As night fell and the dense forest-village quieted down, Gust laid in his cot and waited.

He wore his new robes with the hood pulled up to shadow his face as much as possible. When the paths grew silent, and he was confident he would be alone, Gust crept out as quietly as possible.

The young man tried to follow the path he’d taken earlier that day, but it was difficult. Lanterns dotted the grounds but, seeing the area for only the second time, he barely recognized anything. As Gust’s journey brought him further south than he intended, he heard a pair of voices and headed toward them.

Instead of the eastern gate, however, he found a pair of Masters, marked by the gold sashes tying their robes, standing several yards away from a log cabin with two stories. It maintained the school’s chaste, simplistic style, but enjoyed a prominent location.

There was no shower outside, Gust noticed, and he couldn’t help but wonder if the houses within the walls had their own plumbing.

“Course they do. What kind of Master mage would take a shit outdoors?” he thought with a snort. Gust held his breath and ignored his beating heart. If the men caught him, they might realize they couldn’t trust him, in which case the school would take more serious measures to hold him captive.

Gust kept silent like his life depended on it, but he listened carefully.

“No, no, no,” one of them was saying. “It’s not possible. If we can’t enter, surely some untrained boy would be cut to ribbons!”

“Perhaps. He does own the coin, remember,” replied the other. Gust recognized this voice to be Master Ephraim. “You see the aura! What else but the blade could produce that? He is connected to it, Christos.”

“Mmm. Yes, but we don’t know what else the Swordsman carried, nor what kind of wards he may have set up. Still, you have a point. You think it would spare him?”

“I do.”

“And you would risk his life on this whim?”

“We needn’t toss him in there all at once! All it would take is a few steps. If he gets cut, it will be minor. But if he makes it inside… who knows what sort of treasures a man like that left behind?”

The man named Christos scoffed. “I don’t believe a word from that renegade’s mouth. His people can’t even get simple terminology right, and you accept that he was advanced so far beyond our understanding? The fact that the man has died calls everything into question. Starsoul,” he shook his head. “He probably wasn’t even a renegade. Any of the Dreamweaver’s paths would teach such an illusion. I find that explanation far more likely.”

Ephraim was growing frustrated. “It makes no difference whether he was lying, don’t you see that? The sword itself tells us everything we need to know. Anyone who owns that would surely have a deluge of heavenly treasures at their disposal!”

“He may,” the cynic allowed. “But why would he bring them here?”

Ephraim let out a dark laugh. “To aid us in separating from the Patrons? To bribe whoever he hoped to find in the underworld? I don’t know, you remember the man. He was losing it.”

After a few quiet moments, Christos replied, “Fine, fine. We will send him in as soon as he is fit. But if he dies, you’re the one explaining to the Matriarch that the ‘help’ the Swordsman sent back to us is dead.”

“Brother, if the boy dies, the sword will need a new master. Who will be Patriarch, then?”

The following conversation was hushed, but Gust heard enough to make him uncomfortable. It wasn’t his problem, though, because soon enough he would find himself sprinting home, with a lot of explaining to do. As soon as the men moved on, Gust turned back and finally found his way to the eastern gate.

There was new pair guarding it; a boy and a girl just a few years younger than Gust. At least, that was how they appeared. If Theo was telling the truth, and these mages lived far longer than normal, who could tell what age they were?

One of them leaned against the wall while the other sat cross-legged on the ground. They barely moved as Gust watched.

An hour passed while Gust waited for an opening. It finally came when the boy left. He disappeared behind the outer wall and Gust heard a stream of liquid wetting fallen leaves.

Gust pulled down his hood and started making for the gate. If he was lucky, the meditating girl wouldn’t be paying much attention to the person beside her. A man in robes walked away, and a man in robes returned, as far as she would know.

As his footsteps sounded on the path, Gust’s heart was still. He waited for the girl to turn around and ask what he was doing, but she never did. He clenched his teeth as he walked by her. It was only when he’d taken a few dozen steps beyond the gate that she reacted.

“Uh, hey! Jonas?”

When the girl called out, Gust burst into a sprint. He charged into the woods that led home and prayed that his mom wasn’t back from work yet.

As he pressed into the forest, though, Gust began to feel icy pinpricks creeping over his skin like frozen ants. He felt his energy leaking away as, he assumed, he passed into his own world.

Then the cold, biting sensation reached his skull and Gust stopped walking. He doubled over in pain and fell to his knees as pain engulfed his brain and the world took on a hazy purple glow. Soon, a dome surrounded him, blocking out the trees with an eerie violet light.

A voice emerged. It was low and feminine, and seemed to echo from within Gust’s own head. “Now how did you slip past my gaze, hmm? The master leaves and the pupil returns, is that it?”

His head throbbed with pain as Gust tried to look for the woman speaking to him. Through watery eyes, all he could see was purple smoke. It was flowing in every direction over itself. The current slowly took shape.

“What is so special about this one that he would send you back with so little protection?”

The smoke resolved itself into an illusory, lidless eye with a bright purple pupil. It’s gaze seemed to burn into his skin. Gust grunted against the searing pain, but his muscles were locked in place. All around him, the dome of smoke erupted with hundreds of eyes taking up every bit of space. Occasionally, one disintegrated and another rose from the depths to take its place.

“He failed his fool’s errand. If you follow in his footsteps, then so will you… Augustus.” When he heard the voice utter his name, Gust felt his heart gripped by ice. “Yes, that’s it. Your mother. Your sister, even your brother. I see them, Augustus. And now, I see you, but what do I find? Nothing.” The voice held a bite of frustration. “Why would he send you? What could a powerless Demon ever hope to accomplish?”

Gust gritted his teeth and sucked in deep, heavy breaths as he glared at the lidless eye. He snarled and struggled to keep his back straight, but it bent all the same. An unseeable force pressed him down until his forehead scraped against the dirt and pebbles.

“Whatever it is, it won’t matter,” the voice decided. “Do keep the sword safe for me, will you? And give my champion my regards. It has been so long since he was given the chance to serve.” The bright, central eye floated forward, inching its way toward Gust’s head as it shrunk down in size.

The violet eye as light as a feather, but with the momentum of a truck. It pushed him up, onto his knees, and Gust’s breath left his body. The eye turned into a spear of light and pierced his mind, passed through, and tossed him onto his back.

As Gust lost consciousness, words continued to vibrate between his ears. “Wherever the veil is weak, I will see you, and I will be watching. Always.”

When he opened his eyes, Gust pushed away the hands that cupped his head. “Get the fuck away from me,” he growled as he scrambled backwards until he leaned against an old tree.

Instead of a creepy, ghostly eye, there was a girl. Slim and small, with dark hair and kind brown eyes. She held out her hands and took a few steps back. “It’s alright! You’re the new guy, right? From the other world?”

Gust rubbed his forehead, feeling hot in the place the eye had touched him. There was no scar or swelling. “Yeah,” he said abruptly, still too disturbed to think straight.

The girl slowly lowered herself to the ground on the opposite side of the path and mirrored Gust’s posture while she studied his face. “What’s it like? I mean, there are plenty of people in our world who go their entire lives without using spiritual energy, but I can’t imagine a world without it. I’d love to go.”

Gust snorted. “It’s shit. You people have magic, and you think my world is interesting?” Once he started laughing at that, he couldn’t stop.

“Well, why not?” She asked, offended. “It’s a new place, isn’t it? I’d love to know more about everything! The other schools, the Bloodflame continent, the Subtleties! Why not your world?”

With a bitter laugh, Gust shook his head. “Ah, I guess. Still, it’s not that interesting. I’m not sure what to say really; people live their lives like the non-cultivators in this world do, I imagine.”

“Sure, but you all have… technology.” She whispered the word as if it held power. It was a sharp reminder that Gust left his phone at home, a mistake he deeply regretted.

“Yeah. And you don’t?” When the girl shook her head, Gust leaned forward. Curiosity was beginning to overtake his fear and frustration. “Why not?”

“How should I know? Some of our Masters have gone to your world for short trips, but nothing like the Swordsman. He spent decades there,” she said with awe. “The Masters brought back strange objects of complex design, claiming they would light up or move on their own, but they never did.”

Gust shrugged, as at a loss for an explanation as she was. “Does electricity not work here?” He wondered.

“You people keep calling him the Swordsman. Why is that?”

The girl blinked. “Because that’s who he is. The Subtle Swordsman. Or Blademaster, as some say. Or the Lord of Swords, the Moonson, the list goes on,” she shook her head slightly as she spoke each title, as if she couldn’t believe the man truly existed.

“Seth Perry.” Gust corrected her, feeling oddly at ease with this girl. “At least, that was the name I knew. I’m Gust, by the way,” he added, not even realizing that he’d offered his nickname.

“Alice,” the girl replied. Then she said, “Seth Perry,” in a breathless whisper and looked down the path, toward another world.

Gust grunted and pushed himself up to his feet. He looked east and gritted his teeth. Getting home might take a little longer than he thought.

The girl looked up at him with a kind smile. “Are you sure you’re, okay? We can rest a while longer, there’s no rush. What were you doing out here, anyway?”

Gust scratched at the back of his head. “I was just lost, trying to find my way home,” he said. In a way, it was even true. “This place looks different in the dark, and its bigger than I expected.”

Alice pursed her lips and stared, but Gust refused to meet her gaze. As he turned to leave, she sprung forward, grabbed his wrist, and planted her feet, forcing him to stop. Her head reached barely reached his nose, but her grip was strong.

“No, you weren’t,” she said softly. “I saw you walk by a few hours ago, remember? You were trying to go to your real home, weren’t you? What happened? I followed you at first, thinking it was Jonas, and when you disappeared, I figured you were gone. I came back a minute ago because I heard something and there you were… on the ground.”

Gust felt his anger return, mingling with confusion. A few hours ago? His conversation with that violet eye had barely lasted a few minutes. And it happened right where they were standing! To his eyes, he had never left the forest or returned to his own world at all.

He wrenched his hand out of her grip, “What is it with you people? Is it really so hard to understand that I want to go home? I have a family, you know. People that care about me.”

“Yeah, about two of them,” he added mentally.

Alice’s eyes widened and her hands sprung out in front of her body. “Of course! I wasn’t trying to say otherwise.”

“Well just leave me be, then! If I can’t go home,” Gust pointed toward the school, “then at least let me go to sleep.”

As the boy stormed off, she didn’t try to stop him, not wanting to make his mood any worse. Alice knew she couldn’t understand what it was like to lose one’s entire world, but she could empathize. Every Fallen Leaf student left their own families behind, so she had felt something similar once, even if it wasn’t quite the same.

Her light voice floated over Gust’s shoulder, but he didn’t look back.

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone,” was all she said.