After the war council, after the plans were set and the pieces were in motion, a single, nagging mystery remained. Tiffany and I walked side-by-side down the quiet, sterile hallways of the school's main building, our footsteps echoing in the silence. The rest of the guild was off to their duties, but we had one last stop to make.
"Let's go visit the girl we found," I said, my voice a low murmur.
Tiffany just gave a curt nod, her own expression a mask of cool, analytical curiosity.
We found her in the school clinic, a small, sunlit room that smelled of antiseptic and clean linen. She was sitting up in one of the beds, dressed in a simple patient gown, nibbling on an apple. She looked small and fragile against the crisp white sheets. She resembled a work of art, with porcelain-white skin and pure white hair that was sleek, braided, and flowing over her shoulders. But the moment she saw me, her royal blue eyes widened, and a look of pure, unadulterated relief washed over her face.
She was off the bed in an instant, running towards me, her bare feet silent on the polished floor. "Thank you for saving me," she said, her voice a soft, musical sound that was full of a profound, heartfelt gratitude.
I gently placed a hand on her shoulder, trying to calm her. "It's okay," I said. "You're safe now. Can you tell us about yourself? Who are you?"
She took a deep, shaky breath, as if gathering her courage. "My name is Sylvie Alastair," she began. "And… I need your help. Can you please help me find my sisters? I need to find them. It's urgent."
"Listen," I said, my voice gentle but firm. "I understand. But we can't just help you without any information. You have to tell us everything."
She nodded, her gaze darting between me and Tiffany before she began her story, her voice dropping to a haunted whisper. "I am from the Alastair family, from a place called the Aurora Collective. Our family is… was… very big. And very rich. My mother gave birth to five of us at once. Quintuplets."
"Quintuplets?" I repeated, my own mind struggling to process the word.
"Yes," she said. "Five sisters. We look the same, but… we are very different inside."
Tiffany, who had been observing the scene with a detached, scientific curiosity, finally spoke. "How did you get here?" she asked, her voice a sharp, logical counterpoint to Sylvie's emotional tale. "Grand Metropolis is nearly twenty thousand kilometers away from the Aurora Collective."
Sylvie flinched at the question, her hands twisting nervously in her lap as if the memory itself was a physical pain. "In our family," she began, her voice barely a whisper, "when the five of us were born, our family's clergy said something… strange. He said that we all have shards of a single soul. That the soul had split into five, and that we sisters can feel and sense each other's feelings, especially when they're strong." She looked up at us, her blue eyes wide with a desperate, pleading sincerity. "Then he said that all five of us need to find a single, sole 'Anchor' for our soul. If we don't, we will all die before our twentieth birthday."
My mind reeled. An Anchor? A shared soul? This was beyond anything the System had ever shown me.
"He said that when we find our Anchor," she continued, her voice gaining a new urgency, "we would feel a different kind of sensation. Like a jolt of energy in our bodies. Our parents were trying to find him, but then…" Her voice broke, and a single tear traced a path down her pale cheek. "Our house was attacked. Men in black armor, with weapons I'd never seen before. There was fire… and screaming. My parents… they sacrificed themselves to save us. My father held them off while my mother gave each of us a different direction to run. The last thing I remember is her kissing my forehead and whispering, 'Survive, my little moonbeam. Find your sisters. Find your Anchor.'"
Her story was a raw, open wound. "In the chaos, we were all split up. I ran for days, I think. I don't know how I ended up here, in Grand Metropolis. I was alone, starving. The men who ran that warehouse… they found me. They offered me food, a place to stay. They said they would protect me. But it was a trap. They took my identification, told me I owed them an impossible debt for their 'kindness.' They made me a hostess. They… they tried to make me do other things." She shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. "But every time a man tried to… to touch me… something strange would happen. They would get scared and run away. I didn't know why. I was so scared. Please," she finished, her voice cracking completely, "you have to help me."
After hearing her tragic story, my brain felt like it was short-circuiting. I instinctively activated my [Advanced Appraisal] skill, my gaze locking onto her. The familiar white panel shimmered into existence, and the information it displayed only deepened the mystery.
Status:
Name: Sylvie Alastair
Strength: 20
Agility: 25
Endurance: 30
Mentality: 65
Intelligence: 75
Mana: 0
Potential: UR – (Incomplete)
Skills: [None]
Passive Skills: [Aura of Fortune (Conditional) - {Benevolent Fortune} or {Malevolent Misfortune}], [Aura Concord - Dormant], [A Seeker of the Anchor], [Soul's Vulnerability], [Maiden's Aegis]
Superpower: [None]
Soul Ledger: [None]
I was bewildered. UR Potential? What the hell was that? And her passive skills… they were unlike anything I had ever seen.
Tiffany let out a short, incredulous laugh. "What are she saying a soul anchor?" she asked me, her voice dripping with a sarcasm that was clearly a defense mechanism against the sheer absurdity of it all. "Five sisters, soul connectivity… are we in some kind of fantasy novel?"
"Please believe me," Sylvie pleaded, her voice a timid, desperate whisper.
"She's mentally disabled," Tiffany stated, her tone flat and clinical.
"Please," Sylvie said again, her voice cracking. "I am telling the truth." To make us believe her, she did something completely unexpected. She pulled a small, sharp piece of glass from a broken vase on a nearby table and, before either of us could stop her, made a small, shallow cut on her finger.
She started to cry, not from the pain, but from the sheer, overwhelming desperation of not being believed. And the moment her first tear hit the floor, the entire clinic began to shake. Not a gentle tremor, but a violent, terrifying earthquake that sent medical supplies crashing from the shelves and made the very foundations of the building groan in protest.
I grabbed her hand, instinctively pulling her finger to my mouth and licking away the single drop of blood. "It's okay," I said, my own voice a low, calming hum. "We believe you."
The moment my words left my mouth, the moment my touch seemed to reassure her, the shaking stopped. The violent, chaotic energy in the room was instantly replaced by a profound sense of peace. A pleasant, warm breeze seemed to swirl through the clinic, carrying the scent of flowers from a garden that didn't exist.
Tiffany stared, her face a mask of pure, dumbfounded shock. "What the hell is going on?" she whispered, her voice a mixture of awe and a deep, profound terror. "First an earthquake, and now… this?"
"Look like it, Tiffany," I said, my own mind racing to connect the dots. "Her emotional state can affect the fortune of her surroundings."
"Are you mad?" she shot back, though her voice lacked its usual conviction.
I quickly explained everything I had just witnessed. Kenji's inexplicable fall. The block of concrete that had just happened to fall on the thug who was about to attack her. She listened, her green eyes wide, her analytical mind struggling to process a reality that defied every known law of nature and science.
"Seriously?" she breathed when I had finished. "You mean… oh my God."
Sylvie looked at us, a fragile, hopeful look on her face. "Now do you believe me?"
"Sylvie, listen," I said, my voice firm but not unkind. "First, we believe you. And second, you must not reveal your powers to anyone else. Not a single soul. Do you understand?"
She nodded, a wave of relief washing over her. "Now, tell us. What do you want from us?"
"I need your help to find my sisters," she said, her voice full of a new, desperate hope. "Only then can we find our Anchor."
Tiffany just shook her head, running a hand through her hair. "Okay, Adam. My mind is messed up. This is violating every known law of nature and science."
I was just as messed up as she was. But Sylvie was looking at me with such absolute, unwavering faith in her eyes that I couldn't bring myself to say no. "Sylvie, please give us some time," I said, my voice gentle. "We will help you. But let us think about how. Don't worry. You are safe here."
She looked so happy she could have burst. She threw her arms around me in a hug. "Thank you so much, mister," she said. "I don't even know your name yet. But still, thank you."
"Oh, sorry," I said, a small smile on my face. "I'm Adam Wilson, and this is Tiffany Watson. We'll meet you later."
After saying our goodbyes, we walked out of the clinic and into the now-quiet hallway.
We walked in a profound, heavy silence for a full five minutes, the only sound the soft click of our shoes on the polished linoleum floor. Tiffany's usual cool, analytical composure was gone, replaced by a look of deep, unsettled thought. I could practically see the gears turning in her brilliant mind, trying to fit the impossible, fantastical reality we had just witnessed into a logical, scientific framework.
She was the first to speak, her voice a low, almost reverent murmur. "An anchor," she said, more to herself than to me. "A shared soul. Emotion-based probability manipulation. Adam… what did we just get ourselves into?"
"I have no idea," I admitted, my own mind still reeling. "But you saw it too, right? I wasn't imagining it."
"Imagining it?" she shot back, a flash of her old, sharp self returning. "Adam, a localized seismic event with a magnitude of at least 4.5 occurred in a ten-meter radius around that room, and then ceased the exact moment you provided a positive emotional stimulus. That's not imagination; that's a data point that spits in the face of physics."
She stopped walking and turned to face me, her green eyes full of a new, intense seriousness. "This is big, Adam. Bigger than the Ruthless Animals, bigger than Phoenix Capital. This is… something else entirely. A girl who can literally make the world fall apart just by crying? She's not just an asset; she's a potential natural disaster. Or a miracle."
"I know," I said, my own voice a low, serious hum.
"We can't tell the others," she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Not yet. Think about it. Padro would want to weaponize her. Nari would see her as the ultimate strategic asset to be controlled. And Isabel…" she trailed off, a look of profound understanding on her face. "Isabel would see her as a rival for your affection and protection. It would create chaos in the guild."
She was right. The secret of Sylvie Alastair was a bomb, and our fledgling guild was not stable enough to handle the explosion.
"So what do we do?" I asked, the weight of this new secret settling on my shoulders.
"We do exactly what you said," she replied, her analytical mind already formulating a plan. "We protect her. We keep this a secret, between the two of us, until we understand the full scope of what we're dealing with. We find her sisters. And we find out who, or what, this 'Anchor' is supposed to be." She paused, a new, determined light in her eyes. "But first, we have a more immediate problem to deal with. The prisoners from the raid. They're waiting. Let's go."
And with that, we left the quiet, sterile hallway of the clinic and headed back towards the darkness of our own world, the weight of a new, impossible secret settling on our shoulders.