SHADOW AND LIGHT (CHIAROSCURO)

DOOR OF SHADOWS

“How are you so sure of a dream? A so-called vision that you would even leave your daughter in someone else's hand!?" I asked with a look of disbelief on my face and a bit of rage in my tone.

At the time, I wasn't sure why I had such an outburst, maybe it was because I had just recently lost my mother or because I felt sad about the child's fate. I was unsure at the time then and even now.

The maid looked into my raging but saddened eyes, she took a moment to ponder and then explained everything to me with a pleasant smile, "I did what I did because of my family's aura bloodline.”

“Aura bloodline?” I uttered.

She continued, “Yes, sire. You see, in my family's aura bloodline, even though we may not be proficient in using aura, we were blessed with a certain miraculous ability or should I say skill.”

“A miraculous skill, you say? I don't quite understand...” I said with a confused look on my face.

The young maid continued her explanation, “Well, we were blessed with the passive ability to see visions and premonitions. For years, my family has survived three major solstices with our skill, Aura Vision."

"Aura Vision?" I questioned.

"Yes, sire. Aura Vision was a skill that allowed certain members of my family to see the future but at a cost."

"I see... The cost of using such a power must have come at a huge price." I thought to myself.

She added, "For these many years, we've been advisors, oracles and even seers for the royals of three different kingdoms including this one. My grandmother was the last seer in my family before me and she was the only parent I ever knew growing up. That is... Before she died from the ability after sharing her last vision, a vision she had about my future."

"Your future?" I thought aloud.

"Yes, sire. Sadly, it is a future that seems to be coming to pass," she said with a sad smile.

Once I heard her complete explanation, I remembered a special kind of aura benders that existed in Areth, they were the kind of aura benders who didn't possess the capabilities to evolve past aura lord.

However, for some strange reason, they did possess an innate instinct to survive. And that stubborn instinct was what allowed them to access certain secrets of the world's special element, aura.

This led to such aura benders gaining passive skills and inheritable abilities that didn't require much aura, but other things like stamina, blood, maybe even lifelines, and such abilities would continue to be passed down from parent to offspring, embedded into their very blood.

I believe there was a title they gave such aura benders, Aura Progressors.

I kept silent as I finally understood her reasoning, and I noticed that her mood and demeanour seemed to have lowered after her explanation.

I couldn't tell why exactly her demeanour had changed suddenly but I remembered my outburst a moment ago, so I felt responsible. And with that, there began an awkward silence between us.

But before the awkwardness and moment of silence carried on, she added, "That is why. The visions never lie so I need to get everything ready for the future. All the more reason why I want to leave something in this world that'll be of help to you, sire."

"Leave something?" My thoughts escaped from my mouth. I had thought she meant the secret she had shared with me but it didn't seem like it when she said it.

She gave a vague answer with a smile, "It doesn't matter, at least not yet. You'll see."

"I see..." I ignored it as it looked like she didn't want to explain further.

However, she had a certain dull expression on her face and it made me feel as though she was leaving for someplace far away. I felt sad and empathetic about her situation. She had suffered too much.

Before I knew it, something in me drove me to act so I grabbed the iron bars of the door of her cage and desperately asked, "Tell me, what is your name?! Before I leave, I must know your name!"

"My name, sire?" I had caught her by surprise.

"Yes, your name, tell it to me!" I insisted on it.

"Well, it's the same name I gave my daughter," she started with a smile.

"I see, and it is...?"

"It is..." She told me her name as well as her daughter's name in a whisper. It was a gentle and beautiful name for both mother and daughter.

I replied to her whisper, "That's a beautiful name, I hope I get to meet your daughter someday. If I ever do, I'll tell her how much of an honest, strong and stubborn woman her mother is." Was...

"Thank you, I'd like that, your highness," she said with a gleeful smile across her face.

And that was the last time I saw her, the strong young maid named **Penelope**.

"Sire, Sire!" Penelope called out to me with her face right next to mine.

"H-Huh!!? Uh... Yes?" I was brought out of my trance.

"It's her majesty, your highness. She is just about to leave, sire."

"Oh, yes. Carry on, see her out." I gestured for her to escort her to the exit.

For now, all I can do is wait for the right moment to strike and expose my stepmother for who and what she really was. But it just wasn't time yet.

Hence, all I could do was watch and have Penelope escort her out just like that, with nothing but the hateful words Queen Patricia had spoken and a graceful strut towards the exit, leaving my manor and then later leaving the state entirely.

After she had left, I returned to my chambers and began to think about what she had said about there being spies amongst me.

To be honest, I did have my suspicions but from the way she announced it to me, there may be more spies than I'd expect living in this estate, heck, in this mansion.

After a few hours of worrying and overthinking, I decided to meditate and work on my aura training.

For the past few days, I had noticed that something cold and dark had been affecting the quality of my aura. And I wasn't sure what. But I was sure about one thing, it was something that I'd noticed during the battle I had with Sir Cassian, and it was that I had become an aura master.

I wasn't sure before because I'd never fought someone before but apparently, I had reached a level where I could infuse aura into people. And with that, I had a few aura master skills to perfect, such as aura detection and aura manipulation.

First of all, aura detection is an aura master skill that allows the aura master to detect living things in a mile radius, the maximum radius any aura master has ever been able to detect is 3 miles. But for me, all I could detect was in a radius of a quarter of a mile.

The reason? I still had a very little amount of aura in my magical heart, specifically, flowing through my magic circuits—aura veins were just too small.

To visualize what I meant, it was basically like this; If aura was water, and the bodies of aura apprentices were containers for the water, then a normal aura bender would be at most a bottle of water, an aura lord would be a bucket of water, an aura master would be a tank of water, and lastly, an aura king would be a water fountain.

In my case, you could say I was using about as much as a normal aura apprentice, a bottle of water. So it's never truly enough.

Even with all my limitations, I still trained and meditated without fail. I sat on my mattress, meditated and I kept at it, keeping on my aura detection for hours without stopping.

Granted, it was straining my weak heart and I was hitting my limit with the amount of aura I was using, but I was pushing through my limit every hour. Until, later in the evening, I detected something in my radius...

“Wait a minute, I sensed something different from aura!” I thought as I sat there meditating.

I thought again, “What is this feeling? I sense something dark and smoke-like in the corner of the hallway connecting my chambers to the downstairs and four other rooms on this floor.

From my aura detection, I couldn't notice any other living thing in the area except the shadowy, dark entity lurking in the corner away from my bedroom.

I stopped meditating and using my aura detection skill to check for the entity in my manor. After that, I picked up my rapier in its sheath and slowly sneaked towards my bedroom door that lead to the hallway and that promiscuous corner where the mystery dark entity was stalking.

On closing into the corner, I hid behind a pillar supporting the roof of the mansion and took a peek at the corner, just to see...

“What is that?”

My eyes caught a glimpse of something that I'd never heard or seen before, it was some kind of door-shaped hole in the air, a doorway of sorts and it was made of some kind of dark smokey substance. Like it was made of shadows.

I went towards it to get a definite description of the door-shaped entity.

In the corner of the hall, the dark substance was formed and shaped like a doorway, and it flowed effortlessly clockwise around the doorway, the substance was faded, smooth and most of all, intangible, almost like a...

“Shadow...”

I stood in front of it, trying to feel the sides and corners of the bizarre doorway-shaped shadowy entity but my hands just passed through it like the breeze. Until...

“What if it's like a portal to a different space? What if I stick my hand into the darkened hole, will it pass through to another side?” I thought as I gradually moved my right hand into the presumed portal.

Slowly by surely I put my hand into the doorway and saw my hand completely disappear into the shadow-like doorway. My hand had passed through what should have been a wall behind the shadow-like doorway, it felt like nothing and something at the same time.

It was like tangible air inside the doorway.

I pushed forward by pressing my hand in further, up to my entire right arm but I didn't dare place my head in.

“Something feels... Soft.” My hand had caught something in its grasp, it was round, soft and plump at the same time, like a malleable ball of smooth fat.

“This is odd, what is this?” I kept pressing and massaging the weirdly soft object, it was a good feeling, not going to lie. After a few minutes of poking, grasping and massaging the softball, I got even more curious about what laid behind the doorway.

“I wonder what's inside this magical door-shaped portal,” I uttered.