When Oliver opened his eyes, everything around was covered by a thick, unknown, and thought-provoking darkness. As he was himself from the tip of his head to the toe of his feet, so that the only thing he was able to see was himself and nothing else, at infinitum.

It took him a moment, but when he tried to breathe and couldn’t, he eventually realized, that he was floating inside of this darkness, like a balloon in a night without stars. Then, he looked up and saw a silver thread, a rounded sphere made of light that he thought could be the moon, when he tried to reach it, a hundred particles moved with his arm, and a familiar lighthening feeling filled his body. Only then did he realize that this darkness was made of water, a few seconds after, he panicked.

It was a silent fear, like the one humans have in loneliness, one where screams cannot be heard, nor the pain suppressed, one made of slaps and kicks, in an endless fight to reach the surface, not being sure if such a thing ever existed. It was in the middle of this fight, that Oliver released, that the object he had seen before, the old times favorite muse, the moon, wasn’t what he thought it be. He realized that the light that came out of it was not that of a mythical being, but the very same one that lit up the outside world. For an instant, he saw trees, a clear sky, and leaves falling to the ground. For an instant, he thought he would be able to reach it. Then he realized that, far from close, having emptied his lungs and tired his arms, his strength had started to fail him.

It was just when he had given up, that a hand came from the light, right into the darkness, a single peacefully offering hand that took it and pulled him out of the darkness.

When Oliver lay down on the leaves-covered dirty ground, he was all wet, tired, and breathing like a hurt animal.

— Welcome again, Oliver, to the world of the living —

Said the familiar voice, Oliver turned around, still shakily overwhelmed by the effort, and found Park sitting next to a bonfire. It was late in the afternoon, and he was suited in black wearing the Academy’s uniform, much in the way in which both he and Kiki had been the first time Oliver met them, two weeks ago.

— How does it feel to be in one piece again? —

Asked with whim the slanted-eyes boy from the comfort of a wood-carved little chair.

— I… I —

Oliver stuttered, putting his hands over his pumping chest, and slowly recovering his breath, till he was seated.

— … I feel better, I guess —

Park laughed, oddly pleased.

— That’s good, now sit, and grab a snack, we have a long night in front of us —

Only then did Oliver realize that next to the bonfire, a wooden stick formation held tiny, little roasted fishes, carefully aligned next to the heat. The next thing he knew was that they were not so far from the Sanctuary he, Kiki, and Specter had performed their ritual, but this time he was alone with Park.

Sat the two of them in the middle of the night, Oliver dived deep in his thoughts, rehearsed by having a body back, but still unatoned from knowing it was not the original one.

— Are you afraid? —

Asked the black-haired student, he was only a couple of years older than Oliver, but the distance between them was perceptibly unmeasurable from the start.

— Of what? —

Answered Oliver

— You tell me —

— I’m not afraid of you —

Park gave him a tender look.

— That’s a good start, but why don’t dig deeper? you’ll have a fight before the end of the night —

Oliver gave him a blank stare.

— I thought… —

— We all thought, that’s why I’m here and not them —

— How many…? —

— Four days Oliver, we’ve done everything we could, but it must finish now —

— Is my family… safe?—

— Specter told me to tell you something if you asked that —

— Specter? —

— He said “Look at the fridge” —

Oliver stayed quiet for a moment, thinking

— I… don’t understand, I’m not even a real Sympathist, last time was just… beginners luck —

— … —

— Why don’t you…? —

— We all have our role in this story, Oliver, where did all this start? how to end it for good? that’s what we take care of —

— … —

— Come, follow me —

Said Park, a both headed deep into the trees.

It was a byway that flowed by the east side of the mountain, that took them about thirty minutes of calm walk into the woods. When we started, the sky was stained red, and by the end of it, a blueish darkness had covered, it as a result of the stars shining far from the city. The place was an old abandoned observatory, a stand in the middle of nothing, made out of wood, rocks, and long rusted iron.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

— Where are we? —

Asked Oliver

— Look out there—

Said Park pointing somewhere inside the dark, Oliver sharpened his eye and was able to glimpse a set of distant lights in the middle of the woods.

— It’s the Academy —

Oliver stared at him in white.

— In that place, some of the most powerful, worth-knowing experts in the world live to explore, develop, and teach others how things like Sympathy work —

— … —

— Once you become aware of something, you can lose the track, run away from it, or even cover your eyes, but you can’t unsee it —

— I didn’t ask for… all of this —

— Not everyone is able to do what we do, Oliver —

Oliver gave him a doubtful look.

— And the certainty of that will carry you along the way, you decide if you want to make it a curse, or your strongest feat —

That was the real difference between Specter, Kiki, and Park. Unlike the other two, Park was the only one able to use Sympathy. The only other one able to understand what it was to face others with a hand of sheets and a pen, hoping that your wit was enough to work a miracle. Oliver still remembered the incident, right after being decapitated by Kiki and brought to that dark, mischievous place they called the Academy. Carved in stone and lost in time, they ran away through a desert campus filled with shady corners, still not enough to hide them from the grizzly-looking monster that held the Director’s title, and its right hand, a man covered in scars so tall that make Specter look like a child. It was then that Oliver saw it for the first time, real Sympathy, not the thing he had made with a couple of drawings, salt, and a sheet. It was far away from Arwan’s Comprehensible guide, that night, covered in quasi-runic burning marks, marbling reality as if it was clay on a children’s hand, Oliver met the first true Sympathist he would ever meet and witnessed what could Sympathy in the hands of a real expert truly do in a fight.

Then, Oliver stood on the verge of the long-rotten wooden structure and stared at the lights in the distance.

— I don’t have any plan, I don’t even know what to expect —

Then Park handed him a tiny, all scratched and dirty notebook.

— I think this is yours —

Oliver recognized it instantly, they were its Sympathy learning notes.

— There were a couple of really interesting constructions in there, I took a look inside, I hope you don’t mind —

— Not at all —

Oliver said, giving him a look.

— Where did you learn Hex-linking? —

— Hex-linking? —

— You had a diagram inside of it, an energetic funnel made of a sealing-expelling pair, a dual-link —

Oliver took a second to understand what he was talking about.

— I… thought it would be possible, but I couldn’t find a measure for the energetic storage, it was just too dangerous to use in a fight —

— SRE, right? —

— Exactly —

Said Oliver excited

— Well, you could easily solve that using a Totem/Holder pair —

— Holder? —

Oliver asked

— The inversion of a Totem, that is, an object that makes you able to store energy instead of drawing it —

— That’s… a dualism dichotomy? —

— More like an Opposites Unit, where the existence of an object —

— … Depends on the existence of another two, that means… ? —

— Yeah, there is a third device that can be used to nullify both Totems and Holders —

— Impressive… —

Said Oliver, holding his chin in allured excitement.

— Do you have one with you? —

— A Holder? God no, that’s a very rare artifact, I barely have a couple of Totems with me every time —

— Ah… —

— But there’s another way to deal with SRE using that creation of yours —

Oliver then gave him a distrusting look

— You have funneled in and out, right? As long as you don’t keep it in, you should be okay —

— Wait, is that even possible? —

— To activate more than one Hex at a time? God, of course, it is, imagine how lame would be Sympathy if not, it only requires a little practice —

Oliver stood in disbelief.

— And Hex-linking's main purpose it's actually to make that easier —

— But, what if the energy I’m trying to funnel through it’s too big? —

— Well, that’s the gamble, but it usually takes a couple of seconds for your static body to align with your meta-body, during which some things can just… go through —

— That… I don’t get it —

— Well, that’s on Ardeen’s freshman year beyond biology class content table —

Said Park, throwing a look to the light’s row far away in the darkness.

— That’s… nice —

Then, a horrifying sound that could only be described as the combination of an old lady’s laugh with the collision of two metallic devices, making friction, started to come out of Park’s jacket. The eye-slanted boy then pulled out a disgusting flesh-looking red-ball device, in which a tiny mouth began talking.

— There is movement inside the house, I repeat, our Villain is inside the house —

Park gave a look back to Oliver.

— Ok, Hero has already woken up, We are heading there immediately —

Right there, at that moment, Oliver swallowed a big chunk of saliva.

They had already started moving.