Chapter 01: A faithful encounter

-"The world as we know it now is divided into three realms, and ruled by three different kinds of beings: the Zion, ruled by the risen, also known as the teleios, the interim, ruled by the humans, and the nether, ruled by the fallens, also known as the Emortuuses. The Teleios and the Emortuuses are enemies by nature and share a common interest in the human realm, for the one could not invade the other directly from their own realms, but they could interact in the interim plains. They attacked the humans countless times in order to take over their land, but due to the lack of enough gates to cross over to another realm, the humans outnumbered the enemies and could keep their claims on their land, the attackers didn't attack the humans because of animosity, it was simply necessary for them to conquer this plain in order to declare an all out war on each other. But due to the persistent nature of the humans, the attacks kept growing in numbers and now, the humans had two different enemies to defend their world against. The humans grew helpless with each attack, so they sought the help of dark arts, and the ancient Mages were born. After years and years of blood raged war with among the three nations, 7 years ago, in the year of 2023 both the Teleios and the Emortuuses decided to put a halt on the all out war and instead, they tried to create artificial beings called as the nuntius whom can cross through all the three plains without any difficulties whatsoever. To conduct this experiment, they needed a neutral vessel with a free will, which they collected from the interim plains, in other words, a human. The whole experiment was ment to be kept a secret, but as both the sides were looking for suitable vessels, the sudden rate of humans going missing increased at a suspicious rate and the information regarding the experiment got leaked, which lead to the plain wars a year after, in 2024. The plain wars is considered the biggest and the most gruesome battle among the three nations in the history of the realms. All the three sides recieved huge losses, most of the leaders of the Nether and the interim lost their lives and one of the Teleios leaders were caught by the humans who was later assassinated by his own nation. To prevent the same thing from happening again the humans took their finest warriors and formed the 12 knights, ( some say it was 13 including their leader, but there is no such evidence that proves this theory to be correct). Afterwards, the human realm was divided into 3 different regions and they each selected their knights to protect their boundaries. It was the foundation of the Sirius facility, the protectors of the nation.

No one knows what happened to the experiment afterwards, but the rumours are the experiment wasn't a complete failure, there were indeed survivors of the experiment and any of the 5 academies hold the results in their hands, which they intend to keep a secret."

"Secret, huh? But those actually seem like baseless rumours to me....this book is spot on about the other information though. It's a good find." Yami thought while reading the book he bought from a bookstore for used books as he walked silently behind his other two companions. It's getting a bit chilly as the night grew darker. It had been a busy day for all of them.

- "Oi, Nine. Treat us to some cheese steak tonight, will ya?"

-"Hm? Get yourself your own."

The conversation is being held between two of the three teens walking down the road, Mirai and Nine. 

"No fair. It was your turn remember?" Mirai kept insisting while making a pouty face.

"Yeah, but we agreed to eat out only if we got anything worth showing to the academy. At this rate, there won't be any of us left to enjoy a treat."

At first glance they look like ordinary high school students, but anyone who notices the logo of two raven wings on their backpack straps will immediately recognise them as students from the prestigious Nightfall Academy, one of the leading academic institutions in the whole city, and well known for their contribution to the research on "Emortuus" project. At that moment, Nine, Mirai and Yami, three second year students from the academy were walking their way to the dorms after a pretty tiring day of regular extraction assignments.

-"Huh.... Lisa Sensei can be scary as hell from time to time. Specially if she doesn't get her assignments right. I wonder....how many days left again?"

-"4 days till the next semester classes classes start. No, make that 3, since today is already over and there ain't much hope to get anything done tonight."

-" Aren't you going to say anything about it?" She points at Yami who was silently reading a pocket sized book while walking behind the other two.

-"Hm? Might get a bit busy tonight, not much left to do on the assignment, so I might as well try to collect the last few shards I need by tonight."

Nine frowns - "Hold on, you're not actually telling us that you're done with the assignment already, are you? I mean, seriously? I think we agreed to do this one as a group."

"I told you already, I'm not completely done yet. I still need to coll-" Yami couldn't finish his words.

An explosion. Judging from the sound and the vibration force the source can't be far. It's Somewhere near.

"Mirai?" Nine asked her with a meaningful glance.

"On it.....yeah. Get ready, the night's about to get busy".

"Lead the way, and hurry. There may be bystanders in danger, and also, this might be our chance to gather some more shards before semester starts."

Mirai is a class 5 enchantress with a fire attribute. She is currently the 3rd of the 12 next generation knight nominees, and the best pyro kinetic of the country, if not the whole world. She possesses a very unique pyro kinetic ability which allows her to creat and manipulate blue flames, which is considered to be the apex of pyro kinesis. She is also extremely skilled at enhancement spells, tracing spells and close combat. Also, her pyro kinesis allows her to trace unusual heat signatures, that's how she traces the Emortuuses, also known as the "Emories". 

"Take the next left turn and keep running, we should reach it in about 3 minutes.

It's a narrow alleyway with dense buildings and construction sites, which could only mean that the incident had taken place inside of a building.

" Don't tell me that the gate has formed inside a residential building. It's going to be a lot harder to form a barrier while evacuating." Mirai coughed a little, and continued: "I don't really think so. I can see the place, and looks like it may be a construction site."  

They rushed to the destination, and after reaching the suspected area, they realised something was odd.

A dimensional barrier has been put up here to temporarily cut off any communication from the outside world. And this is a high level skill, not something any sirius under level 3 can cast, and certainly not without the authority of a certified Hunters guild or an academy. Which could mean only one thing.

"Someone else reached here before we could. Is it someone from Nightfall? Or did any of the other academies got there hands on the intel of an Emory being discovered at this place? But that doesn't seem believable either, since it's only been a few minutes since the explosion occurred, we should be the only ones here right now," Yami was storming his brain for explanation, "there COULD be two possibilities, either the explosion was man made, or an accident, which is unlikely, because that doesn't explain the barrier put up outside, and Mirai already confirmed Emory heat signatures too, SO, that leaves us with the conclusion.....some other Sirius such as ourselves were passing by right at the moment....in which case we probably should hurry up and help." 

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"Can you confirm how many are there?" Nine asked Mirai as she finished scanning and securing heat signatures of the barred area, "I'm sensing three, two confirmed Emortuuses, one hum--"

She suddenly stopped and then started running upstairs--"there is someone up there probably in critical condition, their body heat is abnormally low which means they probably took a heavy hit. Hurry up we need to take them to safety and--" she suddenly stopped and looked at Yami with a blank face.

Yami's breathing stopped for a moment while he asked Mirai "Is the human still alive?"

"The Emories, I can't sense them anymore. They....just disappeared. I'm unsure if the Sirius took them down...."

"Both of them? At the same time?" Disbelief can clearly be seen on Nine's face. 

"Well, I've certainly never heard of Emories reopening a gate to go back", Yami replied with a serious tone in his voice - "and it shouldn't be too big of a deal to take care of two Emories IF it is a class 4 or above Sirius.

They slowly approached the third floor.

The whole floor looks like a complete warzone, almost none of the furniture are recognisable anymore, the partition of the dining room on the left is completely broken, the dining room has been wiped out, and a boy is sitting in a corner of the room, his back leaning against the wall. His whole body looks like a mess, blood is almost gushing out of his left arm and stomach, and every other body parts are cut and bruised, he is sitting in a pool of his own blood, heads down. The boy doesn't look alive. But due to her ability to read heat signatures Mirai knew that the boy still had somewhat life left in him, although he was in a critical condition and could die any moment now.

"H-He's still alive", Mirais voice trembled as she was shocked to see this scenery.

For a Sirius battle scenes are considered regularities, and this kind of casualties are expected. Specially for a 5th class such as herself, this is like an everyday thing. Still, what Mirai, Yami and Nine saw wasn't something someone could become used to. It was much too gruesome for the three of them.

"Is he actually a Sirius? Are you sure he isn't just a normal person who got caught up in this?" Nine looked extremely worried as he took out a piece of chalk from his bag.

"He must be a Sirius, or he couldn't have pulled off a barrier spell of that calibur, nor could he have taken down the Emories by himself. But judging from the damage that he took he's probably a 3rd class mage. It is a miracle that he's even alive after taking down two of them by himself. But right now we don't have the time to talk about it", Yami replied as he rushed towards the injured.

"Get the guy, be careful with him, we can't afford any casualties", Yami immediately started chanting a healing spell on the boy, " This isn't good, he might die from shock if not due to blood loss so I'll cast a sanitatem spell on him. Nine, open a portal, we're taking him to the academy right now. Hurry up. And Mirai, manipulate his body heat, don't let it drop."

-"On it".

-"I'm alright, I...I'm fine. It's just over exhaustion, it's...it's been a long day, so..."

Everyone froze for a moment. To their utmost shock, the boy seem to have regained consciousness, and he is trying to get up as he casually starts talking like nothing happened. He seems a bit embarrassed, almost as if he feels stupid to get injured Infront of them.

"Excuse me....?" Nine muttered under his breath.

Mirai and Yami look confused, they aren't really sure how to response to this situation-"I mean, I can heal someone who's injured, and take the critical ones to the academy if need be, but this? What am I supposed to do here?"- Yami thought to himself.

Mirai was the first one to break the silence.

-"You look heavily injured and your body temperature is extremely low. We are going to need you to cooperate with us for the time being as we treat your wounds, so please lie down in order to prevent further blood loss. Don't worry, we're authorised Sirius from the Nightfall Academy, we're only here to help." Mirai says to the boy while she tries her best to keep calm.

"It won't be necessary, I'm not as badly injured as I seem to be. You guys are from Nightfall?" Although he looks like he's about to fall over and his voice seems to be broken, the boy seemed a bit interested in this information.

Yami seems to have gotten the hang of the situation by now. He asks the boy, 

"Are you certain you are okay? You look like you're about to pass out. I mean you seem to have lost a lot of blood, and if you don't have a healing omamori we'll be glad to help, all three of us are expert healers and her ability is specialised in mana healing and treating internal injuries"- he points at Mirai.

"Yup. Never been better. I'm a manipulator, so don't worry about all the blood. I just need to"- he tries to get up with the support of what seems to be a broken piece of some kind of a furniture, a chair perhaps- "rest for the night, it's... it's really been a rather exhausting day..."

Yami reached out his hand to the boy to help him to get up - "I'm Yami, Yami Kusakabe." The boy grabs hold of his hand and gets up - "Cyrus." 

"Not from around here, are you?"

"A class three blood manipulator, huh? That's something you don't see everyday" - nine looked impressed.

" Class three....blood manipulator, huh?" Cyrus mumbled to himself, then looked at Nine- "is it that rare now?"

"Are you guys going to go back to the dorms?" Cyrus casually asked with somewhat of a strange smile on his face, it can be called somewhat friendly, but not as much pleasing.

"Well, yeah. We were just heading back and this happened in the way" Yami said, with a skeptical look on his face. He seems to be a bit confused for some reason.

Nine asked Cyrus- "if you're heading the same way we can give you a shortcut"- he points towards the portal- "I mean I already opened the gate, so we can just drop you off at your place and walk the rest of the way. We were planning to grab dinner on our way anyways so it won't be any problem not going straight to the academy". 

"No I've got my end covered, you don't need to worry about that. Thanks for offering though" Cyrus looks like he's about to fall asleep right here as he stumbles and regains balance the next moment - "Nightfall, huh...."- he mutters while walking towards the broken window instead of the door - " I guess we'll be seeing each other again."

Then, suddenly he just casually jumps out of the window without saying anything else. Yami and Mirai rushes there only to find no trace of Cyrus outside. 

"Another portal?" Mirai looked confused as she asked Yami.

"Probably. But casting spatial spell while falling from a building with those injuries isn't something just anyone can pull off. There's a lot of thing about that guy stroke me as very peculiar"- Yami said in a semi-serious tone. "Well, if he can do that maybe he was alright after all."

"No", Mirai replied with a stone hard face - "I don't know what the Emories did to that guy, but he was really, seriously injured. When I tried to scale his soul it reflected back the heat signs for some reason, so I'm not really sure what kind of internal injuries he had, but I'm certain"- she declared-" with our basic healing expertise we couldn't have helped him, not even me. It's probably good that he went out on his own, it's better if he goes to see a professional medicus, but that's not the question. How did he manage to pull off a barrier spell and a spatial spell in that condition?"

Everyone went silent, and after about one breath stopping minute Nine became impatient and asked Yami,-"You had the chance to question the guy about the Emories that were here, or what happened to them. Why didn't you interrogate him?" 

  - "Well, judging from his reaction after hearing that we were from Nightfall I assumed that he was also an authorized Sirius, not just some stray private. And if that's the case, interrogating wouldn't have done us any good. He wouldn't have spilled a thing. And do you see any shards lying around? He collected those shards and took them with him, which further proves my point. Anyways, what we can do right now is investigate the area, find anything valuable as information or as Emory samples."

  - "Not really sure what good that would do us you know, since the place is trashed. God damn, I didn't know two Emories and one class 3 could be capable of this kind of destruction, and a blood manipulator at that. Aren't they known for their neat and clean work methods? Was that guy fighting two gate keepers at the same time?"- Nine seemed a bit irritated.

  - "Yeah you wish. I confirmed the Emory heat signatures, and besides, fighting two gatekeepers would take a lot more than just one apartment or this building ya know, and with level 3 skills you won't even last 2 minutes. I mean, can you take on "one" gatekeeper? You're a 4th class spirit knight aren't you?"

  - "Hey now, don't underestimate a worshipper of Duma. But all jokes aside,"- he looks at Yami with a curious look-"I don't think there's anything we can do here, I propose we head back to the academy and let the teach know what happened here tonight, what do you guys say?"

  After a few seconds of silence Yami replied -"Mm, yeah I guess that's that for the night. let's head back."

  - " I guess no cheese Steak tonight"- nine says with a mischievous smile.

  Mirai grits her teeth, but says nothing.

"How did I end up Infront of the Ruler this time? This wasn't the part of the plan."- Cyrus thought as he opened his apartment door and limped inside towards the bathroom.

As he entered the bathroom he dropped on the floor and stretched his hand to turn on the shower with the clothes still on him. Blood started washing away from his clothes and body. Steam started to form slowly as ice cold water hit his body.

Although Cyrus made it look like he was alright, he is actually in pretty bad shape. After getting soaked in the cold shower for about an hour he suddenly snapped back to reality.

"I seemed to have lost consciousness again."

 He got up slowly trying to scrape up whatever small amount of energy left in the tattered body of his and stood Infront of the mirror as he started talking off his clothes to check on his wounds.

"These aren't something I can heal with my abilities. It would be better to just lay low and rest for the next few days while I heal up a bit. I'm guessing I'll be late for college too. What a drag, I'm not cut out for this kind of things. That's why I chose to take the special course in the first place"- Cyrus sighs.

 - "I'm still not strong enough."