The Weight of Legacy

After hours of neglecting everything else, Malwine nodded sagely to herself.

There's something missing.

The irony of that thought's phrasing wasn't lost to Malwine, considering just what the Affinity had been derived from.

{Vestige} simply felt like pieces—a feature, not a flaw. The whole of it was somewhat understandable, yet few details held up to scrutiny. It was not unlike gazing upon a house from a distance, only to notice the walls had holes in them upon closer inspection.

For all she would have preferred to avoid thinking of it, the fact was that this Affinity's ‘creation’ left her with certain implications. Affinities were personal, no doubt, but Malwine got the impression that they were certainly interpretable.

{Legacy}, to her, was something intrinsic. She'd struggle to put what it meant to her to words, but within, there were no doubts.

{Foresight} was… more complicated than that. An annoyance. She loathed what it represented, the fact that it got her cursed, if indirectly. But none of that ultimately mattered as far as the Affinity was concerned.

Though I fear it could, if I go out of my way to see it that way…

She would not. She refused.

In the end, {Foresight} could be a tool. Preparation without thought, instinct before the turning of the tide. The deck, once stacked, accounts for tomorrow.

Malwine avoided focusing on the details, enough to get the impression that not focusing on that was precisely the point. Teach had made it sound as though outright trying to use it for predictions would be a waste of time anyway.

But what did {Vestige} mean to her? What was the point of it, beyond being her new Root?

It stood precariously between her other two Roots—something distant, and though it was whole, its very essence gave off an impression of incompleteness.

If {Foresight} was a vine-like Root woven around {Legacy}, then {Vestige} was a collection of… wooden puffs around it. They each certainly looked like they could maybe be a part of a root, but up close, there was no true consistency between them. Though they were all part of a whole, they still looked like they existed independently.

An echo of something.

In truth, she'd already answered this before—it was not as instinctive as {Legacy}, but Malwine could get there.

Something that refuses to go out.

Pieces that had been close to aligned suddenly slammed into place, a subtle yet unignorable difference. White light burst from where the Roots joined together, coalescing around each of {Vestige}’s pieces before brightening further, until even the imaginary waters of her core appeared luminous. Fresh chapters posted on N0v3l.Fiɾe.net

{Vestige}’s Root thickened all at once, her core shaking with what wasn’t even truly a realization. Malwine’s mind rationalized it in ways that undoubtedly had literally nothing to do with what {Missing} originally stood for, but that was the point.

A weathered grave with details eroded by time. Old pictures that may be missing pieces that succumbed to decay—or were removed. {Vestige} was what remained, incomplete, but still a testament to something that used to be there, and it would not let go.

As the light subsided, the Root was no longer that irksome dark blue—it sizzled now, the saturation lowering until it dimmed to a sky-blue. Not quite. Something between blue and green, one of the many shades that could technically be considered green opal despite the lack of specificity that stood for in practice.