The following has been compiled and reconstructed from the fragmented narrative provided by Elena. Her account was frequently interrupted, showing signs of significant memory loss and chronological dislocation. This text presents a collation based on verifiable information.
---
— Residual Echoes of a Former World —
Approximately four centuries ago,
in the early seventeenth century.
The mortal realm was then under the reign of Gustavus Adolphus.
Elena was born into the Valeris family.
A lineage of merchants who had built their fortune on cross-border trade.
She was the second child.
This is how she recalled her childhood:
"I remember sunlight.
Bright and warm.
I thought then—
that the world was meant to be like this."
The family was affluent.
The courtyards were spacious, the air perpetually laced with the scent of the harbor and exotic spices.
This lasted until the year she turned sixteen.
---
That year, she traveled south with her elder brother to procure goods.
On the return journey, the caravan passed through an unnamed stretch of hills.
The ambush came without warning.
She remembered the first scream.
Not loud, but abrupt.
Then came the whinnying of horses, the clatter of metal, and the smell of blood.
The guards barely had a chance to resist.
When she was dragged from the carriage, her brother's voice was already gone.
As if something had erased him from the world.
She never saw his body.
Never saw him again.
The only survivors were herself and two maidservants.
The three were taken captive.
Days later, they were sold.
Their buyer was an alchemist.
Alrik Skarsund.
When he first appeared, he stood in shadow.
What Elena noticed was not his face, but his eyes—
or rather, eye.
The other side was covered by a weathered leather patch.
His voice was low and measured, carrying a patience that did not belong to ordinary men.
---
According to fragmented records, this man once served as the Royal Alchemist to the court.
He lost an eye in a secret elixir-brewing accident and subsequently left the capital.
He then relocated to a remote village—Ashcroft.
The locals called him:
One-Eyed Alrik.
---
They were taken to his residence.
The dungeons lay deep underground.
The stone steps were damp, the air thick with the smells of rot and metal.
Elena hardly slept that first night.
She heard sounds from behind the walls.
Not weeping.
But... a low, chanting hum.
She would later learn those sounds came from the deepest part of the dungeons.
There, a great number of female skeletons lay piled.
An exact count was impossible.
But one thing was clear—
they were not the first.
---
Later investigations yielded scattered testimonies:
When Alrik left the court, he had, under the pretext of "brewing a higher grade of royal elixir,"
demanded three hundred palace maids accompany him.
These women were forced to ingest a specially concocted drug over a long period.
They did not die immediately.
On the contrary—
their minds remained lucid, while their bodies slowly ceased to respond.
Death became a drawn-out process.
Years later, a mage exposed the true nature of this elixir.
It was a fusion of ancient Hermetic philosophy from Greece,
and alchemical principles from the East.
Its name was—
"The King-Maker's Elixir."
Its purpose was not longevity.
Rather—
it preserved consciousness after death.
Those who ingested it, upon the death of their physical form:
They did not pass into the underworld,
nor did they forget themselves,
nor were they erased from the world.
Instead, they remained.
In theory, it was a key to a state of "pseudo-immortality."
But Alrik did not allow them to simply wander.
Through esoteric rites, he constructed an artificial underworld.
Imprisoning within it all the souls of those who had perished from the drug.
On his deathbed, Alrik instructed the villagers—
not to disturb his body under any circumstance.
After he passed away—
his spirit remained bound within the basement of his house,
watching over the space he had long claimed as his own.
And, as its "Creator," became the sovereign of that underworld.
Denied a king's throne in life,
he built himself a kingdom in death.
Posterity would call this ritual:
The King-Maker's Art.
---
It was during this time that Elena and her maids were forced to take the drug.
"He said it was a necessary part of the process."
Elena repeated this phrase often during her account.
As if confirming she remembered correctly.
They did not suffer an immediate, fatal reaction.
The dying was slow.
Their awareness never faded.
She remembered the last time she opened her eyes, seeing a crack in the ceiling.
Like a wound that would never close.
After death, their souls did not disperse.
Her spirit was sealed inside a hidden compartment.
Within it, gathered the souls of women who had died across different eras.
Their backgrounds varied.
Their ends were the same.
Within that space, Alrik held absolute dominion.
The spirits endured prolonged psychic suppression and spiritual torment.
The precise duration cannot be determined.
Time held no meaning there.
Elena did not break free from that sealed space through force.
Her departure occurred during what was deemed a "routine act of service."
In that pseudo-underworld Alrik had constructed,
time did not flow in a line,
yet "rituals" still existed.
He had replicated a palace for himself.
Grandiose, yet without sun or moon;
eternally lit, yet without a visible source of flame.
All the souls, based on memories from their lives, were assigned fixed "stations."
Elena and her two maids were placed in the area closest to the throne.
Alrik did not require them to eat or sleep,
but he required servitude.
The music, the recited verses, the ceremonial paths they walked—
all were part of maintaining his "order."
During their long servitude, the two maids gradually discerned a pattern—
Whenever the music reached a specific passage,
Alrik's attention would become fully absorbed in his own "sense of sovereignty."
It was an immersion in dominion—a state he had long grown accustomed to.
In those moments, he would not notice the subtle movements of the spirits around him.
They did not act immediately.
They waited.
Waited for a performance long enough, perfect enough.
That day, the music was more complete than ever before.
The two maids deliberately extended the final movement.
While one continued to play, maintaining the most steady rhythm,
the other, from a kneeling position, slowly approached the throne.
Alrik remained unaware.
To him, it was merely one repetition among countless others.
At that moment, the two maids made their choice.
They used their own spiritual forms to actively fill two "nodes of authority"
within the palace's structure—
hidden points only souls long bound there could perceive.
They did not try to escape.
Instead, they used themselves as a key.
The palace's structure shifted briefly.
A pathway that should not have existed unfolded at Elena's feet.
It was not the main gate to the outside,
but a "descending fissure" overlooked by the sovereign's awareness.
Elena understood it was her only chance.
She did not look back.
In the moment of her fall, she perceived the consciousness of her two maids rapidly dissolving.
They did not send complete words.
Only one, crystal-clear thought remained:
"Live."
Elena succeeded in escaping that sealed space.
The pseudo-underworld palace immediately restored itself.
The spirits of the two maids were permanently locked into the palace's structure.
Becoming part of what sustained its "order."
Elena never again referred to that event as an "escape."
In her view, it was a departure that had been permitted.
And the price
was a debt she could never repay, through all her subsequent years of wandering.
---
After her escape, she returned to the lands of her birth family.
The house still stood.
The people were gone.
Standing in the empty courtyard,
she realized for the first time—
she no longer had a place to return to.
From then on, her spirit entered a state of prolonged wandering.
In the years that followed:
She was pursued multiple times by exorcists.
Sealed away.
Restrained.
She escaped each time, by different means.
From one exorcist, she learned this:
For a spirit to be reborn, there was only one path—
borrowing a living body.
Two methods existed:
Soul Displacement & Body Theft (resulting in the original host's death)
Coexistent Fusion (shared habitation of one body)
Elena explicitly rejected the former.
She refused to secure her continuation through another's end.
She subsequently attempted Coexistent Fusion multiple times.
All failed at the final stage.
Until approximately eleven years ago.
She encountered an individual named Adrian.
Age at the time: nine years old.
Records indicate this individual displayed abnormal calmness interspersed with violent tendencies.
The year of contact coincided with his Nine-Year Threshold.
It was then that Elena proposed a marriage pact binding.
The request received the individual's consent.
Subsequently, she successfully entered his body.
However, due to the lack of her own original bones,
the fusion state could never be completed.
Current status: Unstable.
Projected outcome:
— Eventual collapse of the host's physical form.
— Complete dissolution of the spirit.
Record ends here.