Lars Graham wore an elaborate, finely detailed silk robe as he slowly stroked his Bone Carver staff.
It was a bone staff carved and crafted from the living spine of one of his students.
Engraved on the staff were the twelve love letters she had written to Lars, overflowing with adoration, along with the sonnets he had sent in return.
They filled it perfectly from top to bottom—not a word too many, not a word too few.
The old man did not consider this cruel in the slightest—without a doubt, it was art. Her soul still loved him. That was proof enough.
"Elodie, what do you think?"
The old man asked the question aloud.
Standing behind him was a girl of seventeen or eighteen dressed in a white priest's robe.
She wore a white priest's robe, and her body was translucent. Only her spine shone with a brighter, purer white. She looked just like a white jellyfish.
She lowered her head slightly, her lips moving faintly as though she were saying something.
She made no sound—the dead who returned from the realm of the dead had no voices.
But Lars seemed to have heard something and nodded faintly.
"That's what you think."
Old Lars muttered to himself, "That means there are four possibilities..."
"The first is that Aleister is Chloe. Her uncontrollable inclination toward the Path of Love ultimately drove her to defect..."
After all, Avalon was not Iris.
The people of Avalon knew almost nothing about shadow powers.
The most common shadow powers came from the Path of Love. For example, the Children of the Moon, witches, and those who had become werewolves after being cursed by a witch's "werewolf transformation."
Whether it was the Shadow Demons of the Path of Transcendence or the Mimics of the Path of