Whispers of Stars beneath the Quantum Sea

First Mission.

Vivere: Who are you? Why are you haunting me?

Vivere was on guard. The figure resembled Seele.

???: What are you talking about, Nii~? It's me, Seele~

Vivere: Cut it out. You are not Seele. Answer me!

Seele?: But I am Seele, though. More accurately, the physical manifestation of her darkest desires~

It fully materialized into Seele, with shades of red instead of her blue color.

Vivere: Her darkest desires? What are you talking about?

Seele?: You didn't notice? How unfortunate for her~ The one she trusts the most isn't aware of what she longs for~ How pitiful.

Vivere: I do know! Why wouldn't I know?!

Seele?: Then, you sure have noticed that she yearned for revenge, for blood?

Vivere: Nonsense! Seele is a kind soul, she would never wished for others to suffer! You're lying!

Vivere charged at the figure, punching it, only to slip past the figure, and fall face flat on the ground.

Seele?: You've seen it once, haven't you? It has only been a year since that "incident", I'm sure you haven't forgotten about it so quickly.

Vivere: The Sin Mal "accident"... That was your doing too, wasn't it?

Seele?: Bingo! And what am I?

Vivere: The manifestation of Seele's desires...

Seele?: You don't deserve her. Seele is only in good hands when I'm with her. As for you...

The figure morphed into an almost identical version of himself, smiling psychotically.

Vivere?: I will have fun tormenting your mentality, Nii.

He jolted awake once more. The symbol on his forehead dimmed down. So it came from the stigmata.

Vivere: Fuck!

He punched the floor. He couldn't do anything at all. He was like a fish on a chopping board, ready to be butchered by this stigmata. He needed to find a way to get rid of it before it drove him insane.

He checked his phone. 6 AM. 14 hours until the promised training with Ms Natasha. Maybe he could ask her about it. He tidied up his wrecked room after the turbulent night.

He plopped himself on the bed, hand on his face. Was that Seele telling the truth? Was Seele truly a dishonest person as the stigmata said? It couldn't be. He had been with her for 7 years, and not once did she express her desire to kill, to harm others. Sin Mal was the first person she let out her anger on...

Vivere: What happened that the soft and kind Seele had to unleash her fury onto Sin? She was still fine with Sin bullying her from time to time back then. Was hurting Bronya the final straw?

He traced his memories further. Taking Bronya getting hurt as the endpoint, he searched for the reason why Sin Mal hurt her. Bronya showed high Honkai resistance, given her ability to modify a silver ball using just her imagination. Sin looked displeased then.

Vivere: To gain that resistance, we all had to take a serum... Could it be the serum that awakened her stigmata? She had almost zero resistance like me, yet somehow was able to participate in the X-10 experiment which required high Honkai resistance... So her stigmata awakened thanks to the serum.

Having understood the source of the issue, he started brainstorming the solutions. The stigmata were a manifestation of Honkai as well, so perhaps gaining more Honkai resistance was the quickest way to prevent his mind from being torn down. He'll ask Ms Natasha later about this.