Elizabeth didn't have to search long to find the main office. It was one of the largest buildings in the miniature city, impossible to miss.
Just as she approached the entrance, she noticed Nephis exiting with a box in her hands, most likely her reward for sharing details about her Aspect. Their eyes met briefly. They stared at each other for a few seconds before exchanging simple nods of acknowledgment.
'I wonder what her Aspect is.'
After all, Nephis was another Sleeper with a True Name. The last Sleeper to possess one before them had been Smile of Heaven, and she had been one of the strongest awakened.
'Now that I think about it... her face does look familiar.'
Her brow furrowed as she searched her memories. There was something about Nephis's features that tugged at the edge of her mind, something she felt she had seen before but couldn't quite place.
'No way...'
Realizing something, she hastily pulled out her communicator and began searching, her fingers flying across the screen. The moment the results appeared, her eyes widened in shock.
So the resemblance wasn't just in her imagination. She snapped her head toward the direction Nephis had gone.
'She's the daughter of Broken Sword and Smile of Heaven??'
A whistle escaped her lips.
'The Immortal Flame's princess herself…'
Though the clan had declined after Saint Broken Sword's death, it had once been among the most powerful in existence, rivaling, perhaps even surpassing, clans like Song and Valor. It was also the clan her brother had worked for, at least its Antarctica branch, before it was dissolved.
'Like mother, like daughter, huh? Receiving a True Name as a Sleeper... it must run in the family.' She paused, then frowned as she realized what she had just crossed her mind.
"Gods, what a stupid saying..." she muttered.
A few minutes later, her name was called at the desk. A woman in formal attire, wearing oversized glasses, placed a box on the counter.
"Here you go, Sleeper Elizabeth, your shards. You have received a total of 50 dormant shards from the Night Clan and 20 from the Academy as a reward for sharing information related to your Aspect. Please sign here to complete the transaction."
Elizabeth signed quickly. Once the formalities were complete, she returned to her dorm.
Sitting down on her bed, she opened the box.
The moment the lid lifted, a strange energy radiated from the shards, something she hadn't sensed while the box was closed. Slightly startled, she examined the container more closely and noticed intricate runes etched into its surface.
They were far more complex than anything she could comprehend. The symbols twisted and intertwined in elaborate patterns at a level of sorcery far beyond her current understanding. Whatever enchantment had been placed on the box, it had concealed the shards' aura completely.
'Looks like one class of sorcery doesn't make me an expert...'
With a sigh, she picked up a shard and examined it, tracing her finger along its surface. They varied in shape; some were jagged and pointed, while others were smooth and rounded.
"Well… let's see if it's as addictive as people say." She clenched her fist, crushing the shard.
A pleasant energy flowed into her arm and it kept going until the Spell spoke.
[You have consumed a Soul shard.]
[You were not under a sky or near a sea.]
[You have failed to convert it into a fragment of heaven.]
The energy dissipated instantly.
Elizabeth blinked in confusion.
"What the hell?"
She summoned her runes to check if anything had changed.
-------
Name: Elizabeth
True Name: Siren of the Last Haven
Rank: Dreamer
Heaven Cores: [2/7]
Fragments of Heaven: [71/2000]
-------
Nothing had changed.
"Seriously… what the hell?"
Annoyance flared within her. She had expected her uniqueness to affect her progression but not like this. Having to fulfill conditions just to absorb a shard?
"That's ridiculous…"
Still, the irritation faded quickly. She had expected obstacles. After all, she was walking a path no one else had. She closed the box and stepped outside. There were still a few hours of daylight left, winter made the days short, but she had time.
Finding a quiet park, she settled onto the grass and opened the box once more. This time, when she crushed a shard, the energy flowed without resistance, coursing through her arm before sinking into her soul core.
[You have consumed a soul shard.]
[You are under the sky.]
[You have consumed a shard of heaven.]
Satisfied, she checked her runes.
Fragments of Heaven: [72/2000]
"So that's how it works…"
But something bothered her.
'I don't remember absorbing anything from Rethen or Koven... so how did I get the earlier fragments?' Elizabeth pondered the mystery for a while, but when no answer came to her, she pushed it aside for the time being.
She continued absorbing the remaining shards, crushing them one after another and drawing their essence into her soul core. When the last shard dissolved, she glanced at her runes.
Fragments of Heaven: [140/2000]
A faint smile graced her lips. It wasn't much progress compared to how much she still had to fill, but it was progress nonetheless.
She was about to get up when an idea suddenly struck her.
Her Soul Sea.
She hadn't visited it since awakening as a Sleeper. Back then, she had been far too overwhelmed to examine it properly. Now, however, with a clear mind and no immediate concerns demanding her attention, there was nothing stopping her from taking a look.
Closing her eyes, she focused inward. She didn't really know what she was looking for, having never experienced anything like this before. Yet, as if guided by instinct, she felt something tugging at the edge of her mind. Reaching for it, she pulled. The world around her faded as her consciousness descended into her Soul Sea. Then she opened her eyes and looked around.
"…Huh."
It looked mostly the same but the two suns had grown larger. Their soft blue glow now carried a faint golden hue, burning brighter than before.
'That must be from my new attributes… [Star Lighter] and [Flame of Divinity].'
Still... something felt off. She had sensed it before, during her first visit to her Soul Sea. Beneath the stillness lingered an unsettling emptiness, a hollow void that seemed to permeate every corner of the place. It carried with it a quiet yearning, as though the Soul Sea itself was longing for something, begging to be filled.
At the time, she had dismissed it because of the pain she had been in, but now it was unmistakable. The feeling lingered throughout her Soul Sea, it was so profound that it felt almost tangible.
'Great, more mysteries.'
She was about to leave when she noticed something strange.
Beneath the twin suns, partially concealed by the mist, lay a small island covered in yellowish grass. Elizabeth stared at it for a moment, her brow slowly furrowing. It looked eerily similar to the patch of grass she had been sitting on.
'Did... grass just enter my soul sea?'
She cautiously approached the patch of grass, her gaze fixed on it. Both of her minds raced with questions, desperately searching for a reason why a small island of grass from the outside had somehow found its way into her Soul Sea.
Then, all at once, understanding dawned on her and her eyes widened. She quickly summoned her runes to check her Aspect description.
'Trying to regain purpose, you began to devour the heavens... The 'heavens' in my Aspect description... does it mean the Fragments of Heaven?!'
She quickly withdrew from her Soul Sea as a theory began to form in her mind. Rising to her feet, she studied the grass around her. Sure enough, it was the same yellowish grass she had seen growing on the small island within her Soul Sea. However, it looked exactly as before, showing no sign that anything had been removed from it.
'But how? Replication?'
So the small island of grass wasn't random at all. Somehow, when she had created that Fragment of Heaven from a Soul Shard, something must have happened that caused a piece of the surrounding landscape to be replicated within her Soul Sea.
Her eyes widened even further as another piece of the puzzle surfaced.
'The mist in my Soul Sea...'
It was the same mist from her Nightmare, the mist that had surrounded the ship.
A chill ran down her spine as the implications sank in.
If the island of grass had been copied into her Soul Sea when she transformed the Soul Shard into a Fragment of Heaven, then perhaps the mist hadn't appeared by chance either.
It, too, might have been a recreation, a fragment of a place she had somehow consumed and preserved within her soul. The thought made her stomach tighten. If that was true, then the mist wasn't some feature of her Soul Sea at all. It was a remnant, left behind when she had somehow acquired the earlier Fragments of Heaven.
She went back to her soul sea and her gaze swept across the endless sea of mist.
Just how many things had she already absorbed without realizing it? And if pieces of the world were truly being stored within her Soul Sea, what would happen when she gathered more Fragments of Heaven?
'That's why my soul sea feels so empty...'
She was meant to fill it with the heavens themselves!
"...Gods..." she whispered.
Would her Soul Sea eventually become a world of its own?
The thought was overwhelming. She couldn't even begin to comprehend how such a thing was possible.
"A Divine Aspect indeed…"
With a sigh she left her soul sea and looked up at the sky as the sun began to set, the horizon slowly burning with soft winter light. With another quiet sigh, she headed back to her dorm room.
The energy from the soul shards had cleared her mind; the lingering fatigue from earlier was gone. With nothing else to do before her evening class, she curled up on her bed, opened a webtoon on her communicator, and read as the last light of day faded outside her window.
Just when she thought the day couldn't get any more eventful… her body shifted turning into that of a very old lady.
***
Combat class was held in a vast dojo, spacious and bright, with rows of reinforced metallic dummies and an armory of training weapons lining the walls. The weapons were likely practice grade, but they still looked dangerous enough.
At the moment, Elizabeth stood in one corner, slightly hunched, wrapped in her armor memory. Pure white hair flowed down over a face etched with deep wrinkles and calm green eyes.
She had arrived first, even before the instructor. So when her fellow students started filing in, they greeted her with respectful bows and polite voices, assuming she was the teacher.
She tried to correct them at first.
"I'm not the instructor," she repeated several times.
But more kept coming, bowing and addressing her the same way and eventually, she gave up.
'Do these brats not read the instructor's name before entering a class?'
Of course, many of them knew exactly who she was. Her fame had skyrocketed ever since her True Name became public. And wherever her name was mentioned, details of her Flaw inevitably followed. By now, most people knew that she could appear at varying ages.
Nephis entered a few minutes before class officially began. She scanned the room, clearly looking for a quiet corner, but her gaze stopped when she noticed Elizabeth.
Elizabeth nodded in greeting, and was a bit surprised when Nephis actually walked over to her.
"Hello again," Elizabeth said. "We keep running into each other, huh?"
The silver-haired girl gave a small nod.
Nephis was silent for a moment, then reached into her pocket and produced a headphone earpiece.
"…Do you want to listen?"
The instant the earpiece appeared, Elizabeth snatched it with startling speed, her withered looking hand moving faster than most young bodies could.
"Don't ask obvious questions, young lady." Elizabeth had come to enjoy pretending to be the age her Flaw made her appear. It was one of the few positive things about it.
Nephis tilted her head slightly, a brief flash of amusement passing through her calm grey eyes.
They listened in silence, waiting for the instructor.
Right on time, Instructor Rock entered the dojo and took his place in front of the gathered Sleepers. He surveyed the hall, his gaze lingering for a few seconds on Elizabeth and Nephis.
"Good evening," he said. "Welcome to the combat course."