The whole world around her is black. Just black.

“Hey.” Lilianne appears in front of her.

“What are you doing here?” Blue asks.

“I’m merging our souls. You’ll get all my memories.” Lilianne smiles.

“All? I don’t remember any of that…” Blue says, tilting her head.

Lilianne laughs. “That would overload you, I’ll seal your memories from before this, you’ll get them back with time.”

Lilianne fades, and the world around Blue changes.

A voice shouts. “Your majesty, that’s a terrible idea!”

“I have no choice.” I say with a sigh.

“Are these all the items needed for the ritual?” I ask. The room around me is empty, we emptied it out just before. Three people stand besides me.

“Yes, your majesty.” My loyal servant says.

I let out a small smile. After all, it’s finally time. I’ve been working for this for five years, ever since my wife died. The world just went down, kingdoms attacked me in this moment of weakness. I’ve got nothing left, besides my three loyal servants. They still say your majesty, but I’m a ruler of nothing.

“Let’s start the ritual.” I say in my stern voice. I can’t let my emotions take control of me.

Of course, should’ve expected that it went wrong. But, lucky for me, I’ve gotten a second chance. I guess people call this reincarnation, never heard of one where there’s a clone of you coming with you. It’s a different gender than me even. I don’t remember which gender I used to be, maybe I’m the one with a gender change? My memories seem to be broken, guess half of it went to my clone. Or am I the clone? I don’t know. Maybe I’m not even myself, just someone who has gotten some broken memories of a distant person.

We decided that we’re siblings. Or well, fate decided that for us, since we have the same parents. It’s odd, my memories seem to be disappearing. We decided to focus on remembering the ritual, so that we can try again. Starting again feels weird with memories. We just need to wait enough years so we can walk on our own and get our own stuff.

Oh, forgot to say, I can somehow communicate with my sibling. I just feel what they want to say. Quite handy, I might have gone crazy if I didn’t have anyone to talk to for years.

Through the years my sibling and I talked about the memories each of us has. It seems like I received parts of the end, and my sibling parts of the beginning. They were talking about grand adventures and all the fighting. They seem to be the better fighter because of those memories. I know more about the ritual, so at least I’m not useless.

We decided to work on fixing the ritual, everything is so much easier with another person, I wonder why the original didn’t do that. Ingredients have different names here, so we’re working hard on finding out what the names are.

20 years passed just like that. We didn’t do any of the normal things in life, we just focussed on the ritual. I just feel like we owe that to the original, to complete their incomplete wish. Maybe we shouldn’t, maybe we should’ve been happy with a head start. It’s too late for regret now.

We did find flaws in the original ritual, it all depends on one person. It drains the power out of them, to give a different power back. Our original might have been arrogant in believing they could do it on their own, but they didn’t have enough power to supply, let alone having enough room to store what you get back.

We’re not sure what the ritual was meant for. It enhances power, that’s for sure. But it seems to be something that changes whoever made it into a conductor of it. You’d be a breathing magic conductor. I’d say alive, but I’m not sure if you are. Maybe you sacrifice yourself to it. Since like that we can’t actually get the benefits, I wonder who the original was doing this for.

It doesn’t matter though, even if we’re a sacrifice to it. We’ve been living our whole life for this. My sibling doesn’t think the same of it, and wants to change it into something we can use as well.

I guess since we have no clue what we’re doing it for it’s for the best. It’s completely useless without a goal.

We did some changes and little tests, everything seems to be working now. We’re ready for the complete ritual now, I wonder what it does. We’ll find out soon enough though.

It looks like it works, we’re still alive. The whole room lights up. We manage to pass the first stage, where the original failed. Since we trained our whole life for this, to get enough power for the ritual, it’s a great thing. We’re both relieved with the progress.

The second stage is unknown to us, let’s hope we can do that too.

Well, that didn’t work out. The second stage is the ritual merging with the person, so the person becomes the ritual. I wonder who made this ritual, because it’s impossible for any person to carry so much power. Was it actually made with humans in mind? Or is it made for people from the legends?

Anyway, the ritual is implanted on our soul. It damaged it yet again, the memories of before are almost completely gone. I wouldn’t be able to make the ritual again with what’s left.

It split our souls in half, now we got two clones. They look exactly like us, but their eye colour is different. Our eye colour changed as well, I noticed that when looking at my sibling.

The two new clones, or siblings, seem to carry most of the ritual. Great for us, to leech of their power. For them I don’t know, it could have unknown side effects that we need to research.

I feel different, the original feels like a stranger, not like I ever used to be that person, or maybe I never was.

Half of my personality was given to the soul that split from me, I guess it’s the same for my sibling. They don’t seem to have the memories at all, they act like their age. Maybe it will change through the years, carrying a magic ritual isn’t normal.

Merging complete.

Okay, thanks for telling me, whatever that was.

Am I still myself? With all those memories I sure don’t feel like it. Merging with Lilianne, does that mean I’m more like her now?

Oh fuck. Doesn’t it explain why I would take out her hair ties? Why else would I do that? Am I slowly changing into her?

Wait, I can’t worry about that now. I open my eyes, and stand face to face with the ones who murdered April. I’d cry, but it feels so distant now. My face still has the tears from before, as if not even a single second has passed. Am I colder to everything now? Is that because of Lilianne?

The people try to poke me. The pitchfork breaks, that’s surprising I guess. I recall that I can call out to a soul linked sword or something like that. It seems to be part of my soul, but in a sword. That definitely comes from Lilianne, why would she hide something like that though?

I change part of my soul into a sword, and a sword appears in front of me. It’s a pretty sword, with azure blue lines over the silver colour. I grab it and everything comes naturally to me. A practice swing feels perfectly fine. If I recall the sword I get the part of my soul back, like it never happened. I wonder what else I can change or make with my soul.

Oh. The practice swing slashed the people in front of me in half. Oops? I don’t care though, they’re annoying.

I slash them some more, it just is so easy. They stare at me with fear in their eyes. Yes, fear me. It’s payback, I won’t let any of you escape! I smile at them, that seems to be enough reason for them to drop their pitchforks and run away. I’ve gotten familiar with a few of the things the ritual does. One of those things is teleporting, I’m not strong enough yet to go far away, but this small amount is easy enough, it’s really just working with the elements outside, changing them a bit and then poof. I appear to the place where they are running towards.

Their faces, it’s laugh worthy. Where’s their God? They were doing this for their God right? What an useless guy, it’s not helping them at all.

If I knew I was this strong I would’ve escaped earlier. But we didn’t have any combat experience, April shouldn’t have been that far behind me, yet she died. Now that we’re eighteen we got the power of eight adults. That’s quite a lot, compared to these people that probably didn’t train one single day in their life.

It’s so easy to hunt them down, even while thinking. It just happens naturally. Did Lilianne kill a lot of people? She probably did before, in three life times a lot can happen. I can probably see through all her memories, although it seems to be a bit broken. Her soul took damage when she forcefully merged with mine.

But well, I don’t feel like watching a lifetime worth of memories, I think I grasped the most important ones already.

Ah, there’s no one left. The place is drenched in blood, so am I. I’m a monster now I guess. Time to recall my sword.

I head towards April, she lies there peacefully. I can revive her, I know I can. I got two souls in me, that means I’m able to afford the cost.

It’s a simple kiss to blow in a bit of your life or something, I don’t really care how it works. As long as it does it’s great.

I kneel down next to her and lean in. Isn’t this exactly like that one story? Or all of them? Where a prince kisses a princess and wakes her up, although I’m not waking anyone up. Reviving seems to be different from that.

I breathe my life into her, doing that feels strange. I feel part of my soul leave, and I feel it inside her. It’s like a soul contract, but instead of leaving a part in a soul space I’m merging a bit of my soul with her own soul. I wonder if it gives her a few of my memories, or would it change her personality?

April opens her eyes. It takes a moment for her to register everything, and then her face turns red. I break the kiss, it should’ve been enough, then I smile at her. “Welcome back!”

I thought I was cold enough to not care about her death, but I guess I didn’t care because I knew I could fix it. Seeing her blush makes me happy, I don’t know if I could go without her.

She puts her hand in front of her mouth and looks away. Oh, the corpses are still there. Her blush disappears and she turns pale. [What…. What happened?] Her voice stutters inside my mind.

Ah, yeah, mind talking still is a thing. ‘I took care of it. No one will ever hurt you again.’

She looks me in the eyes with fear. Is she scared of me? [They clearly were running away, why would you do that?]

I guess she’s not used to death. ‘I’m sorry’ I can’t get anything else out, it would just be excuses on top of excuses.

I don’t get a response back, she might not forgive me. She shouldn’t, I’m the one that scared her. Next time I might need to hold back.

She sits up and starts hugging me, crying on my shoulder. Ah, she’s touching me. I don’t want that, it just reminds me of that moustache man. I shiver. But April needs it, just this once then. I feel disgusted, but manage to get myself together.

I wonder how long she’ll hug me for, I don’t know how long I can hold on.

Wait, why is the world disappearing again? April disappears out of my arms, I don’t want to lose her again!

You have sinned and will be punished accordingly.

Welcome to the Sin System.