Chapter 16

The family waited expectant and as Isabel's belly swelled more and more, it became obvious she was pregnant, so she stayed behind closed doors. It's not the family wants to supress it, but the soul is very weak at this stage and higher ranked people can see through some things at a first glance.

Only when the child is born and received the blessing of the river of reincarnation, will it be somewhat shielded. At least a single glance isn't enough, or any non-forceful attempt at all. In addition to this, once it is born and truly shows her bloodline, she will also be protected by fate. The Holle family has a close relationship with fate and the laws of the spiritual world.

They can even be said to be keepers in this regard, after all, sixteen generations of higher ranked people in their family kept their promises to the spiritual world after gaining the bloodline, and every generation ensured prosperity. All the seals they put upon the people that asked for their fate have benefited the spiritual world.

…

Time passed once more, and the ninth month, Isabel gave birth in her family.

A little girl was born, silver hair like her mother, beautiful and unique, when she opened her eyes quietly without crying, one was able to see shining dark purple eyes. The maids cleaned up very quickly and Ludwig carried the baby to her mother.

The mother looked at the baby and then at her husband. Fate seemed to revolve around her child and finally was absorbed into her eyes, then it announced the name of the child to anyone that could listen to fate in the surroundings "Adele, the Noble with Thousand Eyes."

When they heard her title, they were a bit surprised. Eyes a symbol of the Holle family, that was for sure… but the prefix 'thousand' is often used in relation to the Trugbild family, such as Ludwig's 'thousand shadows' or the renown 'thousand shapes' and 'thousand faces'. This was very important because the Trugbild family… had the bloodline of Doppelgänger!

Right at this moment, the baby's eye colour changed from purple to red. Then the red turned into a white and black movement. The adults looked at the baby, and Isabel said "No one shall know of this. Father, report to the clan head about this matter, but tell no one else! Ludwig… please keep it a secret, at least until we figured out in which direction her Doppelgänger bloodline mutated."

Currently, they were only able to see a change of colours, but they were sure that it was much more meaningful that this.

…

Ten years passed once more.

In these years, Adele grew up in a loving home. Being able to harness spiritual power also meant that she was officially able to advance, and she did. She built her 1. 'circle' when she was eight. This was three years earlier than her mother, and she was called a genius internally. But they kept it a secret and only tomorrow would this be announced.

In truth, she isn't able to do this at all. To create a magic circle, you need a lot of knowledge. This wasn't an issue. The second was to have a strong affinity, having an ancient bloodline, she was able to hide her own natural affinity. But the effect of a circle was that there were spells she'd be able to cast directly. Although the amount of spells depended on the number of circles, so a first circle had one direct spell, it was still impossible for her to do it as a witch.

There is a reason why she was still able to succeed: her doppelgänger bloodline!

Her father had it too, and his branch 'thousand shadows' allowed him to control the shadows of many, of course not a thousand at this level, but still many. He was able to focus his strength to fully control a single few, but the rest were like wards that listened to the surroundings.

From this, her own 'thousand eyes' is similar in that she's able to cast several eyes all around. With this ability, she's able to see far more than with only one pair of eyes. Combined with the natural ability of the Holle Eye to perceive fate and changes, her eyes are powerful. Although Ludwig knew by this that his bloodline became auxiliary, he was very happy about the benefit his daughter gained.

But this wasn't the only ability – no, Adele was also able to copy any ability she had seen and perceived with her Holle Eye. As long as it wasn't extremely difficult, she was able to fully copy it and occupy one 'eye'. She didn't even need to extend spiritual power to activate it, since the eye was a container of spiritual power too.

Most importantly, besides this, she finally walked down the path of prophecy. Among the many paths, prophecy was definitely one of the most sacrificial, difficult but also rewarding. Looking into the future has a certain cost, especially telling that future other people. Considering the high cost a prophet has to pay, they are rewarded extremely well whenever people ask for their abilities.

The past ten years, she actually spent learning an extremely difficult ritual among the Aeon Witch inheritance. Her prophetic path was only officially her path, but additionally to that, she'd continue to learn her real path, the time path.

Luckily, the Aeon Witches are also extremely inept in prophecies. Similar to pharmacy, they are the second best at it. The reason here is somewhat different though. A certain ancestor of the Aeon Witches made a pact with fate. Lifespan was the most used consumable when prophesying, obviously time witches had more of it, but even if that was the case, they were still reluctant to give that up.

Instead, the pact between the ancestor and the spiritual worlds fate laws said that as long as a witch is willing, she can sacrifice her mortal age in exchange for the lifespan she'd have to sacrifice. Naturally it wasn't a one to one exchange, and more age would have to be used, but for time witches, their soul age was actually more important than their lifespan.

This was the only reason this pact was finalised. Whether it is better or not… Adele actually thought that this might be because Aeon Witches had a way to age their soul without actually experiencing the years. Maybe the same way she gained her old age? Regardless, after ten years she finally learned the ritual.

As for how to perform it… she found a different way to use her eyes. Rituals are just a huge combination of spells, intertwined together to strengthen each other and achieve what the caster wants to achieve.

This was also the reason it took her so long to learn the ritual. Instead of performing the ritual normally, she instead separated the aspects of the ritual into many different spells. This was also why she had kept the actual number of her eyes hidden. She was able to grow ten eyes every year she lived – her guess was that after a mortal lifetime, her bloodline would be fully grown.

But instead of revealing this, she only said she'd get one eye per year.

Currently, she hid over eighty eyes in her room, five eyes are used to hide the fact that she didn't actually have a circle spell, and the remaining ten were spread around by her family for her to train her ability. They were mainly inside the mansion.