Chapter 31 The Veritas Promise

"By the call of Blood Oaths; I command thee to course through my veins." Sheila chanted, closing her eyes as the magic circle propagates, filling the room with intricate arrays of magical origin. The lines illuminated the throne room dimly, enclosing the darkness with sinister blood-red light.

"One will not speak of his own; the blood oath shall permit thee to bind the tongues of these children to the depth of Truth." Three thuds from the edge of her staff. "Veritas." A section of the hexagram glowed, the one with the eye of Horus. "Fidem." Glows the one with a triquetra. "Virtus." The bindrune.

Truth. Faith. Virtue. The three Personality of Blood Oath.

The glowing hexagram was now complete with the three Blood Oaths lit.

Sheila, extending her arm in the middle of the magic circle, slit her wrist. The blood trickled down, spreading from the center of the circle towards the whole hexagram.

Orwell's eyes widened. He has never seen a blood oath before, given the fact that this spell was rarely used.

The sinister red light was the same color as Sheila's blood, to the point that they are almost indistinguishable. Orwell noticed the blood reaching his shoe—and then suddenly—

"This is…"

A small hexagram formed in the back of his palm. A hexagram line with the color of blood, as if it was engraved.

"Hold on! We cannot have this in our hand!" Bethrion argues

"It's alright, brother." Lucas answers.

"Huh?"

"These are only visible to us and the castor herself. I cannot even see yours." Lucas exclaims as he looks at Bethrion's hand. "This is an individual pact."

"That's right." Sheila replies, "even the High Knights are on a pact with me. It's only between you and I. This is the Veritas Promise."

"Now in this spell I would bind a certain 'truth' you shall not speak of to anyone."

Sheila mumbled several phrases of Mystisch, that made the ruby resting on the peak of her staff glow immensely. Sheila raised her bloodied wrist and then drew a pentagram in the air.

"I will now convert my memory into a photographic illusion." Sheila says. "Observe closely."

**

"Sheila is a… traitor?" Faustina asks, perplexed of the king's statement. Her eyes fixated at the king, observing his very expression.

"Unfortunately." The king says. "She is."

"How could that be? I can see how loyal she is to you…" Faustina mutters, her words slowly drifting to silence. She remembered many things back when she first met Sheila. The priestess was obviously very wary of her—and did not like her much, provided how she treated Faustina even in lessons of Theology.

And Faustina was very certain that she had done it due to compassion—the loyalty towards the king.

"Sheila is the daughter of Julian Ortfalcon, an old friend of the Feuerkriegers—their line was said to have thrived because of my ancestor, Alexander Octavius, the first king of Feuersturm."

The king stared at the seed.

"Sheila and I have been together for a long time—dating back even when I was a child; she visits occasionally because her father, Julian, was one of the head mage of the palace back then. When I was seen to have the potential to use the Opus, my father died quickly after." He says. "And I woke up with eight souls possessing my body."

"Your majesty…"

"This is what nightmare is. It ate my body away. Nine souls in one body resulted in a quicker cell deterioration. The toll was too much to bear—nevertheless, the head mage found a way to sustain the body for a bit longer. It is by using spells from Zweite."

"Spells from Zweite…"

"That is right. They used the spell of another nation."

Faustina stared, listening closely.

"He told me that the spell was passed down to every head mage of the Ortfalcon family, the spell passed down and originated from the first king himself. It looked like that several years before, he has been trying to sustain the bodies of the future generations who can use the Opus—because he knew they will be plagued by such disease."

"He knew it will happen?"

"He was cursed, my lady." The king answers. "Octavius is a cunning man. He did not want his line to end just because of a curse. We are said to be his reincarnation on the body but not the soul—and that was very evident; our features are very akin to the ancestor."

"He, along with the other seven first kings of the seven countries of Zuerst have been cursed this way by the ancestor of Jonathan Unsterblich." The king says. "And it is now known that the Forsaken is continuing his ancestors' legacy."

Faustina bit her lip. She felt a pang on her chest hearing the name of that man. The man who took Eula away. "Then what does this have to do with Sheila being a traitor, Your Majesty?"

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The king sighed. "Sheila has been a friend of mine. We have been together for many years… but I know something changed her when Julian Ortfalcon, her father, vanished into thin air, without passing down the magical formula of Zweite to the next head mage."

"Then…"

"It caused an outrage. It appears that there were no written scriptures or guide for the formula. It was utterly based on memory. It caused a panic—because this might end the Feuerkrieger line."

Faustina gulped. "It means whenever there will be someone that will be able to use the Opus, then…"

"That person will die shortly and the souls will vanish into nothingness. We will not return to heaven or hell. That is Nightmare." Says the king.

"But what happened to Julian? Why is he gone? What about his child?"

"We do not know. But this was the time that Jonathan Unsterblich started to cause another uproar. He committed a mass murder… sixteen years ago. And this was the time he allegedly killed the brilliant scholar, a student most loved by Magierstadt—Eulalia Fortunatorum."