The path led her through more land surrounding abandoned fields until she saw, on the right side of the road, a dilapidated two-story building overgrown with weeds emerging from a small forest behind it.
"An inn, perhaps," she thought, given the fork in the road and a post with glyphic text, fallen and partially covered with mud that had solidified after the recent rains. Her stomach growled, and when she looked up, the sun was stinging despite the cold wind blowing from the south, and the Twin Moons on the opposite side of the heavens waited patiently for the moment of their nocturnal reign. "I'll rest for a while, before I faint from hunger, thirst, and heat."
The inn's facade was made of gray bricks covered with vines, with wooden frames to stabilize the structure, and tiled roofs riddled with holes. The windows were broken, and the front door was fallen down, covered in layers of dust.
Upon entering, Tristessa found a desolate sight: the inn's grand dining room, where travelers and adventurers gathered to enjoy themselves, in ruins. The tables and chairs were in pieces, some ceiling beams had fallen, the stairs leading to the second floor had collapsed, and the gloom covered everything, giving it a miserable air due to the lack of candles or power crystals.
Only the reception desk remained almost intact, albeit dusty and with black stains covering the table and the empty shelves…
"…"
Silently, the girl walked to the reception desk, bringing back from her broken memories the stories she had read about adventurers and warriors preparing to explore dungeons, resting after narrowly escaping with treasures in their hands and wounds inflicted by monsters. About music playing while they ate roast pork or chicken and drank fresh draft beer. About a beautiful receptionist who greeted them with a smile, ready to negotiate the price for their stay at the inn or show them the quests requested by the local adventurers' guild.
"What do you have for me today, Lyanna?" Tristessa rested her arms on the table and smiled at nothing, imagining herself standing before a beautiful woman with long blond hair, wearing a uniform that highlighted her prominent bust. "Oh, hunt twenty goblins for ten silver coins? Sign me in! And if I return victorious, would you like to have dinner with me?"
Of course, her voice echoing throughout the empty inn was the only response she received.
Her smile waned, and, ceasing to act stupidly, she placed her backpack on the table and began to unpack supplies. She took a drink of water and popped a modest piece of dried meat into her mouth. Spicy, with a flavor so strong it was almost inedible.
"Rather than starve…"
To one side, she looked at her makeshift map. She hadn't yet reached the structure indicated on it, but she was confident she'd make it before nightfall.
A few more minutes of resting, and then she'd continue her journey...
"Uh..."
Out of nowhere, Tristessa felt a slight headache. No, a discomfort, as if part of her brain was throbbing and, as strange as it sounds, generating an icy breeze that spread everywhere, reaching her ears, her eyes, her mouth. The thought occurred to her that maybe the smoked meat had compromised her health, but... There was something else going on.
"The thaumaturge..."
"...!"
Tristessa turned around quickly, startled, as she began to hear eerily familiar music and a male voice very close to her ears. At first glance, there was no one with her in the derelict inn. Her eyes darted around, searching for anything out of the ordinary, her heartbeat increasing exponentially in a split second.
Almost instantly, she detected something. A shadow, standing out between the gloom and the light coming from outside. The shadow of a human silhouette standing upright amidst all those broken tables and pieces of fallen ceiling, as if there were an invisible wall onto which the shadow could be projected.
"The blood elf gave me a task. A generous payment in soul-jewels, impossible to refuse and of dubious origin, just to map an ocean of trees."
The shadow's voice echoed inside Tristessa's head, as she listened, open-mouthed, watching the shadow move from side to side as if walking absentmindedly, in constant meditation. The silhouette of a blade could be seen in its right hand, making agile movements with it.
"I was never one to pay attention in class, much less in science and geography. My thing was being outside, running around and chasing the ladies going to the ballroom. Maybe that's why I accepted the elf's mission, if the assignment had everything I liked…"
The echo of the shadow was cold. Very cold. Tristessa unconsciously began to shiver. The music was no longer a mystery to her, coming from nowhere itself: it was the same melody that played in the In-Between, with that cracking tone as if it were being played on an old gramophone.
"I didn't expect my best hobbies to turn into my worst nightmares…" the shadow said, repeating that walk, the movement of the knife, caught in a loop. "They are coming… The witches of the Coven are coming for me. Their eyes see everything, and in their hands they bring Death and suffering."
It was then that Tristessa brought a hand to her mouth, and a memory of the nonexistent past came to the forefront of her mind: that lonely corpse in the Sea of Trees, surrounded by dead soil and cursed with evil thaumaturgy.
"I wonder if the elf… Malak Drakan, if he'll send someone to search for my remains. He has the other soul shard, but… I wouldn't want to be forgotten. I wouldn't want Viktor Enma to be forgotten." The shadow's sorrow was deep, a pit that reached into the depths of the abyss of despair. Tristessa knew it well enough, that torment that Death brought every time she was locked in its inescapable arms. "No one will hear my screams. No one will come to save me. I am alone… They are coming."
With that final lament, the deference to Death imbued in its voice, the echo of that dead man's shadow—that mercenary named Viktor Enma—faded, taking with it the chill that covered Tristessa's mind, but not the feeling within her.
Something that was beyond flesh and bones. Something that reached the depths of her soul.
"What the hell…?" she muttered, taking several steps toward the rubble and the mountain of broken wood. She saw dust stirred on one of the tables, as if someone had been sitting there. And below, among the shards of glass, there were footprints. "Viktor…"
Tristessa whispered the name of the man she had never met, and whose body she had found with Jin and Severus in another timeline.
She had no doubt: Viktor Emma had visited that place, perhaps to rest or seeking shelter from the night, before reaching the end of the highway and entering the Sea of Trees, never to return.
And he had left a part of himself behind, a testament to his ignominious future. An echo the mercenary left in that world before dying at the hands of the Coven.
"This sensation…"
Tristessa couldn't stop feeling it inside her, as if it surrounded her heart and the mark of her successive resurrection. She knew what it was, and it terrified her. She could have attributed it to a supernatural event; Nekrom was a world, the axis-mundi of a parallel universe, where magic, miracles, and Gods existed, and there was no reason not to believe that the shadow of a dead-man could be something ordinary in the right context.
But it was an identical sensation to when she had reanimated Gaal and Jin's corpses, only the headache had been much less severe in comparison.
"Another Divinity…" she thought, unable to understand the Gods' intentions regarding such mysterious and terrifying abilities. "Whispers in the Dark…"
Little by little, the strange feeling that was coming from her soul and the slight headache subsided, causing the gray-eyed girl to realize something else: she looked at her hands, feeling that something invisible to her eyes had changed in them. She didn't quite know how to explain it… But the way the shadow had been handling a knife gave her the idea of taking the hunting knife from her backpack and holding it firmly in her right hand.
"…"
Hesitantly, she focused and tried to find what felt strange about her hand. It wasn't until she moved the hunting knife from side to side a little that she understood:
"It feels… Lighter."