The Ascendant Wizard

That very night, she returned to her room and was ready to begin the seventh, and final, poison cycle. Picking up the vial of poison, she slowly motioned it around in her hand, looking at the dark liquid inside.

Morena held it up to the lamplight and let out a slow breath as she steadied her nerves for what was undoubtedly going to be a very taxing process.

She didn't know what would happen when she drank it. The first six had nearly killed her, each one pushing her further past her limits, reshaping her body and blood alongside the energy within her.

If she hadn't trained every day to keep her strength up, if she hadn't guided her energy with every waking hour, she doubted she would have survived them unharmed.

Her body was stronger now, her elemental energy was also much denser than it was at the start.

But this... this final vial wasn't like the others. The AI had warned her multiple times about just how dangerous it was.

Even it could only give a rough estimate of what the outcome might be, especially since the visions weren't within its calculations. That was something it couldn't understand fully.

She hoped she wouldn't see any more this time, but that was just a fool's wish; she knew that she would.

She clenched her fist around the vial and calmed her nerves, taking a seat in the middle of the room on the floor.

'There's no point in hesitating now. If I stop here, then all I've done is wasted. If I want to get closer to being a Wizard, then I can't afford that.'

She twisted the cap open, and the smell hit her instantly, bitter, acrid, like rust soaked in vinegar. Her throat tightened just from the scent but she didn't let that bother her.

Bringing the vial to her mouth, she tilted her head back and drank it all in one motion.

The burn was instant.

Fire clawed down her throat, into her chest, spreading through her veins like a wave washing through her body. She choked trying to keep it down as her body tried to reject the poison from entering.

It fought against her will with every motion, her body seizing as her lungs refused to breathe.

She clenched her fist so tight that she didn't even feel her nails digging into her own flesh, blood leaking out from the open wound it had caused; such a small pain was nothing in front of the intense suffering her body was facing.

[Warning. Heart rate unstable...]

[Warning. Blood pressure exceeding safe levels...]

[Critical alert. Immediate stabilization recommended...]

'Dammit.'

She didn't expect it to be this bad right off the bat; it was almost instant, no buildup, no slow discomfort; just straight misery.

Her teeth ground together as she leaned over on the ground, clenching her body in pain, collapsing onto her side. She forced her energy into motion, wrapping around her heart and veins to stop them from bursting.

The pain was indescribable; it felt as if her very blood wanted to tear out of her body and escape.

Thankfully, she didn't need to suffer through the pain for long, as her vision slowly blurred, and the darkness swallowed her mind.

When she opened her eyes again, she wasn't in her chamber anymore.

Instead, she found herself standing on cracked stone, a plain that stretched seemingly endlessly, with the only contrast to the pale gray of the stone being the black roots that seemed to poke through it occasionally like disgusting veins.

Looking up, all she could see was a vast, gray sky that constantly shifted and reflected light, almost as if it were made of glass.

She couldn't help but look around, panning from side to side until finally she noticed something in the far distance.

It was hard to describe, but it seemed almost like a figure.

Squinting her eyes to get a better view, she could only vaguely make out the figure itself, not because her vision was bad or because it was too far to see, but rather, the figure itself seemed almost blurry.

As if it wasn't real, like a haze in the desert heat.

But she could make out the form roughly, and it looked just like her, and yet not her. It was shadowy in texture, like literal darkness taken form, taller than she was currently, with a wider frame.

She couldn't make out its face, only the faint outline of her own features, twisted by the haze.

Her brows narrowed at the sight.

'What...?'

She took a step toward it, trying to get a better view.

The figure didn't move, yet the space between them seemed to stretch. Another step, and she was further away, not closer. She started walking faster and faster until she was running, until she was sprinting across the broken ground, but the figure only grew more distant.

Her chest tightened with frustration.

"Wait!"

The figure tilted its head slightly, but it didn't answer; it just stood there, waiting and staring directly at her.

She stopped running and just stared at the figure, hoping it would do something, but that was when a sound drew her attention.

Voices.

Her head turned, and suddenly she wasn't on the cracked plain anymore. Instead she was standing in a crowded marketplace, but not one she knew.

The colors were brighter, the buildings much different, and the people... they wore clothes not of this world.

Men in simple clothing, women with bags of groceries, children running with toys she recognized not from this world, but her previous one.

And there in the reflection of one of the glass doors, a face she knew but felt a disconnect from.

It was her own. Not Morena Ravenscroft, but the other her, the her before this life.

She froze as the memories clawed their way up from where she had buried them. The small apartment, the endless nights with the glow of a screen, and research after research.

The knowledge she sought to no end, no matter what she had to push aside to achieve it.

The loneliness.

Her throat went dry.

The memory self laughed, chatting with someone in the market; it was a scene of warmth, of simplicity, but it twisted her heart with knots she couldn't explain.

Because it wasn't hers, it was not a memory she had; at no time in her past life had she been free enough to enjoy such warmth.

The vision cracked when she understood that fact in her heart. The market shattered like glass, falling into shards of memory that cut across her skin as they dissolved, yet there was no pain from the wounds.

She stumbled back into the plain of roots, clutching her chest as she felt her heart racing against her will.

The shadow was still there, just watching her without doing anything.

She tried again, reaching for it, but every step only dragged her further away.

Her knees buckled as she tried to push herself. She hit the ground hard, the roots throbbing beneath her palms like they carried blood, her own blood.

She gasped, trying to breathe, but the air felt like poison.

Her gaze lifted one last time toward the shadow.

It still hadn't moved; it was still watching her, though she couldn't see its eyes. And for the first time, she gave up on the idea of trying to reach it. Perhaps she was never meant to reach it in the first place, perhaps it wasn't even real.

Was it just a fragment of her imagination trying to cope with the pain her body felt by conjuring an impossible task to strive towards? She couldn't know for sure, but in that moment, she gave up on that task.

Then the world collapsed.

She woke up with a scream, her body arching on the floor as her stomach retched yet nothing came out. Sweat drenched her, her bandages soaked through, her veins still burning like fire yet not nearly as much as before.

She gasped for breath, clutching her chest as the AI's voice returned in her ears.

[Stabilization successful. Energy density increased by 167%. Energy signature comparable to early-stage Wizard Apprentice threshold according to textures.]

Her body trembled violently, but she was alive.

Alive and even stronger than she had expected.

Her head sank back onto the floor, eyes staring at the ceiling. The vision burned into her mind, refusing to fade. The memory of her past life's face, and the shadow of herself that she couldn't reach.

Her hand curled into a fist.

The door opened, and Adolf rushed in having heard her scream, his face tense as he saw her condition.

"My lady!"

She waved him off weakly.

"Calm down, I'm fine. In fact, I'm better than fine."

Adolf frowned, unconvinced, but he held back his words. He placed a folded note on the desk beside her bed.

"A report came just now. The bandits are on the move."

Morena's eyes narrowed, the fire in her veins hadn't even cooled, and already another storm was waiting.