Enigma of Sin

"Is he okay? Do you think he lost his mind a bit due to the experiment?" Est asked as both her and Horace stared out of the front window in their house to the outside snowy ground.

"I mean, he didn't show any odd behaviors yesterday while he was playing with Lara and Titus. He even talked with us normally throughout the day after he woke up and came out of his room."

Horace and Est couldn't tell any difference yesterday during their interactions. Today though, as soon as they woke up, they saw Kayn outside waving his arms around like a lunatic. They had seen him practice his martial forms before, but this wasn't that.

They ignored him at first, but it had been several hours now and Kayn was still outside waving his arms around every which way while following his own hand movements with his eyes. He would wave one arm for a while, stop and wave the other.

They were honestly staring to wonder if he went insane. Who stands there for hours waving their arms like floppy noodles?

All of the sudden, Kayn stopped his movements and moved to go inside the house. As soon as he was inside, he noticed both Est and Horace looking at him with concern on their faces.

"Uhh, is everything okay? Did something happen to my sister?" Kayn asked as he felt they would only show this kind of face to him if something had happened with Lara.

"We want to ask you the same. Are you feeling okay? You've been outside for hours just waving your arms around." Horace replied for both of them.

"Ahhh, that. I'm okay, I just discovered a little something new. Didn't you guys see the cool little strings coming off my fingers? I was trying to figure out what they are and how I can use them." Kayn had a big smile on his face as he was curious what they thought.

"Strings? What strings?" Est asked even more concerned with Kayn's mental well being now.

"Huh, you guys couldn't see them?" He asked in confusion.

"We swear, we don't know what you're talking about Kayn. Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes. In fact, I'm better than ever! I really appreciate your concern though. I'll be playing with Lara in my room for now if you two need anything."

Saying this, Kayn picked up Lara who was currently sitting on a blanket playing with toys and retreated to his room. He sat on his bed with Lara and started to play with her by creating small light shows with light elemental magic as he had since she was born.

'They couldn't see them? But I know they were there, I can even create them now.' Kayn thought to himself as he waved his second hand that wasn't controlling his sister's entertainment. She always seemed to love these lights as she would giggle while trying to grab at them.

Kayn glanced at his arms as he examined his now black scars for the umpteenth time in the last day. Kayn paused his light show for a moment and picked his sister up as he was worried she would try and follow him off the bed. He quickly grabbed the book that was inside of the box with the Tethers of the Void before returning to the bed to continue entertaining his sister.

Kayn stared at the book for a minute and then attempted to open the cover as he had before. To his surprise, the cover turned over just as easy as a normal book would open. The front page finally had the title Mana Thread Arts and Use of Legacy Bracelets.

'Legacy Bracelets huh? They must not have been aware of the true name then.'

Kayn's eyes were then drawn to the words Mana Thread Arts. He couldn't help but become excited at this point as he was about to learn something new, not to mention it was the legacy of his race. If nothing else, maybe he could figure out something about what happened to him and the Tethers.

Before he could turn to the first page though, his sister crawled into his lap and laid down, shutting her eyes. Kayn could only smile before moving his hand that was controlling the spell to his sister's head and gently caressing her growing hair. "I'll protect you no matter what" Kayn spoke softly before moving his attention back to the book.

As Lara slept, Kayn slowly made his way through the book. While he could read books pretty quickly nowadays, he spent his time thoroughly examining this instruction manual and all of the notes left behind by the previous users of the Tethers of the Void.

…

It wasn't until many hours later that Lara woke up and began to fuss as she was hungry. Kayn smiled at this as he closed the book he had already read through multiple times. The manual wasn't very thick to start with as after the methods were listed, there were only notes from three individuals.

Apparently these three were the only ones who were able to use the Tethers ever since they were discovered by the clan millions of years ago. The fact that the Tethers were so old was an astonishing fact in itself, not to mention that meant that this book was also ancient. He was honestly a little surprised it didn't fall apart after he touched it.

The last entries into the manual were by his grandfather that he obviously never knew. While Kayn was hoping to read something about his mother within the notes, every entry was very specific to the Tethers and how they were being utilized at the time.

Kayn was able to learn an astonishing amount of information and what he should be capable of doing now, but there was no mention of the Tethers ever entering into someone's body. In fact, it was recommended to only wear them while their use was required, as they would constantly drain the void element from the user's body.

The first wielder learned this the hard way as he eventually lost all of his control over the void element and even his mana core cracked in the end. The crack ended up spreading and he lost his mana core, which crippled him. He wasn't even able to change back into his original dragon form after that point.

The ending history of the first user was recorded by the second as apparently after he lost his connection to the void element, he was no longer able to open the book. The second made sure to write the warnings about wearing the Tethers all of the time in large letters to ensure any readers would see it.

In the end, there was single major conclusion Kayn came to. All three of the users originally had terrifyingly high affinities to the void element and were the three most prominent users of it within the history of the Obsidian Void Dragon Clan.

On a side note, he was also astonished at how long each of these people had lived. While the Tethers only had three users, the first lived for over 500,000 years while the second had lived over a million. While Kayn didn't know exactly how many years his grandfather had lived, it was stated in one of the last entries he made that he was coming up on his thousandth millennia, so close to a million years old.

His mother was only in her 400s according herself, so Kayn could only imagine how many siblings she might have had, throughout the years of his grandfather. But none of that mattered now as they were all dead. The only two remaining who could continue on this once glorious dragon clan's legacy were himself and his sister.

The fact that Kayn could use the Tethers meant that he must have somewhat unlocked his affinity for the void, even if he didn't know how to use it currently. While he was more than ecstatic about this discovery, he was deeply concerned about how the Tethers had fused with him.

However, even after exhausting everything he could think of, he still couldn't find anything wrong with him. Even examining his scars in depth revealed nothing of use. Ever since he was little, he and Lydia tried getting rid of them several times to no avail. They were there and visible, but it wasn't actually scar tissue.

There was also no trace of the Tethers now. It was like they were just a part of him that had been separated long ago and fused back into their proper place after a long time away.

Kayn was pulled out of his thoughts as his sister had started crying since she wasn't being fed yet. Kayn stood up from the bed before looking down at Lara while trying to calm her down. "I think I need to make some adjustments to the plan…"