Helios was gone.

Or, more likely, planning something that required intense concentration and most of his followers were a few fries short of a happy meal, which was good for easy direction, bad for patience.

Perhaps he was smoking them out, looking for those truly loyal to the cause. He had dirt on all of them, but those who turned tail now would face punishment whenever their leader returned.

Ji-hun was an informal supporter of the cause, or as informal as one could be. He was under no illusions. No doubt, there was a file on him, too.

He wondered if it included this latest information, a secret that he'd had no idea of until he returned to the country.

A child.

Called Luna.

Given the surname he hated yet couldn't discard, he was unsure who the child's mother was. A search for records about her on the magical side of things proved fruitless, except that she recently began a search for himself with the help of a vampire.

From the non-magical direction, there was still little to find. He accessed her birth certificate and she was born to a woman named Arizona. He had no memory of a person by that name and the woman was dead, killed in a fire. The child was presumed dead as well.

He knew that to be false, but according to the one in question, she'd been with vampires for as long as she could remember. That wasn't too surprising, given her age and the possibility of trauma. If she was with her mother at all, she may not recall it.

The question, then, was how she ended up with a hoard of vampires and that would be especially difficult to find out because the ones she knew were gone without a trace. The birth and death of a vampire remained hidden knowledge. Hypotheses were one thing, actual data another, and the wizards weren't keen on finding those truths. It all fell too close to the dark side for them.

Assuming the child wasn't lying to him, which was a possibility though he didn't know why she would think it necessary, this was a dead end.

The people who lived in the area of the mansion she now called home had nothing much to say about the place except that it was haunted. People had gone missing over the years, but there were no stories about an Asian child.

At the end of his search, all he knew for sure was that she was of his blood and that was hard to accept because he'd certainly never intended to continue this cursed family line.

If the child had been a male, he would have killed it.

Rysing.

Because though he left her, his mother gave him the surname of the one who impregnated her. A belief in the power of a name.

What a stupid superstition and yet…

Allowing her to live for a while would do no harm. He could remove her at any time, so it wasn't an urgent matter.

"Arcane Arts." He assumed she'd heard about it from the vampires. Possibly one of them attended long ago. The school itself was near ancient.

Since she was now without a guardian, though she appeared capable of caring for her basic needs, he supposed it made sense to give her to the institution.

Where did she go when he pushed her into the portal?

He would ask her when he next saw her. Soon, he thought. The days turned to weeks too easily and the time to register her was almost upon him. Something he never thought he would do.

Well, wasn't life full of surprises?

The necessities for her entrance weren't many, the process heavily relied on direct observation of the student to be admitted. Her basic papers were necessary, which explained why she was planning to search him out. Otherwise, the vampires would have enrolled her themselves.

Collecting the few documents was no trouble, what took time was his attempt to look into her background. He found she had living relatives, though it didn't appear she'd ever met them and they had no knowledge of her. They were non-magic people, a mother and daughter living in the countryside. Nothing of interest was gleaned from them.

As far as he could tell her story was the truth.

It would also explain her lack of manners. Being raised by vampires, who had little contact with the world, may account for her behavior. If she did spend some time with her mother, who he'd learned was a prostitute after a lot of digging, then perhaps she heard those phrases during her early years.

He still didn't know who Arizona was, though accounting for age they must have been quite young at the time. In those days he had no morals whatsoever and also lacked forethought. He was lucky he'd made it out unscathed, to be honest. There were too many women to count. Whoever Arizona was, wherever he met her or when, he doubted he would ever remember. And it didn't matter. He wasn't willing to risk memory magic for that.

There was a rather odd encounter though, one he would have to think about. When he went to the Annex for copies of documents, after receiving the Pinewood School of the Arcane Arts admissions packet with the list of requirements and necessary paperwork, he was waited upon by someone who didn't quite fit the role they were playing. He asked more questions than necessary and while they weren't exactly probing, it did raise suspicion.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

In any event, the next and final item on the to-do list was to take the child to the school for her appointment. From there it was possible he would have no further contact with her until it was time to move on to Nyx and Aether. Barring disciplinary actions he should have no reason to hear from her again, as she claimed to be able to support herself. Again, attributable to the vampires. Their possessions were hers now, to do with as she wished.

It all seemed so nicely prepared.

Of course, he didn't believe it could be that simple. He'd lived too long to accept anything at face value, much less an entire life, no matter how small it seemed or how detached from him it tried to be.

There was more going on, but for now, he would let it play out. He would perhaps look for Helios and what he was most eager to find, once the child was in school, was a way into the Sphere.

Because something was going on and they were involved.

Ned.

No.

Fredrick.

It was obvious that he wasn't supposed to remember the man, yet he did. Why was that? Why was it that he'd noticed the man so often of late, when they'd had no contact for years?

Yet when he saw him it was as though through a fog. Lighter than it should have been, however, because he was still recognizable.

A sign of involvement with the Sphere.

Mere rumor, but credible enough. When one entered that division their existence was wiped from the minds of those who knew them. Magically hidden from the public.

This investigation would take time. He had the resources to pull it off, but the contacts were the problem. That was where Helios would come in handy, though Ji-hun was sure that not even he had a direct line to Enigma. Possibly, not even a secondary in. The department was locked down.

Not as tightly as they thought, apparently, as he remembered Fredrick Nedabi as he once was. The man in question looked worse for wear. Dark circles beneath the eyes and a jumpy countenance.

What Ji-hun didn't know was that Ned had been assigned to tail him in hopes of finding information relating to Luna. In all honesty, Ned couldn't exactly recall what happened at the farm, neither could Robert, but they knew it was something extraordinary.

He woke each morning in a cold sweat.

His dreams were so full and so empty at the same time.

Something, something, happened and he didn't know what but it was to the point that he believed in that generational curse. Whatever went down at Autumn Gold's hobby farm was serious business.

And it was getting worse by the day because now he and Rob remembered she existed in relation to Luna Rysing but no one else did. The one tasked with monitoring the woman's online presence suddenly had no idea why he was doing such a thing. That was a flag. So, they had someone else take a look and the same thing happened to him.

Magic.

Cast upon Autumn's blog it wiped the memories of those who laid eyes on any page of the website.

It was Luna's doing. They didn't know how, but it certainly was.

And Ji-hun was back. Her father. One more variable to deal with and the man didn't seem nearly as disturbed by the fact that he had an unknown daughter as they all thought he should be, but that was neither here nor there.

She was going to Arcane and that meant they needed to plant someone in the building, which was turning out to be more of a hassle than they thought. There were no open positions, and that meant they'd have to get some employee, preferably one who'd have a lot of contact with Luna, to resign. That was harder than it sounded.

No matter how much they offered, no one was a taker yet.

Work in Arcane was highly coveted. It wasn't that everyone wanted a job there, but those who did were ready to pounce should a spot open up. The school was known to turn a blind eye to the darker magical arts. Accepting no funding from the government allowed them to keep to their own rules and turn away inspectors. Unless some wild evidence cropped up, no one would get a shot at taking a good look. That was why they needed somebody on the inside, but the new school year was approaching and the chances of an employment opportunity were dwindling.

This left them with few options and honestly, Ned didn't want to keep on with it. If he had his way, they'd leave Luna alone and go on with life, but his life was not his own.

It'd never been a problem before, his ties to the Sphere, yet today things were different.

The blood rituals, the bonding, made it impossible to leave. Unless he suffered a catastrophic brain injury or death, he was in it whether he wanted to be or not.

Death.

He shivered.

Somehow, he thought he'd faced that once already and it was the most unsettling feeling. Was that the darkness of his dreams? He felt like he'd cheated death.

The farm. What happened at the farm?

"Ned, are you alright?"

No. He wasn't and they all knew it, especially as he continued to stare silently into the surface of the desk.

Rob was Blair Witching in the corner.

Something within them was messed up and had been ever since that mission to look through the kid's house. They weren't broken enough to trigger their expulsion from Enigma, but it was disrupting the workflow.

Still, this was an opportunity to learn, and based on observation, they now had even more cause to follow the kid around. She did something. Her aunt's website was one thing and she'd disappeared from the house. The family no longer knew her. That wasn't simple magic, certainly not something a normal child was capable of.

Between the prophecy and what they were seeing in real-time, they were all wondering if they'd bit off more than they could chew, but even if they had it was too late. This was the whole point of the Sphere. Of course, nothing like this was even on the books and they weren't exactly trained to deal with these circumstances. They were supposed to be, but they weren't.

So they had a few options, but didn't want to involve any other departments; the red tape would be unbelievable.

"What the fuck are we supposed to do about that," someone asked, nodding to Ned and then Rob. "And how are we going to get into Arcane?"

"I don't know," someone else answered. "But I don't want to send any paperwork anywhere because you know how that'll turn out."

Exactly. They all knew it and no one wanted to deal with it.

He was so tired he didn't even know his own name anymore.

Did he ever have a name?

What was a name?

"Coffee."

Was his life.

Was that his name?

He passed out, face first on the desk and no one cared.

They all had their own overtired problems to deal with.