Guys, I'm now going to change the pov from Ist ( I ) person to third ( he, she ). The reason's quite logical and demanding. Laura isn't the all-knower nor a psychic. She doesn't know what other people are thinking and she also did't belong to this hunter world since the beginning. So she isn't aware of Casstelia or the Deathstar spells or the unrest in the hunter city capital. Also, she now faces blackouts because of the psyche intervention while the story doesn't stop just for her. Yes, the tale still focuses on Laura, but now the speaker would be me. Another reason, as you'd see, is that some secrets are still kept from her and I need to tell them to you without a single word falling on Laura's ears. So naturally, I cannot let her be the narrator.

~~~

"Laura, open your eyes! Laura!" Sebastian shouted. He'd thought his speech would help her feel better, but the results were obviously contradictory to his expectations.

One moment Laura was sitting just beside him, trying to calm herself down. But the next moment, she'd fallen completely unconscious in his hands. He held her upright, shook her shoulders and patted her cheeks but she wouldn't react in any way. It was as if he were trying to bring a motionless doll to life.

"Laura, you hear me?" He could no longer control the panic rising in his breaking voice. This was just like before when they'd defeated Brad the Warlock. Laura had became unconscious and hadn't rosen up until next week. He couldn't go through the same procedure of crashing hopes. That time, he barely held up. But now, his uneasiness had increased several folds.

"Don't worry, a few blackouts are expected." Pamela was back. She held the thickest book Sebastian had ever seen and it also looked the oldest, even when compared to his uncle's priceless collection. In her other hand, she held a silver goblet through which grey fumes were rising.

"What you should worry about is this-" She placed the book in his laps. It was as heavy as it looked. The silver embroidered cover, through which a net of silver strings arose, was torn at many places. But instead of degrading the book, it added to its fragile beauty.

Pamela flipped it open and unlike any other book he'd seen, this book was indeed made in the old days. It wasn't printed. A beautiful cursive flow of ancient Latin adorned the yellow brown parchment.

"Is this-" Sebastian's eyes widened.

"Yeah, it's the Psychiatricana Ritualis . Don't ask me how I got this." Pamela cut him off.

Psychiatricana Ritualis, written by the great scholar and psychic Monroe, was one of the most important scriptures manuscripted by the Royal Society which was off limits to commoners, including the non-royal hunter society. Few of them were raided as history dictates but the existence of most still remained a secret. And Pamela having one such highly secretive scripture, that too the original one, was therefore quite surprising. She might make a zillion dollars just by letting a venatorian historian steal a few glances.

"This is more important." She said while flipping over a few pages. Though the book looked very fragile from outside, it was quite well maintained. The latin verses and translations hadn't faded out with time and apart from a few pages in between, nothing else was torn.

Now, Sebastian wasn't a polyglot. But if you belong to the Venator Society, you end up learning a few Latin words. He understood the title

Mercapto

But comprehending the rest of the article was beyond his limits.

He rose his attention to Pamela. She was standing in front of him staring distantly like a statue of some punished titan. He nudged her.

"Oh damn it Sebastian! You still don't understand Latin?" Pamela was angry.

"It's the Law of Mercapto." She said after giving an audible frustrated sigh.

"That Red Door thing?" Sebastian said wonderingly. Pamela nodded.

"Laura-" Pamela began.

"Something's wrong with her Mercapto?" His eyes bulged wide with fear.

"She doesn't have a Mercapto?" He stood up. He no longer could contain his worries. When Laura had said she wasn't human, he'd assumed her to be some weird creature. The thought had scared him to death. But now that Pamela mentioned something was wrong with the Mercapto, his worries had entered a whole different level.

"Quite the opposite." Pamela said.

Sebastian raised his eyebrow.

"Laura has three Mercaptos." Pamela stated.

"Three. Wait, three Mercaptos? But doesn't Mercapto represent a soul?" Sebastian said confused. Soulless was a term he could relate. There had been at least one person in history who, having finished his Deathstar, had become soulless and thus lost existence.

But three souls? It was something unheard of. Not even the fiction writers used a term something like soul-more.

"Yes, Laura has three souls!" Pamela said, still wondering if she wasn't mistaken in seeing the other two doors.

"But how can it be possible? Three Mercaptos?" Sebastian said.

"Exactly. There's been not one person who had more than two souls, let alone three! It's ridiculous. Whatever Laura is, she's -" Pamela couldn't find the word. She was not a human, nor some creature, she was a complete different being.

"That's why demons are after her, I reckon." Pamela said.

Pamela then shifted the table aside so she could make her way beside Sebastian who still was standing upright, struggling to make sense of the most crazy fact he just had heard.

"There's more." She said as she sat beside him and helped the unconscious body of Laura on the couch. She placed a pillow under her neck so that her head was tilted at a weird angle. Sebastian didn't notice. The three door thing was driving him crazy.

"One of the doors was stranger than the other two. The central one must be hers, the original one while of the rest, I don't know much." She said.

"But there was this mark on one of the other two doors." She bent over to pick up the scripture carefully. She placed it on her laps and flipped over a few pages until a parchment, darker than the rest, flew away and landed on the table. She picked it up.

"This." She pointed at a figure at the centre of the page.

"It was probably drawn by Monroe himself before the War of Tethes." She said. But history wasn't very important at that moment.

"I don't remember the mark I saw in Laura's psyche very well, but I believe this was it." She said.

"But unfortunately, I don't have anything else. The mark was said to come to Monroe's mind in one of his dreams of which he made a note. There's nothing else mentioned in here." She said.

Sebastian sat beside her and looked at the mark, trying to remember whether he'd seen it before. But not even one thing came to his devastated and confused mind. All he could think was of how can a person have three souls and what would it result into. Was Laura a creature levels apart from humans or vampires or lycans? Was she a being like a demon who, for the record, have one single tainted Mercapto or was she a mythical being like an angel of whose existence no one had heard ever?

"What does it resemble?" Sebastian asked. The calmness in his voice was replaced by a broke feeling, just like his heart.

"I've no idea." Pamela said which yet again was surprising. Like said before, she was the Hermione Granger of venator. There was simply nothing she didn't knew of. Except of this mark.

Sebastian closed his eyes.

"What else do you know?" He asked, the cold calmness of his voice had now returned.

"Well, nothing much. Except for she doesn't have much time." She said.

"What do you mean?" Sebastian asked.

"You know how dangerous it is if a person has a Mercapto even a little bit larger than expected size. Laura has got three bigger Mercaptos, and it's critically affecting her balance. If you ask me, I think it's a surprise, a big surprise she made up this far." Pamela said.

Sebastian rose up and checked Laura's forehead.

"She's cold." He said.

"Don't worry, it's expected." Pamela assured. But she must've lied. Psychic procedures were usually a bit hardcore than other treatments, but none of them were that extreme that it'd bring down a person's body temperature by a 100 Fahrenheit.

"Believe me she's fine." Pamela said. But she wasn't, definitely wasn't. The psychic balance is quite critical right from the beginning and with the existence of three mercaptos, that balance was now threatened further many folds. If a lake was the level of original tension, the current one was an ocean.

"Where are you going?" Pamela asked when Sebastian made his way out.

"I gotta call uncle, he might be knowing something." Sebastian said.

"You won't get any network. Use my phone." She said.

"It works on powerful signals so it could penetrate the Mor -" she stopped explaining when she realised Sebastian didn't give a damn about science. She hurried to another room and emerged holding a phone in one hand and a laptop in another.

"Thanks." Sebastian said when she threw the phone to him. He walked out while Pamela returned to the couch and switched on the laptop. She kneeled down to find her spectacles kept at the base of the table.

She connected a dongle and made some quick software executions until a prompt message was displayed -

"stable internet connection. Cheers, Pam"

She opened the google page and typed in a few words. A number of results were displayed. She opened the topmost search result and got excess to a database.

Meanwhile, Sebastian walked about the house while dialling his uncle's number. He waited and tried again when Uncle won't answer. Finally, after fourth call, Sebastian was relieved to hear his uncle's voice.

"Seb, anything wrong?" His uncle asked.

"Uncle where are you, are you alright?" Sebastian asked worriedly.

It was the first time they were talking after what happened back at the tomb. His uncle must've had a pretty hard life to get away from those demons.

"Seb, don't worry. I'm...I'm fine."

"Uncle, can you meet me now. I'm at Pamela's. And did you find out about aunt Jane?" Sebastian asked.

Once he heard his uncle, all his reliefs and worries again resurfaced in his mind. He remembered his uncle turning into Gudruk back in the tomb. He remembered that bloody monster taking away his aunt through that fiery goblet.

"No, no. I don't know where Jane is, Seb. I don't." His voice broke a bit.

"Anyway, tell me what happened. Did the procedure go well?" He asked.

"Well, Laura ain't awake now but Pamela said there's nothing to worry about." Sebastian answered.

"Except." He continued.

"Except?" Uncle asked.

"Except Laura has three Mercaptos." Sebastian said.

"Excuse me?" His uncle was as surprised as Sebastian was.

"Yes. Pamela is looking on it. I think you'd know something." Sebastian said.

"Seb, sorry to say, but even I'm hearing something like this for the first time. I'll tell you when I get some-" uncle couldn't complete since the signal was cut off.

"Hello? You hear me?" Sebastian asked and after hearing no response, he cursed and hurried inside.

"Sorry, I think I burdened the system. Damn, I just can't hack it." Pamela apologised once Sebastian told her about the call.

"What are you doing anyway?" Sebastian asked as various failure prompts loaded the laptop screen. Frustrated, she flapped the screen shut.

"I was trying to get into Viktor's database, but I couldn't hack it. But I think I know what software I should build." She said wonderingly.

"Viktor? No, you don't mean King Viktor, do you?"
Sebastian said surprised.

"Well, what's the big deal? His database is the only place we can find out about the mark." Pamela replied as if breaking into the most secured database of the highest status king on planet wasn't that big a deal.

Sebastian made a you-are-crazy face and went to check out Laura's condition.

~~~

That day, just after Sebastian's call,

"It's like you said. Laura ain't in great shape. Her psyche is damaged." Uncle Rob said, his voice a bit tensed.

"That's not what I asked. How many Mercaptos were there?" A rough voice ordered on phone.

"Three." Uncle Rob replied hesitantly.

"Hmm. So it's confirmed then. What we are looking for is hiding in there." A sinister laugh filled the room.

"Ok then, keep me updated." He continued.

"When Sebastian tells me anything, I will. But don't forget the deal, Delroy. Or I'll have to -"

"Don't worry, I do keep my word." Delroy grinned

Sebastian's uncle replied and put down his phone.