I panicked, clutching at my chest as I felt the small stone move through my body. It circled around my heart for a moment before growing still. I looked up at Faria whose eyes were wide, not with horror, but with excitement. Something about this excited her. What if this thing just blew up and killed me?

“What’s going to happen to me?” I asked, getting frustrated at my sister’s lack of concern. “Why aren’t you freaking out?”

“I’m not freaking out because this is a good thing.” She replied, trying to calm me down. She placed a hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes. “I did some research on this as well. Everything is going to be fine. Everything is going according to plan.”

“What plan?” I nearly shouted.

“I can’t tell you yet, but you need to trust me. You cannot tell anyone about this.” She spoke in a stern voice. In all my time with her, I had never heard her speak like this, though her tone turned soft soon after. “Some very difficult things are coming. This will help you get through them.”

“Can’t you tell me anything?” I asked, desperate for more information about the gem currently sitting in my chest.

“If I told you anything now, it would just put you in more danger. There will come a time when all of your questions will be answered. Please, be content with what I’ve told you.”

“…This thing won’t blow up in me?”

“No.”

“And this is for my own good?”

“Yes.”

“When will I know what this is all about?”

“I don’t know. That depends on others, but you will have answers.”

I sucked in a deep breath and looked my sister in the eyes. When I was growing up in the city, when it was just my mother and I, I had to learn quickly how to judge a person. One skill I had picked up, was how to tell when someone was telling the truth. If I met eyes with someone, I could see the small signs that they were lying or dangerous. Though I would never admit it, I spent the majority of my time there stealing for the same reason that Hazel did. Sometimes, there would be the occasional merchant who “wanted to give food to the poor” or a guard who “wanted to make sure that we were safe.” These skills helped keep me, and those who were with me, safe from harm. None of these signs were on Faria’s face. She was absolutely, seriously telling the truth.

“Alright, I’ll believe you.” My words made Faria breathe a sigh of relief and hunch forward. “But if this really does kill me, I’ll haunt you forever.”

My sister chuckled and patted me on the back.

“Now how about we see what this stuff can do.” She spoke, brandishing the ring on her finger.

We spent the next several minutes together as Faria played with the things that she had taken from the reliquary. There were some things that I had seen her grab that she hadn’t taken back out, though she had taken quite a bit to begin with. Finally, she summoned a simple, black bracelet.

“This was something that I was excited for.” She said, spinning the bracelet around her finger.

Then, she grabbed at the band with both hands and broke it in half. It then exploded into a small cloud of black dust that hovered in the air. Faria held her hand out and pushed her finger into the cloud, cringing as the cloud of metal dust scratched against her finger. She then summoned her aura. The indigo colored aura spread out from her finger and mingled with the cloud. The metal dust then started to swarm around and collected around her wrist, reforming the bracelet. My sister suckled on her injured finger, watching the metal shine in the light of the crystals in the ceiling.

“What is that?” I asked, shocked at all that had happened in the space of a couple seconds.

“A wasted opportunity. Or it was.” She replied, then answered. “I read about it in one of the books in grandpa’s study. It’s called the Iron Cloud. Some soldier in the past used his father’s sword in a battle, and the blade was completely destroyed. The soldier and his father’s love for each other was enough to rebuild the sword, though it was still broken.”

“That’s really cool, but… you went into grandpa’s study?”

“I know that I’m not supposed to go in there, but it was for a very important reason. And I never broke or changed anything; I just read some of the books he had.”

I knew that this important reason and the one about the Dragonstone were most likely the same, but I felt strangely violated. Grandpa’s study was supposed to be my private space. Though I couldn’t be too mad since she had left it the same.

“Now let’s see what this thing can do.” She said, holding out her right arm, the arm that had the bracelet on it. “This thing is supposed to absorb my mana and get stronger, but I should still be able to use it.”

She waved her arm around for a moment, the aura wrapping around her body. Then, like a snake, the bracelet broke apart into the dust cloud and slithered up her arm and into her hand, forming a tiny dagger. She waved it around for a moment, then watched as a thin chain started at the base of the dagger and extended down, wrapping around her wrist. She then let go of the dagger and grabbed the chain and started spinning it around. I noticed a couple times where the blade looked like it was going to hit her, but moved out of the way just before it could connect.

Then, all in a single second, the dagger and chain collapsed into dust and reformed into the bracelet on Faria’s arm.

Furrowing her brow as she glared at the bracelet, Faria mumbled, “I guess it needs to charge more.”

She then stretched her arms out and turned to me. At this point, I had taken a seat on the ground to spectate her experiments. She came over and pulled me from the ground and handed me a simple blue ring.

“Consider this another birthday present.” She spoke with a grin. “I know how much you like to hide, so I made sure to grab this. If you put it on and rub it three times, it turns you invisible.”

I slowly slid the ring onto my finger and watched it shrink to fit comfortably. I then rubbed the ring three times, as she had instructed, and felt a slight tingling sensation from the ring.

“It works!” My sister cried out. “Rub it three more times to turn it off.”

I did as she said and the tingling sensation stopped. I then thought for a moment.

“If these things are so powerful, then why don’t we use them in the war?” I asked, trying to come up with my own solution.

“It was some kind of treaty that we signed a long time ago. Nobody knows what kind of artefacts that everybody else has, so nobody uses them.”

“Sounds like a-”

“A wasted opportunity. Yeah.” Faria interrupted, looking over my shoulder. “A lot of good could happen if these things were actually used, but father is too afraid of them being stolen.”

“Aren’t we stealing?” I responded, looking over my shoulder. There was nothing there, so what was she looking at?

“I guess we are.” She chuckled.