark to speak of. In fact, he was the only Reznal to be born unblessed since the founding of the Reznali dynasty.

Ivak of Kersa was nicknamed ‘Black Scales’ among his kin for a reason. The nickname was a dual jab at Ivak’s unblessed and disfigured state. A connotation to the Dawaha’s bestial form, the scaled black Nak’e, and to the young man’s burnt and blackened face. According to the Scared Records, anything touched by the Dawaha is corrupted and abnegated the blessing of the holy All Mother. It was no coincidence that he was often referred as the ‘cursed’ and the ‘defective’ one among the Reznali.

So why would Yuer’s mark react to an unblessed person of all people? This issue was something that Yuer could have never foreseen. He had met Ivak in his past life, on the day of the harem Selection, he even greeted him and his mark never responded in any way.

Am I wrong? Could there be another reason for the mark’s sudden reaction? But what if it is what I think it and Ivak of Kersa’s presence has a hand in this? What to do then?

If one was faced with an unforeseeable problem, one had to validate the most suspected origin of the problem. Yuer had to simply arrange a situation where he could meet or maintain physical proximity to the second Reznal. If the same thing was to happen again, then the cause of the problem would naturally be ascertained.

Yuer’s calculated the cons and the pros of one decision against another. He could go back to the Middle Tower and barge in under the pretense of forgetting something. In this manner, he could hit two birds with one stone, ascertaining the cause of his mark’s flare-up and confronting the Tewekaga about the nature of his relationship with the second Reznal. The Tewekaga was in no position to aggravate his one and only potential ally. So, the old man would have no choice but to fess up.

The second decision was to pretend that Yuer knew nothing of this and slowly bide his time so that he could use this knowledge to later on pressure both the Tewekaga and Ivak. The current old Rezas hated nothing more than for his sons to mingle with the Temple. If he ever found out about Ivak’s secret dealings with the head of the Temple, life for the second Reznal would only become harder which would make controlling him much easier for Yuer.

The third option, which was the riskiest, was to confront Ivak of Kersa directly. Yuer initially wanted to remain low-key for the time being. He didn’t wish for anyone to be privy to his motives. He thought to maintain the helpless image of a naive, innocent and sheltered young master for more time to come. In his past life, he was indeed as such so holding up the act would raise no suspicions. However, he didn’t have the luxury of time now. His mark had become unstable and the continuous accumulation of undefined Echo could ensue his demise in a matter of a month or two, he can no longer afford to dally. In fact, he had only today and tomorrow and then the Reznali harem Selection would be upon him. Therefore, he had to act and fast.

Yuer previously thought to bond himself to the fourth Reznal, Sinrad. In exchange for Sinrad’s outward protection, he would make sure to not let the young man fall prey to his eldest brother’s mechanizations. A give and take sort of a deal. However, now with the knowledge that Ivak of Kersa had possible connection to both his future ally and to his mark’s instability, the second Reznal might be the more logical choice overall.

From his past life’s memories, Yuer was privy to the knowledge that, out of all the Reznals, Ivak had the worst relationship with the current Rezas and subsequently his eldest brother. This one point was something which would work quite well in Yuer’s favor.

The father and son couldn’t see eye to eye and as a result, Ivak was generally disregarded by most of the Reznali clan. The black-haired Reznal was unfavoured and powerless. His birth mother was a Sherfin woman of unknown origins, a fact which only served to garner disdain from his relatives and the Dasra alike. In this sense, Ivak of Kersa had no strong maternal support to lean on, unlike his third brother Mayir. This youth’s position among his clan only worsened with his state of unblessedness. His lack of an Echo mark, on top of the low-born origin of his mother, only helped to further the familial gap between him and his brothers.

In truth, the reason why Yuer subconsciously disregarded this very Reznal was because he reminded Yuer too well of his past self. Both too weak and too pitiful with a short lifetime that ended due to the whim of another.

In the case of Ivak, if it wasn’t for his paternal uncle, the old Rezas’ deceased youngest brother, the youth wouldn’t even have a fief to rule or reside within. The late fifth Grand Reznal had no offspring of his own so he passed down his landed title, the northernmost province of Kersa, to his nephew.

After all, Ivak’s Shefrin mother was a servant who belonged to his uncle. The Rezas met her at his youngest brother’s manor where she served. He was momentary besotted by her exotic silky black hair and dark crimson eyes. From what Yuer knew of the Rezas and from his experience with his golden eldest child, he had his doubts on whether Ivak’s mother had been willing to bed the man.

The fact that she remained a shefrin and the Rezas didn’t even bother to elevate her status or receive her into his Inner Palace told him that much. He probably had forgotten her existence until someone of his brother’s manor came and told him she was pregnant. The fire that took place right after her labor had the Rezna’s, Jarak’s birth mother, hand written all over it. Good thing, it didn’t kill the infant, only disfigured him. Not the same could be said of his mother, however.

The one thing that Yuer knew very well about the current old Rezas was how obsessed the old man was with bloodline and legacy. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t stand his son. It didn’t matter that he held no affection or favor for him. It didn’t matter that he let his son grow up parentless in the frozen land of the Semani north, six weeks away from the Palace. The only thing that mattered was that the boy was a Reznali. So, even if he didn’t like him and even if the boy was born unblessed, he was still his blood. For a man so narcissistic, the pretense of shared bloodline was all that mattered.

This was where the old Rezas and Jarak, the Malhada, differed. Although the former favored one son so blatantly and neglected the rest, he still would never kill off his own children, therefore the fire that claimed Ivak’s mother could have never been his work. The Malhada, on the other hand, operated differently. In this world, only Jarak could stand at the summit of the mountain. There could be no other tigers.

 The old Rezas and his Rezna had an unwitting hand in this. They both raised Jarak upon the notion of utmost superiority. They conditioned him to believe that he was unparalleled and that no matter what he wished to do or to achieve, the consequences didn’t matter. They gave birth to a small boy and made him into a monster.

 This boy only grew to be a psychopathic beast in human’s skin, purging his own entire clan in the process. In the year that followed his coronation during Yuer’s past lifetime, No one was spared the executioner’s cleaver, not his brothers, not his uncles, not their consorts and not even his own one-summer old nephew, Mayir’s only child. His birth mother, the Rezna Dowager, grew terrified of her own son and after realizing that he was the one who pushed his father to his grave with slow-acting poison, she secluded herself in her maiden home until she died some months later.

Jarak loved to share his thoughts on his relatives with Yuer, especially after several bouts of ‘lovemaking’ when Yuer no longer felt a thing. Jarak would talk to him often of his clan, of the things he hated, of the things he loved while he caressed the gashes and the bruises he carved into his ‘beloved’ Rezna’s skin.

He would whisper to Yuer of this hole inside him that no matter what he stuffed into it, it would never close. He talked to Yuer about the perpetual itch underneath his skin that would only ease a bit once he hurt something or anything. He talked to Yuer about the black wolves that would lay in wait for him every time he fell asleep. He would murmur to Yuer old lullabies, lullabies his old nanny used to sing to him. One night, he gently laid a kiss on Yuer’s temple and whispered lovingly to him, “How sweet it would be to die by your hand one day, you whom I hurt the most.”

Out of the nightmare that was his past lifetime with Jarak, Yuer came to the truth that the first Reznal was simply an empty man. An empty, albeit mad man, who would commit any form of atrocity to ease that emptiness a little bit. The innocent and the not so innocent paid the price for his sickness and eventually the entire Semani Empire also paid its toll to him in full.

Yuer would not disappoint Jarak this time around. His carelessly whispered wish shall be fulfilled to the letter. If he had to use Ivak as an additional sword to brandish against Jarak, he wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of him.

Fret not, ‘my dearest bonded’. I shall free you from the emptiness soon enough.

“Let’s go.” Yuer curtly ordered as he strode his way out of the marbled plaza.

Sakina followed suit in brisk, hurried footsteps. “Is esteemed young master going back to the residence?”

“No, Sakina. We’re not finished here. We have yet to cut some wings.”

The girl’s dark brows furrowed in confusion. Cut some wings? What wings?

After Yuer crossed the Temple’s gates to the main street, he turned to Sakina and fixed her with a chilly stare. “Let us head to the Undercity.”

The servant girl nearly stumbled on her own feet. “The Undercity?!”

Yuer chuckled, “What? Scared?”

“Esteemed young master, you have been to the Undercity before when you acquired my humble self. You surely know what sort of place the city of Night is. There are no Ayaseen guards to accompany us there.”

Yuer lifted his hood a fraction and flashed his servant a confident smirk. “There is no need. I’m a twice-blessed person or did you forget? I’m more than capable of protecting us.”

He then turned around and walked to the waiting carriage across the street. Sakina run after him, concerned and slightly dazed by her master’s uncharacteristic audacity. Before today, he never liked to flaunt his abilities and Sakina knew that deep down, the youth harbored hatred for his own Alikana-mark.  He was also never properly taught Echo-Control during his schooling at the residence. Most of his education revolved around scholarly matters like faith, literature and history and he was rarely if ever lectured on the Divine Echo.

Apart from the hired Echo tutor who came once a week to help her master exercise his Echo with little tasks like using the Light Echo Mirror or raising some pebbles, no one paid his training any actual serious thought. And as her master was forbidden from having any contact with the Temple and its Kumatani, he had no one to properly teach him how raise the rank of his Echo attributes. At his best, her young master was even less than a beginner-level Echo user.

Sakina suspected that the Dasiri had a deliberate hand in wanting to keep her young master ignorant and defenseless but she never dared to express her suspicion outloud seeing how her master heeded his consort mother so sincerely.  

The servant girl shook her head, attempting to ward off that dangerous train of thoughts. Instead, she dashed after her master. She waited by the carriage’s door as the youth went and whispered something to the middle-aged driver. A moment later, the pair hopped into the carriage and settled into opposite seats. The carriage took off.

Yuer removed his hood and threw a glance at Sakina. He found her slightly perplexed gaze already on him. The moment she noticed his eyes returning her gaze, she quickly looked away.

Yuer wasn’t oblivious to Sakina’s unspoken bafflement. He knew that he must have shocked her today with his uncharacteristic demeanor and mysterious actions. He allowed her into the underground room where he met with the Tewekaga for a reason. He needed her trust but he also wanted to let her see that he wasn’t what she thought to be. He promised himself that he wouldn’t let her live in vain again. So, he must protect her in any way he could.

“I will clear up everything for you once we get back to the residence.” Yuer started, “For now, just trust me.”

Sakina nodded vehemently. She didn’t even think to add another word.

Yuer smiled softly. Trust, the hardest currency in this world and Sakina gifted it to him so genuinely, so carelessly. Regret, the bitterest of things, seeped into his heart. He regretted many things but he also knew that in this new lifetime, he must make sure there wouldn’t be any more regrets to pile upon his old ones. That past life was gone but this one was still here to be lived.

And Yuer needed to start with this one small thing, locating Tamine Nakari. This man, or rather this boy, should be around fifteen-summers old at this time. He should be a small scribe and an occasional errand boy for one of the many sub-chiefs of the Shakoura, the organized criminal order that ruled the Undercity. This boy was the discipline that led the Zaradate Temple to ruin and the Tewekaga to the netherworld. 

The thing about Tamine was that he was, in layman terms, a natural genius. Although born unblessed, he was maniacally fascinated by the Divine Echo and its phenomena. He was taught to read and write by the sub-chief himself in order to cultivate him into an engineer. However, no one would have expected this little common-born orphan to shake the very foundation of the scholarly world by successfully engineering a device that would negate the Divine Echo just two years later from his fifteen’s birthday. This device would later be manufactured under the guise of many things, including jewelry.

Back then, Yuer remembered how Jarak used to treat him decently until two years after their bonding, when he told Yuer; he wished to gift him a precious amaranthine earring to to replace his bonding one. At that time, Yuer’s heart overflowed with joy, thinking how fortune he was to have such a kind and thoughtful bonded. He had no idea that he had sealed his own doom right at that moment. The altered amaranthine sucked up all the residual Echo within him. No matter what he tried, Light Echo healing, pills, elixirs, mediation, nothing seemed to ever work. Yuer had no idea his bonded’s precious gift was the cause of his predicament.

Losing his Echo was the very first brick that cause the entire roof to collapse over his head. Due to that dazzlingly beautiful earring, he was rendered a defenseless, powerless thing and Jarak no longer had a reason to put up with his benevolent charade. Instead, he revealed his monstrous nature to Yuer in the most blunt and candid of ways.

Jarak discovered Tamine when he reached his sixteenth summer, mainly through the secret intelligence of the Aknar, who, at this moment, should be an unknown and hidden order operating at the fringes of the Undercity; an elusive fox hiding within the sleeping tiger’s den.

In the beginning, Jarak reached out to the Shakoura with an arrangement, hoping to acquire Tamine directly. However, the Shakoura refused him. This refusal only served to fan the flame of the Malhada’s rage. One wouldn’t tell ‘no’ to someone who was never used to been told no. In the end, Jarak had his personal agents, some of which were high-level Dark Listeners invade the Undercity under the cover of the night, massacring an entire faction of the Shakoura. He then kidnapped Tamine and persuaded him to work for him by promising the boy to get him into the Zaradate Temple where he could read, experiment and learn to his heart’s content.

Tamine’s peculiar personality and his maniacal thirst for knowledge would serve to endear him to the aged Tewekaga, who ended up offering discipleship to the boy, despite his unblessed state. This one move of the old man would later seal his own demise and lend a hand in the subsequent fall of the Temple.

Yuer had to either acquire Tamine before Jarak did or to wipe this kid off of the face of the living world. He didn’t care how cold-blooded and evil this line of thoughts would make him seem to Sakina, but he couldn’t allow this one wild variant to roam free. Tamine must not learn to engineer the Echo-negating device. Better yet, he must never meet Jarak.

The sub-chief that should be employing Tamine at this moment was called Lone Eye. He was placed somewhere at the lower end of the Shakoura’s food-chain. At this point of time, it should have been close to a month since he recruited the boy. Yuer needed to meet the man. Until now, Lone Eye should have not discovered Tamine’s genius so he might be willing to part with the kid for the right price.

After some time, the driver halted the horses and hopped down. He placed a small wooden stool under the ride’s door and knocked. The pair quickly got off of the carriage. The driver then looked at Yuer with his perpetually bored eyes and curtly said, “I can’t drive you any closer. You follow on foot. I will wait.”

Yuer nodded, not sparing the older man any further attention. He quickly made his way across the street, Sakina followed along without much fanfare. The pair walked for a while, bypassing decrepit stacked houses, depressingly bare shops and countless guarded eyes. They eventually reached a certain alleyway of Indigo District.

The alleyway was dark and musty, littered with stale, unclean water pools. At the end of the alleyway, an unremarkable rusty door stood. Painted across its rust-crusted surface was a drawing of a gigantic ten-legged black spider. The design on the bottom pulpous part of its body evoked the image of a wailing skull. This was a depiction of a Scythe Spider or commonly known as Death Spider. They were no ordinary arachnid species but an Echo Beast that roamed within the Razura Forest, far north of the Semani Empire.

Sakina held back the shudder that fought to break through her slight frame at the mere presence of that symbol. She knew better than anyone what that insignia meant. The Shakoura; the reigning kings of the Undercity. In this city that never knew the sun, there was but one law and that law was the Shakoura. In her time spent here, she had never glimpsed a single Reznali trooper or a Helisari warrior. Even the mighty Rezas and the famous Zaradate Temple wouldn’t want their people to set foot in this violent world of darkness. One simply wouldn’t step on the Scythe Spider’s web if they cherished their lives.

Yuer noticed Sakina’s alarmingly pale face. He moved closer to her, freeing her hand from its death grip on the heavy cloak. Instead, he took her skinny, slender hand into his own, squeezing it gently. In a low and smooth voice, he reassured, “Don’t be afraid. It’s all in the past now. This place is no longer where you are. It’s just a pile of rust, old stone and dirt. It can’t hurt you anymore.”

Yuer’s previously smooth voiced developed a dagger-sharp edge, “And if anyone in there dares to breathe your way, I will make them regret the very thought of it.”

 Sakina shut her eyes for a bit, her eyelids quivering. She took a deep and long breath before she looked back at Yuer. Her brown eyes brimmed with trust and determination. “Let us be on our way, esteemed master.”

Yuer nodded, a proud smile clinging to the edges of his lips. “Let us, then.”