The Weight of Legacy

There she was, at last—the widow in all her glory, finally arriving upon the city of Beuzaheim.

According to Malwine’s imagination, anyway. As much as she tried to visualize her double waltzing right out of The Fire, decked out in a fashion lifted right from the pages of a Victorian recreation magazine, she knew she probably wouldn’t be doing it justice. She almost wished her [Remote Reading] worked like remote viewing in general, if only to bask in the experience properly.

She dismissed the form and resummoned it within a blink. This version of her double looked closer to the widow’s old neighbor, Margaret, rather than her real self—as much as she liked creating the widow, she would have stood out too much.

The moment she began her approach in earnest, she felt as though the world itself were buzzing in anticipation alongside her.

Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately?—for her, it turned out cities apparently set their wards quite some distance away from the literal line of fire, much like her own family’s estate did. As far as she could tell, literally no one saw her.

Perhaps that was for the best.

The widow had never been a mature person, if Malwine was being honest. There was only so much time itself could do to a personality when factors like a stolen childhood and general preferences came into play. She’d had her moments, and would never have gone so far as to pretend she was fully keeping up with the times, but she had to confess…

…Yeah, she might have been a little immature.

It had been easier to ignore when she was completely stuck in her current physical form. She truly had no excuse now, at least whenever she was using her doubles.

No excuse beyond the fact that I feel like it, that is.

Her spirits were still high, especially now that she was so close to Beuzaheim and its registry. She’d half a mind to just ditch the entire idea of exploration until after she’d taken care of that.

With her testing, she’d managed to determine which Skills were accepted by [Earthless Glory], carefully noted down in a list because Malwine would certainly not have remembered that offhand.