~XANDER ELIAS VITALIS

---

It was a little after nine in the morning when he returned to his office from the meeting.

His feet were killing him from being stuffed for so long in such tight and formal shoes.

If the rooms were not airconditioned, he would be sweating through his off-white business suit as well.

Annora Vaultz – his most trusted – followed in behind him at a carefully measured distance and pace.

“You have an open schedule until noon.” She promptly said as her boss breathed out a sigh and let his shoulders sag a little.

Xander simply nodded as he rounded his table and sat down.

He stared intensely at the neat pile of papers and envelopes, placed strategically where the mouse and keyboard for his monitor should have been.

The peripherals for the computer had been pushed aside, but still placed carefully within hand’s reach – the clean arrangements of his desk and office were courtesy of Annora’s OCD.

“The papers?” He questioned as he eyed his secondary.

“Your lawyer will be in shortly for the finalisation of the documents.”

Xander nodded again and stared back at the papers.

“Do you think I’m doing right by her?” he asked.

Annora pushed her half-rimmed glasses further up her nose, abusing the moment to extend the pause and properly formulate her answer.

“You’ve gone above and beyond, sir.” she told him. “She would probably scold you for pulling a stunt like this though.”

That made Xander chuckle as the nostalgia and memories of his first wife washed over him.

“Serena was always one to worry about Skylar and me.” He mused over the though, “Even though she was the one who worried us the most.”

“She was indeed reckless.” Annora’s façade broke down a little as she entertained a light smile, “But it’s thanks to her that we’re all here.”

Xander eyed his dead wife’s best friend who stood stoically across his desk.

“When would you like to break the news to miss Skylar?” She changed the subject.

“She’s very much like her mother. I doubt she’ll accept this decision sitting down.” he rubbed his temples in an attempt to massage out the thoughts of a good scenario of how the big reveal would go.

“It’s not everyday one ascends to the throne of an empire.” Annora stated, “The earlier you tell her, the more time she’ll have to make her own decisions of it.”

“I at least want to wait until after I manage to get home. I haven’t seen my daughters in days.”

“They’ll all probably scold you.” Annora joked with a straight face.

“Doesn’t help that Skylar recently got her black-belt too…” Xander groaned.

“Really?” Annora was genuinely surprised. “She dropped so many sports midway in the last few years, I thought for sure she would drop this one too.”

“Serena must have spoken to her before she passed.” It still stung him to say that last word. “Skylar was probably doing right by her too.”

“You always seem to have girl troubles, sir.”

“Yeah… yeah…” He chuckled, “I used to think it was such a curse ever since I was younger. But blessings usually come in the least expected of disguises.”

~

~SKYLAR AMBERLY VITALIS

---

The shroud of darkness that had veiled my mind, hadn’t robbed me of my consciousness.

I experienced agony and hell like no other.

I lost my sense of time. Fluctuating between going insane and regaining my sanity… only to go insane again.

Pain to move. Pain to stay still. All the while my lungs burned and my bones audibly cracked through what remained of my ear canals.

It took hours… maybe even minutes or days – I couldn’t tell.

However, once it all subsided my energy was drained, and I fell asleep in the cold of my own bloody mess.

~

I woke up expecting pain.

It was nice to be disappointed in that regard.

The sun was up, and the bathroom was overly bright, which caused me to squint.

I spent a good while remaining absolutely still.

Terrified that any amount of movement would bring more agony.

But once I noticed that I was breathing normally, and that the rhythmic expansion of my ribs didn’t bring with it any further fractures, I managed to push up onto my elbows and then sit up in the bathtub.

My body had changed.

Ash-grey skin and sharp clear claws in the place of nails.

I shut my eyes tight for a moment. Taking a few calming deep breaths and shoving the thoughts aside.

‘Get clean first! Get clean first. Get clean first…’ I mentally chanted the mantra as I forced myself to label my problems in order and scale of priorities. Kicking the panic and worry into a corner and shoving it under a pile of more pressing questions that were already scrambling to put themselves in line to be answered.

I was dirty, everything smelled raw, bloody and horrible. I needed a clear line of thought, and to do that, I couldn’t remain in such a mess.

Besides, I could scrutinise this new body thoroughly as I washed myself anyways.

I crawled on all four to the shower knobs to turn on some hot water, shoving the tails out of the way.

Yes. Tails! Two of them!!

I was fighting against my own metal freakout at this point, and was holding on to the reality of my existence by less than a fraying thread. I propped myself up using the wall to be able to stand again.

When the water began flowing, I gradually increased the heat.

Then increased it a bit more…

Then more… before pausing, and frowning at the knob.

The blue digital display showed eighty-five Celsius and rising, but the water flowing over me felt lukewarm.

I would have thought the heater was broken in some way, if it wasn’t for the fact that steam was fogging up everything.

The display stopped at a hundred and three, the knob turning no higher.

Boiling water cascaded over me and washed away everything.

Well, mostly everything.

Hair, skin and nails didn’t go down the drain at all and started to clog up the bathtub. I somehow managed by occasionally pushing the remains of myself out of the way with my foot to allow most of it to go down.

Which it eventually all did with the aid of the hot water.

I calmed down a little when I figured out that aside from the addition of claws, tails, and grey skin, nothing else had changed.

I showered long enough to feel cleansed down to my very core before stepping out and drying myself.

The same face, with the same look as always stared back at me through the bathroom mirror. Aside from the flawless light-grey skin.

I pulled my lips back to check on my teeth.

They were clearly pristine and new. Perfectly aligned.

However, I now sported two pairs of lengthy, sharp, predatory canines. Yet they didn’t feel uncomfortable in my mouth.

My ears may have turned a bit pointier. Nothing too noticeable.

My hair was back and the same… but now, it looked that dark metallic blue, all the way to the roots.

“Guess my hair grows blue now…” I mumbled, as I messed around with the wet strands.

I wasn’t concerned. I hadn’t planned on colouring it any other way.

The movements of my swaying tails caught my eyes through the mirror over my shoulder.

Those didn’t feel unnatural to me either. But their motions were a conscious effort on my behalf. Same like using an arm or moving my fingers.

“These will definitely take getting used to.” I sighed as I grabbed my own tails to get a better look at them.

The sensation was weird. I could feel them, and my brain was registering the pressure of my palm around the both of them, and even the way they rubbed together.

The twin pair of tails were very long. I estimated them to be about a metre and a half, give or take.

Fully extended, they would easily touch the ceiling, or extend almost more than twice further than my hand’s reach if extended to the side.

My tails were a bit bigger at the base of my spine and they gradually tapered off to the diameter of a pinkie finger near the tips.

The end of my tails had double diamond shaped tips. The very end was a flat black spear-end tip, and just before that the other shape had a hole in it – it was the only point where the ends of my tails seemed to split into two before kinking back to join the spear-like black tip.

“Interesting…” I prodded through the holes in my tails. I could feel that two.

The new appendages were coloured a darker gradient of grey, until they turned completely black down at the tips. They were extremely prehensile too, even the hard tips were flexible.

The claws on my fingers and toes seemed to simply be a more robust version of nails, and I doubted that I wouldn’t be able to trim them if needed.

Walking back into my room I noticed that my tails now accounted for a good portion of my balance, since when I wasn’t consciously moving them, they swung and coiled accordingly to every step I took.

My phone showed almost eleven in the morning.

Getting changed was an issue. The tail got in the way. And I wasn’t particularly happy to have to take a pair of scissors to my panties and pants.

Yet, even then… the ends of my tails – although flat – were wider than the diameter at the base.

I would have to cut slits in my clothes the length of my palm!

I didn’t have a single dress either. Although I was certain that that too would fail in some way due my tails as well.

I shrugged to myself. The first option was my only viable route at the moment.

After that was complete and I was properly dressed, I tried to think of my next order of business.

Trying to answer the questions.

How did this happen? And why?!

My first thought was obviously the place I was rummaging through with Oliver yesterday, followed by the weird empty book and my lapse in memory.

“Hey Oliver.” I spoke as he picked up his phone after a single ring.

“You sound a little different…” he said immediately.

“Yeah…” I trailed off, “Listen, did anything weird happen after I left yesterday?”

“Nah. I just hung around, picked up a few antique candle holders and waited for sis.” he said. “Why? Did something spook you?” he paused. “Was it the three brains story? Because that was totally true.”

“Very funny!” I replied. “I was just checking up on your sorry ass.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. What about you? Seems like you’re coming down with something.”

“The ride back took a bit longer than I thought, but as far as I can tell I'm doing ok too.”

This was not a lie. Not at the moment.

“Cool, cool, cool.” he acknowledged. “I’ll catch you later then.”

“Later…”

And I hung up.

I looked for the book, but nothing had changed with it aside for the absence of the designs. And with my missing memory, I couldn’t even be sure that I wasn’t the one who removed the thin metal from the hardcover.

Not entirely sure on what to do next, I went to the kitchen for some cereal. Only to find that Fumiko had prepared an eastern-styled breakfast for me before she had left to attend her classes.

It dawned on me that I would have to find some way of hiding these changes or break the news to my family.

‘I wonder if she found the glass I drank from last night?’ I pondered, since I couldn’t see it anywhere.

She had probably washed it out without checking the contents.

I ate alone. Stewing in the silence of my own thoughts as I searched online for… something.

I wasn’t even sure what I was searching for.

Everything was either fiction or had unreliable sources.

Even if I already knew this, I was just fishing for anything I could hook on to.

“Maybe I have some sort of status system too.” I mused to myself as I tapped out of the anime review site.

“Status.” I called out… gestured my hand… but nothing happened.

‘Is the prompt word different?’ I wondered. ‘Or am I just making a fool out of myself?’

I tried checking online what other terms were used to activate such an ability. But no matter what I tried, nothing worked.

I decided it was best to test out my body, instead of fishing for things that might not exist. Since those were the work of fiction and human imagination after all.

I set a pot on the stove and boiled it.

Tentatively I stuck my hand out above it. Bringing my palm down closer and closer to the water, until my hand was fully immersed in the boiling pot.

‘I mean… I can feel it very faintly, but as I suspected.’ I brought my hand out of the water and analysed the still-steaming digits. ‘Not even a blush or blister.’

I set the pot aside, letting the fire run, and brought my hand down over it, closer and closer.

In the end my hand was resting on the central metal hub around which the blue flames came out from. And the fire was licking around my fingers without burning me.

‘Still lukewarm?!’ I was surprised. ‘Wait… exactly how far can I take this?’

The only reason I had this question was because the fire felt slightly warmer than the hot water. Which meant that I could still feel heat, but it just took a greater amount of it.

I didn’t have anything on hand that could produce any hotter temperatures though.

So instead, I turned off the stove and grabbed some ice from the fridge, clenching it in a fist.

Nothing!

With the heat I had at least sensed the minor change, but the ice felt like room-temperature water.

Not to be outdone, I grabbed the salt shaker from the table, applied it to the ice, and clenched my fingers tighter.

‘I sort of feel something…’

It felt more like the cool air under the shade of a tree rather than cold.

I washed my hands before moving to other experiments.

I pinched myself. I still felt pain… More acutely too!

I took a sharp knife to a fingertip.

I could still be cut just as easily as normal, but the blood was a darker red than normal. Not to mention that it didn’t heal at any noticeable rate.

I had realised that my strength had seen an exponential increase, but I could still control it just as finely as normal.

The penthouse was no place to test my strength, and although the building did have a gym that I occasionally used, I couldn’t go there now for obvious reasons.

Testing out a few of the most difficult karate moves proved to be a breeze.

My body had gone through an increase in speed and dexterity as well.

I still wasn’t used to my tails, so they got in the way often.

>DEMONIC ENTITY, YOUR PRESENCE HAS BEEN REQUESTED IN REALM NOSTRA

And before I could recover from the multitude of voices speaking at once, a hexagram appeared beneath my feet, lined with sigils and glyphs that glowed a fluorescent light.

“What the-?” The centre of the markings collapsed into an abyssal black void! “-Fuck!”

I dropped through before I could step away.