As Shinra arrived in a tidy, wooden room, he looked out the four-paned window towards the ocean.

It felt surreal.

Sunbeams reflected off the waves, creating a gleam that stretched towards the horizon. The ocean was beautiful from the perspective of someone living on land. It no longer seemed like the parlous life on the rafts; hunting to feed yourself, fearing the dangers of sea beasts and humans alike.

But as he looked out towards the ocean, he also harbored hate. Hate for the people who oppressed those living on the sea. Hate for the people who despised his birth. Hate for himself, being unable to protect someone he loved dearly.

The ocean was his friend, his life-long companion, but it was also his enemy. Its capriciousness gives and takes, switches from love to hate in the blink of an eye.

Halfway up the mountain, there was a large, decorated building with a sizable number of children residing within it. These were all the children that had passed the diver test. Shinra was evidently among those that passed. Seafarers usually had trouble scaling the mountain and lacked the generational advantages of those born on land. They knew how to swim, but a lot of them, being children, never prepared for the climb, thus resulting in the test's high failure rate for seafarers.

Shinra was more mature, more prepared than the average seafarer deciding to take the test, but he still shouldn't have made it. It was only that strange surge of power, perhaps due to his affinity shown in the aptitude test that allowed him to overcome those odds.

Regarding that power, he still hadn't figured out what it was. The purple-robed old man clearly had an idea of what it was, believing it to be a sort of healing power, but Shinra thought it was more than that.

After that night, he tried to move that formless energy within his body again. It flowed into the air, turning into a subtle, almost unnoticeable green smoke only he could see. Not only that, he was able to partly perceive that same smoke in him, and in other living things.

It was strange, constantly moving, turning and twisting. The green smoke seemed to originate from a certain place in the center of the human body, but Shinra was unable to clearly see exactly what it was.

Thinking about all of this, he almost forgot about the day. Rushing out of the dormitory, he entered a flat stone square. This was the training ground… allegedly. Other trainee divers also approached the training ground, clearly nervous, yet with varying levels of excitement.

In that crowd of people, he was looking for Eve.

After the traumatic accident that took the lives of everyone he grew up around, he thought that loneliness would be a long-term associate. However, when he was taken in by the old guard, he started to realize that the burden of loneliness was much more difficult to shoulder than he initially anticipated.

On his climb up the mountain, he realized that while everyone around him had the support of their friends and family, he had no one.

He thought that he would be alone forever again, so he started adapting to the loneliness… until she showed up.

Eve lived in a completely different world compared to Shinra. She was brought up as a noble, educated and trained by the best teachers that money and connections could acquire, while he was an orphan, born in a rafting village. She had generational talent, while he had an unknown power without a clear path to success.

But she still treated him like any other person–like a real human. Although Shinra didn't believe she approached him simply because he was lonely, he didn't mind it.

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"Hey, how's it going."

"..."

'How did she get behind me again…'

It was just like the first time they met.

"Hey."

"Are you going to answer my question?"

"uh, oh"

"It's… going well."

"Well you aren't making it sound 'well'."

"Everything's going fine, anyways, how are you doing?"

"Splendid." She answered back with a modest smile. There seemed to be something off about that response, but Shinra couldn't really pick up on it.

There was an awkward silence, but Eve quickly broke it.

"What was your life like before this?"

"..."

Shinra didn't want to think about his past. Recalling all the happy memories he had with his caretaker, which were taken away like candles to the wind. It hurt. He looked towards the crashing waves in the distance, trying to make amends with his losses.

"My life was…"

"..."

"...Sorry."

"Don't be, it's nothing serious anyways. Life was hard on the ocean. It wasn't particularly hard surviving, but it was hard to leave... The dream of every seafarer was to one day make it to land. Some worked themselves to death just to make a few coppers. Some accepted their fate to live at sea all their life. There was crime, murder, petty theft. No one felt safe on the ocean when everyone was fighting for the same thing…"

"I guess I was lucky."

Luck, that word seemed to stick to both of them.

'Was I lucky to be where I am?' they both thought at the same time.

Shinra was only where he was right now because he had survived the sea beast attack, because he had met that one benevolent guard, because he had some mysterious power to help him climb the mountain.

'Do I deserve it?'

Eve on the other hand was born into a noble family with everything provided for her. She never had to hunt for her own food. She never had to sleep on the cold ocean… She had the best teachers that taught her everything: reading, writing, fighting, swimming, art, music, magic, etiquette.

These were thoughts that no child their age probably even considered thinking about. Other seafarer children knew too little about responsibilities and of the outside world, while noble kids were too prideful, being completely ignorant of their familial benefits. Perhaps they were both mature for their age, shaped by their own experiences, equally joyful and sickening.

"Alright everybody listen up!"

They were so deep in thought that they didn't even see the instructor take his place at the front of the square. He was a well-toned, tan-skinned man donning rough leather garments.

"For the next two years, I will prepare you all to take on your first real mission. The training will be difficult, maybe even torturous to an extent. You all have the potential to be a hero for Arter, either through combat, discovery or creation; but more importantly, I don't need any of you staining my reputation on your first mission, SO GET TO WORK, 50 LAPS AROUND THE SQUARE! AND REMEMBER, YOU WILL ADDRESS ME AS CAPTAIN PHAN FROM NOW ON."

All the children quickly got to running. The noble kids, who were the most prepared, seemed to be well-conditioned for this type of training, clearly having done so many times before. The middle-lower class kids however started showing signs of struggle on the tenth lap. Shinra was also struggling as he got to his tenth lap.

'40 more laps, how the hell am I supposed to finish that…'

Overlooking the entire square was Captain Phan. After everyone had finished the first ten laps, something changed about the square. The cracks in the floor emitted a slight blue glow, and the air felt heavy. Suddenly, moving became harder, their heads felt tighter, and there seemed to be less oxygen to breath.

"These are the conditions of the ocean. Just having stamina isn't enough. If you want to survive your first mission, you have to get adjusted to the environment first."

All the kids looked at him with a sense of dread. Those 40 more laps really seemed impossible now, even for the noble kids.

Shinra, on the other hand, seemed relatively okay. He felt the change in pressure, yet being in the ocean for so long every day–even if his dives were shallow–allowed him to adjust to the new environment almost seamlessly. So, while everyone around him slowed down, he was perfectly fine and steadily making his way to the frontmost section of the runners.

Captain Phan seemed to notice this and kept a note in his head.

Time passed like this. Every day the children would wake up, train, rest and train some more.

Shinra and Eve's relationship also grew closer. Eve would teach Shinra how to read and write, filling a hole in his study that was not taught to him at an earlier age.

Time passed surprisingly peacefully. Although there had been a few stuck-up nobles that poked fun at his origins occasionally, no one really bothered him, probably due to his closeness with Eve, whose background seemed particularly special even amongst the other nobles.

He still didn't know what her full name was or what family she came from. Every time he would ask her about it, she would dodge the question. It was clearly something she didn't want to discuss.

Two months went by in the blink of an eye, the young divers were finally ready for their first lessons in combat and magic.