The office of Avriya's council was a spacious room with a long wooden table surrounded by high-backed chairs with cushioned seats. The windows' curtains on the left side of the room were closed, and on its right side, a pillar connected the floor and ceiling. At the office's forefront was a screen with a projector, and at its rear was a door with a painting next to it. The painting displayed a scene of a wooded area in Misty Glen with a ribbon of the Silver Run River cutting through its trees.

Five councilmembers sat at the table: Kai Dalton, Elliot Springer, Juliana Shaffer, Orion Westbrook, and Hyacinth Valencia. It was Kai who took a seat at the head of the table, being the High Mage of Avriya. It was also he who kickstarted the meeting. "First order of business," Kai announced as the rest of the council turned their heads toward him, "is to discuss Cayto Halifax's living arrangements. Hyacinth, who reported that Cayto will have to leave the infirmary due to completion of his recovery, suggested we find housing for him, along with an adult supervisor who can look after him."

"That's right," Hyacinth confirmed. "So is anybody willing to share their living space with Cayto?"

"I'll do it," Orion volunteered. "I'm the reason he got kidnapped, so I've got to take responsibility for my actions."

"Wait a second," Elliot chimed in, "you're not gonna allow Cayto to sign up for more magic courses, are you? I still don't think we can trust him with that sorta stuff…"

"Of course Cayto is allowed!" Kai boomed, the rest of the room falling silent after him. "Cayto may be the son of Martin Halifax, and he may have worked at a tagging center, but the next Cloudgate Crusaders needs a lightning mage, and he'll fill in that role perfectly. His experience producing shock tags will most certainly help him in his magic classes, and he'll also be able to give us information about Halifax Industries."

Juliana shook her head. "Kai, I still don't think we should be doing this. What if we teach Cayto magic and he uses it to escape? Or he turns against us?"

Kai crossed his arms. "That won't happen!" He proclaimed loudly. "Nobody would turn down a spot on the Cloudgate Crusaders because of its legacy, and because of its pay. Who wouldn't want to get paid twenty thousand goldstones a year?!"

"But Kai, where are you going to find all that money to pay each of your guild members?" Hyacinth asked.

"I'll most certainly find it," Kai assured her.

"I admire your ambition, but you may be getting a bit ahead of yourself here," Hyacinth commented.

Elliot sighed. "Always gotta have the last word, do you, Kai?" He noted. "It's gotten to the point where sometimes I feel like you overshadow everybody else. Your decisions to raid the tagging centers and let Cayto enter the mage courses were both controversial, but we had to go through with them because you said so. As the High Mage, don't you think you should listen to your subordinates more?"

"I'm only doing what I have to do," Kai said matter-of-factly. Meanwhile, Juliana pulled out an envelope from her purse.

"Kai?" Juliana asked, presenting an envelope to the rest of the council. "I have something I'd like to share."

Kai looked at Juliana. "Go ahead. Make it quick."

"A snowy owl dropped off an anonymous letter at our delivery box this morning," Juliana announced. Her announcement was followed by snickers and utterances of disbelief.

"You're either seeing things or you're saying this to get our attention," Orion replied. "There's no way an owl would be delivering that letter. Nobody owns an owl around here, and wild owls surely aren't smart enough to deliver letters."

"I know, right?" Elliot followed. "What is this, Harry Potter?"

"No, no! You got it all wrong. I could've sworn that I saw an owl! A big, beautiful snowy owl!" Juliana exclaimed. The other members shook their heads.

Kai rolled his remaining eye. "Looks like the batty old lady forgot to take her meds again."

Juliana got up from her seat, slamming her hands on the table. "Kai Dalton! Have some respect for your mother, will you?!"

"You're not my mother!" Kai shot back. "You're only my aunt who thinks she's my mother! My real mother is dead!"

Juliana sighed, a melancholic expression on her face. "You never complained about me not being your "real" mother until the incident…"

"What incident?" Orion piped up.

"Everybody, we're getting off topic," Hyacinth reminded the councilmembers. "This meeting is about Juliana's letter."

"Yeah, right, the letter," Orion echoed. "Juliana, you claimed that this letter was written anonymously and delivered by an owl, right?"

"Yes," Juliana confirmed.

"I'm still skeptical of your claim, but if what you say is true, I find it strange that the writer of this letter would not only write anonymously, but resort to such unconventional methods of delivery as well," Orion remarked. "Why is that?"

"Maybe we'll find out if we read it. Kai, since it appears that the letter was addressed to you specifically, you will read it out loud to the rest of us here," Juliana instructed. She slid the envelope across the table to him.

Kai opened the envelope, unfolding the paper inside. "Dear Mr Dalton," he read out loud, "In this letter, I intend to address your actions as of last Monday, in the greenhouse, at around 4 pm. It has come to my attention that you got into a fight with a boy named Lucian, namely the Shrine Scorcher, over his destruction of property, specifically a shrine of Blanche set up in Avriya's market district. The fight ended with a longsword being driven through the boy's stomach."

"The Shrine Scorcher has a name?" Elliot asked.

"Please tell me you actually got the little brat this time around," Orion remarked.

Hyacinth laughed. "Kai, that's the seventh time you've tried to kill the Shrine Scorcher already! Give the poor creature a break!"

Kai shushed the other councilmembers and continued reading. "As somebody who used to be your number one fan in your guild leader days, I have got to say that I am beyond heartbroken. I used to love you. I used to look up to you. You were my biggest inspiration and the source of my childhood hopes and dreams, but now you have gone and crushed them all. Why? Why would you do such a thing? Are you, the honorable head of the Cloudgate Crusaders, paragon of justice and peace, really the same as the man in the greenhouse who drove a sword through Lucian? Did you really think that boy deserved to die MULTIPLE TIMES OVER for spreading the truth about the deity you idolize— the same way I used to idolize you?!" After reading the paragraph, Kai took a breath. "Sappy much?" He scoffed.

Elliot rubbed his forehead. "What on Earth could burning shrines have to do with spreading the truth?"

"Anybody else thinks the "spreading the truth" part has something to do with the graffiti Orion and I found?" Hyacinth speculated. "There were messages written on Blanche's shrine saying things like "tyranny will fall" and "justice for Polaris."

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"Hey, you may be onto something there," Orion replied to Hyacinth.

"Looks like the Shrine Scorcher is trying to slander our Fair Lady Blanche. We will not stand for this!" Kai proclaimed, pumping a fist into the air. The other councilmembers all raised their fists with him— all except for Juliana.

Kai shot a suspicious glance in his aunt's direction. "Juliana, why aren't you following? Don't tell me you support the Shrine Scorcher's actions, do you?"

"You should really read the rest of the letter," Juliana hinted.

Kai sighed. He held the paper up to his face and continued reading. "Blanche is not who you, or who any of us, think she is. She enslaves her spirits and can be quite violent toward them if they refuse to go along with her agenda, even if they did nothing wrong. The ice-spirit Polaris, for example, got dismembered by her. According to Noi, who is another spirit, Polaris had never committed any sort of wrongdoing worthy of his annihilation, but because it was suspected he'd betray Blanche IN THE FUTURE, Blanche denounced him and killed him. If Blanche can be this brutal towards her own creations, who knows how she'll act towards humans?"

Kai's jaw clenched, the paper shaking in his hands. "Bullshit," he spat as he tore the page down the middle. "Bullshit."

Juliana leapt from her seat and grabbed Kai's arm. The High Mage shook it off. "Kai, no!" She cried out. "At least read the rest of the letter!"

"Back off, woman!" Kai yelled. He crumpled up the pieces of paper and tore them in half again. "WHY SHOULD I LISTEN TO YOU WHEN YOU RUINED MY LIFE?!"

Upon hearing those words, the other councilmembers felt a sense of dread creep over them, and Juliana bowed her head. "Kai, you know I didn't mean to hurt you, and that I'm terribly sorry for what I've done. I just hope someday we can fix our relationship..."

"What relationship?! You, Juliana, are DEAD to me!" Kai yelled, shredding the paper to pieces. "If it weren't for you, I'd still have my arm, my leg, and the other half of my face, but no, you just had to set off that explosion and FUCK ME UP for the rest of my life! I had to stop being a guild leader because of you! I had to shell out almost all of my life savings to the healers because of you! MY FIANCÉ LEFT ME BECAUSE OF YOU! She said, in her own words, that she "didn't want to marry a half-faced cripple she'd be stuck paying healer bills for!" He threw the shredded paper pieces at Juliana.

Juliana shook her head. "Kai, I've tried to warn you that your ex was only dating you for your money, fame, and good looks! If she left you over something like that, then she never cared about you at all. But you refused to listen..."

"I don't care. It was all your fault," Kai said coldly. "And now we have to convince the courts to make guilds and auras legal again, because after that explosion, the government decided that aura-havers were dangerous and shut down my guild."

"Our guild," Juliana corrected. "I built the Cloudgate Crusaders from the ground up and recruited the most talented mages in the country for it. You just happened to be the face of the guild while it was already in the spotlight, and wouldn't have had your career as a distinguished guild leader known by all of Cloudgate without me. Yet it was you who took all the credit for making the Cloudgate Crusaders what it was." And then she added: "I guess a zero-to-hero story of an orphaned young man becoming a legend appealed more to the public than the idea that a middle-aged mom may really be the one behind it all—"

"Hello?" A tiny voice piped up from the back of the room, interrupting Juliana. Upon noticing the visitor, Kai and Juliana fell silent. Standing at the council office's doorway was a little girl dragging a stitched-up bunny plushie behind her. The girl had pitch-black, silky hair; skin that was so pale it almost made her appear ghostly; and wide, round eyes a deep blue with tints of purple in them— the color of ripe juniper berries. "Daddy, why were you yelling at Granny-Ana?" The girl asked.

Kai rushed towards the little girl and walked her out of the room. "Don't worry about it, Juniper," he assured the girl while laughing. "Granny was just being a little…” he spun a finger next to his head, making the gesture for crazy, “cuckoo, that's all. Now go talk to ghosts in the waiting area or something, I have important work to do." Then, after walking her to the waiting area, Kai left the girl behind and returned to the council's office.

After Kai re-entered the room, a cloud of unease fell over it. The other councilmembers simultaneously released their breaths, grateful that Kai's daughter was able to stop the fight before it got worse. They knew that Kai would've gone a lot further given the chance. To the public, Kai was a composed and charismatic High Mage. But the council knew he wasn't the same man behind closed doors, and that the real Kai Dalton was much more volatile. If they valued their position as council members, they would stay silent about this whole matter. One wrong word could spell out their firing.

"Oh my God Kai, your daughter is so adorable!" Hyacinth squealed. "I wanna hug her and squish her cheeks if she doesn't mind, and oh, can I call her Junebug?"

Kai shook his head. "If there's anything Juniper hates, it's pet names and being called cute. She'd prefer to be addressed as an overlord of the underworld over a nickname like Junebug any day of the week," he clarified. "And vegetables. That's another thing Juniper hates. Vegetables."

Orion's eyes widened. "Kai, was that the little necromancer girl you adopted recently?" He asked. "She is adorable, but there's also something off about her if you know what I mean. No offense but she's kinda creepy. In a cute way of course. In the way that she looks exactly how I'd imagine a four-year-old who could talk to the dead would look like."

Elliot threw a glance at Orion. "Look who's speaking," he muttered. "In terms of creepiness, I don't think your aura is much better than Juniper's. You're literally able to possess people. You can't get much creepier than that."

For a while the room fell back in silence. Then, after a minute had passed, Juliana was the first one to break it. "So anyway," she continued, "I'll sum up the rest of the letter here. Our anonymous writer continued to write that Lucian was also a spirit who lived under Blanche, and when he burnt the shrines, it was actually a warning for the rest of us that she's not worth worshiping, a warning we all refused to take. They also mentioned that, in a way, stabbing Lucian was even worse of a crime than stabbing a mortal human, because with a mortal, they can die once and it's over, but Lucian had to go through the same pain on repeat because he can't die. Finally, they ended the letter with an ultimatum: that if Kai were to repent for his actions, he must resign as High Mage and maintain as much of a distance from Lucian as possible so as to not hurt him further. Thoughts?"

"I still think it's bullshit," Kai insisted. "And an empty threat from some ignoramus who blindly pities a dangerous beast, one that deserved every knife, sword, and stake it got, does not scare me at all. What are they gonna do if I continue to stab the beast, fire me?" He scoffed. "But I still gotta thank whoever wrote that letter. At least they were nice enough to explain why that stupid Shrine Scorcher refused to die— because it can't. So next time I come across that hideous beast, I'm gonna attach a metal weight to its foot and toss it in the sea, and you all are gonna help me catch it. Got that?"

The rest of the council nodded, though whether it was out of fear or because they genuinely agreed with Kai was uncertain. Even Juliana nodded, albeit reluctantly. What she really wanted to tell her nephew was that maybe he was escalating things too far, and that maybe the boy he was punishing didn't deserve to suffer as much as he made him. But at the same time, Juliana could understand where Kai was coming from: he had a hard life, and religion was one of the few things he could trust in. For Kai, praying to Blanche put his mind at ease, as it was not only a comforting ritual for him, something he could come back to each day, but it also represented his hope for a better tomorrow. Kai could've sworn on his parent's graves that Blanche answered his prayers more than a few times, but whether his luck was actually a result of faith or just mere coincidence was uncertain.

And then there was the matter of Kai's father, and the rumor that maybe the Shrine Scorcher had done more than simply burn shrines. Kai's father was a victim of the Inferno of 2004, one of Cloudgate's worst supernatural disasters. A fifth of the nation was set on fire that year, only for the affected land to mysteriously disappear while it was still on fire. Some believe that was how Avriya was formed— the Inferno burnt up so much land it made the burnt land part from the mainland.

The Inferno happened before Kai was born, so his father didn't die immediately. But while Kai's father initially survived the fire, he was left with irreversible lung damage from inhaling too much smoke. Eventually, his disease got to him, and only a week before Kai was born, his father died of lung failure. Then his mother died in childbirth, so Kai never knew any of his parents in person, and instead was raised by his aunt. For most of his life, Kai didn't mind being an orphan— he couldn't miss what he never knew, after all. But as soon as Juliana set off the explosion that maimed Kai and ended his career as a guild leader, Kai started blaming her for all of his problems and began wishing he had his parents back instead of her. If only he had a father instead of being forced to live with his aunt! If only his father didn't die from The Inferno! To Kai, The Inferno represented the stealing away of the life he never had.

And there was a new theory going around among Avriya's higher-ups. Some believed that the Shrine Scorcher and the divine entity who created the Inferno all those years ago were one and the same. For a while, Juliana doubted the theory, because the boy who burnt the shrines looked much too young to have even existed back then, but now that he was confirmed to be immortal, it was quite possible he didn't age the same way humans did. There was another part of the theory that didn't match up as well— minus his invincibility, the Shrine Scorcher was actually pretty weak for a spirit, and he always used torches, other weapons, or simply his bare fists to fight. It seemed impossible he could inflict damage on a scale as large as the Inferno.

But there was one part of the theory which Juliana couldn't deny. The resemblance between the two entities was there— and it was uncanny.