Cale had distanced himself from the unfinished book and leaned against his shelf while covering his face with both hands, trying not completely fall into despair.

"What is this... thing?", Grischa asked.

"Kormandent", Cale repeated slowly. He took a deep breath and dropped his hands before looking at Grischa. "A creature with similar intelligence to that of dragons and humans. He or she, I don't know if it has a gender or if there are even more than one of them... it's supposed to face its opponents with monstrous speed and use its magic to make sure its opponent can't use mana."

"Where did you get this information?", Aaron chimed in as he held the page with the marker in his hands while simultaneously reading what was written.

"I know a man who had the same thing happen to him. He called the creature Kormandent. Just like Grischa, he had this strange marking on his back, but in his case it was completely blacked out. The drawing of the creature is also based on his memory, I never met it in person."

"What in the world...", Aaron didn't dare to say more before Cale interrupted him.

"Grischa, that mark on your back is what triggered your inability to generate mana. The man I met that time didn't have a spark of mana left, but he..."

Cale fell silent. He didn't want to say the next words, so Aaron completed his sentence.

"He was a normal person, wasn't he?"

Cale nodded and looked down at the floor.

"I don't want to imagine what this marking does to a High-Magician who has gone through the third stage", Cale gave in afterwards. Silence filled the room. Each of them knew what happened when a mage lost his Igrikum. But what would happen if he lost the other half? What if his own mana disappeared, but the Igrikum remained behind?

"Caleb...", Aaron spoke up with his real name for the first time in 6 years. "... we need to tell the Eldest."

"Yes, I agree on that", Cale confirmed without hesitation, disengaging from his support.

"Wait a minute. Stop. Short pause. Why do you want to inform the Eldest? That's my problem, let me decide", Grischa interjected.

"We can't just hide something like that", Aaron replied.

"Of course we can. What's the point if..."

"No, Grischa. You don't understand", Cale interjected into the discussion. "You're putting the whole Magistrat in danger with your secrecy. You are currently useless as a magician."

Cale's words were curt, but true. Even if Grischa was still able to use his Igrikum this was not a situation they could simply hide. Thanks to the successful defense of the capital, Cale had changed the future he knew and was thus no longer able to make appropriate arrangements. He, too, was now forced to hope for the Elder's Igrikum and work with the High-Magicians. But this group was only as strong as its weakest part and that part had now become Grischa.

"I have to agree with the kid. This is too important to keep quiet. Besides, we need to track down this creature. Especially if the elder had a vision of this creature", Aaron added matter-of-factly, but that didn't reassure Grischa at all. What the 1st Seat probably hated more than secrets was the fact that he didn't want to put a burden on others.

"Didn't you listen to me? I killed it!"

"I don't think you managed to killed it", Cale threw back. "The Eldest said to me that the creature appeared briefly in his vision and immediately disappeared. I don't think you realized he got away from you. As fast as he can move. Because otherwise I would have no idea how to separate that mark from your body."

"I'll call the Eldest, wait one", Aaron directed, standing up with a jerk and out of the room along with the documents in his hand. He merely stopped in Cale's office one floor below and retrieved his crystal before attempting to reach the Eldest.

Grischa, on the other hand, dropped stunned onto the bed behind him and watched Cale sit down in the vacated chair. With a sullen look, Cale slammed the unfinished book shut and held his head. He was buzzing with countless questions and feelings of remorse, anger and sadness surfaced. But one feeling dominated his whole, inner turmoil. It was fear.

"Grischa...", Cale raised calmly and looked at his friend with sympathetic eyes. For the life of him, he didn't know how to make light of this situation. Grischa had a huge problem and it couldn't be ignored. In the end, therefore, he decided to tell the hard truth. "... You are not allowed to use mana anymore, under any circumstances. Do you understand me? Your life is facing a precipice and you're playing against time. If we don't do something about it, Grischa, you'll become a soulless mage."

"Aren't you exaggerating a bit? Your thought process doesn't make any sense to me. After all, I still have some mana in my mana pool, that should be enough for now. Besides, I'm a High-Magician, so for something like this to happen to me... it's a bit surreal, don't you think?", Grischa replied in a monotone but somewhat detached manner.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Grischa..."

"No. I think you guys are wrong. This is madness, after all. Something like this cound't have escaped me."

"Grischa", Cale repeated, slower and calmer this time. The inventor, on the other hand, had his eyes fixed on his own hands and caught himself beginning to tremble. Even if his words claimed otherwise, he was well aware of how dangerous the lack of mana was for him.

"It could also be for a completely different reason. Maybe I'm just tired and didn't concentrate properly?"

"Grischa", he repeated, before standing up and reaching for his friend's shaking hands. For the first time, Cale saw something in his friend that he had never experienced before. Grischa was crying.

"Caleb...", Grischa raised slowly, trying to stifle his sobs. Staring down at his friend with wide eyes, he seemed to accept at the sight of him that there was no point in interpreting the situation any other way. Maybe it was the trust he'd built up toward Cale over the past few years, but from the first moment he know just how seriously the 12th seat took the situation. He would never lie to him, especially about such an important issue. "... I don't want to die. What am I going to do? What happens to me after this? Will I still be human at all? What do I tell Ibellina and Fabio?"

Calmly, Cale held his hands tightly and knelt on the floor in front of Grischa, not looking away from him for a moment. Cale hid well how much the situation was weighing on him himself and tried his best to be a good friend. But the glass house that Cale had so carefully built for himself was hit by a large stone. A rock he didn't see coming.

"You're not going to die, I promise you that. Would be embarrassing to call ourselves High-Magicians if we couldn't handle a creature like that. Don't you agree?", Cale cautioned. He smiled, even though at that moment his heart was breaking.

He felt an inner emptiness that he had only led with one other person, William. Since when was Grischa no longer a character in his plan, but a real person for him? Since when did he care about the welfare of a stranger as much as the welfare of his own groups? When did Grischa become such an important part of his life that he cared so much about the man? They were never that close, always on a good, friendly colleague basis. When did Grischa become so influential on him?

He could remember the many times William had died in front of him or in his arms, therefore he would never forget that feeling. That hatred and remorse that drove him for hundreds of years, he had buried it deep into his heart so that no one could see it. But all at once it ate through Cale. Just the idea that a similar fate could befall Grischa drove him insane. What had he spent the last 17 years trying to make the world a safer place for, if he was going to run into such a problem on the very first day after the great crossroads? Why couldn't something in his life go the way Cale wanted it to, just for once?

Grischa and Cale remained in that position for several minutes until the 1st seat calmed down, let go of Cale and wiped away his tears. His otherwise wonderful green eyes were red underneath and his face was all softened, but he forced himself to smile. He was visibly uncomfortable with the whole situation, but Cale didn't care at all. Shortly after Cale asked Grischa to get dressed again, Aaron reappeared. He had finished talking to the Eldest and remained standing in front of Grischa and Cale for a brief moment, perplexed.

"How do we want to proceed now?", Grischa gave in a serious and clear tone, while Cale unobtrusively stood up and looked over at Aaron. Whatever he had been told by the Eldest did not seem to please him much.

"We'll discuss that after a healer takes a closer look at your situation", Aaron brought out, turning to Cale. "This man you told us about, where is he?"

Cale was silent. He had met the man in one of his past lives, but that was likely twenty years in the future and the stranger was relatively old at the time. He couldn't exactly tell what he would be doing now, but he for sure should already have the marker. According to the stranger, he had the encounter with the Kormandent when he was still a child. Adding his age, that encounter had to have happened well before Cale was born, so it couldn't possibly have been altered by the time loop.

"I don't know for sure. When I met him, he was living in the death region of Winstest, he could be anywhere now. I can't say he would talk to us either. Even then he was really unfriendly, grumpy fellow."

"That doesn't matter. In my opinion, it would be worth a try to meet with him. Would you draw me a sketch of the man, please?", Aaron replied. For a moment, Cale remained silent. He was supposed to draw a man he had last met half a century ago and was currently 20 years younger than when he visited? How much had his appearance changed in that time? "What is it? Can you draw him or not?"

"Ah, I think so, although my memory of him is pretty poor."

Cale remembered those nights in the man's cave. He had felt a real low in his life at that time, traveling in the death region of Winstest. He almost didn't care when the creatures had attacked him then, maybe he even wanted to die. The stranger, however, had rescued him from the mess back then, but he was never particularly pleased about his visit. It took him a few days to get used to Cale and one morning he was suddenly gone. He had left for the hunt, leaving Cale alone, who was slowly coming to his senses. The High-Magician stayed with him for barely two weeks and on one of the last days the strange, bearded man had revealed something of his past.

This had been the same man who had introduced him to Theorik back then. Cale had known Theorik from his other lives at that point, but did not know that the young spearman was also a former member of the Faith People from Winstest, just like Philippa.

It almost felt as if their encounter had been fate, which Cale refused to accept. Out of sheer anger at the dragons, he had gone out to Tsuke a day later and, for the first time in his life, had let his Igrikum run wild. The only time he was so desperate that he could not stand to stay alive.

Cale let mana slide through his body as he tried to remember what the fat man looked like. He couldn't tell exactly how detailed he could recreate his appearance, but he tried to make him look a little younger than he remembered. A few moments later, however, he stood before Aaron in the guise of a half-giant, narrow-eyed across the beard. The 3rd seat himself looked at the transformation with interest, while Grischa starred at him irritated.

"Do you remember what his name was?", Aaron finally gave in, causing Cale to hesitate for a moment and think.

"I think his name was Basil. What his last name was and why he lived in Winstest, though, I don't know. He was definitely not an outcast."