Elizabeth stood at the water's edge, silk‑black hair dancing in the wind. Her face was calm, almost tranquil, the serenity in her blank gaze giving her a distant, mythical air, like some siren who had simply risen from the sea to observe the world. For a moment, she could have been part of the scenery, a quiet figure framed by sky and surf.
But the world around her refused to let that illusion stand.
The beach was littered with bodies. Wolf‑like nightmare creatures lay scattered in every direction, their hulking forms half‑buried in the sand, dark blood soaking into the shoreline. Elizabeth stood at the center of the carnage, the water lapping at her ankles stained a murky red.
She lowered her eyes and sighed.
'And to think I used to consider these little things hard to kill.'
Her gaze swept over the ruin one more time. The corpses were not real. The Dreamscape's training protocols had flooded the scenario with illusory monsters modeled after nightmare creatures, giving them weight, movement, and a convincing approximation of their malice. A few minutes ago, she had been carving through them, pushing her Aspect as far as it would go to see what it could do… and where it failed.
The results were promising. They were also troubling.
Elizabeth looked down at her arm and willed it to change. Her pale skin grew translucent, then lost all solidity. In the space of a breath, her forearm turned into liquid, a column of water holding roughly to the shape of a limb. She studied it for a few seconds, then exhaled.
She let go.
The moment her focus slipped, the water collapsed. It fell away from her like a broken wave and rejoined the sea at her feet, leaving only empty space where an arm should have been. Elizabeth stared at the absence with a faint frown. There lay the first problem: she could transform her entire body into water, but any part she wanted to keep in a stable shape demanded constant, unbroken concentration. Even a small lapse, and it dissolved.
Thankfully, "dissolved" was not the same as "gone."
She shifted her attention to the water pooling at her feet. Her arm was still there, in a sense, she could feel it, along with the cold bite of the ocean and the faint drag of the current. She called it back. A mass of water rose from the surface, drawn by her will, drifted through the air, and latched onto the empty stump of her shoulder. After a little more focus, and the liquid tightened, clarified, and turned back into flesh.
Without [Split Spirit], this would have been impossible. The attribute split her consciousness in two and expanded her mental capacity; with its recent growth, she could maintain multiple streams of thought at once. Even so, sustaining her form in battle was taxing. Without it, all her focus would have been spent simply holding herself together, and she doubted she would have dared to use her Aspect at all.
And that wasn't the only thing she had discovered.
She turned her arm to water again and pushed herself further this time. The translucent column warped, stretched, and slowly reshaped into a crude, wavering outline of a sword. With a thought, she severed the connection at the shoulder; the watery weapon floated in the air in front of her, stable only because she forced it to be.
She could mold parts of herself into almost any shape she wished. Even separated from her body, the water remained a part of her, its every movement responsive to her intent. As long as her focus held, it would obey.
"Training dummy, human-shaped." she said activating another protocol.
Light flared in front of her, converging into the form of a faceless mannequin, roughly human in build.
Elizabeth sent the water sword forward. It shot across the distance at impressive speed, looking like a streak of liquid blue, and struck the dummy squarely in the chest. On contact, the blade exploded into harmless spray, soaking the mannequin but leaving no mark. She exhaled through her nose.
Even if I can shape it into a sword, it's useless as an actual blade.
Right now, all it could do was splash someone with a bit of force.
In terms of raw damage, it was laughable.
But not hopeless.
Her lips curved slightly. At her command, the droplets that had scattered through the air rose again, collected, and condensed into a tight sphere. She snapped her will forward. The sphere surged ahead and engulfed the dummy's head like a clear, shifting helmet. For a few seconds, the mannequin thrashed in place, then dissolved back into a cloud of particles.
"Training dummy type: human. Cause of death: drowning."
Her smile widened. If she could manipulate water, then suffocation was the most obvious application. She could drown her enemies where they stood, flood their lungs and nose, choke them from the inside out. With a bit more finesse, she could force them to swallow the water and shape it afterward, turning their own bodies into fragile containers for something lethal. Her second mind had been quietly sketching possibilities like that since the moment she realized what her Aspect could do.
'…Okay, I might not be mentally alright. Is it normal to think like this? Probably not. Who in their right minds thinks of the best way to drown people.'
She called the water back and reformed her arm. For a moment, she simply looked at it, then at the fallen wolf-beasts around her, and her smile sharpened. There was still more to her aspect.
To warm up, she had started with a pack of illusory wolves, at least forty of them. They weren't strong enough to truly threaten her; Dreamscape's simulations were calibrated for training, not slaughter. Even so, they had managed to scratch her, leaving shallow wounds along her arms and legs. That was when she noticed the second peculiarity.
Water from the sea had flowed into her. It seeped through her skin like ink drawn into paper, and wherever it went, torn flesh knit back together. The process was not slow, either. It was rapid, almost aggressive, reminiscent of a dedicated healing Aspect.
And that still hadn't been the most impressive part.
Elizabeth dipped her arm into the blood-stained surf and willed herself to absorb it. Power surged through her at once. She felt strength flooding her muscles, her body thrumming with vitality until it seemed she had doubled in might. The sensation was light and liberating, every movement suddenly easy, her limbs weightless. Her combat power had risen by at least twofold compared to her baseline.
The water did not simply vanish once it entered her. It lingered, cycling through her body, sustaining the enhancement and continuously stitching any lingering damage back together until the stored reservoir ran dry. Even then, if she chose to expel it, the water remained hers, obedient for a while longer before the connection faded.
She extended her arm. A compressed torrent exploded outward, rushing past her in a roaring arc. As the water left, the heightened power bled out of her, her strength settling back to normal. She caught the expelled current with her mind before it could crash to the sand, guiding it into a circling stream that coiled around her like a flowing river ring.
"Training dummy, human-shaped. Four units."
Four mannequins appeared in front of her a moment later. Elizabeth split the floating river into four distinct masses and sent each to its target. The water wrapped around their heads, tightened, and held. Moments later, all four dissolved into sparks.
"Training dummy type: human x4. Cause of death: drowning."
Her connection to the water broke.
The ring of floating water collapsed, fell, and rejoined the sea.
Her Aspect was terrifying. Its potential was… vast.
'If I can just figure out how to increase the range, and how to make it more deadly…'
At the moment, the water she had absorbed obeyed only within a radius of ten meters. Parts of her body she transformed could stretch a bit farther, up to fifteen meters before the control slipped from her grasp. Beyond that, she could still feel them, but they became distant, unresponsive, like limbs that feel asleep. There had to be a way to push that boundary outward. Whether the limit would naturally expand after Awakening, or could be trained even now, she did not yet know.
Elizabeth tilted her head back and stared at the artificial sky for a while, tracking the slow movement of the simulated sun. Then she lowered her gaze and studied her hands.
'…Should I try it again?'
There was one experiment she had not repeated, turning her entire body into water. The last time she had attempted it, she had been seized by an instinctive, primitive terror, every part of her screaming that it was a bad idea. She had listened to that feeling. Now, she understood why. If everything, including her head, dissolved into water… where would her brain be? Where would thought happen? How would she form the will to return to flesh if there was nothing left to think with? would she still be able be herself if she was completely liquified?
She couldn't make herself do it. One mistake, one miscalculation, and she would simply… cease. With a quiet sigh, she discarded the thought.
'Should I stop for today?'
She watched the sun drift toward the horizon, staining the sky with orange light. Her answer came with a slow shake of her head. She doubted sleep would come easily anytime soon anyways.
'Oh well. Keep training. I still need to get used to this vision.'
Seeing in 360 degrees around herself was disorienting. At first, it made her feel unfocused and easily distracted. But she adapted fast, frighteningly fast, especially in combat. The more she fought, the more natural it felt.
"Training dummy: human type, swordsman. Difficulty level: hard."
A new mannequin appeared in front of her, this one holding a longsword. The moment its form solidified, it lunged. Elizabeth summoned Last Hope into her hand, the familiar weight of the dagger settling into her grip as she fell into stance.
'How… slow.'
The dummy moved with the strength and speed of a peak mundane human. For most people, it would have been a nightmare to face, its strikes were precise, its footwork efficient, its tempo relentless. Even many Sleepers would have struggled to track its blade. To her, it was slow. By the time the sword entered her reach, she had already rehearsed several counterattacks in her head, each with branching variations for minor changes in angle or timing.
Something in her had shifted since her fight with Rethen; her approach to fighting had changed significantly.
Before, she had fought by instinct and adaptation alone: reacting, adjusting, and surviving. Now, when she looked at an opponent, everything else fell away. Every tiny motion, each shift of weight, twitch of the wrist, or change in breathing registered as clear, clean data in her mind. The world broke down into lines and numbers she could read and try to find an answer to.
'It's like… I'm seeing the world for what it really is.'
She still didn't know how to put it into proper words. Before she could try, the dummy's sword came down toward her neck. She started to execute her planned counter then paused mid way through.
'…Would it work?'
An idea surfaced in her mind, simple and dangerous. The more she entertained it, the more inevitable it felt.
'It won't hurt to try…'
She dropped her guard, spreading her arms slightly as if in invitation. The Mannequin's blade swung down at her throat. The instant it touched her neck, she turned that part of her body into water. Steel passed through without resistance. She watched the sword emerge from the other side of her "throat," droplets of water scattering, and felt a smile tug at her lips.
The dummy's swing had carried it too far. It had committed to a cut that expected solid flesh and bone; when it met none, its stance broke. For a moment, it was off-balance, it's defenses wide open. Elizabeth's hand blurred as she stepped in and drew Last Hope across its neck.
"Training dummy, human type, swordsman. Cause of death: decapitation."
She watched the particles rise and scatter on the wind.
'…I can do this too.'
A soft chuckle escaped her. Even so, she doubted she would rely on that trick often. She could turn her own flesh to water, yes, but what about her armor? Could she shift it as well, or would it simply be left behind, sliced cleanly through while her body avoided the blow? And even if she solved that problem, there were too many unknown Aspects and Memories in the world. If she grew arrogant and started letting attacks land on purpose, all it would take was one enemy whose power ignored intangibility, and she would die. Better not form that habit at all.
That's how Rethen fell, in the end.
He had dismissed her dagger as irrelevant, confident his skin made him untouchable. That single miscalculation had cost him his life. Elizabeth's expression tightened.
'Now that I think about it… how did Last Hope even injure Rethen?'
Had he truly been weakened enough for the blade to pierce his skin? She still didn't fully understand what had happened. At some point in that battle, Last Hope had crossed the threshold and become a Memory. Something had satisfied the conditions but what exactly, set a Memory apart from an ordinary artifact?
'Knowledge of sorcery really is mandatory…'
She had seen what sorcery could accomplish. It had dragged a near-divine being down to a level where she could finish it. Of course, that had been sorcery woven by a goddess, the kind of skill that might take years, centuries, or eons to approach, let alone match. Even so, it was worth chasing.
After all, knowledge is power.
If it could grant her strength, she would learn it.
Elizabeth had always hungered for power. Even as a child, she'd watched her parents' eyes follow her brother, and she'd understood, strength drew their attention, not her. Not the weak, tear‑stained little girl she used to be.
He had been everything she wasn't, brilliant, gifted, effortlessly admired. A sun in their household, and she the shadow cast behind him. She had wanted to be like that. She had believed that if she became strong enough, if she shone brightly enough, her mother and father would finally turn toward her as well.
Then he died, and the illusion shattered.
She no longer sought power to be loved. She sought it to survive. She wanted enough power to stand alone and still burn, for no one's sake but her own. To reach that point, she would have to surpass her brother in every way that mattered.
'…Right. That was the reason. I'd forgotten why I started imagining him.'
When she first conjured his presence, it had not been out of a need for familiar company.
'I… wanted to kill him.'
Not the person, but the symbol. The image of an unshackled, invincible ideal she could never match. If she could defeat that image, if she could destroy the version of Cain that existed in her mind as an untouchable mountain, then she would be strong. She had to be.
"Oh my, how rude. Thinking of me like that. Isn't that a little heartless, sis?"
She looked up. Cain stood in front of her, smiling.
"Didn't we already talk about this?" he asked lightly. "Give up on beating me. You're....what, twenty years too early? Although" he tilted his head "with your potential, maybe ten."
Elizabeth glanced at him, a small smile tugging at her mouth. "So we've gone from a hundred years too early to ten?"
He shrugged. "That's just the deadline you set for yourself. I'm only your imagination, remember? I say what you already think." Cain chuckled. "But do you remember what I always said about true strength?"
Elizabeth nodded. "True strength is defeating your enemies without lifting your weapon. Your might alone should be enough." She brushed her thumb along the dagger's hilt.
"Exactly." He grinned. "That's why you can't beat me yet, Liz. You're still afraid of my might. You watched me train in the basement, heard the stories about what I did, and that was enough for you to make me into something untouchable."
He tapped his chest. "You're not trying to kill me. You're trying to kill that image of me."
She held his gaze in silence. He was right, and they both knew it.
"That's right," she said quietly. "I want enough power that your accomplishments sound like a joke next to mine." Her grip on Last Hope tightened. "And I will get it."
"But you killed a sacred being," Cain pointed out. "That's more than I ever did."
She shook her head. "Rethen was weakened. I would have died without a ridiculous number of things lining up in my favor. I don't count that as an accomplishment."
Cain smiled faintly. "…If you say so, sis."
Elizabeth's mind snapped into battle mode, and the world around her slowed to a crawl. Her brother didn't even bother to face her, he simply turned away, completely ignoring her as she dropped into a battle stance, his eyes lifting toward the orange‑tinged sky.
"Wow," he murmured. "How pretty."
A moment later, she lunged.
And a few moments after that, she suffered a brutal, one‑sided defeat.
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Note: She is basically a water bender from Temu.