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StLQ Chapter 5 - Examining The Mystery
🕑 Added 2025-08-10 11:07:30 +0000 UTCThe good news was that four-year-old Nelly woke me up by jumping on my squeaky bed, as if intending to crush me alive.
The bad news was that I’d barely slept for two hours, and I was apparently late for school.
Which was hardly bad news. I gave Nelly the largest hug I dared. I grinned through the grogginess and the headache, waking up with the most energy I’d had in a while.
I grabbed school supplies, filling my backpack with random books. I had no idea what classes I had on my schedule today, but fuck it, I didn’t exactly care. I wished my mom a nice day at work, and I practically ran out of the house, into the winter morning.
The outside world was still pitch black. The sun hadn’t even started rising. A lone street lamp lit the block, a part of it at least, with some help from my neighbors’ well-lit windows. A snowman smiled at me from the house across.
I quite liked my neighborhood. It had grown less pleasant over the years as people moved out and new idiots came in, but I had very few complaints. My neighbors weren’t rich, but each home had character. It was the type of neighborhood where happy hard-working parents lived for years and years. Yards were well kept and snow was plowed. Some even plowed their roofs of snow.
With the exception of the neighbor directly to our right. Luna’s house.
The large estate looked abandoned. The dark curtains were permanently shut. Snow stacked like overgrown vegetation, covering every bit of the house. I struggled to even call the building a home. People lived there—I often saw Luna enter and exit, and sometimes her mom—but usually the only indication of life were the deep bootprints in the snow.
This house will be abandoned not long from now, I thought. After the lich transformation, both Luna and her mother left Lokora, leaving the old house to rot.
I walked to school swiftly through dark streets. My eyes pointed down, lost in thought, while I tried my best to recall the past. I had a lot of work to do if I wanted to stop the academy from burning down.
Ahead, branches of the World Tree hung ominously in the dark morning sky. Alchemical glowsticks hung underneath the branches, appearing like distant stars outlining the shape of the tree. The glowsticks were recharged and hung once every winter. It wasn’t uncommon to find fallen glowsticks within school grounds.
The gates to the academy were just opening when I approached. Sleepy students were rising from the dorms, heading into the academy before classes. Probably into the library. That spot was always popular.
So much for being late; I’m an hour early, I thought. That suited me fine. I had a lot of things to check out as well.
Namely, I needed to prevent this damn disaster.
I entered the academy like an investigator before a crime scene. Except, the crime would be happening in the future, and I knew exactly how.
I backtracked my memories thirteen years in the past. The event was still quite clear in my head. I’d witnessed most of it, and I’d read all available records about the disaster. Really, the attacker’s plan had been quite simple from start to finish.
In the middle of the world tree was a small platform. An old apple tree grew atop it. Mostly as a decoration, but it was a real tree that usually grew some haphazard hundred apples each year. Students loved to pose underneath it for pictures and such. It was considered one of the academy’s most interesting decorations. A smaller tree growing inside a giant, hollow tree.
I leaned against the tree, closed my eyes, and recalled the events thirteen years in the past.
On the first day of the grey winter, the day of the disaster, as I burst through the academy’s gates more than thirty minutes late, the first thing I noticed was that the beloved apple tree had been cut down.
The second thing I noticed was a large witch’s cauldron replacing the tree, sitting atop the cut trunk, and the third thing I noticed was the black-masked figure, fully covered in a cloak, approaching the cauldron with a sack too heavy for it to carry.
The figure had stumbled unnaturally, as if it didn’t quite know how to use its feet. I remember being confused as I watched it climb atop the platform, the sack dragging along like a limp foot. The figure faced the cauldron and reached into the sack, struggling to open it.
The figure looked so helpless that I, dumb as I was, walked over and asked, “Um, do you need… help?”
The figure turned its head with unnatural, creepy movements. It stared at me through its mask. I gulped, taking a step back. I apologized, slightly freaked out, and headed toward the stairs, while keeping an eye on the figure.
It eventually managed to open the sack, and poured its contents to the cauldron. I squinted my eyes as I saw purple glass-like shards.
The shards, I later learned, were called lichstone shards. Containers, essentially, filled the lifeblood of fallen corpses—the final drops of mana drawn from a dead mana core. Lifeblood was like food for liches. They consumed lifeblood to cast mana, and to keep themselves alive.
I continued to watch as the black-masked figure poured a vial of active alchemical mana into the pot, which caused the shards to simmer. Purplish smoke began rising from the pot. The shards were cracked open, and the lifeblood inside was burning into the air.
By that point, fourteen-year-old me started to grow concerned. I was still clueless about what was happening, but getting to class was no longer my biggest worry. I wondered if I should shout for a teacher or go back down to confront the figure.
For some god forsaken reason, my dumbass decided to choose the latter, as if the sight of a masked figure in the middle of the academy was nothing alarming. I called, “What are you doing?”
The figure didn’t even look in my direction. It added another vial of the same kind, and more smoke poured out as if a bonfire was lit. The smoke rose up the World Tree, escaping into branches. The view above me was already obstructed with a thick purple cloud.
Chaos started after that as students and staff noticed the smoke. Figures shouted around me, one of which was Mr. Frederick, a math teacher, followed by a few panicked students. I heard an order to step away, directed to whom I wasn’t sure, but I retreated from the position.
The figure didn’t even glance in Frederick’s direction.
“Step away from the platform!” he’d shouted, but once again, received no response.
That was enough for Frederick to pick up his staff. Mana formed for a few seconds, a spell about to shoot out, but he suddenly froze in place, as if frozen in time.
Frederick froze in place… I thought, suddenly curious. The Lich Queen did the same to me when she killed me. I froze in time, as if the air around me turned solid. Frederick must have been frozen by the same spell.
The black-masked culprit must have had an assistant. The figure never cast magic around Frederick’s body. Was the culprit already working with a lich?
That was probably an important detail. I took note of it.
With Frederick frozen, the figure was once again uninterrupted and free to do as it wished. It waited atop the cauldron, letting smoke spread into the air. I watched with my mouth open, too shocked to shout for help.
Not ten seconds later, students began rushing downstairs, coughing and covering their mouths with their uniforms. Some of the more skilled seniors covered their mouths with a breathing bubble. A basic spell to breathe in smoke-filled rooms.
Upon the rush of students, the figure took action. Mana pooled in its hands, light shining in its fingers as it lifted a hand at the cauldron.
Seeing the mana, in a split-second decision, I deemed that something catastrophic was about to happen if the spell landed. I was the closest, and I felt like I was the only one who could stop it. I burst to a run, screaming as I tackled the figure.
The tackle landed, but I was too late. The figure’s spell landed on the cauldron. All I remember was the odour of mold on the figure’s clothes as the explosion went off, and the wave of pain that sent me unconscious instantly.
From there… Well, I woke up from a coma three years later, having gained lich sight, with my mom dead.
I also learned that the situation, and the investigation around it—which was already concluded and considered solved by the time I woke up—was a total fucking mess.
The explosion cast a fire, burning down the World Tree. Not totally to ashes, but enough so that the academy had to disband. Over a dozen students died in the fire. A total of four people turned to liches from the explosion of lifeblood—the four people nearest to the cauldron. Mr. Frederick, the teacher, as well as two students, Elina Angela, and Watakin Hallman, who were running for the exit closest to the explosion. All three died promptly after, refusing to continue eating lifeblood for the rest of their lives. And the fourth lich, was of course, Luna.
Scientists still weren’t sure why I hadn’t transformed into a full lich. I’d gained my superpower, and the left side of my face had acted off ever since then, but I’d survived the explosion with my flesh intact.
Waking up from the coma, after hearing what happened, I was fairly certain I knew the identity of the black-masked figure. Five people had been near the cauldron as it exploded, casting the lich transformation. Elina, Frederick, Watakin, me, and the black-masked figure. Using simple math, the fifth person had to be Luna. Not only that, Luna had been absent from class, and the black-masked figure was exactly Luna’s size.
So imagine my surprise when the investigators told me that the culprit behind all this was Johannes Longfield. Lokora’s professor of alchemical properties.
A teacher who I actually respected for being good at his job. One who I never, in a million years, expected to do anything like this. And whom I still couldn’t believe had anything to do with this.
Apparently, lichstone shards had later been found from Johannes’s lab alongside the black mask and cloak. Crime records wrote that Johannes simply ran out after exploding the cauldron. He wore a wyvern silk bodysuit to protect him from the explosion, which was also found in his lab.
In my opinion, it didn’t make any goddamned sense at all. Someone of Johannes’s size literally wouldn’t fit in the cloak I’d seen the black-masked figure wearing.
As for Luna, the records wrote that she had been fleeing alongside Elina and Watakin, yet another investigator claimed that both Elina and Watakin, prior to their deaths, claimed to not have seen Luna once throughout the morning.
The investigation just didn’t match up. Something was wrong. I always knew something was wrong.
But I never brought the situation back to light. Johannes had already died in prison by the time I woke up. He wouldn’t be saved by proving him innocent. Luna herself had openly committed worse crimes since then. Busting her for blowing up the academy, assuming she was actually the black-masked figure, would have merely added another medal to her list of crimes.
And that was just about all I knew about the disaster.
To this day, I was fairly certain that the black-masked figure was Luna herself. I’d go as far as to say I knew Luna was the culprit. Even the moldy odor on the figure’s black cloak was the exact same reeking smell that always oozed out of the shack behind Luna’s house.
But even if I assumed with certainty that the culprit was Luna, she had acquaintances. Ones whose identity was a total mystery.
I tapped my foot, lost in thought. Preventing the disaster should have been easy enough. I could always just warn the academy’s administration about the event ahead of time. Yet, that wouldn’t actually stop the criminals behind this from running loose. They could always attempt another plan later.
My job wasn’t just to prevent the disaster. I had to catch each culprit involved, and to stop them from doing anything in the future.
For now, I had to finally confirm what the date was, and how much time I had before the first of the grey winter. I’d need to somehow figure out whether my superpower, lich sight, still worked.
And if possible, I wanted to get to Luna’s good graces. Assuming she was involved, the best way I could gain information about the crime would be to ask her directly. Her reaction alone to odd questions would give me information. Perhaps I could confront her about the crime ahead of time, proposing to join her on the crime or something.
I sighed and prepared to move. Every thought leads back to the Lich Queen, huh?
