The voice kept speaking, questioning—
"I've seen so many things. What do I truly want?"
"I want to see everything I've never seen. I don't want to lose what I once had."
"But think about it—by giving up just a little, I can get back something more important that I'm about to lose! Such a sacrifice is more acceptable than losing everything, isn't it?!"
Lys gripped her hair tightly. Her labored breathing and the sobs choking from her throat echoed continuously in this empty room.
That voice carried undeniable determination and madness, even the pronouns quietly shifting.
"Souls only need fairness. Dad hasn't truly died. You only need that tiny bit of already-torn soul, just that little bit, and you can get the chance to call him back. Depriving just a little bit of life isn't that difficult."
Lys suddenly raised her wand.
Yes... it wasn't that difficult.
She had once not been abandoned, so now they shouldn't be cast aside either!
But Lys's hand was trembling. She also wanted a complete soul, wanted to know if her deepest choices were real.
Were those choices made because she was afraid?
Or did she truly want to pursue them?
That voice continued its relentless chatter:
"Think about it—what is your fertile ground? Have you really stood upon it? Think about it—can your future truly no longer need him?"
"Will your fertile ground disappear with his disappearance? Of course, his disappearance might also bring the fertile ground one step closer to you."
"He's a werewolf. How much of your pain has he brought you?"
"What kind of suffering has his past cowardice and avoidance brought you?"
"He once tried to abandon you and your mother by abandoning himself..."
"And death is the result he's constantly pursued. You can satisfy him, then tell Mum you were powerless."
"A werewolf—every full moon, do you really want your family to feel heavy-hearted just seeing the moon?"
"So now, you can choose to give him a chance to live and continue the current life."
"You can also choose to give yourself the chance to know yourself, to experience a future like any other young witch."
"How will you choose? Stalys, I'm waiting to see your choice..."
How to choose?
How to choose?
How to choose?
Lys's hand shook violently.
She knew she was wavering.
"Avada Kedavra!"
The scales in her heart quietly reversed. That heart ultimately outweighed the white feather and crashed down with a thunderous fall.
The pleading eyes of the man on the ground could never find mercy, losing their murky light forever.
Struggling to activate Occlumency to suppress those conflicting, surging emotions, Lys stirred her magic to carve the symbols from the stone archway—symbols she'd memorized countless times these past days—in rings around her left arm.
When those symbols began to flicker through the flowing blood, Lys knew her conceived method had partially succeeded.
Lys suddenly let out a bitter laugh, then burst into tears the next moment.
One of her tears was scalding hot, dripping onto her left hand covering her chest, flowing down along her wand.
Her soul would never return to wholeness. She would forever lose part of herself.
She would never know whether her need for home, for family, truly stemmed from love or merely from fear and desperate need.
In all these years away from home, she'd never found 'herself' the way Senna stood before her cauldron with such certainty. Only when she occasionally received letters from home did she feel that anything had value.
What was this?
Was this love?
Was this the love her mother had asked her about that year in the cramped little shop in Knockturn Alley?
And now.
The blackthorn wand raised in Lys's left hand cast Avada Kedavra for the first time willingly. Under the sickly green light of the curse, the unconscious wizard lost his life.
Following the teachings in those books considered taboo, Lys actively split her own soul.
She could never know that answer again...
Compared to losing 'home,' perhaps she could better accept such a sacrifice. And as that voice had said: "This world is like the bottom of the sea. Without struggling and waving your limbs, who will be the next to sink?"
And Lys needed to know what awaited her on the surface...
If there was nothing on the surface, what use was struggling upward?
If she only learned the answer after losing everything, she couldn't gamble on whether it was the price of her true love.
Lys told herself that her father's return would be the best choice for this 'home.'
Even if that man had wanted to leave completely long ago, using death to achieve what he considered liberation.
When the final spell ended, Lys could feel her left arm losing sensation. She switched her wand to her right hand, looking at the thin figure before her wearing an ill-fitting, worn red nightgown.
She just stood there quietly, extending both hands toward Lys. Blurry grey mist emanated and gathered from her body, her facial expression hidden behind the fog, impossible to discern.
This was the part of her own soul that she'd torn from the wound on her left hand.
Lys embraced her, feeling the part of herself she'd lost. Even though she tried desperately to restrain herself, part of the emotions and reason that composed her soul had still been bloodily ripped away.
Those dark, cold, achingly suppressed longings—even though she rarely thought of them after graduation, how could she forget? Lys spread her arms and embraced 'her.'
That was nothing but herself... that was all herself.
But that broken soul just stood there quietly, like young Lys standing in the corner of the kitchen, silent and motionless...
Standing before her father's bed, Lys poured large amounts of soul stabilizer into herself.
The two rings of symbols on her left arm were one of her research achievements from these years. Things surrounded by these symbols would possess the power to take away life.
Two years ago, she'd used her privileges to sneak into Britain's Department of Mysteries again. She hadn't emerged for a full fortnight, but had only learned the function of these symbols.
During her travels, Lys had also experimented with bizarre materials. Only that black dragon skeleton, giant skull, and a strange stone riddled with pockmarks had withstood the carving—but they'd also crumbled after taking away the 'life' force of several rabbits.
And now Lys didn't have time to search for materials and research more suitable methods. Anyway, without a soul, this arm would never be whole again. She didn't care anymore—she was past caring.
Supported by vast quantities of magic crystals, Lys barely managed to stretch open those symbols with her own flesh and blood.
Timing it carefully, she awakened the gradually dulling Noah. The departure of his soul made his body unable to comprehend the world of the living. Even with his eyes open, there was no meaningful existence within them.
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