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Chapter 239 - Ramifications
🕑 Added 2025-08-17 14:07:07 +0000 UTCOne by one, the souls in the underground winked out, until those that remained were running for the surface through the entrance north of town. There, they seemed to realize the rest of the Akanan army wasn’t there anymore, and joined the retreat.
By then, Mirian had organized Professor Cassius and a handful of professors and students to set up a perimeter around the town, and had handed the Luminate priests two of her soul repositories and directed them to use them for healing.
As Mirian was doing her last check around the perimeter of Torrviol, she saw the corpses of students where they’d been slaughtered in the initial attack from the west. As she passed by her old dorm, one of the corpses caught her eye. Her enchanted glasses had been shattered, and gunfire had torn her apart.
Lily.
Mirian stared at the corpse, emotions churning in her. Disgust. Anger. How many times has she died here, blinded, terrified, and alone? But another emotion stirred, one that she liked far less than the others.
Apathy.
She’ll be fine next cycle, at least. That had been something she’d told herself for so many people in so many cycles. It was a necessary line of thinking. She was glad she felt something for her old roommate’s death. She worried for the day that she wouldn’t.
Mirian moved on.
Then, she heard a remote voice spell from her father. “Naluri, come quickly. I’m by the train station.”
She stopped her patrol and flew southeast as fast as she could, a burst of wind trailing her as she sped over the town. Her father’s soul was easy enough to pick out. He was by one of the train cars, casting a spell she’d never seen before, eyes closed.
As she approached, she saw the corpses.
Gaius opened his eyes. “They all died recently. One of the Akanan remnants ambushed them before I could finish them off. Four of them have only been dead for a short time, and I’m stabilizing their remnant soul energy.”
“Resurrection of the dead,” Mirian whispered. “You mentioned trying. You really can do that?”
“Only the recent dead, and only if the soul can be reconstituted and the body healed. The damage done by the body’s death is… not always reversible. I’ll show you. Watch.”
Mirian looked at the corpses. She closed her eyes. Nicolus had been going back and forth between Torrviol and Cairnmouth. He’d returned by train at just the wrong time. Sire Nurea had thrown her body in front of him, and her corpse was on top of his. “Them,” she said.
“The woman’s too far gone. She died well before he did. I can do the boy.” He levitated Nurea’s corpse off her ward.
“Then do it.”
Mirian watched as her father began to manipulate dozens of runic bindings, each one grabbing and pushing the fragmenting pieces of Nicolus’s soul back into place. He explained his technique as he worked, only occasionally falling silent as he worked through an especially tricky piece of magic. The amount of control it required was staggering; when Mirian reached out with her own binding to help, it was like trying to push water into a sphere with her hands. She backed off, watching Gaius’s technique.
Once the soul was in place, he started going through healing spells. He pieced back together the shattered rib, fusing the shards back together. The punctured lung healed over. New blood began to flow in his veins. He did this all while keeping the soul in place.
“Then, the soul must be rebound in place. Once you adhere it to the body in several places, let the runic bindings decay naturally as the soul reattaches itself.”
The former corpse of Nicolus Sacristar stirred. He opened his eyes and gasped for breath. For a moment, he looked around uncomprehendingly. Then, he saw Mirian, Gaius, and Nurea’s corpse, and his eyes went wide. “It was… real. Gods… Gods… what? How?”
“You were unconscious. We healed you,” Mirian said, simply. There was no need to tell him the truth. She recognized the similarities between binding Nicolus’s soul back to his body and binding human soul remnants to one of Gaius’s undead soldiers. The process was similar enough that anyone with a prejudice towards necromancy would be disturbed.
He looked around again, then suddenly became angry. “You didn’t—you didn’t see this! How? Why? I thought you were a Prophet. You… we should have—she shouldn’t…” He scrambled over to Nurea and started weeping.
Mirian used a remote whisper spell to talk to her father so her former classmate wouldn’t hear. “How complete is the resurrection? This isn’t like him. I’ve seen him deal with Nurea’s death before with knowledge of the loop, and he isn’t so… emotionally volatile.”
Her father used the same spell to whisper back. “Hmm. I suspected as much. Incomplete, but by how much varies. Part of it is from the damage his brain took while his body was dead. The brain is the only thing I can’t fully heal. It can draw memories from the soul to repair some of itself, but when re-binding the soul, inevitably, fragments are missing. Those fragments are associated with memories, so it’s affected his mind. There is always some permanent damage. We’ll know in a few weeks how much.”
Mirian looked at Nicolus with pity. He doesn’t deserve this. None of them do. Yet what else can I do?
There was only so much she could do as one person. She could monitor Akana and prevent the invasion herself, but then she couldn’t head the research efforts in Torrviol, nor search the various Labyrinth sections. She could look around for Ibrahim, but she knew from Troytin chasing her that hunting down a time traveler who didn’t want to be found wouldn’t be easy. Her research here meant she couldn’t research in Tlaxhuaco, nor help Gabriel push into Zhighua. No matter what she did, she’d be failing to do a dozen other things.
She focused back in on the present. There were lessons to be learned here and now. Later would come later.
Gaius moved to the next recently dead corpse, and they repeated the lesson.
It’s worth the cost, she thought. For now, it was a relatively useless spell. But someday….
***
The next morning, Torrviol was still reeling from the attack. The way the people of the town looked at her had also changed. She often heard hushed discussion when she walked, or other times, conversations would cease completely as they saw her.
Some thanked her profusely for saving their lives and homes.
Some knelt and touched their hand to their heart.
Some walked away quickly, hoping not to interact at all.
And some went wide-eyed and trembled in fear.
The damage to her research was extensive. A fire had broken out in the Myrvite Studies building, and gunfire had shattered the greenhouses. Torrian Tower had taken less damage, but there were still a lot of broken glyphs, disrupted enchantments, and knocked over papers to deal with. Dozens of apprentices and professors who had been working for her had been killed.
She found herself in a grim mood. No one much liked the hundreds and hundreds of Akanan corpses piled around the town, and a disease outbreak would further impede her, so by midday, she found herself incinerating bodies with her father. “What a waste of time,” she said as she cast another remote flames spell.
“Part of life, I’m afraid,” Gaius told her. “Waiting for a carriage that’s late. Repeating chores. Needing to go back home because you forgot something important. You can’t let it bother you.” He paused, then said, “It does still bother me, though. I’ve always struggled with patience.”
There was another group of dead Akanans north of them. Mirian began incinerating each, compacting the ash back into the soil.
“So how do you do it?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“How do you cling to… kindness? Hope? The greater ideals that you do this all for? I find myself annoyed all the time. Surrounded by the ignorant, who I must teach again and again. Harassed by the malevolent, or those too stupid not to be tricked by them,” she said, waving her hand in the direction of the still smoldering airship.
“Some days, I don’t. On the days I do though? Love.”
“That’s it?”
He shrugged. “You’ve heard the more complicated answers, I’m sure. As the Unification War proceeded, I… became unpleasant. There’s a great deal of lies in the Baracueli histories, but there’s quite a bit of truth in there too. War makes monsters of us all, and I fought for many, many years. It became easy to kill. Satisfying, even. Plenty of them deserved to die. But that’s not why we live life. Life is about sharing a good conversation over a good meal with good friends and family. Everything else just revolves around that.”
Mirian raised an eyebrow. “Even if you can’t eat?”
“Even then. Oh, of course I was bitter about it for a few decades, but I don’t regret it. There’s too much left to learn for me to regret chasing immortality.”
“Then isn’t life about learning and growing?”
Gaius torched another group of scattered corpses. “Sure. But it becomes empty if you can’t share it with people. I enjoy learning history, but the satisfaction of new knowledge is best shared, not hoarded. An artist wants her art to be seen. A musician, his notes to be heard. To be human is to crave connection, and love is our primal, desperate connection to each other. We connect ourselves in other ways. Friendship. Trade. Reliance. And less admirable ways. Hate. Fear. Envy. Not recommended, but they are bonds, aren’t they? If you let yourself be disconnected entirely, then you lose your humanity.”
“Then you didn’t succeed. You’ve been holed up in a secret lair for near two decades making soldiers.”
“I didn’t. Life is a process. It’s never done. I would have done what I must to get you back.” They continued burning corpses. “I don’t know what’s to be done about the warmongers. The people who take and take, and never have enough. The Baracueli couldn’t leave us alone. If we’re to have a good life full of good meals with good friends, the ravenous leeches wearing human faces must be dealt with. Sometimes, we must give up a part of our humanity. Just keep those threads of connection alive.”
Mirian shook her head. “One by one, I feel those threads of connection snapping. Dhelia, Jeron, and Zayd… I’ve stayed away from them to protect them, but then the connection, the love… fades.” Mirian stopped walking, her gaze following the smoke trailing up into the air. “Lily died again. I barely felt anything.”
“A fighter must harden her heart,” Gaius said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Yet, any shell that can be made can be broken. What are you fighting for?” he asked.
She thought about that. A cold wind blew across the bloody fields, but neither of them felt it.
Gaius continued. “When it was me, I came back to the reason I’d joined the war in the first place. I’d fought for the Naasqual, so I returned to the Naasqual. It took me a long time to return. But then I met Leyun, and I knew the fighting, the pain—it had been worth it.”
“I need to think,” she said.
“Then go think. I’ll finish cleaning up this mess.”
***
Mirian spent a few more hours wandering the battlefield. Then, impatience seized her. She felt like she was wasting time. Why did she need a rationale? Her philosophy didn’t need to be particularly deep. Existence was preferable to nonexistence. She returned to her work.
The damage to most of the spirit constructs they’d been working on proved too extensive to recover. Mirian reestablished the arcane physics experiments, but when the attack had hit, she hadn’t just lost information, she’d lost people too. Some, because they’d died. Some, because she’d lost their trust.
Nicolus was one of them. She monitored him because, like it or not, she wanted to see the effects of resurrection on the psyche. He was the best one to examine, because she knew him best.
After a few days, he was better, but he still wasn’t quite the same. It took longer for him to think. His words sometimes became jumbled. His emotions were all over the place. When he saw her, he became afraid.
She stopped bothering him.
Several regiments of Akanans tried to attack again, but this time, the incoming force was spotted by militia patrols and Mirian and Gaius could crush it before it was even near the town. Five militia members died. Another hundred Akanan soldiers burned. Neither Jherica or Liuan had responded to Mirian’s zephyr falcons, but that didn’t surprise her. With the war declared, those messages were likely being intercepted at the delivery point. She’d figure it out next cycle.
One evening, Archmage Luspire approached her as she was looking through notes. He watched her from the door. She smelled alcohol on his breath. He was drunk again, then.
“Who is… Professor Xidi?” he asked.
“I told you when he arrived. A Persaman arcanist. An archmage, obviously.”
“Are you aware he’s using, um, an illusionary disguise?”
“Yes.”
“And… necromancy?”
Mirian looked at him. “Is that going to be a problem?”
Luspire looked scared. She’d rarely seen him scared. His hand was twitching by his spellbook. “There are… lines. That shouldn’t be crossed.”
“Would you rather the Akanans slaughtered the entire town? Because that was the other option.” She hesitated. If she summoned her spellbook, she was pretty sure Luspire would attack. She sighed. “Why are you here?”
“To stop you, if we need to.”
We? Mirian realized he hadn’t come alone. She wanted to cast her detect life spell to see how many he’d brought, but that would involve her spellbook. “Should I remind you what our research is for?”
“Luspire, move,” she heard a familiar voice say. Professor Torres. “It’s a convenient excuse. You could justify anything with it, couldn’t you?” she said. Several other professors now moved into position behind her. Cassius. Runer. Even Eld and Holvatti. If they were all working together, that wasn’t a good sign.
Mirian closed her eyes. “That argument again.” She opened them again and flung the notes aside. Luspire flinched, hand touching his spellbook. “You can’t stop me. None of you can. That’s the thing about time loops. You will forget all of this. I won’t. You’re all powerless.” She snarled the last word.
“What did he do to Nicolus?” Torres asked.
“Saved his life.” Mirian shook her head. “None of you understand. None of you can understand. How do I convey all the things I’ve learned, everything I’ve seen… the misconceptions I found, the truths I uncovered. Lessons about soul magic. Hidden truths in the Grand Sanctum. Secrets beneath the Labyrinth. Sacred mysteries in distant lands. How do I convey that all with mere words?”
“I found the undead soldier in the underground,” Cassius said. “Mirian, you’re playing with powers you don’t understand.”
Mirian was silent. She understood it just fine. Gaius had been teaching her. It was Cassius who didn’t.
“Do you really have nothing to say for yourself?” Torres asked.
Mirian summoned her spellbook and cast black shield.
In an instant, the room was filled with spells. Luspire’s fire spells burned through the room. However, the more spells that were directed at the black shield, the more arcane force she had to play with. She spun most of it into the light-suppression part of the shield that was the secondary defense of the spell, meanwhile, she began to cast mana siphon spells, locking one onto each aura. Professor Atger fled. Professor Eld tried to break line of sight, but that didn’t stop the siphon. Luspire put up his prismatic shield, and Mirian ignored it. All of their spells were being suppressed by her spell-resistant metals. The dozens of spells they threw at her, she hardly noticed; only Luspire’s were strong enough to need her attention. The archmage’s fire spells splashed back, burning Torres badly. Mirian healed the burns with a thread of soul energy, continuing to stand there.
After a few minutes of the bombardment, their auras were mostly depleted.
Mirian dismissed her black shield. “Well, this loop was a waste,” she said. Luspire was looking at her dumbfounded. Torres still had her wand out, but Mirian could see the fear in her eyes. She shook her head again sadly, then broke the window behind her and flew out.
***
Gaius found her floating in the air, high above town, looking out beyond the Littenord mountains, looking towards the Endelice. He came and floated next to her without a word. Mirian liked the snow-covered peaks. There was a majesty to them. The north forest was dusted by its own snow, the pines and firs implacable as always, the mushroom trees looking dour but colorful with their shrunken caps.
“When I look at people now, I look at them like puppets I want to pull the strings on. The connections to them I have—they won’t last.”
Her father was silent. He floated there as a comforting presence.
“When I need to center myself, I come back to this. The beauty… whether here, or down in Persama, or in Tlaxhuaco. There’s… so much of it. The snow on the mountains never loses its majesty.”
She felt Gaius’s gaze on her, and his smile. The cold wind continued blowing past them, making their robes whip about. The cold didn’t touch either of them, though.
“That is a thread I can hold onto. Whatever parts of my humanity I lose, whatever walls I have to put up around my heart… there will be this one connection. No matter how many times I see the wonders of this world, their beauty doesn’t fade. If nothing else, I’ll fight for this.”
“Good,” her father said.
Mirian smiled back at him. It was a soft, sad smile. “I love this place,” she said.
Comments
Chaos
yeah, he’s going to be madder when it’s revealed for each loop that passes. And he grows stronger for every loop that passes through that hatred
Thaabit Rivertree
So, am i the only one worried about ibrahim's reaction when he learns Mirian has kept knowledge of Relicarium to herself? He continues to live with his wifes death, while it couldve been stopped a long time ago. Unless he somehow learned about it and that's why he's been so absent. Either acquiring it, figuring out how to use it, or spending time with his now alive wife. I imagine he would be pretty upset if he finds out after 10 hears of time he couldve been stopping it, though not enough to stop him from focusing on using it.
UraniumPhoenix
Thank you for the wonderful comment!
Porygon2Fan
I love when you can tell a story's author love's and romanticizes humanity; this story at times evokes the same sort of feelings as "the alchemist" in a way I struggle to describe–the cruel, tragic beauty of life. Thanks for the chapter :)
Erebus
Thank you for the chapter 🙂
Erebus
You’re such a good writer , this story is so awesome
Mr NerfGun
It's possible to heal yourself with your own soul energy. But it is not a good thing to do as it will make the person exhausted and weak for some time. Her Spellbook also has repositories inside. Also, what is up with everyone wanting Mirian to go through even more traumatic events?
Michael Vonica
I'm going to throw out some crazy, and potentially gruesome, theories here. Will probably be writing a lot, again. So, Mirian has been underutilizing the time loop in a pretty big way, and we've just seen an example of that here. Gaius was just able to bring a person back to life, and he was able to do that thanks to experience. He's been practicing at it, and has learned enough about how the body works to put it back together. The only thing he doesn't have enough experience in is healing brains. But you can do more than just heal with soul magic. You can also change a person, like we've seen with soul disguises. You could, theoretically, do things like changing body shape, strength, or even the mind itself. The things Lecne said not to do, because no one is safetly capable of them. You'd need years of careful research to identify exactly how the body works and how you need to change it to get the desired result... or a willingness to give up on morality and brute force it by trying thousands of different experiments on people. The loops, are, of course, the perfect place for this. You can experiment on the same people repeatedly. Everyone will die soon anyway. No evidence will be left behind. And you can even justify the research, by focusing on the potential for tremendous good it will bring once the loop is over. Lives could be saved, and incurable conditions, like Lily's, could be solved. For saving the world? It isn't that useful, for how much time it takes. It solves none of the actual problems. It only lets a prophet secure social and political power faster (whether diplomatically or forcefully), and maybe harvest and implant memories across loops. I doubt Mirian has ever even considered trying anything like this, because of how bloody it would be to even try, and how little it would directly help. But Mirian isn't the only looper. Scebur, if they are real, is being set up as a threat to Mirian and the other prophets. But how could they ever be a threat? We just saw Mirian tear through the most modern human army like nothing. Even if Scebur were her magical and physical equal, they can't actually hurt Mirian. She can send her anchor off before they could do anything permanent. So what could Scebur possibly do? Imagine if Scebur went to Westerun, to learn mind magic. Imagine if, after that, Scebur went into hiding, maybe somewhere remote, like western Akana, and spent all their time quietly kidnapping people no one would ever miss, and experimenting on them, for 20 years. Imagine how much they would have discovered, in all that time. A taskforce of mindcontrolled archmages and preatorians, with improved mental and physical abilities, and maybe even mentally uploaded skills in soul magic, sounds like it might actually prove a threat, even to current Mirian. Not to mention how severely they could interfere with any project she attempts. This goes a long way towards explaining how Scebur is recruiting agents to go on suicide attacks against Tlaxhuaco. Agents who are willing to kill themselves before capture, can all withstand torture, and who all claim to be Scebur. Agents who even somehow include an archmage. It still doesn't explain the why though, outside of field testing. If this was somehow the case, I really wonder what Mirian would do. Label them an enemy, and do everything she can to take them down, and destroy their work? Try to work with them, so she can learn what they have, and have them help her? And if that doesn't work, would she be desperate or apathetic enough to start her own human experiments, just to keep up? With Troytin, I kind of felt that the Ominian chose him so that he would push the other prophets to grow. How long would Mirian have taken to learn soul magic without him? Maybe, if I'm right, the Ominian chose Scebur to do the bloody but necessary work no one else would ever be willing to, so Mirian and the others could apply the results to solving the real problem. On that theme of threats, I can't really think of much else that could threaten Mirian. Some other form of magic we've never heard about? One real threat I can think of is relicarium. If it was used to bind some of Mirian's vital organs after she dies, she would start every loop dead. But I think even that wouldn't stop Mirian. She would probably somehow learn how to cast even with a dead body, and eventually find some way to heal herself before her soul gets carried away from her body. Of course, the only soul energy Mirian has to heal herself at the start of a loop is her own... and Lily's. How traumatizing would that be? Being forced to kill her friend just to survive?
Milo
EXACTLY!
Doleo
if you're in a time loop and don't go through at least one villain arc, you're not truly experiencing the time loop tbh.
Enthernal
Great chapter. I like the mental "evolution" but I find her reasons to postpone things lacking. Sure spending multiple loops to investigate/track Ibrahim might not be high priority, but she'll seriously wait till last loop to ask Liuan "what's up"? Next thing we know the Omnian has 2 more needles at the end of the loop and she'll never know what happened or if she could've done anything to help them. Not to mention she should have realized her research loop was shot the moment she took stock, with how much repetition she has to do. Even without the intervention of the teachers it's unlikely she could've advanced the research enough to learn anything. Something she should realise is true for the other loops as well. The need to explain more and more each cycle means less and less new developments. Meanwhile spending one or two cycles to unravel one of the open mysteries could learn he so much important developments in the loop. Maybe Ibrahim isn't hiding at all? Maybe Cellen is/was? She could go to Zhighua and find out there is a prophet waiting there like Xecatl was, or learn they have knowledge of a gate already. If anything I hope there is enough time left in the loop for her to at least have to look at what's going on in Akana. On the other hand, having Liuan/Jherica removed from the loop should serve as a wakeup call she shouldn't ignore developments outside her research.
Michael Vonica
You don't get cancer if you use actual healing spells. Only if you use raw soul energy manipulation. Think of it as the difference between shaping magic without glyphs and casting a spell with glyphs.
lenkite
> Once the soul was in place, he started going through healing spells. She should ask her father about how to stop cancer growth from healing spells. Her way of brute force is not sustainable and bad habits once inculcated are difficult to remove.
Metal(Liz)ard🏳️⚧️
My thoughts of Mirian reaching human soul draining grows ever closer!! Glad that no matter how apathetic she becomes to others she remains open to her father they deserve moments of happiness after what they've been through
Tetrasimplex
This place...
Zurko
I really dont want to see that...
FuriousDee
That is why it would be nice if she could share memories. It would help research a little bit but the help for her mental state would be far more important. She seems a bit depressed at the moment.
Milo
God I want her to break mentally and decide to wage war on the world for a little while. I think she and Ibrahim could have the most insane connection and I want to see it.
Crapgeezer
THIS PLACE.
Michael Vonica
The rules of necromancy are a bit vague. But I think one of them might be that you need to damage souls to bind them in repositories? I'm going off of this quote from 231. "The heretic priest, Lecne, would have told her souls were, by their nature, separate. They could touch, but never join. Only when scoured of uniqueness by the proper bindings could foreign soul energy be merged with a soul." That isn't actually very good evidence that you can't bind a soul in a repository without damaging it, so if anyone has something better, I'd appreciate it.
Reppyxz
Love this chapter. I wish I had the words to describe how I feel about it, but I don’t seem to have them. But I’m really loving the progression of Mirian’s Apathy towards everything. Because how can one not feel extreme apathetic when nothing they do has any consequences? I’ve seen a couple people comment that they want her to have the ability to share memories or something, but I feel like that’s too much. Because giving her that ability removes a lot of the mental toll the loop has. Plus i’m a fan of the idea of her being more and more apathetic. The professors “betrayal” was honestly something I was sort of expecting for a long time. Because as time goes on Mirian will become less and less sincere, and she’ll have to use increasingly taboo magic to get what she wants. I mean, I feel like it’s not too far off for her to start just straight up sacrificing people at the school for soul energy. I don’t think Mirian has any strong connection to anybody anymore, the only person she really does right now is her father, but eventually that connection to will wither.
antpocas
I wonder if Mirian can bind a soul repository, kill her friends at the end of a loop, bind their souls, and then meld them back on the next time loop, like some fucked up version of Ceiba Yan's memory transfer
Dragon Patreon
Perhaps Mirian becomes the Omnian....
Daniel Andrews
Is she becoming the villain or something?
Cally JJ
I just for the life of me cannot understand the professors perspectives. I've been trying but I just can't. The part that kills me is that the professors would be perfectly supportive if Miriam was just weaker, if she handled the invasion worse, if the death toll was higher on their side. In a timeline where they fought with their lives on the line after loosing people they love, they would have absolutely no sympathy for the invading army, but in this timeline where all they see is massive piles of bodies burning they suddenly care about the people that would have killed them all without regret.
Leaf
always more steps on the long path for mirian to take.
FuriousDee
Well that is just sad
Michael Vonica
I really hope not. That sounds like it might just be more suffering for her. I hope that, after all this, she can find some way to live a relatively happy life.
Amin Boudjelida
Heavy is the crown
Kadi
I've been wondering. With how detached her mindset is becoming, will there be a time when she considers sacrificing herself on the final loop to fix some problem, like the gods did?
zoarian
Inb4 Mirian starts walking through the world, saying This Place. She's Ominian fr, fr. Or maybe she understands their lesson the most?
Lamaschokolade
Man, Miriam is so gonna ascend into godhood. She already is starting to think like the Ominian. *This Place* .
HeartHawk
Really good chapter, sad, but good. Really enjoyed this one. Grapples with a lot of some of the most difficult, I suspect, aspects of being in a Really long time loop.
Scyfe
Agreed, sad but a great way to showcase how disconnected she is becoming. She didn't fight back though, thought it was a great way to show her feelings.
Alexander Dupree
Thanks for the chapter. Sad that she had to fight Torres and the others
