Val sat on her bed sideways with her back up against the wall. It did not matter where she positioned herself to dive into the past, but she preferred to be somewhere comfortable. The lights were turned off, and she had drawn the blinds. The last thing that she wanted was harsh light in her face while trying to work with Past Insight.

Like her mother, Val also knew the pain of migraines, though hers were related to her power. In the event that she induced a magical migraine, Val could flop over and cradle herself on the bed. That happened more often than she would like to admit.

To hopefully avoid that fate, she tried to call Ross first.

The rote voice of his voicemail grated against her ears. "You have reached Rosamer Johnston. Please leave a message, and I will get back to you as soon as I can—"

Val was not going to leave a message, so she hung up. This happened to be one such purpose of text messages.

Val: Hey.

Mom is freaked out that you're gone.

We had plans today. Would you mind letting me know what's up?

When he did not text back and would not answer any follow-up calls within the hour, it was time for Val to find him with her powers.

At this stage of its development, Past Insight was a finicky ability. Val was not particularly well-practiced with it, so the rare occasions where she did play with her powers, it proved all the more challenging.

When she had started to learn Past Insight, Val had thought that it would make history classes at school vastly more interesting. If she could watch history unfold, it would be like an exciting documentary—or sometimes more accurately, a soap opera. Instead, Past Insight made the subject more painful as she gave herself headaches and fell behind in classwork when she had to leave school early.

If she did manage to see the past, then she only gained a perspective on events that academia had failed to capture in its history books. Her grades in history class suffered despite the fact that she had the most honest and well-researched papers, when she finally did turn in her late work.

Anyways, with her current skill level, she did not feel entirely confident that she would be able to find Ross. Her ability of Past Insight worked like a ponzi scheme. She needed information to begin a vision to get more information. Four out of five attributes were required: who, what, where, when, and why.

The 'who' seemed easy but only on the surface level. She was looking for her brother Ross obviously. Yet, if there happened to be another major player in that moment of the past, knowing only some of the participants would not suffice. For now, she would search just for Ross and no one else.

The 'what' exactly had happened was trivial in this case. At some point last night or this morning, Ross had left. He had to have walked out the door. That much she knew for certain. Likewise, the 'where' was their apartment. By starting her vision at the point in which Ross had left the apartment, Val would be able to retrace his steps up until the present moment.

As for the 'when', it was always the most frustrating piece of information. Sometimes she could use a general frame of time like a year or a season. The dates provided in history textbooks nearly always worked to let Val activate a vision.

Other times, Past Insight jettisoned her from the tunnel of time with a migraine if she was not specific enough. Usually that happened when she tried learning something relevant to her own life. Val theorized that the timeframe needed to be more specific the more recent that an event had happened. It was a little counterintuitive, but that was simply what Val had observed.

The 'why' was something that she could only guess. Did Ross leave because he had a secret girlfriend, like she had told her mother earlier? Had work taken away his day off and called him in anyway? Was it something as simple as going grocery shopping? They might have been out of some essentials like milk or eggs this morning.

If Val thought that he would be back later, she would not be using Past Insight like this. Ross most definitely would have left a text to let her know where he had gone. He was a responsible person like that. The fact that he had sent her absolutely nothing when they had plans for today alarmed her.

This left two possibilities. One: Ross had left for the Summit of Ascension without her.

"As if," Val sneered.

Never, would Ross leave her behind like that. It was simply unthinkable, though something else unthinkable could have happened. Their mother's overbearing nature did not spring from nothing, after all. Horrible things could happen to weak demigods like them.

That led her to the other option. Two: Ross had been kidnapped by the Demigod Project, an underground crime syndicate, or the likes. Because his disappearance could potentially be a dire situation, she seeded the 'why' with kidnapping.

Val laughed aloud at her own absurdity. Evidently she was related to her mother in more ways than just blood. Ross had left the house before breakfast and what did she assume?

"Oh, yes, he was obviously kidnapped!"

The 'why' did not particularly matter. She only needed to get four out of five things correct, or close enough to initiate a vision. Then, she would get to know everything about the past down to the last detail. While those odds might seem bad, at least she felt fairly certain about the other four attributes that she had seeded Past Insight with.

With that, Val was ready.

Firstly, her chest rose and fell with a deep breath to recollect herself. Next, she reminded herself exactly what she would search for within the fabric of time: her brother Rosamer Johnston as of last night.

When Val delved into the construct of time, her mind detached from her physical body which had been grounded at the present point in time. Instead, she became an invisible entity which contained her consciousness. Sight and sound were retained as her only two senses. Within her field of vision, her surroundings changed.

Time appeared to Val like a vast tunnel interwoven with some trillion individual threads. Obviously, Val had no reliable way to estimate how many strands in time there were—probably more than a trillion.

If she kept her mind suspended in this state for more than a second, she would get nauseous, immediately throw up, and find herself crippled by an excruciating headache. Then she would not be able to use Past Insight for a while. For this reason, it was critical that Val knew exactly what she wanted to find before she engaged with the ability.

Yet for whatever reason, she could not find Ross. Her second was up.

Val abandoned her attempt to see the past and slumped over on her bed. Her stomach churned, but she had exited quickly enough before she would throw up. The same could not be said for the beginnings of a headache that had already taken hold.

Muffled by the way that her face had landed against the covers of her bed, Val groaned, long and miserable. This just had to be her luck. Clearly, she was having an off-day with Past Insight if she could not even find Ross.

Trying to initiate a vision with Past Insight was like guessing a forgotten password. There was some vague idea of the right letters and numbers, but upon an incorrect guess, there would be a cool down period. On average, she did not feel good enough to try again for a whole day.

That probability unit in her math class might be useful right about now. Out of all the combinations of reasonable possibilities for Ross's disappearance, how long would it take for her to get this right? Sadly, Val did not do very well in math just like all other subjects. Probability in particular made no sense, but she understood well enough that this would take her forever.

Hopefully Ross would turn up before then. Ironically, she had forever for him to return, barring a tragedy. Their immortality was not perfect; it functioned as eternal youth. Significant damage to their bodies could still kill them.

When Ross came home, she would definitely slug him in the arm for this migraine. Val cradled herself and whimpered while she waited for it to subside.