Byleth's Sorrow

Reflection

Byleth continued softly laughing for a while. It was fun to give them vague hints, and see if they figured it out. He had done something similar in his last life, but Hubert  had immediately become suspicious of him so he had to stop. 

He sat in front of the fire for a long while. Most of his day was spent maintaining the fire with his magic, sometimes causing strange shapes to form and dance around the fire before fading into sparks. He supposed that it could be considered an experiment. In his second life, he had decided to try out magic.  There wasn't any real downside to it, and the results were better than he could have hoped for. Turns out, having the power of a goddess makes you extremely magically powerful. Who knew, right?

In any case, Sothis' power (He still couldn't think of it as his) was subtly influencing his own magical reserves, slowly merging into a new kind of magic, not divine or faith or reason magic, but something different. This new magic, although extremely potent, was very volatile. His own body, even with all the Divine Pulses he had used, was not able to handle the flood of unfamiliar magic. The first time he had used it, he was violently sick for almost a month, and his internal organs had pretty much gone through a blender. He was sidelined for that entire lifetime, so he wasn't there to see Dimitri die to Edelgard's Relic. 

He spent most of his time sitting by the fire, allowing minute amounts of the strange power to flow into it while slowly transforming him with its power. After almost a year, (The students were quite late to Abyss this time around; he was surprised the mercenaries hadn't already found the Chalice of Beginnings) he was quite well acclimatized to the magic. After a more extensive evaluation, he was again surprised to realize that his bones had transformed into a substance quite similar to that of the Hero's Relics. 

He always knew he would meet the lords at some point. Over the course of three lifetimes, he found that the Strings of Fate were intertwined and entangled, but with careful precision, one could unravel the knot and redirect the Strings. However, some points, (Key Points, as he liked to call them) were so tangled and convoluted that they were impossible to prevent. His meeting them was a Key Point. So was the attempted resurrection of his mother. Whether it succeeded or not was a different story, but Aeflric would always try.

He sighed. More Key Points were coming soon. Some of which he had to intervene. So with a heavy heart, he gathered the fire in his arms, (He had grown quite attached to it) and walked out of the room.

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The students and the Abyssians gathered in the town. After the encounter with the Ashen Demon, none of them were in a good mood. 

Except Dimitri, that is, who was just very confused and continuously trying to figure out what the words the Ashen Demon had said meant to the other two lords.

Yuri was the first to break the silence. "The Demon said something about Constance finding a lock." He turned to the person in question. "Do you know anything about that?"

Constance scoffed. "As if I would find such a thing and not mention it to you. I am not so forgetful as to-" 

Balthus interrupted. "Alright, alright. So if haven't found it yet, doesn't that mean we just have to keep looking?"

Dimitri glanced at the two lords. They were still out of it. 

He sighed. "Yes, that does seem the best course of action."

Lindhart spoke up. "The mercenaries seemed to be after something. I have searched the library, and only found one thing that could possibly be of any value to them." He fished in his pocket for small diagram of a strange cup, and placed it on the table. "The Chalice of Beginnings."

He continued. "It is supposed to be protected by many wards in the Chasm of the Bound, which is said to be deep in Abyss"

"Hm..." Constance mumbled. "I wonder if the chasm I found has something to do with that."

Silence.

Constance looked up, only to find everyone staring at her. "What? I said I'd tell you about any locks I find, not every tunnel or chasm."