“Victory! Harris Flash Step, a former Nizeium ranked adventurer, has declared defeat! With his defeat to the victor, the Respondit Mandatum is bestowed! Zero of the Flowing Blade!”
The memory played through my mind endlessly on repeat, the buzz from the moment like an intoxicating high.
That really happened.
I was standing there, resisting the urge of my knees to buckle, Rainsplitter all but ready to fall from my hands. I couldn’t keep fighting, could barely even bring myself to move, but I had to. While I was nearly completely depleted of mana, Rainsplitter was bursting with stolen energy that had been siphoned away from the titanic inferno that Harris had thrown my way. I wanted to fall over, but I had to persevere and present an unwavering image of strength.
My mind felt like tearing itself apart as I swung down Rainsplitter. The magical recoil from releasing so much power while wholly drained of my mana was nearly enough to send me unconscious. Still, I fought with every fiber of my being to hold tight. Still, even holding tight to the power, I faltered, releasing Rainsplitter. Any more than that, and there was a chance I would suffer permanent damage. The wave of light that had been released from Rainsplitter hadn’t reached Harris like I’d intended for it, so I instead played it off.
“Do you really want to keep going?” I called out; my tongue felt swollen for some reason.
Harris seemed to think for a moment until, with a final shake of his head, he raised his hands over his head.
“No. I think that’s enough.”
Four days. It had been four days since then.
And still, I hurt like hell.
Groaning, I attempted to sit upright, but a hand was instantly upon my shoulder, pushing me back down.
“No, you don’t.” Scyla was scowling at me, her arms folded across her chest in irritation. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I... I need to get up. It’s been four days already.”
“No.” Scyla was still scowling as my cat suddenly appeared upon her shoulder, having grown familiar with Scyla in the few days she’d taken it upon herself to stay at my place and look after me. “You need rest after the damage you suffered.”
“I’m fine,” I spoke through tightly gritted teeth.
“Physically, sure.” Scyla shook her head at me. “But magically speaking, you’re a mess. I may not have the same knowledge and magical abilities that you have, but I have spent enough time examining your mana signature over the last few days to see you came -” She held up two fingers all but touching in front of her face. “- that close to burning yourself out. I swear, any semi-talented mage learns at some point to dial back how much mana they’re throwing around at once.”
“But Harris-”
“Harris is a former Nizeium adventurer who naturally has stupid amounts of mana. Even with that said, I wouldn’t doubt he is nursing his own magically inflicted wounds as we speak. You, on the other hand, don’t have that same magical capacity. Look, Rook, do you trust me?”
I smiled weakly at her, shrugging. “It depends. Am I talking to Scyla or Ms. Eorial?”
She scowled at me before sighing as if I had a good point. “Scyla.”
“Then yes,” I answered.
“Then trust me.” She sat at the edge of the couch I’d dragged myself out to when she hadn’t been paying attention. “I’m not an idiot. And even if I were, it wouldn’t take a genius to recognize that your magic is different.”
“What do you mean?” I tried to hide my discomfort behind a faked smile, raising my hand as I did, “I use magic all the same as-”
“You don’t have to demonstrate.” Scyla gently pushed my hand back down with her own, still holding in after the fact. “I’m aware you can use regular magic. But you and I both know that’s not what I’m referring to. The way you move superhumanly fast-”
“That could be Inner magic.”
Scyla shot me a stink eye, so I quickly shut up.
“- or how you conjure a sword out of nowhere? A glowing sword that could siphon away some of the magic Harris threw at you? That same sword that could send that same energy back as a wave of light? Or how about this: you simply stopped his massive firestorms from ever reaching you. You didn’t block it, didn’t counter it. You simply sent them in another direction. No magic works like that.”
I was silent, unsure what to say.
“Rook, listen to me. You can trust me.”
She gave my hand a gentle, comforting squeeze as if for added effect.
Where do I even start?
I’d only told one person any of the details revolving around my being a Sage or how it had all started, and that had been my mother.
This is like saying I trust her the same as I do my own mother.
I grappled with the feelings tossing around inside me before finally relenting with a sigh.
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve been camping out here with you for four days now. I’ve got time.”
“What about all your familial obligations?”
“I had a convincing excuse prepared.” She waved the comment off with a smirk.
“Fine.” I sighed again. “So, you remember the first time you met me?”
“How could I not?” She laughed.
“Well, you’re probably curious why I was with my master.”
“The third star of Nochesuki is not known for being a guiding voice or a philanthropist, so yes, that was a matter of intrigue.”
“It’s because of this.” Propping myself upright, I raised my arm to be visible.
“Because of…. Your arm?”
“Well, not quite.” With only the tiniest specks of effort, I sent mana through the divine cloth wrapped around my arm, the fabric vanishing as if it had never been there in the first place.
“Huh?” Scyla leaned in, staring at my arms and the five golden bands that appeared like they were inked into my flesh. “What are those?”
“Have… have you ever heard of a sage before?”
“A sage? You don’t mean a mage?”
“No, I meant what I said.”
Scyla frowned for a moment, chewing on her lip before shrugging.
“It’s one of those things where now that you say it, part of me feels like perhaps I’ve seen it written somewhere once or twice before, but I can’t say that I actually remember anything past the inkling feeling that I might have once.”
“Well, given your family and how they like to be involved in knowing things they shouldn’t, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were maybe some in your family who’d had some sort of forbidden text about the sages.”
“So, what is a sage, then?”
“Sages were, are-” I corrected myself. With five Sage rings, there was no getting around the fact that I was a Sage through and through. Plus, there remained the fact that somewhere out there in the world at wide, the Sage Above All was still lurking, somewhere. “- magic users of incredible strength. At the height of their power, they predated Haerasong as we currently understand it. The most powerful amongst the Sages were known as ‘Ten Ringers’ or Great Sages.”
Scyla glanced at my arm again, no doubt counting them before raising her hand.
“Five?”
“Yes, I only have five,” I confirmed. “But you’re getting ahead of me.”
“So you’re a Sage?”
“As I said, getting ahead of me.” I reminded her.
“Sorry.”
“It’s whatever.” I waved the interruption off as little concern. “The point is, the Sages were active several thousand years ago, and how long they had existed for, I don’t know. Their existence and history are considered a closely guarded secret.”
“No kidding.” Scyla agreed. “I won’t pretend that I know everything that happens within these lands, nor does even my family, but the fact that something like that I’ve basically never heard of….”
“Yes, well, going back to my story. When we first met, I traveled with my master because he took me under his wing. After all, I have a connection with the Sages.”
“You do?”
“Sort of. It’s… complicated.” I brushed a strand of hair away from my eye as I spoke.
When was the last time I got my hair trimmed?
“Some three thousand years ago, there was a Sage known as the Sage Above All.”
“Bit of a pretentious name,” Scyla said.
“Tell me about it. Anyway, this Sage Above All had an apprentice. For whatever reason, the Sages were being hunted down; I don’t know the specifics. All I know is that the Sages weren’t exactly a group of righteous individuals; they did what they wanted, so I don’t doubt they brewed up quite a bit of animosity toward themselves. Point is, with nowhere to escape to, the Sage Above All and her apprentice escaped to the one place they could.”
“That being?”
“The future,” I answered plainly. “If you ask me, I think the Sage Above All probably could have escaped had she wanted to, if she even needed to, but it made for a perfect excuse to test her theory.”
“You speak as if you know her. Also, what do you mean by ‘escape to the future’? What does that even mean?”
“Exactly what I said.” I laughed darkly. “The Sage Above All had discovered, created, I don’t know the details, a spell that would allow her and her apprentice to reincarnate far into the future.”
“Wait, they time traveled?”
“I would say it was more of a stasis or time-capsule effect rather than time travel, but again, not like I understand the details. The point is that they could reincarnate into the far-flung future with this magic.”
“And that far-flung future was…?”
“Roughly eight years ago.” I was reminded of the day with horrid vividness, my village burning as people I’d known my entire life were killed before my eyes. “The spell, though, was not exactly perfect. First, some sort of quasi-magical tremors were detected, the impact of her rebirth like the ripples on an ocean as a leviathan emerges from the depths. So, an anti-Sage squad was sent to deal with it.”
“And?”
“They burned my village.” I scowled. “Killed people I’d known most of my life, and when they couldn’t find the Sage, they kidnapped my mother. Or they tried to.”
“Tried to?”
“Turns out, the Sage did reincarnate, but the vessel she reincarnated through had to suffer a severe shock before she could be fully reborn. In this case, the vessel was a girl from my village, around my age. When the leader of the anti-Sage squad attacked us, he snapped her neck.”
For whatever reason, as I recalled the memory, the girl in question was like a black mist, my brain unable to recollect who she was, yet when I thought of her in terms of the Sage Above All, I could remember what she looked like just as I would any other person.
Strange. I wonder if that’s some effect of the rebirth magic?
“With her neck snapped -” After a moment of curiosity toward the details of the reincarnation spell, I resumed my story. “- The Sage Above All was fully reborn. The Sage Hunter who had left with my mother, teleporting away-”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Wait, teleporting? How strong was this Sage Hunter?”
I glanced upward, thinking about it. I had my mother’s statement from years ago, but then I’d also been nothing but a teenager who knew not of the world at the time. My mother had only been around the level of a gold-ranked mage then.
But.
But, even with the reflection that perhaps my mother may not have been able to accurately gauge just how strong the Sage Hunter was, there was still no doubt in my mind that the man was amongst the strongest I’d ever met.
“Let me put it like this,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “Even if Harris and I were to work together, he would likely have done away with us while barely breaking a sweat.”
“I can see why if he could freely utilize teleportation magic.”
“Yeah. I’m fairly certain he was also some bastardization of a Sage.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Word magic,” I said as if it were the most obvious explanation.
“Word magic?”
“Yeah.” I nodded toward my arm, and the five golden rings magically inked upon my arm. “A sage, when they finalize a ring, gain access to something known as ‘word’ magic. They’re a little difficult to explain. Think of them like your ship.”
“My ship?”
“Yeah. In theory, the result of the magic operating your ship is simple, it automatically sails itself. In practice, it’s a complicated set of hundreds of spells interlinked and interacting with one another, like a magical equation.”
“So, how is that like whatever this word magic is?”
“Each ring can be vested with a spell of your own devising, a specially organized and constructed magical sequence of actions. As a fifth-ring Sage, I have five. Flow, Null, Rainsplitter, Crawl, and Bend.”
“What do they do?”
“Do you want the long explanation or their easy explanation?”
“Give me the quick and dirty.”
“Right. Flow is how I can achieve superhuman speed and strength; it magically supercharges my body. Null takes the inner state of my body, a state of constant magic rejection, and extends it outwardly, nullifying magic and mana around me. Rainsplitter is the sword you’ve seen. It has two levels, an ordinary sword with minor magical properties such as minor magical nullification and absorption and the energized state you saw during my fight with Harris. The active state requires more mana than I can currently supply it. I could only use it the way I did because Harris supplied me with enough mana to utilize it fully with his final flame attack. Crawl was meant to be a way of slowing my perception of time, thereby giving me more time to analyze a situation. Unfortunately, that’s where I learned to thoroughly plan out how a spell works before vesting it within one of my rings. While it does slow my perception of time, it also slows all my mental processing. What does it matter if my sense of time is half the speed if I can only think at half the speed?”
Scyla nodded, pointing a finger at me as she did. “That does seem stupid.”
“Hey, don’t rub it in.” I snorted before glancing at my most recent addition to my Sage rings. “Finally, there is Bend. Bend I only achieved a day before the fight, so I hadn’t had the time to practice it much. Bend is my answer to the problem I have with Null, in that by using Null to protect myself from the spells of any opponent I may be facing-”
“It also has the effect of nullifying your own magic?”
I snapped a finger, smiling as I did. “Bingo.”
“So bend, what? Bends spells away from yourself?”
“Not exactly.” I drummed my fingers along the coach, still thinking about what had gone into devising the required components of the individual sub-processes that made bend work. “It doesn’t bend spells. It bends space.”
“Huh?” Scyla stared at me like I’d just spoken gibberish.
“Bend was, is, my first foray into word magic that combine extensive spell effect amalgamations to create a spell that ordinarily would take days or weeks’ worth of effort to construct. To bend space ordinarily would take ridiculous amounts of mana that only Ornnax-level mages could likely achieve with much success. But for months now, I’ve been mentally mapping and planning out the exact sequence of magical effects that would create the desired effect without requiring so much mana that I couldn’t ever use it. It still takes a lot of mana, I can only use it a handful of times alongside the rest of my magic before I’m completely out of mana, but if I’m not trying to use the energized state of Rainsplitter as well, it’s enough times that it’s still quite the valuable magic.”
“Still, you’re bending space!”
“Scyla, everything bends space. Mass, matter, energy. We all take up space; in doing so, we bend space constantly. Sure, the effect may effectively be nothing, but the fact remains that bending space itself isn’t some impossible thing.”
“Fine, I’ll buy it.” Scyla scratched behind my cat’s ear, still balancing on her shoulder perfectly. “But there is still a lot you haven’t explained.”
“I did say it was a long story, didn’t I?”
“Fair.”
I waited a moment to see if Scyla had anything else to add, but I took my cue to continue when she remained silent.
“Anyway, the Sage Hunter used magic that I’m fairly certain was Word magic. He was so powerful that he could have easily thrashed even the likes of Harris and me. Well, the Sage Above All, she killed him even more easily than that. Literally burnt him from the inside out.”
“Using magic within another person should be impossible, the existence of our spirits, souls, whatever you want to call them, blocks outside interference.”
“That’s only between those of similar levels of magical strength.”
“But even Ornnax caliber mages can’t use magic inside of another person without them allowing it, even against non-mages!”
“And there is what makes Sages so terrifying,” I said with a knowing smile, the memory of the burning man playing through my mind like a warning fire. “For most mages, their strength follows a linear path. The refinement of a mana core is a progressive, continuous effort. Depending on the inborn talent, a mage can quickly grow in strength until they reach their genetically predisposed ceiling of magical strength. Some never reach that ceiling, and very few manage to break through that ceiling with external resources. The point is, as far as we’ve seen throughout history, the height of a mage’s strength is what we’ve roughly seen from Ornnax mages. But with Sages, their path does not follow a progressive linear course but a jagged exponential staircase until they reach the heights of a Great Sage, in which case their strength generally tapers off. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be the pinnacle, would it?”
“So you’re saying….”
“Let me put it like this.” I nodded toward my arm. “The difference between how much mana I had access to, from a zero ring to a first ring, was about enough for about five or so spells. By my second ring, it was a little over double. By my third? Roughly ten or so times. Mind you, I also got more efficient with my mana usage, but you can begin to understand what I’m getting at.”
“And as a fifth ring?”
“Well, at only four rings, I would have only been able to use Bend once or twice. As a fifth ring, I could use it several times alongside the rest of my magic and conjuring Rainsplitter. Once I achieve my sixth ring, I’ll finally be able to use the full potential of an energized Rainsplitter without first borrowing power from elsewhere.”
Scyla was silent as she let the ramifications of what I said process.
“Earlier, I mentioned the Sage Above All, the Sage that reincarnated, who killed the Sage Hunter that took my mother. Now, she only did that because I’m the reincarnated vessel for her apprentice.”
Scyla looked up sharply, staring at me with an unwaveringly intense gaze.
“Before you think I’ve been hiding my identity, I’ll put it to rest and say that, no, I am me. While the Sage Above All’s reincarnation magic worked properly for her, it did not work as well for her apprentice. From what I’ve gathered, his spirit was wiped clean. I was just like any other child growing up. I wasn’t secretly some forty-year-old man in the body of a five-year-old. The Sage Above All’s apprentice wasn’t much older than me either.”
“How do you know that?”
“A memory.”
“I thought you said you don’t have any of their memories.”
“I don’t. Sometimes some of their innate understandings come through our shared spirit, but that isn’t much more than ordinary intuition. No, the memory I do have doesn’t come from me. That leviathan we saw, remember?”
“How could I forget?”
“It knew the Sage Above All and her apprentice. In fact, her apprentice saved her life. I think that’s why she emerged for us. When I touched it, it shared a memory with me.”
“This is a lot to take in.” Scyla sighed, leaning back with a heavy breath. “But you promise that you’re.. really you?”
“Promise on my life and my mother’s,” I answered instantly.
“Alright. So, how again does your master play into this?”
“Oh, that? At the time, he was in the area, one of the few who sensed the imminent rebirth of the Sage Above All. He was spying on us and learned about me in the process. He took enough interest in me, or rather, in my connections with the sages of the past, that he decided to take me under his wing. When the subjugation squad was sent after us in Theronhold, it was for him, not me. Had they known I was some sort of Sage-in-training, they might have sent another Sage Hunter. If they even had another.”
“I very much doubt that,” Scyla said with a shake. “If this ‘Sage Hunter’ was as powerful as you say, well, I think that begins to put some things together.”
“It does?”
“Think about it. The kingdom of Haerasong, since its conception, has been staunchly anti-magic. Yet, within the last few years, they’ve suddenly softened their stance. Doesn’t that come across as… odd?”
“I guess I just didn’t think about it?”
“Well, if I had to warrant a guess, this ‘Sage Hunter’ was likely the secret strongarm of the kingdom, a carefully cultivated enforcer, strong enough that even you, someone capable of besting a Nizeium-ranked adventurer, are certain that even with the aid of another similar strength partner would still be defeated with ease.”
“Wait,” I frowned as I followed her train of thought. “So, you’re implying that the Sage Above All, by chance, killed the single strongest enforcer the kingdom could call upon just because she was showing off.”
“I didn’t say anything about showing off,”
“Hah, well, it does make sense then. Even without trying, the Sage Above All upset the kingdom’s balance. Do you think my master knew?”
“Maybe not right away, no. I would warrant the existence of the Sage Hunter was one of, if not the most closely guarded secret of the kingdom, their ace in the hole. It probably took some time for the ramifications and understanding of that day’s events to make the needed rounds.”
“Which would also explain why Nochesuki has apparently been more active over the last few years; they’ve been emboldened,” I added.
“Mhmm. When powerful and important figureheads within rival factions stopped disappearing or being offed, even those who weren’t actively hostile to the crown likely realized that something had changed.”
“Hmmm.” I paused, something tickling my thoughts.
“What? Is something wrong?”
“No, not really.” I shook my head. “More just… something I didn’t have the context for at the time beginning to make more sense now.”
“That being?”
“Dion Heavenward.”
“The master of the Adventurer’s Guild? What about him?”
“When he ex-communicated me from the guild, he discussed with me the necessity of the Dungeon being maintained by a neutral party and of the general stability of the land. I’m beginning to think that there was a secondary implication.”
“That would make sense coming from him.”
“You know him well?”
“Personally?” Scyla shook her head in denial. “No, but my family is well-versed in his history. The man is as cunning and conniving as they come. He can’t be bought, can’t be bullied. He is all but an impenetrable fortress, stalwart. In fact, his only theorized weak point was his daughter.”
“You knew of that?”
Scyla shot me a look that made it abundantly clear what she felt about me being surprised she knew something that wasn’t considered public knowledge.
“Sorry.”
“Point is, the only real point of potential weakness that could be identified in the man was his adopted daughter Iris, but given how powerful she was in her own rights-”
“It didn’t matter.”
“No, it didn’t, nor did it ever matter, considering she was killed.”
“Well, it was her or me,” I said with a shrug.
“I’m not faulting you for that.” Scyla snorted, giving my hand a gentle squeeze again. “Honestly, it’s just hard to take in everything you said. Godlike mages being reborn, the fact that you’re technically one of them, the ramifications of what happened, it’s just… a lot.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, I’m not as powerful as you may fear. Because of the magic that led to me being well-” I gestured vaguely at myself. “-as a result, I don’t have a mana core.”
“Wait, really?” Stared at me as if I was some impossibility, wholly taken off-guard.
“Why is it that of everything I’ve said, that’s what seems to surprise you the most?”
“Well… everything else was fantastical, but I can sort of process it. Being told you don’t have a mana core, next, you’ll say you were born without a heart. I mean, isn’t the mana core basically the heart of a mage?”
“Yeah, for most. But it was my former master who proposed the theory that by becoming a Sage and developing Sage rings, I would be capable of storing mana inside them, given they were mana constructs themselves.”
“Still seems strange.” Scyla poked my chest as if testing whether I was made of flesh and blood. “Do they feel like anything?”
“Does what feel like anything?”
“Your rings.” She pointed at the golden bands on my arm.
“Physically? Not any more than a regular tattoo. Magically? It’s like I have concentrated mana weighing on my arm. If it weren’t for the gradual creation process, I suppose they might have made me feel off balance.”
Scyla snorted. It wasn’t long until her snort turned into full-on belly-shaking laughter, a cacophony of noise that my cat appeared to grow annoyed by, leaping away. As if only making the fit worse, Scyla laughed even harder.
“What? What’s so funny?”
“You.” She finally managed to get out in between gulps of air. “You’re just… absurd. Absolutely absurd.”
I was about to come up with some witty response, but it was silenced as the next moment, Scyla leaned in, planting her lips upon my own.
Huh?
For a moment, I wasn’t sure which way was up or down or what I’d just been thinking about.
The kiss lasted another two seconds before Scyla pulled away.
“Uh, sorry.” She wiped her lips for a moment. “I shouldn’t have just done that; it just felt like the right time.”
“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, still processing what had happened.
What was that?
It wasn’t like it was the first time I’d ever kissed a woman. In fact, I’d done more than that with Maeya, yet that had been nothing more than a labor to get through. There had been no emotions, no connections, nothing. It was just something I had to do if I wanted to keep my working relationship with her.
What Scyla had just done… was only the same by technical definition. My brain felt as if it were swimming around in a hazy fog, strangely disconnected.
“Rook? Earth to Rook?”
“Wha? Oh.” I stared at Scyla, her expression oddly worried. “Is something wrong?”
“I should be asking you that.” She bit her lip, glancing at me up and down. “You sort of froze up. I was afraid I’d triggered another one of your episodes.”
“N-no.” I shook my head, recalling how the first few times Scyla had attempted to touch me how my body had seemed to involuntarily revolt against the idea of physical touch. “I’ve just.. never really felt that before.”
“What, a kiss?” Scyla’s demeanor changed, a playful teasing expression on her face.
“No.” I glanced to the side, suddenly unable to hold her gaze. “A kiss that meant something.”
“Oh.” Scyla dropped the playful smile as she instantly understood the implicated meaning of what I’d just said. “I’m so sorry, Rook.”
“Don’t be.” I leaned back. “I… I think I liked it. But, uh, this may sound strange, but could we, uh, try that again?”
Scyla smirked at me before shrugging.
“Well, if you insist.”
She leaned forward, and as she did, I was suddenly intensely aware of the scent clinging to her.
Jasmine, I think?
Lips only a finger length from my own, the fragile moment was suddenly shattered as a loud knock resonated from my door.
“Figures.” Scyla huffed, her breath gently puffing against my face as she pulled away.
“Yes?” I called out loud enough that whoever knocked would know I was there.
“Mr. Koor?”
“Yes, who else would it be?” I raised my eyebrows at Scyla, who looked as perplexed as I did.
“I was instructed to ensure you were alone before I spoke further.”
I once more shared a look with Scyla, who silently zipped her lips.
“Yes, I’m alone,” I spoke up.
“Alright.” There was a moment of silence from the other side of the door, almost as if the messenger were taking a moment to ensure there were not overly attentive ears nearby. “You have a, uh, guest here wishing to see you.”
“A guest?” I frowned, unsure of who that could possibly be without any sort of prior notice. “Why didn’t you send a message through regular means then?”
“Because, strictly speaking, they made it clear that they were never here.”
I frowned once more, Scyla also looking confused.
“Okay then, out with it. Who is here to see me?”
Once more, there was a pause. The messenger, I was sure, was making doubly certain he was alone.
“Strictly speaking, I’m not supposed to disclose-”
“Speak, or I will ignore their summons.”
“Dion Heavenward has requested your audience in our… ‘exclusive’ meeting room.”
Speak of the devil.
“And, uh, I was told to deliver a message as well if you seemed unwilling to meet with him.” The messenger added.
“Being?”
“He says your sister sends her regards.”
Ice swept through my veins, and my heart felt like it had stopped beating.
No. No, he wouldn’t.
Scyla looked at me, entirely lost as to what was happening, but I shook my head, mouthing three words at her.
“I’ll explain later.”
The ache permeating my body was gone, a steel resolve replacing it at the mention of my adopted sister, Rosalina, who I hadn’t seen since I’d been banned from returning to Dunehold.
If he has laid even a single finger on her, I swear I will tear him apart limb from limb.
Looking back only once to ensure Scyla was hidden in my room, I pulled open the front door, revealing a nervous-looking messenger.
“Lead the way,” I announced, refusing to share any more conversation when my sister’s fate remained unknown.
Oh, Pips, please be okay.