After pulling his hand from Jacob's painful handshake, card tucked safely in his pocket, Adrian took a moment just to breathe, flexing his fingers to shake the lingering ache out of them. He looked back at Eric, who had already claimed a bench near the far wall and sat with his arms crossed, watching the hall with the same flat, unreadable patience he seemed to carry everywhere. A few feet away, Max had somehow already acquired a paper bag of sweets from who knew where and was working through it with the same focus he'd shown the food back at the cafeteria, utterly content.
Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to move, so Adrian decided he wasn't either. He wandered off on his own, weaving between clusters of Aura users, letting his eyes drift over the hall properly now that he wasn't being dragged through it.
That was when he noticed it.
Suspended in midair near the center of the hall was a massive tablet made entirely of white light, its surface easily the size of a small building, glowing softly without a single visible source. Names scrolled down its right side in neat, evenly spaced rows, each one paired with a number that Adrian assumed had to be contribution points, though the sheer scale of some of the figures made his eyes widen slightly the longer he looked. Most names near the bottom were rendered in a plain, quiet white. The names higher up burned brighter, and the ones at the very top weren't white at all.
They were gold.
Adrian drifted closer without quite meaning to, drawn in the way anyone might be drawn toward something that glowed. He tilted his head back, scanning the golden names near the top of the board, and felt a small, strange thrill just looking at them, like standing at the base of something too tall to properly measure.
On the walls were mission boards made of white light, each one humming faintly with its own quiet glow, words written across them in bright yellow light that shifted slightly whenever someone stepped close enough to read.
All the details regarding the missions and rewards were written out there in careful, orderly lines: difficulty ratings, party size requirements, deadlines, payouts in Aura stones or rare materials. If there was too much information to fit on one board, a small arrow blinked patiently in the corner, and a person could swipe to the second page to see the rest, the whole board rippling like water disturbed by a stone.
On the left and right sides of the registration table were two hallways that led off into different corners of the building entirely.
One opened into a bar, where Aura users wearing bodysuits of every color imaginable sat in loose clusters, some laughing over drinks, others hunched quietly over half-empty glasses, mourning, Adrian realized after a moment, the loss of a teammate, the mood at their table heavy enough that even the noise of the rest of the hall seemed to fall away around them. Further down, a cafeteria buzzed with a lighter energy, people eating and drinking and talking over each other in easy, overlapping conversation. Past that were shops, their windows stacked with books, charms, and things that could only be Mystical relics, glinting faintly under glass. And at the very end of the hallway stood a library, its bookshelves stretching up so high that Adrian had to crane his neck just to see where they stopped, thousands upon thousands of books lined up in perfect, silent rows that left him staring for a moment longer than he meant to.
The main hall itself was the busiest of all, filled with people of every background, look, Aura, and appearance he could imagine, and plenty he couldn't have imagined before today. Mostly humans wearing bodysuits in every color under the sun stood in scattered groups near the boards, some studying the listings intently, others just talking, trading rumors, arguing, laughing. Adrian felt a small, nagging self-consciousness at not having a bodysuit of his own; he was still in his school uniform, oddly plain against the sea of color around him. But if anyone noticed, they didn't show it. There were plenty of others walking around without bodysuits too, and after a moment the feeling faded into the background along with everything else.
"Hey, let's form a team of five, including you and me, and go hunt the six-horned rainbow rhino," two people in red and black bodysuits were saying to each other nearby, already counting names off on their fingers.
"What!? A shiny eight-armed crocodile has appeared! I need to get its brain to advance!" A tanned middle-aged man screamed after seeing that the last ingredient he needed to advance to Auri Nova had finally appeared on one of the boards. He was overjoyed for a moment, practically bouncing on his heels, before the joy curdled into something closer to panic; he didn't have many connections to form a party with, and he certainly wasn't wealthy enough to buy his way into one. He sank into a slump against the wall, deep in contemplation, muttering numbers under his breath.
"Haha! Finally, I took over that bastard Klein!" A haughty young man was laughing proudly a few feet away, chest puffed out, clearly repeating the news to anyone who'd listen. "Risking my life to hunt those serene sirens was worth it!"
"What is this golden-haired baboon?" a young boy asked his father, tugging on his sleeve and pointing at something on one of the boards. His father, wearing a red bodysuit with the boy standing close beside him, only laughed and ruffled his hair without answering.
Adrian had been given the freedom to look around the place, and he was having a decent enough time doing it, taking it all in with a kind of distant curiosity, but if he was being honest with himself, he'd never been much for big, crowded places. The only reason he was even bothering to explore at all was more out of politeness than genuine interest, a sense that he was supposed to look impressed, so he might as well actually be a little impressed while he was at it. If he had his way, he'd already be halfway home, curled up somewhere quiet with the books Visie had given him.
It struck him as strange, thinking about it. He'd never once shown this kind of enthusiasm for his own studies back at school, had barely scraped by most years without much effort at all. But the thought of reading through the history of this world, of actually learning about the Aura Region and everything buried inside it, sent something sharp and electric through his chest, made his heart pick up its pace in a way multiplication tables and pop quizzes never had.
He would be more confident coming back here after learning all he could. Just as he was about to go to Eric and request that they leave, Jacob shouted to Eric, "Hey, Eric, come here! I have got news to tell you!"
His scream got the attention of every Aura user in the hall as everybody's head turned to look at Jacob. Eric got out of his thoughts and turned his head to look at him. He slowly stood up, walked toward Jacob, and leaned in to hear what he had to say. Eric always preferred to be aware of every piece of news in the present as much as he could, even if it wasn't detailed, at least to be aware of it on the surface level.
"What is it?" Eric asked. Even Max, who was happily chewing his sweets, drifted closer to listen in, still popping pieces into his mouth without much regard for the moment. Adrian didn't back down either, drifting into the loose circle forming around Jacob's desk. No one else in the hall dared to get close to the group, though plenty of eyes stayed fixed on them from a careful, respectful distance.
"It has been quite a while since you have come here, but I believe you haven't been checking the news lately, right?"
Eric tilted his chin and replied, "Yes. There have been many things going on in my life. I am even married now and have many things to do. I can't just hang around asking others for news. If I were to move to Lumenia or any other planet in the Auralis Solar System, I could get major news with no problem, but right now I do not have the time."
Adrian mustered up the courage and asked Jacob sheepishly, "Uh, Mr. Jacob, can you tell me about your Aura?"
Jacob slightly turned his head to look at Adrian. He stared at his face for a few seconds, long enough that Adrian felt his stomach twist, already regretting the question, already bracing to hear something along the lines of maybe some other time, kid. He opened his mouth to take it back, to say never mind, but Jacob chuckled first and answered with a warm smile before he got the chance.
"Sure, no problem. But first, remember to just call me Jacob." He leaned back slightly in his chair, folding his hands over his stomach, settling into the explanation like it was something he'd given a hundred times before. "I am an Auri Nova-rank Aura user of the Instinct Pathway. I have the Intuition Aura. It allows me to feel intuition through different reactions of my body, like gut feelings or hunches. Through them, I can tell things accurately, like I just did with Eric, sensing how he has not been paying attention to the major headlines of the Aura Region."
He paused there, and something in his expression shifted, just slightly, the easy rhythm of the explanation slowing down.
"It is not suitable for fighting at all, as you can see." He said it lightly, almost as a joke, the kind of self-deprecating line meant to get a small laugh and move on. "I was a supporter of a team that got wiped out not many years ago, and I became a receptionist."
The words landed and just sat there in the air for a moment, plain and unhurried, like he'd said nothing heavier than the weather.
Adrian felt his whole chest go cold.
Wiped out. He turned the words over once, twice, trying to find some gentler meaning hiding inside them, some way to read it that didn't mean what he was almost certain it meant. He didn't find one. His stomach dropped somewhere lower than his feet, and for a second he couldn't even look directly at Jacob's face, because Jacob was still smiling. Still smiling, easy and warm, as if he'd just told them about a mission he'd once failed or a meal he hadn't liked. Adrian's eyes flicked to that smile, and something about it suddenly looked wrong, too steady, too practiced, a mask worn so long it had started to feel like skin.
Why did I ask that? Why did I open my big mouth and ask that? Adrian's thoughts scrambled over each other, replaying the question in his head, wishing he could reach out and physically pull it back out of the air. He'd meant it as something small, something easy, a bit of harmless curiosity to fill the time before they left. He hadn't expected it to open a door onto something like this.
Adrian's expression contorted as the guilt fully settled in, thick and immediate. Jacob was telling his sad story with a happy smile, and somehow that made it worse, not better. It felt less like relief and more like watching someone hold a wound closed with their bare hands and call it nothing. Suddenly the warmth in that smile felt less like warmth and more like something sad and quietly practiced, worn into place through repetition. It seemed the old saying was true after all: the brightest smiles hide the deepest pains.
Adrian bent into a slight bow, the motion stiff and a little too sudden. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked. I didn't mean to bring up something like that; I really didn't think—"
"H-hey, don't bow, kid." Jacob waved his hands quickly, sitting forward again, some of the old ease returning to his voice, though it took visible effort now. "It's okay. I was the one who brought it up in the first place, not you. There are thousands out there to whom way worse has happened, and they still live happy lives, still find some kind of peace with it. In comparison to them, my suffering is nothing. Straighten your back and ask anything else you want."
Adrian straightened up slowly, but the guilt didn't loosen its grip on his chest at all. Jacob's words were meant to be reassuring; he could tell that much, but somehow they only made him feel worse. Nothing, he called it nothing. Like losing his whole team was some small inconvenience he should just get over. Adrian didn't believe that for a second, and some part of him suspected Jacob didn't fully believe it either, that it was just something he'd told himself so many times it had started to sound true.
He wanted to say something else, wanted to find some way to fix the moment he'd accidentally broken, but every sentence that came to mind sounded worse out loud than it did in his head. Eventually he decided that silence was the safer option, the kinder one, so he shook his head, declining the offer to ask anything more. He didn't have anything else he wanted to ask, not really, not after that. He'd already decided that staying quiet was the best thing he could do right now.
Despite everything he'd been through the entire day, despite becoming a Walker, despite all the strange, dangerous new world that had opened up around him, Adrian still had a soft heart underneath all of it, one that ached hard at the sight of someone else's pain worn out in the open like that, dressed up in a smile too warm to be real.
After this entire exchange, Eric turned his attention back to Jacob. He was getting a little restless about what the news was, some small, impatient part of him wanting to just hear it and move on so they could finally leave. Jacob finally opened his mouth and told them, "Sasaki Alberich is getting married."
Eric's expression didn't change upon hearing this. On the surface, it was quite useless news, the kind of gossip that meant nothing to him and would mean nothing to him tomorrow either. However, the voice in his head didn't seem to think the same. An old man's groan resounded in his ear, the same sound that had lived somewhere in the back of his skull for years now, familiar in a way that no longer even startled him.
"The fourth one is getting married now? Good, good."
Eric's expression still didn't change, held carefully still through sheer habit, but inside he was in genuine disbelief. The voice in his head had spoken to him plenty of times over the years, offering fragments of guidance or cryptic remarks he'd long since stopped trying to fully understand. But this was the first time it had ever spoken to itself rather than to him, murmuring something under its own breath as if it had simply forgotten Eric could hear every word of it. And what it had let slip wasn't some vague, useless clue he could shrug off and forget. It was real information, concrete enough that his mind seized on it immediately. Something connected very deeply to him and Max.
The fourth one.
"Sasaki is the fourth one," Eric thought, and something in his chest went very still as the pieces started falling into place almost on their own. "If Adrian is the first, and Max is the second, and I am the third, the way Voyage already confirmed to me, then that makes Sasaki the fourth." He turned the thought over slowly, feeling the shape of it settle into something heavier than he wanted it to be. "But what does that actually mean? What connection do the four of us share that I still can't see? How many "ones" are even out there beyond us? What decides whether someone is a "one" in the first place, and why has nobody ever bothered to explain any of it to me?"
He had no answers for any of it, not a single one, and that realization settled over him with the same familiar frustration he'd carried for years now regarding most things in his life. He decided, almost out of self-preservation, not to chase the thought any further than he already had. He'd learned the hard way that digging too deep into something he couldn't yet comprehend rarely ended well for him. It felt safer, if not exactly satisfying, to let the question sit unanswered for now rather than risk unraveling something he wasn't ready to face.
But his mind wouldn't let him rest there for long.
A separate memory jolted loose almost immediately after, some quiet, nagging sense of familiarity from earlier that he hadn't been able to place at the time. He remembered it now with sudden, uncomfortable clarity: the feeling of being watched on his way here, faint and fleeting, gone almost as soon as he'd noticed it, the kind of sensation he might have dismissed entirely if his instincts hadn't been sharpened by years of needing to trust them.
Could it have been Sasaki?
The thought arrived, and Eric almost laughed it off immediately, some reflexive part of him rejecting it outright. No, that's ridiculous, he told himself. Sasaki Alberich has no reason to be anywhere near here, let alone quietly watching me from a distance without saying a single word. It was probably nothing. Probably just some stranger, some Aura user passing close enough to register on instinct and nothing more. There was no reason to assume it had been anyone significant at all, let alone him specifically.
And yet the denial didn't sit right, no matter how many times he repeated it to himself. The feeling had been too specific, too deliberate, not the vague background awareness of a crowded street but something closer to being singled out. He found himself circling back to the thought again despite his own resistance to it, turning it over from a different angle this time.
"Wait," Eric thought slowly, the realization arriving with far more weight than the first one had. "Edward already knows the three of us are the first, second, and third. If that's true, then there's no reason to assume Sasaki wouldn't know it too. If he knows, then it isn't actually so strange that he might have come looking? He might have wanted to see for himself rather than simply take Edward's word for it. That would explain the timing well enough. What doesn't explain itself is why he would come all this way and then not even approach us, not say a single word, not give any indication he'd been there at all."
"Or am I thinking too much of ourselves? Sasaki Alberich is a Supernova; even if we are somehow connected, why would he give us all face or respect enough to come and actually meet us?"
The more he sat with it, the less he could convince himself it was nothing. Sasaki had motive enough, if the voice's words were true, and Eric found it harder and harder to dismiss the sense of being watched as mere coincidence now that he'd let himself actually consider the alternative seriously. It wasn't confirmed. It wasn't proof of anything. But it was, he had to admit, plausible in a way that unsettled him more than he wanted it to.
"He must know a great deal more than I do about all of this," Eric thought, something like quiet resignation creeping into the thought now. "But if he isn't going to approach me directly, then there's nothing I can actually do about it either way. I can sit here turning it over in my head all day, and it won't change the fact that he's the one holding whatever answers exist, not me."
"Haha. It is still quite strange," Eric thought, forcing a bit of dry humor into the thought, if only to keep it from weighing on him too heavily, "I am apparently connected to the most powerful Aura user in existence through some mystery I don't understand and can't even properly investigate. Of all the things to be tangled up in.
He had more guesses now than he'd walked in with, and every one of them felt uncomfortably plausible. But guesses were all they were, and for now, that would have to be enough.
Max didn't care about who was getting married or who was dying. He simply didn't let himself be affected by things happening in other people's lives, treating most gossip the way he treated most food he didn't like the look of: with polite disinterest and no further thought. Adrian was in the same boat, more or less, though for different reasons. He didn't know much about Sasaki, barely more than the name itself, and news that clearly meant something huge to everyone else in the hall meant nothing at all to him yet. Not until he actually knew who Sasaki was and why an entire room full of strangers had gone quiet and wide-eyed over the mention of his wedding.
From others' reactions, Adrian could tell easily enough that he and Max were the odd ones out here. Everyone else who had heard the news looked genuinely mind-boggled, whispering to each other with wide eyes and excited hands, some of them already pulling out notebooks or leaning toward their neighbors to spread the word further. Whatever this was, it was clearly going to be a huge, grand event, the kind that rippled outward and touched things far beyond a single wedding.
Max glanced over at Adrian while working through another honey-layered stick, chewing thoughtfully, and it didn't take him long to realize two things at once: that Adrian had no idea how news actually traveled across the Aura Region, and that Adrian, still a little raw from the moment with Jacob earlier, wasn't in any hurry to open his mouth and ask. So Max decided to ask in his place instead, keeping his tone light and easy.
"Hey Jacob, can you remind me again how news is circulated across the Aura Region?"
Jacob looked up at Max, and something in his expression made it clear he understood exactly who the question was really meant for. He didn't call it out, though, just gave Max the smallest wink with his right eye and played along smoothly, the earlier heaviness between them fading a little as he settled back into something closer to his usual easy rhythm.
"News in the Aura Region is primarily circulated through newspapers," Jacob said. "We're not like the Utopian Region, where the natural Utopian Energy lets people build advanced technology and instant communication channels anyone can use. Over there, sharing information is easy. Aura does exist in our world too, of course, but the natural Aura flowing through it isn't something ordinary people can touch or use."
Adrian tilted his head slightly. "So there are no phones, no internet, nothing like that at all?"
"Nothing built off Aura, no," Jacob said. "What about telepathic communication, you might ask? In theory, sure, one person with strong enough telepathic ability could reach a lot of people at once. But in practice, that would take countless individuals with exceptional mental capacity and Aura control just to cover the whole region, which is well beyond what's realistically possible. Even if you somehow managed it, you'd risk disturbing plenty of people mid-process, Aura users trying to craft relics or push through advancement, and that kind of disturbance can get dangerous fast. On top of that, Meditation Aura only allows telepathic communication between other Meditation Aura users to begin with, so it was never going to scale the way you're imagining."
"Okay, that already sounds like a nightmare," Adrian muttered, mostly to himself.
Jacob continued, unbothered. "Most Knowledge Pathway users with abilities suited for exactly this kind of thing have already been recruited by the four great bodies of the Aura Region, and they work exclusively for them now. So what's actually left? Newspapers. That's really the only answer. And honestly, not everyone needs to know everything happening across the whole region anyway. Local news gets handled through printed papers, or on smaller planets, through limited broadcasts covering just that planet or the area around it."
He paused there, and Adrian found himself leaning in slightly without meaning to, curiosity starting to win out over his earlier reluctance to speak.
"Once a month, though, there's a special edition," Jacob went on. "The Universal Paper. Mostly read by Aura users, and it covers the biggest developments from across the entire region. Before it ever gets printed, every single piece of information in it gets cross-checked against Lumenia's own records, so you can trust what's in there. Once it's verified, it goes out to every planet in the Aura Region; allied planets get priority delivery, and if your planet isn't allied, you have to actually buy your copy each month if you want to stay in the loop."
Adrian nodded slowly, piecing it together. A wedding announcement big enough to make an entire hall of strangers gasp probably meant Sasaki was important enough to land in that monthly edition. Which meant Sasaki wasn't just some random name. He filed that thought away, deciding it was a question for later, once he'd had time to actually sit with everything else he'd learned today.
"Can we go home now?" Adrian asked instead, glancing between Eric and Jacob. "I feel like a lot of time has passed. My sister's going to be worried; she's alone at home too. I really need to head back."
Eric glanced up at the clock on the wall, and Adrian watched something faintly surprised cross his face for just a second. Six hours. They'd been here six hours already. It had to be evening back on Earth by now, even though nothing about the light in this place had shifted the entire time- no sunset, no change in the sky at all, nothing to mark the hours passing except the clock itself. The rate time moved here matched Earth's exactly, Adrian had been told, but standing in a place that never got darker or brighter made that fact easy to forget.
Eric nodded and turned to say his farewell to Jacob. But before they'd taken more than a step or two away from the desk, Adrian's mind snagged on something Jacob had said earlier, something that had been sitting there quietly since the moment he'd first heard it and refused to let go.
"Wait," Adrian said, stopping. "Why newspapers, though? I mean, actually. If Lumenia's this advanced, if they've got Meditation Aura and telepathy and all of that, why would they end up settling on something as basic as printed paper for the big stuff? That seems like a weirdly old-fashioned system for a whole region."
Eric glanced back at him, considering the question for a moment before answering. "Honestly? I don't know the full reasoning behind it. What I do know is that it wasn't some accident or leftover tradition nobody bothered to update. This system, the whole structure of how news moves through the region, was set up deliberately. By the third Meditation Master."
Adrian blinked. "Why would he decide something like that, though?"
"I don't know," Eric admitted, and there was no discomfort in saying it, just plain honesty. "But he must have had a reason. He wasn't the kind of person who did things without one." Eric's tone shifted slightly, something almost like reverence creeping into it despite how flatly he usually spoke. "The third Meditation Master was the smartest Aura user in recorded history. He wasn't the strongest, not necessarily, but he was, without question, the smartest. He was also the main strategic pillar behind all of Lumenia, the one who actually built its foundations after the First Meditation Master established it in the first place. Whatever this system is, whatever reason lies behind newspapers over telepathy or broadcasts, you can bet it wasn't arbitrary."
Adrian went quiet at that, turning the idea over slowly in his head. A whole civilization's method of spreading information, deliberately shaped by one person, one mind, sharp enough that everyone still trusted the decision generations later even without fully understanding why. It was a strange thing to sit with, unsettling in a way he couldn't quite name, the sense that there were layers upon layers of design behind even the most mundane parts of this world, structures built by minds so far beyond his own that he couldn't hope to see the reasoning, only the shape it had left behind.
"That's kind of terrifying, honestly," Adrian said eventually, only half joking.
Eric didn't argue with him.
With that, the trio walked out of the hall and out onto the streets, leaving the noise and light of the Adventure Association behind them. Before they'd gotten far, Max had already ducked back to buy a few more sweets, stuffing them into his bag with the satisfied look of someone stocking up on something he knew he wouldn't find anywhere else. After all, sweets like that didn't exist back on Earth, and he wasn't about to pass up the chance while he had it.
After reaching the streets again, Eric grabbed the shoulders of Max and Adrian and walked ahead, his grip firm and unhurried, the kind of motion that gave neither of them any real chance to ask questions before it happened. Adrian's vision wobbled again, the whole world briefly folding in on itself, before he found himself standing under the red sun, the light bleeding low and orange across a sky he now recognized without needing to think about it as the familiar wind hit his cheeks again. He was in an empty, dark alley, the noise of the city humming faintly somewhere just beyond the walls on either side. He looked behind him, half expecting the transition to have changed something, but Eric was still there, still in the same appearance from moments ago.
Eric removed his hands from their shoulders and took a step back, giving the alley room to breathe around the three of them. For a moment, nobody said anything at all. Max stretched his arms overhead with a loud, satisfied groan, the paper bag of sweets crinkling against his side, and glanced toward Eric with an easy, expectant look.
Eric turned to his right, ready to leave, then looked over at Max instead. The two of them exchanged a glance that carried something unspoken between them, some understanding built from years Adrian hadn't been a part of, and they nodded to each other once, simple and final. Max lifted a hand toward Adrian in a lazy, two-fingered wave.
"Catch you later, kid," Max said, already grinning around a mouthful of sweets he'd apparently decided couldn't wait. "Don't get yourself killed before I see you next. That'd ruin my whole week."
"Thanks. Really comforting," Adrian said dryly, though he found himself almost smiling despite everything.
Max huffed out a short laugh, brought his Meditation Aura up around himself in a faint shimmer of light, and teleported away entirely, vanishing to some place only he and Eric knew the location of, leaving no trace behind but a faint afterimage and the rustle of a paper bag that was no longer there. Before he'd fully disappeared, though, his voice carried back one last time, half-muffled and already fading.
"Adrian, after you get home, you will be meeting your bodyguard. Be kind to him."
"Wait, bodyguard? What?" Adrian spun toward the space Max had just occupied, but there was nothing there anymore, only empty air and the dim red light settling back into stillness.
Eric didn't answer the question. He didn't even acknowledge it had been asked, already turning to walk further into the alley at an unhurried pace, hands sliding into his pockets like the conversation was already over as far as he was concerned.
"Hey, wait, Eric!" Adrian jogged a couple of steps after him before he stopped himself, remembering the actual question he'd meant to ask before Max's parting comment had derailed his entire train of thought. "I forgot to ask. What's the first step of the method of control for my rank? So I can actually start increasing my rate of control over my Aura."
Eric paused mid-step. He'd already shifted back into his Mike Jackson look somewhere in the transition here; the Imperator's Cross settled neatly back onto his left earlobe like it had never left, catching the last of the red light in a thin, cold gleam. He turned his head just enough to look back at Adrian over his shoulder, unhurried, almost amused.
"You have been doing it for hours now," Eric said, his voice flat and cold in the way Adrian was slowly starting to recognize as something closer to a challenge than actual dismissal. "Guess."
Adrian went quiet, eyes drifting off to one side as he genuinely tried to think it through, running back over everything that had happened since he'd woken up that morning. Asking Eric questions. Answering Eric's questions. Wandering the guild hall, asking Max things, asking Jacob things, turning every strange new piece of information over in his head until it made some kind of sense. None of it clicked into an obvious single answer, and after a few seconds of visibly getting nowhere, he just shook his head.
"I've got nothing," Adrian admitted. "I really don't know."
Eric let out a short, quiet sigh, though there wasn't much real frustration behind it, more the sound of someone who'd expected exactly this answer and wasn't disappointed by it. "Curiosity," he said simply. "Just go home. Meet your bodyguard. Read. Ask as many questions as you possibly can, of him, of your books, of anyone who'll answer you. The more you ask, the more you learn, the more you clarify what you don't understand, the faster your rate of control climbs. That's the whole first step. It's not complicated, Adrian. You've just been doing it without realizing it counted for anything."
Adrian blinked, turning that over in his head. It felt almost too simple to be real advice, and yet, thinking back over the day, over every question he'd fired off without a second thought, it made an uncomfortable amount of sense.
"For today," Eric said, already turning fully away now, "goodbye."
He lifted one hand in an easy, half-hearted wave over his shoulder, not even bothering to look back again, and stepped forward into the deeper dark of the alley. The shadows there seemed to fold around him more readily than they should have, swallowing the shape of him piece by piece, the gleam of the Imperator's Cross the very last thing to vanish, until there was nothing left of him at all.
Adrian stood there a moment longer in the sudden quiet, the red sun casting long, still shadows down the length of the empty alley, the city noise beyond it feeling distant and unreal.
A bodyguard.
The word sat there in his mind, refusing to be ignored, and for the first time all day, Adrian felt a small, uneasy flicker of nerves creep back into his chest.
He had no idea what, or who, was waiting for him at home.