The sunset brought a soft orange glow into the sky – something common in the Mainlands, but a rare treat within the Desolations. Anything less than blue was a rare treat, but this particular orange hue was called Transience by the Venti people. The Guardians patrolled about a third of their normal number, most of whom had gone on break for the few weeks this serenity would last, and who could blame them? Most beasts would have retreated to their lair to breed and recuperate, leaving only the weakest wandering about, the beings least affected by the dip in ambient mana.

A fine day for Louis to recline in an earthen chair outside. A deep black liquid swirled in a glass in his right hand, every sip leaving the taste of fire and pain – something Louis only just recently tolerated for the weaker wines were now failing him, like the rest of his body. In his left hand, Louis held a stack of research papers sent by Sylvarent, who refused to let him rest even thousands of miles away and while he laid close to death. She kept telling him he could rest when was dead and, admittedly, the research she sent was fairly interesting – discovering and consolidating almost thirty Divine Magics that few could name more than six or eight.

It seemed like her crew had grown once more. Splendid. Very few of their friends had lasted this long and Louis would not last much longer. It almost felt like a betrayal, but Louis had very little regret. The Flower of Resurrection was the last shot in seeing Amelia and Hefra. The first one was a miracle, then second greed. Neither brought back a sister, let alone both.

Louis downed a good bit of the liquid on that thought. That second flower in particular costed him his life core – an injury he perhaps could have fixed if he had tried…but the failure of the second flower accomplishing his wish diminished his drive and will.

It was too bad that his homebrew beer had run out – his life core had lasted a few more months longer than Louis had initially anticipated, which meant he ran out of beer. Not the worst thing, but the alcohol of the Venti, the people of the Fortress, left much to be desired. After all the mana poisoning they partook in to increase their mana resistance and survival, they lost in the ability to smell and taste. So just like the current him only even worse in that regard. The younglings could not even drink alcohol until the third Manifestation lest they lose control of their mana and die – or worse, fall into madness.

Another guzzle of the liquid brought tendrils of darkness around him, ones Louis originally thought was a signal of intoxication but no amount of mana soothe the feeling – only strengthening and quickening the pace, tendrils grasped around him, pulling him into the ground. Spiritually, for his body remained firmly on the earthen chair. It took moments – precious ones that Louis could have used to counter – to find where these tendrils originated: from his life core, exhausted, without a drop of lifeblood. His body stilled, the tendrils surrounded him like the darkness night. And as things began to fade around him, Louis felt two glassy, iridescent flowers shine within his mind’s eye, keeping the tendrils from eliminating him entirely.

Then the lull of sleep came.

҉҉҉

What greeted Louis at the other end of his consciousness was not annihilation or a greeting of the Gods but a familiar classroom he once took classes in as a kid. The room was made of a solid rock, like the rest of the school building, was created through Divine Magic Myr. This particular classroom housed two mosaic windows – the Goddess of Water, Imaru, and the Goddess of Earth, Myr, showcasing different aspects of the world during its creation. The mosaics, of course, were created through generous donations elicited from the Faith of Six temple, due to the principal’s good works.

Money which would have been better spent on tables and chairs for its students and teachers. Alas, the principal had a different calculation in mind – students sat on the ground, with barely a stick of chalk and fragment of a blackboard to takes notes upon and practice. Only ten students were in the classroom. Or, to be more precise, only ten students were forced to attend class. They had neither the blessings of the Six to become mages nor the virtue to be born into backgrounds focusing on some type of trade.

Louis could not help but frown. This was not the end that he was expecting. Besides the lecture that threatened to bore him to death, his attention was highly sought after: hunger that roared within his stomach, one which he never filled adequately until after the accident. Various cracks within the aging building allowed cold breezes to sneak in, raising goosebumps across his skin that his wool jacket could not repel and the warm ground could not compensate for; and muscles cramps that were too tired to move yet twitched continuously still out of habit.

The young man standing at the front of the room, giving an algebra lesson, looked stereotypical Efyrian – a darker tan, green hair, red eyes. His most notable feature was the blue mage apprentice robe that he wore. The boy’s name escaped him but it was not long before the boy stopped his lesson, turning to Louis and asked, “Louis, since you seem to be paying such great attention to my lecture, what is the value of x in this question?” The boy teacher tapped the blackboard – the only one in the room. He held out a piece of chalk towards Louis.

Two linear equations were written on the board, all that needed to be done was to add them together to remove the y variable, then simplify to solve for x. Easy enough. The math required for true magic was much harder, though practice and various shorthands could be used to remove the mathematical requirement.

“Four,” Louis said, without bothering stepping up to the blackboard.

“Correct,” the teacher admitted after a few moments of silence. “Glad you were listening.”

Just when is this, Louis wondered. He was still in school, so he was not yet thirty – but ten children was too few to account for any age group. That meant some portion were excused through to occupation exemptions. Not younger than twenty either - as others, such as Jan, have already unveiled their elemental talent and sent to mage classes and receive a weekly stipend. So somewhere closer to thirty as the classrooms grew smaller due to attrition. The irony that the classes improved to smaller class size just as the children stopped caring was not lost on him.

This merely sidetracked Louis – it hardly mattered just how old he was in this dream, if he could call it as such – he needed to know just what was happening and why he was reliving his childhood. There were a few possibilities for what was happening.

Like, if someone or something erected some type of illusion and trapped him within it. Far-fetched idea given how close to death Louis already was and how he had already given all his possessions already. Plus, the Venti Village would have prevented violence of any kind within the town as no one knew Divine Magic Chiffon to repair or rebuild any of it.

Perhaps the afterlife was a bit different than how the texts foretold, somehow changed by the disappearance of the Gods; or, most likely, the revival flower triggered after his death, which was why he could never get it to work while he was alive. He did remember seeing its splendor as everything turned dark.

“Teacher, I don’t feel well,” Louis ultimately said. There was no avoiding testing the theory – class would only drag on so long and his sisters were not in the building. If this was just an illusion, he was bound to never see his sisters no matter what he did.

“See the nurse, then.” The boy teacher said.

“Will do.” Louis said, getting up and leaving the room. The nurse’s office was down the hall to his left, but Louis went to the right – out of the front doors of the school. School grounds were a barren wasteland – all the windows around the school were barred. The earthen barricade, topped off with barbed wires, confined the school to only one exit: where two guards blocked the way out. Mage protectors would be too expensive to hire, but goons with more brawns than brains were a perfectly acceptable substitute.

Louis finally remembered the name of the school: Academic Excellence. A hopeful aspiration for the school had yet to produce any scholars and any mage left the school in droves, choosing more private organizations for their schooling, career and opportunities. No, the school was little more than a daycare for parents who were far too busy to care after their children – in hopes that what little education found within would empower the children – funded by richer parents in hopes of keeping these children out of better schools.

“Trying to skip school, kid?” A bigger guard asked, as he swaggered over to Louis, towering him as hope to intimidate, perhaps even anxious for an excuse for violence.

“Only due to illness, I’m afraid.” Louis said, clutching his stomach. “My stomach has been hurting all day and the nurse doesn’t know what’s happening. So he sent me home for the day.”

“Where’s the note?” The guard asked.

Louis sighed internally – he hardly ever played truant, ever hopeful in the system. Reading was a better investment for him at the time, but it did make his experiences few in befuddling the guards. He quieted such thoughts, for he was unlikely to remember his methods even if he did use them as a child. So few memories of that time reminded and his mind had better things to record besides daycare.

Instead, Louis closed his eyes and sought mana. His soul, and most of his magical abilities, were still sealed within his mind palace. His mana core, the source of his power, was cracked but not enough to be considered truly open - this, more than anything, seemed to be true culprit failing every some elemental affinity test. The test could only measure mana flowing from an opened mana core.

That problem was nonexistent this time around, but it felt cheap that such a low barrier stopped his magical training. A simple poke could break it open and healing it afterwards was simplicity itself. Did Riveta lack healers to test this method? Or were the nobles that unwilling to recruit mages from the general populace?

“Well?” The guard asked. “Pretending won’t work, go back to class before I escort you.”

Stilling these extraneous thoughts, Louis gathered what little mana his body naturally absorbed to create a spiritual spell. Louis coughed a couple times, then coughed much harder, before falling to his knees. “Sorry, give me a moment. My sickness is flaring.” Louis said, pulsing the gathered mana at the guard. Not the most best way to spiritually convince a person, but most emotions elicited should help convince the guard.

“Well, I still need a note…” the guard asked, softer this time.

Louis coughed a couple more times, taking the time to gather more mana, faster this time now that he knew just how trifling the mana he was now working with. He pulsed his mana once more, then patted, his pockets, calmly at first then frantic. “I must have lost my note somewhere,” Louis said loudly, looking at the guard for a moment. “But I’m really sick, please, let me go. I’ll get the note next time.”

The second guard was the first to react with a stern ‘no’ but was stopped by the first guard.

“Leave him be – look at the child, sick as can be. Any sicker and we will have to carry him home. Let him go.” The first guard said.

“Thank you. Thank you.” Louis said, giving two short bows, one towards each guard, before slowly getting up and walking past the gate. Even past the gates, Louis kept his pace slow, his head down, until he turned the corner and out of any guard's vision.

Stopping the farce, Louis walked in a random direction before sitting under a tree. Louis closed his eyes – it helped sensing the mana within him, as his sensory abilities declined. He should have enough mana to power a divination spell. “En Bryn.”

Instead of a red thread of fate tying Louis to his home, his soul buckled under a great pain, searing as if a hot blade cut through it. The pain was familiar – mages who lived in an area with a broken Divine Magic always hazed new or foriegn mages by teaching them this spell. It wasn't rare for each area to have its broken Divine Magic - Sylvarent managed to find twelve of them in great detail without stepping a single foot into the Desolation, which was bound to have a whole host of fallen Divine Magics. However, this was the first time Louis experienced an univeral Divine Magic falling. Its fall would be the first in a millennium and perhaps have the greatest impact, tied with Divine Magic Chiffon.

No, Louis thought. Its failure could be attributed to many other factors: lack of mana; closed soul palace - which was greatly aided divination spells; being in suboptimal condition; or even in being an illusion and restricted space. Its fall seemed to discredit an actual rebirth than prove that this was reality.

The pain somehow opened his spiritual palace. His soul had regain a bit of its original sensitivity, but everything he had built in his past life was gone without a trace. A point for an rebirth and against some illusion - the caster would have been someone a step shy in strength and skill compared to a divinity, which should be impossible, even for dragons.

During his check over his spiritual for any damages, a foreign entity threw itself at Louis. Louis could feel its anger, its pain and confusion. But no hesitation. With so little time, Louis had no way to defend himself and thought the worst.

Regret and remorse overtook him, until their souls touched. His worries were unfounded. While the foreign entity had the initative, it had very little else. Louis could discern it had to be a soul - a very weak one with no soul palace. The difference in soul quality, quantity and internal mana resistance gulfed whatever advantage this foreigner had.

Its first and only attack exhausted itself and it knew it. Whatever little sliver of a chance it had to succed had now disappeared. Fear and exhaustion overtook it as Louis won the battle of wills, eating up the foreigner and strengthening his own soul.

A slew of memories overcame Louis, ones that became increasingly familiar the more he saw: his own memories from his childhood, one that had disappeared from hundreds of years of neglect. Louis sought to retain a few of the more relevant memories. But there were simply too many.

When everything finally settled, Louis had to consider: did he just kill his younger self? Perhaps, but if it meant seeing his sisters again, it would have been a small price. His younger self would understand. Or not, but at least it would have been untainted by the various traveties that came its way. If the Faith of Six truly existed, and cared for their followers, his younger self would be safely ferried to Arcadia.

But enough hypthotheticals. The setting sun painted the sky in shades of red and yellow, reminiscent of the Transience of the Desolation. The appearance of a second copy of his soul and the abysmal state of his magical abilities gave him enough hope that this was real. So Louis walked home, calm and hopeful.