The Last Godfall: Transmigrated as the Young Master

Vencian left Abnet's quarters with the staff bruises still smarting under his shirt. The air outside was cool, his breath puffing faint in the dim light of the corridor. He had gained what he wanted.

Not from Amadeus, but from the man who can give him what he wanted… Or at least the most closest he could get. It was strange comfort, the kind that did not feel like victory, only like another debt added to his account.

Walking back through the mansion, his thoughts replayed the session.

Quenya slipped into view beside him, her voice quiet. "So you really went through with it. That blade… it nearly broke you last time."

Her words reminded him of what happened last time when he tried to summon that strange weapon once again. It was after he got to know about the pact. Summoning was not hard, it appears on his will. Though but the problem came after he summoned it. In less than ten seconds the colors from his vision depleted.

Vencian kept his eyes forward. "I know. My body gave out, my vision dimmed. But it still appeared. That means it can appear again."

"That's what I'm afraid of," she said, hovering closer. "Every time you push for it, I can feel the strain through the pact. It's not like drawing breath. It takes something from you."

He exhaled slowly, hand brushing against his side where Abnet's staff had struck. "Maybe I don't know how yet. Maybe I'll fail again. But I can't throw it away. If the blade exists, there has to be a way to make it mine."

Her gaze softened, though worry still marked her tone. "Then promise you'll be careful. I'd rather see you stumble a hundred times than watch you collapse for good."

"I'll stumble," he said, a faint resolve in his words. "But I'll keep walking until it works."

He shot her a look, but the corner of her mouth twitched as if she had expected those words. They said nothing more until the path brought him to the gate of the Vicorra house.

Inside, servants greeted him with polite bows. He barely returned them, his legs carrying him straight to his room. The walk back had drained the edge off his thoughts, leaving the dull ache of the staff's strikes and Quenya's words still needling at him.

He sat on the bed, letting his shoulders slump. For a moment the silence threatened to pull him into rest, but then his eyes caught the stack of papers on his desk. The notes Roselys had pressed into his hands earlier. Cases of blood rituals, scattered incidents of men and women dabbling in forbidden rites, the kind that always ended in madness or death.

His fatigue did not matter.

He rose, crossed the room, and set the first page under the lamplight.

The letters stared back at him, waiting to be read.

There were dozens of incidents recorded, most of them little more than wild beliefs scribbled into reports by fearful witnesses. But three stood out once he had skimmed through the first few pages.

The first case concerned an adventurer who had stumbled upon a cauldron in Awekar, a corrupted region spoken of in whispers. Awekar was said to be a place where no settlement could last and no man was safe to wander for long. The adventurer carried the cauldron back, convinced it held power.

He poured his own blood into it, mixing herbs, then spoke a word he believed would awaken it. People argued afterward over its intended purpose. Some thought it was for scrying, others claimed it was for blessing fields or curing disease. The man himself had been ill with a sickness beyond any physician's help, and desperation had driven him to the attempt.

The notes described the aftermath in plain detail. He died within days, and every person who had touched him in the last month fell ill with the same disease. The cauldron was seized and taken to the Cathedral of the Luminous Star in Draal, where it was sealed.

Vencian rubbed his eyes at the simplicity of the man's thinking. Mixing blood with plants and a word was nothing new. Folk healers did the same thing without calling it magic. Yet in this case, the risk had spread past the man himself and ruined others.

The second case was worse in its cruelty. A rural family had locked away their daughter-in-law and used her menstrual blood each month for their ritual. They claimed the rite brought prosperity. The report detailed how they collected her blood secretly and buried the stained rags in the field before planting. The family grew wealthier during those years, though whether the ritual caused it or not was unclear.

The authorities uncovered the practice only after neighbors reported screams from the locked room. When they forced the door, they found her nearly starved, body marked from years of confinement. The report gave little more, only that the family was executed and the victim later disappeared from record.

Vencian lowered the page, the words sour in his mind. This was not ritual. This was cruelty disguised as one.

This case reminded him of his time on Earth. The cult-like practices, the superstitious beliefs paraded as sacred truths. He had seen people cling to them, using fear to control and to justify.

It struck closer because he had lived among such people.

Though calling himself a victim felt like a reach, he had still been caught in the orbit of their cruelty. He knew how superstition could drown a person, turn them into something less than themselves.

The thought dragged up a memory of his mother. He refused to let it take shape. He shut the door on it as quickly as it opened, pressing himself instead toward the next page.

The last case was the one that made him pause longer than the rest. It described a man who had attempted summoning.

Nobody knew the result because he vanished without trace, but the details left behind were unlike the other cases. A sheet covered with drawn circles had been found. Candles had been placed at specific points. Books filled with half-finished notes littered the floor.

This was not superstition. It was precise.

Vencian leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling as his thoughts ran. Could this be what the original Vencian had been working toward? The circles, the symbols, the setup—these were closer to what he remembered from the day he woke in this body.

But the idea made little sense. If the man had truly been trying to summon, what kind of summoning could have reached beyond this world and pulled Luke from Earth? The scale of that act felt impossible. And yet, he could not dismiss it completely.

His hand closed around the edge of the page until it creased. He forced himself to relax before it tore. The ritual that had brought him here may have looked like a summoning, but it was likely not meant for him. The original Vencian must have been attempting something else.

Perhaps a summoning of a different kind, one aimed at another entity.

That thought chilled him more than the idea of being the target.

If he was not the goal, then what had the real Vencian been trying to call?

A thought surfaced, unwelcome yet stubborn. What if the ritual had been for Quenya?

His eyes shifted toward her where she floated near the desk, watching him read. The idea pressed harder.

If the summoning had been meant for her, then why did she know his life in such detail—his past on Earth? And what of the scarlet trail across the moon, the sign that appeared the night he woke here? Was it tied to her, or to him, or was it coincidence altogether?

He pushed the papers away, hands restless on the desk. "Maybe I'm following the wrong clues. Maybe the ritual called both of us. Or neither, and something else forced the exchange."

Quenya's gaze lingered on him. "You think I was the purpose, but you forget—I woke after you did. If I was the one being summoned, wouldn't I have been here first?"

The logic was hard to refute. He tapped a finger on the page without reading. "Then maybe neither of us were supposed to be here. Maybe something went wrong."

"Or," she said softly, "maybe everything went exactly as it was supposed to."

He gave her a look, but she didn't expand. The silence stretched, filled only by the faint crackle of the lamp.

Vencian leaned back, staring at the stack of reports that had led him in circles. If the man had truly tried to summon, it left him with more questions than before. About himself, about Quenya, and about the night the moon bled scarlet across the sky.

The notes had offered cases and consequences. But what they had given him most of all was uncertainty.