'Ack-!'
Quies quickly recoiled his hand away from the surface of the wall. Looking at his finger, he noticed a paper thin cut starting to form blood.
'Another one…'
With the help of blood enhancement's expedited healing process, further improved upon with tourniquet training, Quies' injuries from yesterday had closed and begun their process of healing. He didn't have to constantly maintain a state of flow through the wounds in his forearms, for example. There were still clear remnants of the injury, though, which was expected.
Quies observed the thin streak of crimson liquid painted across a small stretch of the wall. It had a slight glint on its red surface. As he studied it, something beneath it caught his attention.
There, on the wall, barely noticeable from a glance…
'Markings…damn, I can barely read them!'
Controlling the blood flow in his finger and stopping the bleeding, he stepped in closer to observe.
He sighed in disappointment.
Barely any of the letters, if they were even supposed to be letters, were actually legible. Time, weather, and other factors—maybe a little bit of fighting—had scarred and tainted most of the text.
There were only three readable words.
'Song… Catalyst… Drown…'
Song, the force which reality lives off of.
Catalyst, the cause for an event.
Drown… a multifaceted world within the context of this world.
All of these words were separated by an ample amount of unreadable characters too. Quies didn't know if these words had any correlation to each other, or if they were even in the same phrase. The context clues were lacking, so he couldn't make a sound conclusion just yet.
But still, those three words were like a window into the Old World. A precious glimpse into the reality which the people of old experienced. What did a typical day look like for someone back then? Who knows, maybe their lives were not too different to the people of the new world.
Despite the lack of information, Quies could still draw some definite inferences from the markings.
The first conclusion he came to was the fact that advancements in harnessing the powers of the song weren't exclusive to the new world. Mantras, attunements, and most likely resonances, were already known to those of the previous epoch. Quies theorized that they were also the pioneers for these aspects of the song; they discovered these properties at first, and then honed them to be usable by the people of old lumen.
However, this brought up the earlier question he had. Why hadn't people advanced in use of the song? Obviously there would be clear improvements and refinements due to the time that had passed. However, the people of lumen had made a depressingly scarce number of advancements and innovations over the span of 1,500 years.
And as usual, he came to the same conclusion. He'd have to find out later.
The second conclusion he came to was that there must've been a force which caused some sort of major event that created a clear separation between the old and new world. Something huge must've happened to the world, causing history to be erased and knowledge to be lost in the tides. This inference came from the word 'Catalyst', or at least, that's what Quies believed it said.
These characters and runes looked similar enough to the current writing system. Despite his lackluster education, Quies' parents tried their best to teach their son essential skills such as reading and writing both the standardized and local language, the former being Adres (Ay-drees, like Drew Brees), the signature language of the Central Authority. The latter was the dying language of the Etrean kingdom, a tongue which not many people were still masters at. It also just so happens to be the writing system in which these runes are written in, to no coincidence.
However, there were a few nuances in the shapes of the different letters which were later dropped in favor of simplicity. It was the simple principle of evolving languages. So, despite their similarity to the present day letters, the nuances which Quies couldn't interpret had the possibility of changing the entire meaning of the phrase
'This is hurting my mind.'
Backing away from the markings, Quies noticed that the sky had shifted slightly towards a warmer color. The clouds came back once more, moving to cover the light of the sun.
Evening was coming.
Then, night would come.
And then, once the gazing moon dipped below the horizon once more, another day would start once more. That day would be the day he departs the Isle of Vigil for Erisia…
'And I'll probably discuss the amount I'm being paid tomorrow too. Oh, and I need to ask him about Valerie. Evengarde's been overly vague towards her condition.'
He had noticed earlier that, whenever he brought up Valerie, Evengarde would give him a partial answer before professionally redirecting the topic of the conversation.
All Quies knew was that Valerie was 'in the care' of the Vigils. Something had clearly happened to her back in Etris, that was for sure, and it was severe enough to where it needed immediate attention to treat. It felt off—to be able to look Valerie in the eyes without getting the urge to immediately look away…
He walked the rest of the distance back to the inn in silence, his thoughts churning slowly within his mind .He planned to go back to his room before sunset so he had the time to do a little bit more tourniquet training before tomorrow. He hasn't been able to do any since the first time he experimented with a blood restricting device, which meant that he would spend more time on the arm he didn't train. Other than that, he'll be savoring the rest of the free-time he has.There was nothing else he needed to do, after all.
Perched on the edge of his bed, he watched as the cross-shaped sun pierced the blood-orange horizon with its bottom point, melting into a beauty of golden yellows and blazing reds.
Ding…
The deep sound of a church-like bell rang in the back of his mind, barely noticeable.