Either

"Trinity!"

I jerked awake at the thunderous sound of my name.

"Trinity!"

Madam Bertud barged inside my room. Her broad shoulders were heaving from climbing the stairs to the attic. Her blonde hair was twisting into the tightest of buns.

"Trinity, wake up, you lazy bum! It's time for you and your sister to go to the docks and open the stall in the town's market!"

I was getting a headache from all the yelling, and it didn't help that the old woman's voice sounded like a cat in a blender.

"You better be downstairs in five minutes, or you'll be selling fishes the rest of the day with an empty stomach!"

BaAaM!

The door closed, and I scrambled on my feet and fell forward, catching myself in the stone sink, shoulders shaking.

I . . . I really did turn back in time!

My heart thumped so hard, and I felt that there wasn't enough air in this room to fill my lungs. I opened the window and breathed the cold early morning breeze.

It was still dark outside. The two moons were still glowing. I bet it was still three in the morning.

I scrubbed my hands over my face and went in front of the mirror to check when I returned precisely.

I blinked when I didn't recognize the person staring back at me. And then I realized that this was the period when I was still hiding my appearance! More than fifty years ago.

The time when I didn't meet Rhazien yet. Where I was still in my nineteen years of existence.

Rhazien . . . his name on the tip of my tongue sent waves of bittersweet memories that crowded my mind. I shook my head and looked at myself, determined.

This time . . . I would do anything so we won't ever cross paths.

I washed my face and hair and removed all the fake warts and pimples on my face. The only thing I didn't change was my eyes. Light blue eyes looked like diamond snowflakes encased inside glass marbles, and hair white as winter like the moon was constantly glowing on its strands.

Unraveling my nightgown, I found a silver mark of a tree on the smooth lines of my back.

I always wondered what it was, and now I know. It was called a Soul Mark, and its primary purpose was to protect my soul until I die or at least until I offer it to the Tree of Life. Though I was not totally confident about it since my mother's soul was shattered even if she had the mark.

The Tree of Life is the heart of the barrier. The one that I had to find and sacrifice my soul to. Or so Althea said.

To protect the Tree of Life, its location changed every hundred years, and to access it, I needed the three other marks which were keys to its gates.

The descendant of Razim, Seraphim, and Loki bore this mark, and my mission was to find each one of them and drag them into the tree.

I sighed. I was already having headaches on how to do that. The only comforting thought was that Rhazien didn't have the mark. However, I was baffled by this because Rhazien didn't have any siblings.

Then could it be that his father was still alive? The mark was passed down to their descendant if the previous owner died.

Come to think of it. I didn't know much about Rhazien's family. He said that they were dead, and I believed him without question.

I slapped my forehead. If I knew that I would be transported back in time, I should have inquired more about his family.

Thank you so much, grandmother, for informing me just now.

I slapped my cheeks, squeezing them until my lips rose in a pout. 'Honestly, she could have left early signs like maybe a secret diary or a sudden magic letter telling me that I'll be transported back in time.' I mused to myself.

That was crazy thinking, but all of this was crazy in the first place.

I had to deal with the present first and plan my next move. I still have fifty more years before the barrier breaks. But since I didn't have any plans to turn myself into a Vampire in this life, more or less, before I turned old, I had to get this done and over with.

I searched behind the mirror and smiled when I found a stash of Bloodroot. Using the mortar and pastel on the cupboard, I ground the Bloodroot just enough to dye my hair red. And using starched and some tiny seeds, I put them on my face and stained them the same.

With a simple chant of a spell, I watched at how my hair turned from white to black and how the seeds became warts and pimples beneath the smoothness of my face.

Magic. It was the witches' powerful gift and a curse, for they were killed and sought after for it.

But unlike in Netier, where Either was abundant in the air, GrimHeart had little to none. Either was the source of the witches' magic, and we couldn't perform spells without it.

But we found a way to compensate for that. All living beings have abundant Either. To perform magic, we require mediums or offerings that had enough Either for the spell to work. We use plants and herbs for simple magic like healing and repelling dark energy to devastating magic that requires sacrificing a life.

Witches were the only ones gifted to bend Either to their will with the help of incantations. That was why they were hunted to this day for their gifts.

And to live in GrimHeart, we had to hide our appearance and powers.