Chapter 73: Choices and Paths
“Eh?” I rubbed my eyes, then looked again at the open page. As my gaze swept over the strange, thorny symbols, their meaning bloomed in my mind, unbidden. It was a bizarre, intuitive understanding of concepts so alien that my old world’s vocabulary had no words for them. It was a knowledge that could be felt, but not spoken. This understanding had appeared from nowhere. It wasn't my memory. And it certainly couldn't be Parula's. How could a little beggar girl possibly know a language so ancient, so arcane?
“Parula, are you sure you’re alright?” Jared asked, his voice filled with a deep, worried concern. My strange behavior was becoming more frequent, more pronounced. He must have suspected that the witch had laid some curse on me.
“I’m fine,” I said, my voice distant, my eyes still fixed on the page. “But… I think… I think I can read this.”
“Read what?” he asked, astonished. “You mean… those strange markings?” He could perhaps understand me reading the witch's handwritten notes, but the ancient script? It was impossible.
“Yes,” I nodded, my own mind reeling with the impossibility of it. I didn't understand how this was happening. It just… was.
“Is it… is it the whispers again?” Jared asked, his voice a hushed, awestruck whisper. “The ones you hear in your dreams?” His words struck me with the force of a physical blow. It was the only explanation that made any sense. If this knowledge wasn't from me, and it wasn't from Parula, then it could only have come from some other, unknown source. From the whispers. And the whispers… they led me back to the void. To the Great Fly. To the moment of my transmigration, a period of my memory that was still a black, gaping hole. Whenever I tried to recall it, a sharp, searing pain lanced through my skull. If some unknown knowledge had been forced into my mind, there was only one entity that could have done it. But why? Why would that cosmic horror gift me with such knowledge? Why would it understand this strange, ancient language? And why had it thrown me into this world in the first place? The questions were a maddening, unanswerable spiral.
“Parula, never mind that for now,” Jared said, his voice filled with a sudden, feverish excitement. “If you can read it, what does it say? Does it tell you how to become a witch?”
“What? Do you want to become a witch, Brother Jared?” I asked, a flicker of my old self’s sarcastic humor surfacing. It was a strange, ironic thought, coming from a boy who had only recently become a girl.
“Of course not!” he said, his face flushing, his excitement instantly deflating. “How could I become a witch? I was just… I was just thinking of you, Parula,” he stammered. “Maybe… maybe you could become one?”
“And you think that would be a good thing?” I asked, my voice grow cold. I had seen the witch’s power, yes. But I had also seen her chained, tortured, and nearly burned alive. There were other, greater powers in this world, powers that hunted witches, that still clung to the brutal traditions of a darker age. And this was a world of real witches, real monsters, and real, terrible danger. But as I thought about it, a new, dangerous idea began to take root. This… this was a chance. A chance to stand on my own two feet, to no longer be a parasite, a burden on Jared. It was a path fraught with peril, but my current life was already a living death. To not seek a way out, to not grasp for power in a world that respected nothing else, was to surrender completely.
And so, I made my choice. I began to read the witch’s grimoire in earnest. It was the first step on a new, dark path. It was the opening of Pandora’s Box.
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