The emerald-tinted blade pushed the slight silver-blue shimmer of her Aura away from Cali’s skin, white fuzz of her neck hairs igniting and burning away before the blade even touched her.

Cali trembled as a dark, red line slowly burned itself across her neck, as if she was getting a serious, near-instant tan in one spot.

I watched with a pitch of detached fascination as the dragonglass magic practically boiled her skin, ready to devour her life.

Cali closed her eyes, ready to be stabbed by me.

It would be easy to plunge the blade into her, to take her life, to turn her into another magic remote. Did Arcanicx even have crystalline hearts to turn into magic remotes? Were they even magical on the inside?

“Mrrrrw?” Stormy commented, opening a violet-silver eye as if asking me whether I was disobeying her direct order about keeping Cali alive.

I pulled the blade back, coming to my senses. Blue, barely visible threads extended from Cali’s Aura, caressing my face ever so slightly. I swung the dragonglass sword at them and they came apart, turned into fading dust.

“You heard what she said, right?” I whispered in English.

“Mweyarwr-mew,” Stormy replied.

“I don’t speak cat,” I hissed back.

“Mr-yawl-mauywa-urwr-errr,” Stormy swung left and right with her paw as if she was lecturing me.

“You want her alive, I get it,” I shot back in English. “The problem is, I don’t know why you want her alive and for how long. Were you not hissing at her earlier? Make up your mind already, you indecisive kitten!”

It was then that it dawned on me that Stormy, just like other cats, was indecisive because instead of simply existing in the now like a human, she was simply seeing some potential probabilities of the future, in which Cali’s actions were dangerous and also helpful to our survival. Metaphorically, Cali was a door that Stormy kept pawing against to be let out and then in again.

“What’s taking so long?” Cali opened an eye too.

“We’re discussing as to when we should kill you,” I replied as casually as I could.

"You're making a mistake,” Cali said. “I'm telling you, the moment the contracts decay enough..."

“They haven’t decayed yet,” I said. “Until such time that they do, you’re not Sorceress Callista… you’re an entirely different person, one that’s…”

"I don't understand you at all, Ioan!” Cali interrupted my words. “What kind of a Norstaii man are you? You have the power to reshape rivers, to shatter Star-Shards, and yet you won't eliminate a future threat, finish off a dangerous enemy that you’ve felled? What in Goldara’s name is wrong with you?” She demanded. “If you don’t stop me now I’ll attempt to turn you into my thrall in the future!”

“What’s wrong with me?” I barked a laugh and then fell silent.

“Yes!” Cali hissed, punctuating every word. “What. is. wrong. with. you?!”

“I’m not a Norstaii man,” I revealed, burning anger suddenly rising from my throat as I stared at the supermassive rings in the sky.

They looked like arrays of satellites, like rings of massive, long dead megastructures that had fallen into disrepair hundreds of millions of years ago. One of them surrounded what looked like a moon, the innards of which had been scooped out from within.

“Huh?” Cali blinked.

“That’s the problem,” I said. “I’ll never be a Norstaii man.”

I struck the dragonglass blade into one of the blackened runes surrounding her carriage, making Cali flinch as the rune next to her neck ignited for a second and then burst with silver-white flickers.

“I’m not from here,” I revealed, my voice as cold as the vastness of space above us, populated by what looked like torn up, half-pulverised Dyson spheres floating amidst violet stars. “The boy named Ioan Starfall wished for knowledge, made a pact with a spirit as he suffocated beneath this very river.” I pointed the Knell-blade at Glinka’s dark waters. “The spirit in question turned out to be a monkey’s paw of a wish–she gave Ioan knowledge, offered him an understanding… except this Understanding also took Ioan’s life, completely overwrote what he was.”

Cali swallowed.

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“I’m just something that lives in his head. A thing from beyond the stars of your miserable, fucked up planet,” I snarled, stabbing another rune with the Knell-blade and making it rain white sparks onto Cali’s twitching, white ears. The blue spider-legs, wriggling, long Charisma worms emerging from the silver-white tattoos on her chest were really starting to irritate me.

“W-where are you f-from then?” Cali trembled.

I pointed at the supermassive megastructure-world overhead.

“W-what?” Cali choked. “You can’t be from Endalaus! That’s not… not possible! You… you’re alive! The greatest minds of Iridium used their Starscopes to peer at the night sky and they found nothing alive up there, not a tree, nor a man, not even a fly!”

“I’m not alive either,” I shrugged. “I’m just memories, ideas, thoughts, concepts… things that cannot die. What I am really is a nameless, scientific understanding of reality that wears human flesh.”

“But you… how… you’re a what?” The questions tumbled out of her.

“You see that moon with half of its insides missing?” I asked her.

Cali glanced at the sky above us and nodded.

“There’s a letter on it, a bunch of letters the size of mountains, in fact,” I said. “Do you know what it says?”

“I… I didn’t know that those were words!” Cali shook her head.

“It’s words that I can read,” I answered her, squeezing the bone-handle of the Knell-blade, my fingers turning white.

Cali’s blue eyes darted between the supermassive world overhead and the blade in my hand.

“Here’s the thing, Callista Liesl, most noble, highborn Felix Arcanicx from Iridum,” I spat, skewering the blue worms reaching out for me with the dragonglass blade. “I don’t give a shit about you… Just like I sadly don’t give a shit about the people of Svalbard who died so that Ioan could live as a champion and slay the dragon. I also don’t give a shit about your effed up highborn Sorcery-run society and what it does.”

“So then…” Cali squeaked. “If you don’t care whether I live or not, why not just cut my throat and be done with it?!”

“Oh no,” I grinned dangerously. “Oh no, no no. I’m not going to kill you here and now. Such an option would be far too simple, far too easy of an out for you, Miss Liesl.”

“W-why?” Cali let out, ducking ever so slightly as I slashed another set of runes above her, sending sparks flying all over like distant stars, dead satellites caressing the endless sky-canvas above us.

“I just wanted to be left in peace so that I could study magic in my middle of nowhere, empty village. But what’s this? You people just won’t leave me alone,” I growled. “You just won’t leave me alone, trying to get into my head no matter how much you are bound!”

“I c-can’t help it!” Cali blinked tears at me. “I can’t stop my Aura from trying to invade your head! I want to know who you are! I want to know what you are so bad that I can’t control myself! Just tell me where you’re from… and end me!”

“I’m not from here, kitten,” I said. “And I’m not going to play by the rules of your effed up game. What I’m going to do is to understand everything and break every rule. What I'm going to do is study you as my subject on the matter of Sorcery, dissect every bit of you to figure out what makes you different from me and other Nordstaii men. The rules of this world, the division between men and women, the very fabric of magic itself–all of it can be understood according to the principles of science and reason living in my head.”

I paused, looking down at Cali's wide-eyed, trembling form. Her ears were flat against her head, and I could see the rapid rise and fall of her chest as she struggled to process my words.

"You see, Cali," I continued, my voice eerily calm, "I'm not interested in playing the hero or the villain. I'm not here to partake in idiotic politics or to conform to your world's expectations or limitations. I'm here to understand, to experiment, to push the boundaries of what's possible and to open every door.”

I gestured towards the sky with the Knell-blade, the dragonglass glinting in the ethereal light of the aurora and the distant, broken megastructures. "Up there, that's where I come from. A world so advanced it would seem like magic to you. And I'm going to bring that knowledge here, to reshape this world in ways you can't even begin to comprehend.."

“T-to reshape the world?” Cali blinked. “B-but how?”

"With knowledge," I said. "With understanding. With the scientific method."

Cali's brow furrowed in confusion. "Scientific... method?"

"A systematic approach to understanding the universe," I explained. "Observation, hypothesis, experimentation, analysis. Rinse and repeat until you've unravelled the mysteries of existence itself. Your world, Cali, is governed by rules you don't fully understand. Magic, cultivation, the very nature of reality itself - it's all just waiting to be decoded."

"Decoded?" Cali protested weakly. "Magic is… just like a muscle, just like moving the hand or a foot, projecting my Aura out to manipulate the world. It's not something to be understood, it's something to be wielded. Something that… wields us, makes us who we are!”

"That's where you're wrong. Everything can be understood and taken apart, given enough time and effort.”

“I…” Cali deflated. “I-Ioan? Can I still call you Ioan?”

I nodded.

“What does the shattered moon say? Is it the name of the Primordial Gods that shaped the stars and moved the worlds into place?” She asked, her entire body trembling. “Is that what you’ve used to sink me into the floor, the Word used to burn away all of the magic in my Sleigh, the Word that relocated the river?”

“Do you really want to know what it says?” I asked her, slipping the blade onto my belt and crossing my arms with a smug expression.

“P-please,” Cali nodded.

“Are you ready to learn the most terrible secret, the arcane words written by the hand of gods themselves on a moon?” I asked her, milking the moment. “The awful, terrible, primordial phrase that no Sorceress on Thornwild knows?”

Cali’s nodding became so vigorous that I thought her head would unscrew and roll away.

“Have a (G)ood Tomorrow,” I answered her with a wry smile.