The Secret Cult Chronicles of the Decaying Lake Manor

【Burning Heart with Fire】

[Nature/Characteristics: Candle, Document]

[Viscount Edward de la Porter formally began learning his family's alchemy at the age of 16, and ascended to the rank of Herrscher Supreme a year later. This notebook records his thoughts during his time as a Veilbreaker.]

George placed the "Rationality" card on the notebook card.

The words poured down like a waterfall in an instant, and a vast amount of information flooded into his consciousness.

The one who breaks through the veil, also known as the awakened one, is someone who first perceives the world beneath its surface and achieves a fusion of mind and matter. Ordinary people can reach this level by contacting and confirming the essence of the spiritual realm through spiritual dreams or the baptism of extreme emotions. Afterwards, three conditions must be met to cross three stages: spiritual dreams, transcendent knowledge, and a yearning heart...

[Mortals need a dream that makes them realize that something else exists beneath the surface of the world to pierce the veil of waking life. This dream may originate from overflowing spirituality or from contact with extraordinary knowledge—secret teachings.]

In terms of spirituality, mortals may possess strong innate spirituality, experience extreme emotional trials, or create remarkable intellectual achievements. This will trigger fluctuations in the three elements of spirituality, allowing them to access the dream realm and, without fully understanding its nature, encounter extraordinary power...

[After the initial stage, those who make spiritual contact with the second level of the dream realm and subsequently understand the essence of extraordinary knowledge can enter the next stage—unless they went mad beforehand...]

As knowledge flowed into his mind like water, George gained an unprecedentedly clear understanding of the entire extraordinary advancement system, especially the path of the "Candle" criterion.

What struck him most was the final description of "passion on the path".

[Depending on the path and principles chosen by the extraordinary individual and the faith they follow, they will periodically experience powerful impulses—gluttony, indulgence, conquest, courtship, judgment...]

These passions are hard to control; after all, it's impossible for a person to be aware of their breathing and blinking at every moment—the passions that arise on the path are similar, and it's difficult to discern whether they are inherently reasonable.

He suddenly remembered the Viscount—a "father," "patriarch," and "genius" pieced together from the impressions of many others.

Is this the path he walked, and the path I will walk?

The viscount's long-standing rituals, his obsession with power, and even the "ascension ceremony" that led to his mother's death five years ago... Is it Edward de la Pole's own will, or the "passion" that gradually distorted the "candle" criterion during his long ascent?

He even recalled the words of the Anti-Suppression Bureau inspector—that the Viscount once possessed "the passion and almost obsessive dedication of an artist."

After her mother passed away, "that once burning, unwavering obsession, capable of burning away all obstacles, was extinguished."

Extinguished? Or... replaced by a more powerful, inhuman "passion"?

When George returned to his bedroom, he lay down on the bed a little slower than usual—his mind was still racing.

He forcibly suppressed the surging thoughts in his mind and focused his attention on his breathing.

His past habits took over, and his consciousness gradually sank into darkness.

-----------------

After the chaotic darkness, George sank into a state of tranquility.

He found himself walking on a narrow, unfamiliar path that wound its way into a tall oak grove.

The silent oak trees were exceptionally thick, their bark covered with scratches of varying depths, from which blood-red sap seeped.

A thin mist hung in the air, and moonlight filtered through the thick foliage, casting fragmented and pale spots of light on the ground.

George sensed something was wrong, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

There seemed to be a damp, ancient aftertaste in my breath, like being on dry ground one second and then entering a wet underwater world the next.

Dreams always tell you what you should do, rather than giving you freedom to act.

George continued forward, the tree roots beneath his feet intertwined, and vines occasionally drooping down. He had to bend over, turn sideways, and even crawl on all fours to avoid the obstacles.

An uncontrollable instinct drove him, as if he were gradually shedding his human form and transforming into something more primal...

Ahead, the fog is getting thicker.

He saw it.

Something was floating in the deeper shadows of the trees.

Are they pale wings?

Huge, soft, it gathers the moonlight upon itself, silently expanding and contracting between the tree trunks.

The wildest and lightest fantasies of fairy tales or dreams belong only to the pure things that seek to appreciate the solidity of matter.

George stopped walking.

He looked up and saw the moon—an exceptionally bright, sharply defined silver moon—slowly moving past behind the inky black leaves.

And in the instant he gazed at the moon, he felt something cool and ethereal gently brush against his short hair.

finger?

He turned around abruptly, but saw no one.

Then he realized it.

It wasn't just one person.

Seven people.

Seven slender figures, their faces blurred in the hazy light and shadow, floated or stood around the forest in some inhuman manner.

Their heads were crowned with pale flowers and thorns, and their layers of silk robes billowed greedily in the windless fog.

George heard the singing, or perhaps he could not quite discern what his pounding eardrums were conveying to him.

Accompanied by ethereal singing, the seven beings began to move, starting a dance with marble-like forms.

As they drifted along, George noticed a dry well in the center.

Then, George witnessed a horrifying scene.

From their swollen, fluttering robes, five distinct shades of "darkness" spilled out and fell into the well.

As darkness descended like a torrential downpour, the well began to boil, the black liquid rising, overflowing the well's edge, and spreading outwards.

The seven fairies moved more and more hurriedly, and George was so captivated by the singing that he could not move.

Finally, a distinct sound of a broken string rang out, and the fairies, their enormous pale robes billowing, took flight.

George was startled to find himself leaving the ground—he too became light and uncontrollably floated up with them.

He followed the songs and dance steps they left behind, as if being pulled along, and rose into the sky together.

The ground receded rapidly into the distance.

He saw the entire oak grove, the path, and the overflowing, filthy well that was swallowing the island and spreading into the lake.

It was an island in the middle of a lake.

He was suspended in the air above the island, looking down.

After being contaminated, the lake surface froze.

The shimmering light distorted in the wind, eventually settling into huge, sharp-edged obsidian crystal facets.

At the edge of the island, the facets refracted the moonlight, becoming as crystal clear as the water, as if nothing had ever happened under the cover of night.

The seven fairy-like figures continued to ascend into the sky, toward the exceptionally bright full moon.

The tallest figure, with the most elaborate floral crown, stood at the forefront, leading everyone uphill.

George desperately tried to keep up; the tranquil moonlight was exactly what he needed, and he felt something craving within him.

However, as he tried to accelerate and catch up with those ethereal figures, a strange feeling came over him.

It is emptiness.

The closer he got to the moonlight, the emptier he felt inside.

But at the same time, his "body" became incredibly heavy, and the ground was cruelly laughing as it pulled him back.

He struggled to see those elegant and distant beings in the moonlight gradually merge into the bright glow, their elder sister now only leaving behind the pale afterimage of her wings.

George reached out one last time, his fingertips touching the cold, silvery edge of the moon—

An irresistible force of gravity suddenly struck, and he plummeted straight down from the sky like a stone, a soulless doll.

Below, the lake surface, solidified into obsidian, is rapidly expanding.

He couldn't make a sound, but the song in the unknown language sung by the seven beings echoed in his consciousness for the last time.

"Ha!"

George sat up abruptly in bed.

The bedroom was bathed in the dim red light of the last embers in the fireplace.

He was panting heavily, the feeling of falling from his dream still lingering in his body, making his fingertips icy cold.

He sat there for a moment, his heartbeat gradually calming down, but his eyebrows slowly rose.

George focused his consciousness on the card table in his mind.

The card table emerged from the darkness, as if something had changed.

His gaze first fell on the card that was faintly glowing with a silvery-white light.

With a wave of his hand, [Broken Veil - Candle] fell into his palm, and the text below the card changed:

【Breaking the Curtain, Candlelight [Enlightenment]】