“I’m alive?” Damien murmured to himself in surprise, he looked around seeing only a white void, “Or is this the afterlife and I did die?”

“You never died,” A woman replied, “to be more accurate, you never lived.”

Damien spun around to try and see who had responded. Yet no matter which way he turned all he could see was white nothingness.

“No, it can’t be.” He thought to himself as he slowly looked up, seeing a towering figure of a woman looking back at him, “You’re The Goddess. I haven’t seen you in twenty years.”

The Goddess, ruler, and deity of the land of Valeria. She had brought him and his class of twenty to this world to fight demons. But the conversation was decades old and he remembered very little of it, but it was pretty hard to forget a deity who looked large enough to crush a moon between her fingertips.

“And yet you never left my sight.” she replied amusedly, “How was it? Living through twenty years in the blink of an eye?”

He looked down at himself, it was true. He felt younger, with no facial hair or scars. Even his clothes had changed back to his old school uniform, including the emblem sewn onto both the shirt and coat, an emblem that he had long since forgotten.

“How is something like that even possible?”

“That was your chosen blessing, ‘a glimpse into the future’. Just in most cases,it doesn’t last twenty full years.”

“No, that can’t be. I remember everything so clearly, I know what my blessing was, it was…” He paused, there was no way he could forget something like this. The Goddess’s blessing was a cheat-level skill that they had been allowed to choose to start their journey with. Yet no matter how hard he tried to remember, nothing came to mind.

“It’s not that you forgot about it, just you’ve never given it any thought. It wouldn’t be a realistic prediction of the future if you knew it wasn’t real.”

“Then that is our future? The twenty years I lived?” Damien’s heart froze, tears slowly welling up in his eyes, “We failed? We all die? That’s our future?”

“Was, could have been. And yet no longer is. The blessing was a look into a potential future, a path that I assume you do not wish to take.”

“Of course not.” Damien smiled, “Though I’m afraid The Demon Lord will have to wait, I have some demons of my own I need to get rid of.”

Solaris, I’m going to kill you.

I’m going to do more than kill you, I’m going to take every little thing you’ve ever cared about, and then I’ll kill you.

“Fine by me.” The Goddess waved her hand causing a small shining portal to materialize in front of Damien, “The others have already left, but as one last gift I’ll let you pick precisely where I send you.”

Damien took a moment to consider, then another, and finally he spoke.

“The Solar Empire. Half a mile south of Fallbrook Manor.”

-

“Lord Fallbrook.” A young maid with chestnut-colored eyes and matching hair called out from across the study, “There’s a child at the door claiming he can cure your daughter’s curse.”

“What?” Lord Fallbrook responded, his pen rolling out of his loosened grip. Even as it continued to roll itself off the table and clattered against the wooden floorboards, neither master nor maid paid it any mind. “A child who claims he can… How does he even know about her curse?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t think to ask.” She pointed at the window behind him, “He’s probably still waiting outside, should I let him in?”

Fallbrook cleared his throat, trying to regain his composure.

“Of course, please show him to the drawing-room for now. I’ll come after I’ve taken a moment to compose myself.”

“Understood.” She bowed, closing the door behind her as she left.

Lord Fallbrook slowly stood up in his chair, his mind racing.

Stolen story; please report.

His first thought was that it had to be some kind of con. When the curse first started to surface he had an old friend, a royal court mage to come and check on her. And he had simply said nothing could be done, that her curse was not something that could simply be removed.

That was two years ago, her condition had slowly been getting worse. Neither medicine nor healing magic seemed to be helping anymore. And at this critical moment when it seemed like she was simply going to die, a child shows up and says he can cure her.

Peering out the window he could see this child waiting outside, dressed smartly in a style of clothing he had never seen before. Aside from the stray twig he was picking out from his hair, he wouldn’t have looked out of place among other nobles at the royal capital, so what was he doing all the way out here?

The child stopped his errant waiting and turned to face something, smiling politely as he was led inside the manor. Lord Fallbrook watched as he slowly stepped out of view of his window.

“Any decisions I make can wait until after I’ve met him.”

Lord Fallbrook started to leave, stopping only to look at his old sword ornamentally hung on the wall as a reminder of the old days. Gently he lifted it off its hooks and strapped it to his waist, just in case this meeting didn’t go well.

Mind still racing Lord Fallbrook made his way downstairs to the drawing-room, casually sidestepping the wooden pails left around to catch the leaking water from yesterday’s downpour.

The maid was waiting outside the drawing-room, turning to acknowledge with a bow as he approached.

“He’s waiting inside Lord Fallbrook.”

“Thank you Anna. Please have a guest room prepared for him.” She bowed once more and turned to leave.

“...”

These doors were to a room in his own house, so why did they feel so daunting?

What was there to be afraid of? The child was here to help cure your daughter, so why do I feel so afraid of him?

“No, not afraid of him.” Afraid of this not being true, afraid that with one good look at him he would be able to tell the child was lying. Afraid that the only hopeful moment in the past two years will disappear in an instant.

Before he had recollected his thoughts he had stepped inside, automatically seating himself across from his guest.

For a while they merely looked at each other, sizing each other up. But finally, the child spoke.

“I’m sure you have many questions, feel free to begin asking. I promise not to lie.”

“Can you really cure my daughter?”

“No, I can’t for certain say I can cure your daughter before I leave.” He spoke, choosing each word carefully, “But I can promise that Ms. Fallbrook will outlive her curse.”

“That’s a strange way to address someone the same age as yourself.”

“It’s not like there’s another Ms. Fallbrook to get confused with. Is there?”

“How do you know that?” His tone had turned hostile, bringing up someone’s dead wife would do that to them, “First my daughter’s curse, and now this? What is it that you want?”

“I know many things that I will not tell you the reasons for. As for what I want,” He began counting off each item on his fingers, “Two sets of traveling clothes, a steel sword, a flute…”

“Enough.” Lord Fallbrook was starting to lose his temper. “To think you’d come here simply to mock me…”

“When Ms. Fallbrook was cursed, did you find it strange no demands were left? Usually, when someone spends the time creating and casting a curse from scratch, they are doing it for a reason.”

“There are many cases like this when people are suddenly found with mysterious curses. Deadly, debilitating ones that make no sense being used on people with little value.”

“Sometimes people are cursed not because of who they are, but simply because the curse maker needed humans to practice on.”

“A curse like that, a practice curse, is never designed to be removed, but it is also not designed to kill its victim. Which is why I cannot promise that I can cure her, but I can promise she will outlive it.”

“A practice curse? I’ve never heard of something like that.” His hand slowly lowered to his blade as a thought crossed his mind, “Were you the one who cursed her?”

“And if I was, wouldn’t I be the best person to remedy it?” He replied with a calm smile. “Either way I never expected you to trust a word I say without a little demonstration.”

With that, he began emptying his pockets onto the table. A strange assortment of mushrooms, leaves, and herbs stuck with bits of dirt and lint. After he was done with the pockets in his jacket he started on the pockets in his pants.

While he was doing this Anna the maid had returned, unsure if she should speak up at the scene unfolding in front of her.

“Ah, the maid. Perfect timing. Please take all of these and boil them in half a pot full of water for about six hundred and thirty-three seconds, then bring a bowl or cup of it back here.”

She stared puzzlingly at the assortment of random plants, then towards Lord Fallbrook.

“Do as he says.”

She nodded and began to pick up a couple of items, before realizing she probably couldn’t carry it all in her bare hands. Without even pausing to ask she grabbed the four corners of the table cloth, taking all the ingredients in a makeshift sack.

After she left the room returned to silence, though a very different kind of silence compared to when they first met.

The child leaned back into his seat and casually propped his feet up on the table. Quietly humming to himself as Lord Fallbrook glared at him the entire time, hand gently resting on his blade.