I simply stared into Sylvia’s gemborn sapphire blue eyes for a moment, doing my best to hide my unease. I may have a maxed-out Acting Talent, but I couldn’t be sure I was able to fool her.

Sylvia had always been more perceptive than most gave her credit for.

“What did you want to know?” I finally asked quietly.

To my surprise, Sylvia began to fidget in place slightly, toying with the pommel of her sword. Her eyes cut away from me. “I…am given to understand that you are my father’s apprentice,” She said slowly. “And that you were instrumental in freeing him, and have been since that time. Not only that, but we were…partners for a time-”

I felt my heart stutter in my chest for a moment at those words.

Was she remembering?

“-in our work with the Nocturne Division,” Sylvia continued awkwardly. My hopes died a swift death. Thankfully, I don’t think she had noticed, with the way she wasn’t looking at me. “I…likely already thanked you for your liberation of father, but I wanted to do so again. It’s weighed on me that I cannot remember that.”

I sighed slightly. “You did thank me,” I said, my mind flashing back to the hug she had given me all those months ago. Even then, I think I might have had a small crush on the Sculpted woman. Sylvia had been a small source of comfort for me, in the latter half of my time in Addersfield. I had been so emotionally raw in those days that even the smallest source of distraction in the form of her lessons had a gigantic impact on me. I had so desperately needed any source of hope for the future, and her instruction in the path I had eventually come to hate had given it to me.

Even now, I was disturbed at the realization that I was feeling nearly as vulnerable now, as I was in those nightmare-filled days long past.

There were some things strength simply couldn’t fix.

Sylvia finally turned to face me, and I think some of my unease must have finally occurred to her. “We were…close, weren’t we?” She nearly whispered.

I closed my eyes, unwilling to meet hers. I couldn’t bring myself to speak, so I just nodded.

Silence descended on us for a moment, before she spoke again. “How…close, exactly?”

I opened my eyes, but didn’t look at her. “Very,” I said roughly.

Sylvia was smart. I had no doubt that she understood what that meant. “Oh,” She said, in a weak voice. “I…see.”

I finally turned to look at Sylvia at those words. It pained me to see how small the Sculpted woman looked then, with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. I so desperately wanted to be the one who could comfort her again and take her Mithril form in my arms, but…

I was nearly a stranger, now.

I took a deep breath. This had been coming since she had woken up, and it was time to stop running from it.

No matter how much it hurt.

Slowly, so as not to startle her, I approached Sylvia and gently pried one of her hands off her forearms. Meeting her eyes, I did my best to smile. “I’m sorry, Sylvia,” I said quietly. “You don’t deserve this, and I’m sorry that I failed you so deeply. If I had just been stronger, if I had just known how to treat you better…maybe you wouldn’t be suffering this way now.”

Sylvia’s eyes widened from the contact, a small amount of panic entering her eyes as she glanced down at my hand on hers. “I…” She tried to speak, but couldn’t force the words out.

“Maybe one day…we can be friends again,” I said softly. “But…I don’t know if it’ll be more than that. You, as much I care about you, aren’t the woman I fell in love with. As short as a year is…that history was important.” I said, taking a step back and feeling a weight lift off of my shoulders. Both the acknowledgment of that fact, and the small amount of relief that I could see in Sylvia’s eyes…

It hurt, of course. But maybe not as much as it had been.

Like the lancing of a boil, the pain first needed to be confronted, before it could heal.

Sylvia shuddered from my words and nodded jerkily. “I-I see,” She said, looking simultaneously dazed and comforted. If I knew Sylvia…

And I did.

After somehow finding out about how close we had been, she’d felt a pressure at the expectation of the relationship. She hadn’t known me, and even if she knew intellectually that she had no obligation to a stranger, I was still her father’s apprentice.

I had no desire to weigh on her mind as she worked to find herself once again.

“When I get back,” I said with a smile. “We should talk. Maybe spar. And see if we can get to know each other again, if only for Grey’s sake.”

Something about my words must have finally reassured Sylvia, because she gave me a tiny smile. “I would like that, Sir Hart.”

I made a show of wincing exaggeratedly. “Just Nathan, please.”

Her smile widened. “Nathan, then. It’s nice to meet you…Nathan,” She said, extending her left hand.

Something about that gesture…it puzzled me for a moment, before I realized what it was.

Sylvia was naturally right-handed. Why would she extend her left?

My heart picked up slightly at a possibility.

Sylvia, my Sylvia, had been strangely fond of my false left arm, whose foundations had been built on the study of her soul. Always when we had held hands, or merely when she sought comfort from me, it had been my left she had sought out. I think something about the similarity of the limb to her own had reassured her.

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Maybe it was just hope…but if she wanted my left arm now….

Maybe something of her old self still resided inside of her.

My own smile widened as well, and I reached out and clasped her hand with my new Primordium one. I met her eyes.

Emerald on Sapphire.

“It’s nice to meet you too, Sylvia.”

……………………………………………

After our ‘introduction’, Sylvia hurried out of Grey’s temporary office, looking deeply embarrassed. If she had lost all of the emotional growth of the last near year, I wasn’t surprised. Sylvia had been a bit…awkward, back then.

Well.

More than she had been, at least.

As for myself, I was feeling more at peace. Don’t get me wrong, I was still itching to get away from this city and the war in general. And it wasn’t like one small exchange had eased my burdens.

But I felt like at least one small thing was going to turn out alright.

Sylvia would be fine, eventually. She just needed to adapt to the world that had moved around her, in her lost memories.

And…I think I would be fine one day as well.

In time.

I left Grey’s office feeling buoyed for the first time in over a week to seek my mentor out. It was time to get this ritual underway, after all.

The sooner the better, I say.

Luckily, Grey showed me the isolation chamber he had set up for our use yesterday. The manse, once upon a time, had contained a small Gyreite church inside of it. The former ruling house of Elderwyck had apparently been a bit religious, but unsurprisingly, Olsen hadn’t been. Neither he nor the guard he had gifted the manse to had maintained the tiny room, with its single pane of dusty stained glass set above in the far wall.

Grey hadn’t even bothered to clean up the room when he set up the Isolation Chamber. The physical cleanliness didn’t matter for our purposes, only the spiritual. It made for an odd dichotomy as I entered the cluttered, dusty stone confines of the long-abandoned Church that nonetheless felt entirely Aetherically sterile.

Grey was here, as he had said he would be. My mentor was kneeling on the only patch of stone that had been swept clean of the dust, and only for the purposes of creating the needed circles.

I examined them as I stepped into the room. The physical shape of the new engraving on the floor was very different than what I had seen back in Silvercret. There, it had been of a large, golden, seven-armed spiral, the primary iconography of the Gyreites.

Here, it was of eight interlinked circles, cast in silver. They were arranged in a near circle themselves with seven of them surrounding the eighth in the center. I had found that a bit odd, actually. Eight was an uncommon number in Magic, I’d found. Nearly everything seemed to come in sets of seven, instead. But Grey had said this was how it needed to be, and it’s not like I knew any better.

My understanding was that I was meant to kneel in the center circle, while the other six would contain the necessary reagents for the ritual. Grey had carved into the stone of floor using some instrument, and then filled those grooves with molten, Mana-charged silver.

Apparently, he had melted down and charged the metal himself out of some silverware he had found in a dusty cabinet in the backroom of the church.

Every silver line of those circles was framed by tiny lines of inscribed runes. What I’d found a bit surprising about the runic structure of Magi Ascension rituals was that the syntax almost read like complete nonsense. Rather than the near conversational tone of traditional runic script, this was almost purely functional. Nonsense phrases like that were common, roughly translating into things like ‘Aether line down surround envelop totality reverse nothingness’, and that was only one example out of hundreds in the entire array. However, empowered by the array, I could feel that they were working, even though my understanding of the script told me they shouldn’t. Each argent curve hummed with active Mana.

Guess I still had a bunch to learn about Magic.

Honestly, it was a bit exciting.

Grey looked up from his kneeling inspection of the circle as I entered the room. At the sight of me, the wrinkles on his brow deepened into a concerned look.

I smiled and shook my head at him, to his visible relief. “We’ll be fine, Grey,” I told him. “Don’t worry about it.”

My mentor sighed his relief, standing up from his crouch and dusting off his robes as he did so. “Very well. I trust you, Nathan,” He said with a small smile on his lips. Abruptly, he shook his head. “If that’s out of the way, then let us begin. You’ll have to strip down so we can begin the preparations for the ritual.” His smile shifted, taking on a mischievous tint. “I trust you’re prepared for the most harrowing of all trials?”

I rolled my eyes at him but still ran a self-conscious hand through my shaggy brown hair. You see, during our preparations, Grey had told me about one little requirement to a Magi Ascension ritual.

You had to shave your head.

Although the mind wasn’t apparently bound to the head or brain like some thought, there was still a symbological linking to it. That apparently mattered for something like this. Part of the ritual involved shaving your head so it could be painted in similar runic scripts that would decorate the rest of my body. From what Grey had told me, the Cultivators didn’t have to do anything like this. I certainly hadn't seen Sylvia do something similar.

Lucky them. I was going to have to be bald for a few months.

Just like Grey.

Said older Magi ran an almost smug hand over his shiny, smooth, nearly gleaming skull. “Don’t worry, Nathan,” He said almost condescendingly. “There’s only a tiny chance your hair won’t grow back. Alas, I was one of the unfortunate few. I’ve been cursed with this smooth, perfectly spherical crown for centuries now. I’m sure it won’t happen to you too.”

I rolled my eyes at Grey, shrugging off my shirt. “Oh, give it a rest, old man,” I said, exasperated. “I’ve watched you shave that chrome-dome. Your hair still grows back just fine. You just like it that way.”

“Pure window dressing,” He lied shamelessly, not even blinking at the blatant falsehood. “A habit I developed to cope with my unfortunate reality.”

Neither of us could keep a straight face at that idea, and broke out into chuckles. After a moment we calmed down, and Grey smiled at me with a slightly relieved shade to the expression. “Come, Nathan,” He said eventually. “Sit in that chair, and I’ll get started on your hair.”

I nodded and did as he said once I was down to my small clothes, walking over to a small stool and sitting on it. After that, I heard Grey pick up the pair of shears he had brought with him and snip the air to test. Seconds later, my hair began to fall from all around me as Grey trimmed my hair far down enough that he could shave my head. I shivered once he did, feeling the sharp blade of his personal straight razor depriving me of my shaggy hair. I shivered again once he was done, at the feeling of air on my bare scalp. That was a new one for me. I'd never shaved my head in my life.

A yelp escaped my lips when I felt Grey slap my head playfully, causing me to turn around and glare at him. He just smirked at me and nodded at the ritual circle. “Kneel in the center and I’ll get started on the runes.”

Snorting, I did as he asked, resting on my knees in the center. Not long after, Grey approached and picked up the brush resting in a nearby pot of prepared ink, and got to work. I fought down a laugh at the feeling of the bristles on my skin, especially on my newly bared scalp. I had always been a bit ticklish.

It took Grey nearly half an hour of careful painting to finish, and when he had, I looked down at myself. I nearly whistled at the density of runes now painting my flesh. They flowed across my skin in waves and circles, forming smooth patterns that almost blended into each other. I didn’t know Grey was capable of such artistry.

I was broken out of my inspection by the sound of Grey’s voice. “Now…” He said, unexpectedly solemn. “You’re ready. As I told you, Nathan, you’ll have to focus through the entire process. It might be a bit painful, but you need to endure it. The active part of the ritual will not take long, but it will be violent. Thankfully, the included shield mechanism in your circle will contain most of the unstable energies. Are you ready?”

I looked up and met my mentor's eyes. After taking a moment to squash any doubts, I nodded at him.

Grey studied me seriously and then returned the gesture when he saw I was serious.

“Now…let us begin.”