The following morning, Fyn looked like he had been hit by a bomb on the back of a runaway train.

Apparently, humanist or not, he still got tired after an all-nighter. His eyes were ringed by dark circles, and his cheeks were sunken and sallow. One of his eyebrows kept convulsing without asking him first, giving him a nervous, twitchy appearance.

He looked like he might come up to you on the street and ask for some change, only to steal your wallet and spend your hard-earned cash on amphetamines.

Which, to be fair, fit with the rest of him.

He was short and wiry, like a jack russel that's so old nobody is sure how it's still alive. Although neither of these things was a surprise. Most people from where Fyn was from were thin, food being as scarce as it was.

In keeping with the rest of him, he had wild, wiry hair that looked like it didn't even know what conditioner was. Perhaps it had heard about it once from a friend of a friend; who's to say?

Further down were his hands that twitched when they thought no one was looking. They were jumpy little things covered in scabs and callouses.

Adding onto that, his sunken eyes, and Fyn looked thoroughly dishevelled.

However, despite his overall haggardness, he couldn't say that the night had been wasted. Far from it, in fact.

After being surprised by the magic boy, all thoughts of sleep had been banished to some far-off corner of his brain, rallying with his long-forgotten overdue rent. In the end, he sat down at the desk and read until the sun rose.

It was strange, really. Fyn had never been one to enjoy reading. He had always struggled to concentrate on the words long enough for them to sink in, and the quality of the school system had taken a massive dip after the transit. Everyone was always evacuating somewhere new, and teachers struggled to pin down a curriculum when it turned out they knew very little about the universe, to begin with. Besides, most kids would rather dedicate their time to training. Who would want to be an accountant when a Sentinel was a possibility?

But last night, Fyn had found his concentration like nothing he had ever experienced before. The words poured off the page and into him like water onto a sponge. By the time dawn broke, he had managed to chew through the first book on basic biology and part the way through the second. And best of all, nothing he read left him. He could recall it all with but a thought.

'Must be another symptom of being a humanist,' he thought.

He was so engrossed by the books, in fact, that it wasn't until the sun rose over the garden's many hedgerows - casting its glare through the window and onto Fyn's hunched-over figure at the desk - That he realised any time had passed at all.

Blinking as the light fell on him, Fyn rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands. He suddenly remembered where he was. It was both nerve-racking and awe-inspiring.

With just a peak out of the window, he felt like he had stepped into an alternate reality.

The garden was just so beautiful, so picturesque. He hadn't seen plants like that in… well… ever.

Years spent living in the built-up, overcrowded district had relegated nature to a thing that might exist elsewhere. Even the rolling hills near the abandoned warehouses hadn't been as striking as this place was.

There was a wildness to the lands outside Dublin, but the manor's garden was curated and unblemished by weeds or vines. Instead, it was packed full of colourful flowers and marble statues.

Fyn had an overpowering urge to go outside and see it for himself. And then he remembered that this was something he could actually do. Karst and Kline had said they would come and find him when they needed him, so for now; he was free to do whatever he pleased.

And so it was - driven by impulse - that Fyn slid the door to his room open. He stuck his head out into the hallway, glancing both left and right nervously, despite having no reason to be nervous. The floor was lined with plush red carpet, and the walls were stone and covered in Roman drapes and antique paintings. He could practically smell the money.

Fyn tiptoed out of his room and hurried down the hall, feet padding silently on the soft carpet. It was like stepping on a cloud.

The mansion was almost labyrinthian in its proportions, sprawling every which way like the narrow tributaries of a river. Every corridor looked the same, and if it weren't for Fyn's identic memory, he might have gotten lost.

But when he tried, Fyn was instantly able to recall the exact way from his room to the lobby, and that was the route he took. On his way, he passed a few curious servants in pristine black tailcoats carrying silver trays on white-gloved hands.

Every one of them looked like they were in a hurry.

He always stepped aside as they passed, giving them a subtle nod.

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Eventually, he found his way to the front hall and descended the winding staircase down to the vast marble floor below. From above, he could see blue symbols carved deep into the marble. They glittered like fools' gold, shimmering in the early morning sun.

'Wards, maybe,' Fyn thought. He recalled Kline mentioning them the day before.

As he descended the stairs, Fyn noticed a few servants rush out of a door at the side of the hall. They were carrying steaming mugs of coffee and a few loaves of bread.

Fyn watched them go curiously. A nosy part of him wondered where they were going, and then he remembered that he could just follow them.

For the first time in a long time, no one could say he didn't belong here.

He followed the smell, and it led him out of the house and along a flagstone path that traversed the gardens. Fyn paused as he rounded the side of the house, gazing out onto the lawn below.

In the distance, the two servants were handing the steaming mugs to a pair of men in dirty overalls. Both carried gardening tools, with one leaning on a shovel as he sipped his coffee and the other balancing a pair of secateurs over his shoulder.

From where he stood at the top of the lawn, Fyn heard snatches of their conversation. It drifted over the faint breeze that softly stirred the leaves on the distant trees, murmuring quietly.

"Those new children are a real handful," he heard one of the Gardners say. "I've already had to re-pave the south lawn twice this week!"

One of the servants tutted, shaking her head. "He's not even the worst of them! The girl with that sword ability put Harry in hospital last week! Harry, for god's sake!"

"Harry? But he's the best swordsman we have!"

"Aye, but... well... even the best human isn't close to sentinel standards. Even that of a child, apparently."

Fyn listened to this curiously. He, too, had a run-in with an unusual child just recently. It seemed this place was coming down in them.

"Just be careful who you say this stuff to," one of the servants whispered.

Another one nodded. "I've heard that his holiness is incredibly protective of this new batch, so be very careful not to spread this information. I wouldn't want you guys to end up like..." The man shuddered. "Peter."

Following this, the four servants stood in solemn silence. The Gardners sipped their coffees grimly - as though trying to drown out a memory they desperately wanted to forget.

Fyn waited for them to begin talking again, but it seemed they had said all they dared say. Eventually, they all dispersed, leaving him to wander off into the gardens.

Without really thinking, he allowed his feet to take him where they would. Fyn's languid steps passed around rose beds and through gates choked in climbing ivy trimmed to look just overgrown enough. He walked through a small hedge maze where the leaves were so green they looked fake, eventually ending up by the side of a beautiful stone fountain.

Water burbled from the raised hands of a stone statue, flowing down the fountain and splashing into a pond chock-full of colourful fish. It was so… Fyn didn't have the word for it.

He had never felt anything like this before. He had never breathed air this clean or seen grass this well-kept. A part of him was furious beyond words. People were starving in the streets, and yet such extravagance was locked behind iron gates. The unfairness of it all boiled his blood.

But another part of him simply wanted to admire the sight before him. Such a place could only exist in a world this unfair, he supposed.

In the end, he sat on a stone bench by the fountain, listening to the murmur of falling water. His mind had never been this calm, this clear. He only existed in this moment and no other. His worries were yesterday; his future was tomorrow.

There was no maybe, in the present. Only Now.

And what comfort that brought. There was no fear of the looming future or regrets of the past. Only the present. Fear did not exist in the now.

All that existed was the splash of water and the rustle of leaves on the wind.

He sat like that for a long, long time, completely undisturbed by anything that passed by. A small, red-crested bird had landed on the bench beside him, tilting its head curiously at the motionless man. But it soon moved on, leaving Fyn to his lack of thoughts.

Eventually, another person was the stone that rippled the glacial lake.

She stomped into the clearing in what could only be described as a warpath. Her face was stern, and her eyes blazed as she stared intently at the fountain as though coming face to face with a lifelong enemy. Dark hair trailed behind her like a mantle, and the clothes she wore – or perhaps more importantly – the way she wore them, gave her away instantly.

This girl was someone who belonged here.

Fyn glanced up and watched as she tore across the clearing. He smirked, amused to see a look of such intense concentration on the face of a child. 'She must barely be ten,' he thought. 'Probably no older than magic boy.'

It seemed the girl hadn't noticed him in her single-minded determination, so he was content to watch as she closed in on the fountain.

Her priceless leather boots stomped on the gravel as she came to a stop about a foot before the fountain. She stood with her hands outstretched over the water and her head raised towards the sky as though expecting rain.

Behind her, Fyn leaned closer, wondering what she was doing.

The Girl shouted – in what he supposed was the closest thing she could manage to a war cry – and thrust her hands upwards and away from the water in one big sweeping motion.

Nothing happened.

She scowled and glared at the pool, sending the fish beneath the water's surface running for cover. Soon, her hands were back in their original position over the water, and she was facing the sky again.

Another shout. Another nothing.

Fyn forced down a laugh.

For nearly half an hour, she stubbornly butted her head against the wall until a crack finally appeared. Fyn wasn't sure what number attempt it had been, maybe a thousand, but this time, when she thrust her hands towards the sky, some of the water from the pool went with them.

It was like a collection of raindrops falling in reverse. A hundred water droplets hung into the air like liquid crystals, reflecting the sunlight in thousands of dazzling sparkles.

His jaw nearly hit the floor. Another damn sentinel! He had spent his entire life trying to meet one; now, they were everywhere. First, the guys who had almost burned him alive, then the magic boy, and now her. What the hell was going on?

The only person more impressed than Fyn was the girl herself, who let out a whoop of delight and spun around, dancing impishly. She laid eyes on him mid-skip, and froze, losing her rhythm. Out of balance and panicking, she stumbled back and tripped over the fountain's edge.

She was gone in a splash that dwarfed the one she had managed moments before.

Seconds later, she came up spluttering and soaking wet.

Fyn could see she was furious and decided that she could be mad at someone else.

Without so much as a look back, he slipped back through the hedge maze, moving with the urgency and speed only someone being chased could manage.