Jinn returned to his room without eating anything more than a spoonful of soup. After what had happened in the cafeteria, he no longer felt like eating.
By the ti the other roommates arrived, Jinn was already in his bed, covered in sheets.
Sally, being one of them, decided to check up on him and ask what had happened. But when she ca close, he had his back turned towards her, and his breath was even.
Clearly he had gone to sleep, so the white-haired girl only sighed and crawled into the bed herself.
Within an hour the lights in the room dimd down on their own as if they were being controlled by an invisible power.
Everyone had already gone to bed, slowly drifting away into sleep.
Dark clouds slowly gathered above the sky of the Veloria city; the cold breeze blew into the empty streets, rolling the trash down the road. The sound of the air itself had turned sowhat chilling, spreading an eerie vibe like ink in water.
The moon peeked from behind the clouds, already reaching its zenith. With midnight approaching, the city descended into the darkness, leaving only a few lights shimring in the dark settlent.
At this mont, a pair of blue eyes suddenly snapped open under the cover of sheets. The shine in those eyes tore through the darkness.
Jinn slowly lowered the sheets and allowed the faint moonlight to fall on his face. The sheets under him rustled as he tried to move. Lying up straight, he moved nothing but his eyes to see if anyone was awake.
"Everyone in this room is asleep..."
Only when Jinn heard a voice whispering in his ears did he get up from the bed. Placing pillows in his place, he covered them up to make it appear as if he were asleep in the bed.
He turned his gaze towards Sally; she seed to be in deep sleep, hugging the pillow between her curled-up legs and arms. Jinn still walked over to her bedside and decided to double-check it in case she was faking her sleep.
He took a strand of her hair and shoved it up her nose, but the girl did not even flinch. Even an adult would feel slightly ticklish from this and would get up, but Sally...
’As heavy a sleeper as always.’
With her own breath, the hair fell out. Seeing her everlasting silly smile—that she would die before showing to others while awake—Jinn turned around and walked towards the door.
He slowly turned the knob to make sure it made no sound before opening the gate and did the sa while closing it up.
The hall was darker than the rooms since there were no windows in this area.
________
"The last one..." Jinn groaned as he pushed the last of the broken bed into the corner of the room along with the rest of the furniture. Beads of sweat fell from his forehead onto the floor like drizzle.
He had created an empty space in the middle of the room. He picked up a few things and brought them to the middle of this space.
One of them was the bag in which all the items Jinn had purchased in the morning were there, and the other was a bowl and a Mortar and Pestle set he had ’borrowed’ from the kitchen along with a kettle and a cup.
’I wish there was so sort of a mixer machine, but so things from that world are still not there yet. Maybe it’s the power beyond mortal grasp that’s limiting their imagination.’
The chefs in the kitchen grind spices and chilies with the mortar and the pestle, making anything into a thick paste for the food.
"Are you sure you want to use this for such a sacred ritual?"
Jinn could hear the dissatisfaction in the tone of the voice but did not care about his standards.
Sitting on the ground, he pulled the items from the bag one by one and neatly arranged them around him. "I do not have the power like the priest, so I can only use the mundane thods I have on hand to substitute for the process. Don’t worry, I have cleaned them both many tis to make sure there are no herbs or spices still left over in there."
"That is not so assuring!" The voice hissed back before letting out a sigh of resignation; sotis the voice even resembled the hissing of a snake.
"Walk through the steps." Jinn ignored its discomfort and looked at the items one by one. Everything he had carefully procured from different places, so legal and so not so.
"First take the two Silver Tick Leaves along with two inches of the Argroot wood and crush them into fine powder."
Following the instruction to the dot, Jinn poured everything into the Mortar and used the pestle to grind it with his hands.
With ti Jinn started to match the rhythm of his own breath with the rough grinding sound of the stones; his eyes were fixed on leaves and the wooden splinters that were torn and crushed under force.
"This is enough."
Jinn stopped crushing the ingredients any further and looked at the other items around him.
"Now add ten milligrams of the Ashes of the forgotten bones, and in the sa amount add... The blood of the Betrayer."
The voice almost sneered in disdain as it nad the fourth ingredient.
Jinn’s hands moved as fast as he spoke; he pulled a small weighing scale from the paper bag beside him and dropped the two ingredients in the mortar after asuring them properly.
The Voice continued to na a few other ingredients; most of them sounded as ominous as the last two. The mortar was now filled with a disgusting mixture filled with lumps, shards, and splinters of wood.
"Is this even working? Why is it so different from the one that priest used?"
Naturally, looking at the weird concoction, Jinn had his doubts.
"This is not the final blend; it will all co together at the end." The room suddenly turned foggy, and the demonic smile twisted into existence once more. "Don’t forget that you are not like others; how can your awakening be anything normal?"
Jinn narrowed his eyes at the smile and did not say anything for a few seconds. Just when the tension in the air peaked, he spoke: "Your smile is disgusting; take it away and tell what to do next."
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