POV Elian
"Damn it! I can't get anywhere!" I muttered after yet another day of failed attempts.
Ever since Iolanda had shown me the altar and instructed me to begin the meditation to discover which divinity would become my link to the Qliphoth, I had found nothing but silence. No answer. No sign.
"I thought it would be the owl… the same one that brought me into this world. But why doesn't she appear? Why does she stay silent during these meditations?"
The practice Iolanda described required an environment steeped in darkness: a room drowned in shadow, lit only by black and red candles. The air had to be saturated with dragon's blood incense, which she said was bound to the Draconian Kabbalah, serving as a bridge to the Qliphoth.
Let me explain how the meditation is supposed to work: I must lock myself away in silence—which in Brumaria is nearly impossible. The voices of the street bleed through the cracks of the house, mingling with the creak of wagons and the hammering of tools. Even Emanuelle, in her innocence, sometimes interrupts, tugging at my attention. I can't blame her. In two months I'll leave for Cainã, and she'll only see me again every six months. I can feel her anguish as if it were my own.
But I'm digressing. I should return to Iolanda's instructions. She spoke with a tone that was both technical and priestly, words that lingered like a rite:
"If you wish to behold the Tree of Death, you must first learn to descend within yourself. One does not walk into the Qliphoth. It does not lie upon the ground—it lies within the flesh of the soul."
She said even a child could understand this. Yet for me, it made little sense. I knew I wasn't a child—not in mind—but I wasn't wise either. How does one truly look inward? I understood the idea… but I could not endure the process.
Every time I tried, what I found was not light nor revelation. It was my old form—Rodrigo—dark, deformed, like a corpse cast in pitch, its hollow eyes reflecting all I had lost and all I had killed.
Iolanda had made me sit in silence before a black candle and a red one. The flames burned slowly, giving no light, only enlarging the shadows that crawled along the clay walls like hungry creatures. The air was heavy. The dragon's blood incense spread, clawing into my lungs, leaving a metallic, bitter taste on my tongue—like scorched blood.
"Close your eyes," she ordered, her voice sharp, nearly liturgical.
"Breathe deeply, as if inhaling the air of Hell. Hold it. Then release it, as if giving your life back to the abyss. Repeat this until you no longer feel the weight of your body."
I obeyed. At first, it was unbearable. Every muscle resisted, my heart hammering as if it would burst through my chest. I trembled in spasms like a cornered beast, and at times I swore my bones resonated with each heartbeat. The incense scorched my nostrils until my eyes watered, and for a moment I feared I would suffocate.
But little by little, the discomfort gave way. A torpor spread through my veins. My flesh seemed to dissolve, as if I were being drained into the very darkness itself. A strange emptiness received me, cold and endless, as though the abyss itself had begun to breathe on my behalf.
When she sensed my body had surrendered to that torpor, her voice pressed on—calm, yet sharp as a blade.
"Now," Iolanda said, "imagine roots. Not climbing toward the sky, but plunging downward into the dark. Each root is a thread of your pain. Each step you take, you walk upon them. Descend. Always deeper."
And I did descend. I felt it—too real. The ground vanished beneath me, and the roots stretched like black serpents, coiling around my legs, pulling me down.
Her voice returned, steady, guiding me.
"When you hear the voices, do not resist. They will be your dead, your guilt, your cursed names. Let them speak. Do not silence them. In the midst of the chorus, one voice will rise above the rest. Grave. Ancient. That will be your Guardian."
"A grave, ancient voice?" I thought. But none came.
What rose instead was only a chorus of laments and accusations.
Luana appeared first. Her face bore the pain I myself had caused.
"You abandoned me," she accused, her voice cold as winter steel. "You killed me—and our parents."
I knew it wasn't truly her. I knew it was the Qliphoth, feeding me my own sins. But knowing didn't spare me. It cut all the same.
Then Arthur appeared.
"Because of you I had to die!" he roared, pointing at me like an executioner.
His body was a grotesque vision: thighs torn with deep cuts, fingers bent at impossible angles, teeth missing from his bloody mouth, a dagger sunk into his ribs.
I clenched my eyes shut, fighting to endure. Iolanda had warned me of illusions, of visions meant to break me. But to see Luana and Arthur… that was a torment too sharp.
And when Emanuelle appeared, for an instant I thought I was saved. Her glow pierced my shadowed world—only to turn it to ash in the next breath.
"You destroyed my family," she said, her small voice edged with venom. Her eyes, once tender, now blazed like blades. "Just as Father said at your birth… you will die alone, with no one by your side. I hate you."
Her words shredded me. I would be lying if I said I had never feared hearing this—from her, from Mother—if they ever discovered who I truly was: Rodrigo, the killer, the monster. I had buried those fears deep, suffocated them beneath memories of Arthur embracing me as his son. But hearing Manu spit that hatred… it tore open a wound that never healed.
"Elian, return!" Iolanda's voice cried, distant, echoing as if from a well.
I heard her, but muffled—buried beneath layers of pain. Abandonment wrapped around me, dragging me down. My spirit flailed, sinking deeper into solitude.
"I can't let this consume me!" I thought desperately. Yet my strength was fading. I felt caught in sticky threads, like a spider's web pulling me inward, and the more I struggled, the more ensnared I became.
Then—a sharp crack across my face.
I gasped awake, eyes snapping open. The dark room rushed back, incense still burning my nostrils. My body trembled, but I was back in myself.
"What happened, Elian?" Iolanda asked. Her voice, always calm, was tight now—rushed, uneasy.
It took me moments to speak. I still felt as though part of me wandered, lost among the Qliphoth's roots.
I told her everything I had seen. Her face shifted—incredulity, unease, and something close to fear. She stayed silent until at last she spoke:
"Very well," she said, grave. "It seems you must take more care than I imagined."
I asked her why, if what I had experienced was normal. Her expression betrayed the truth: it wasn't. She hid something—of that I was sure. The thought gnawed at me as I studied her face.
I knew she was human, that she could fail. But in these months, Iolanda had always seemed unshakable, almost infallible. To glimpse doubt in her was unsettling.
"Perhaps it was irresponsibility on my part," she admitted at last, her tone shadowed by hesitation. "But you may continue the practice. Only… do not go so deep again. Not as you did today."
And with that, she closed the subject.
Since then, I have kept to the meditation. She spoke with Elise, who gave me the attic to use as my chamber. It is here I spend my nights, locked away, between black and red candles, wrapped in the heavy scent of dragon's blood.
I repeat the ritual daily. Yet since that night, I've reached nothing. I've not returned to that place of voices and roots. It is as though a door slammed shut. And the owl… she has not come either.
"What am I doing wrong?" I murmured to myself.
At that moment, a knock at the door.
TOK. TOK. TOK.
"Who is it?" I asked, rising, adjusting my tunic.
"It's me, Eli," Manu's voice answered softly from the other side.