I groaned, letting the cool water of Yrd’s streams pass underneath me, trickling and tickling my feet.

  It was good to get outside every once in a while.

  A wild mane of cobalt hair danced in the spring breeze.

  Setsuna sighed, lowering herself and gathering the sacred water of the river beneath us in her palms and drinking it.

  She let out a small groan of relief, feeling the many built-up aches and sores of the past months slowly fade from her body.

  I took a seat by the riverbank, closing my eyes and smiling, just taking in the cool, crisp spring air and listening to the flowing river.

  “Headmaster’s treating you rough, still?”

  Setsuna just grunted in annoyance.

  “That decrepit, withering skeleton,” she clicked her tongue and mumbled, “thou should just crumble into dust already. Leave thy ancient bones behind to the rot of time and decay into sands of history. Leave the present for the young and free, thou shalt not burden me with thy terrible torture any longer.”

  “Seems like you’re having fun,” I raised an eyebrow in amusement.

  Well, eh.

  I shrugged.

  “To be honest, I’m not really doing that much better myself, kind of why I invited you up again,” I sighed, closing my eyes and hugging my knees slightly, trying to dispel the tiredness and migraine by a bit.

  “Thou seems to be fine in mine eyes,” Setsuna mumbled, looking over my relatively unscathed body, “at least thy bones remain unbroken. Mine hands can scarcely hold a blade these days.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  There she went again, thinking of the world and other people solely through the eyes of swordsmanship.

  She really wasn’t helping when it came to dispelling the stereotype that the melee combatants had amongst the fledgling magi at Nindo – and even adult magi across the globe depending on how sheltered, rude or ignorant they were – were just muscle-brained dunces incapable of doing anything but swinging a sword or thinking about fighting.

  “There are other types of pain and exhaustion, you know,” I dryly remarked, “maybe my bones aren’t melting, but my brain sure feels like it is sometimes. And half the time I feel like I can’t hold chalk or pens anymore.”

  Setsuna flexed her sore fingers as she flipped between miming hold a sword and holding a pen.

  “That is true, I suppose,” she frowned, “for a witch, being caught unable to scribe must be equivalent to a swordsman being caught bare-handed.”

  She sighed, trudging up the river to sit next to me on its bank.

  “It seems being under thy mother’s tutelage has brought thee no pity, privilege nor comfort.”

  I smiled wryly.

  “Well, I think it’s because I’m her daughter that she’s taking this so seriously.”

  Mother could be a harsh tutor when she needed to be.

  And, well, when it came to this matter, she really needed to be.

  Setsuna slouched slightly, drooping her shoulders and mumbling off to the side.

  “Thou art learning thy mother’s signature rituals, no? If nothing else, at least the art of rituals should be familiar ground to thee. The headmaster… he hath not even the decency to pretend to be teaching me sword forms.”

  I grimaced.

  “I wish,” I groaned, “but there’s a massive difference between what Nindo teaches for runework, even as the best school on the continent, and what Mother has pioneered as one of the most freakish ritual mages on the planet.”

  I sighed heavily, slouching even further than Setsuna did.

  “Samsara… it’s a completely insane, ludicrous spell. It’s barely even a runic ritual for the most part. It’s almost completely reliant on an innate, internalised understanding of geomancy and Cardinal Theory, its calculations rely on four-dimensional matrices, and if you really want to understand it, you probably have to take a whole semester on Planar Studies… if they even offer a course on that anywhere on Manusyara. Mother’s probably the only qualified teacher of it even in the Citadel.”

  Setsuna frowned, letting out a small grunt of defeat.

  Her ego didn’t want her to admit that she was losing in our strange competition of comparing and one-upping our sufferings in training.

  “It seems thou art no less strained than I. I suppose ‘twas foolish to think that I alone was suffering through hell,” she commiserated with me.

  I shrugged.

  “Well, best friends have to match each other somehow. United in tortured tutoring is one way to be on the same wavelength, I guess.”

  The days spent studying Samsara’s perfect ritual form were particularly hellish, and all of that effort was just to be able to copy it and write it from memory, let alone actually understand the underlying mechanisms and calculations.

  And that was just for our initial holistic view on it. I really wasn’t looking forward to the second round of study, deep-diving into its individual mechanisms after I figured out how to complete one round of conversion from Fire to Wind.

  I hadn’t felt this strained in years. Even the days when I was first wrapping my head around the concept of magic just existing didn’t leave me as confused.

  The last time I felt this way was probably in my previous life, when I was busting my now non-existent balls over every last exam that crept around the corner.

  Huh.

  I blinked.

  Right, I used to be male. I forgot about that. Life as a girl came so naturally now.

  I had forgotten that there used to be a thought lingering at the back of my mind that was always scared of facing that fact, terrified of what it meant to confront the fact that I was now someone else.

  That all seemed so silly, now, all these years later.

  ‘Someone else’, ‘the person I used to be’, ‘things I left behind’, ‘things I could no longer return to’...

  None of that felt like it mattered anymore, or it had ever mattered in the first place.

  That little boy who waited for his sister, who never reconnected with his parents… well, I was still here. There didn’t need to be conflict between the two of us.

  He was still with me in my heart and memories, as I carried on as Estelle Symphonia, living on as my silly dream to travel the world as a miracle-creating, tragedy-defying witch, as Luna’s older sister and Belle’s daughter. He was me and I was him.

  It was as simple as that.

  Setsuna winced, rolling her shoulders and joints as the pain started to burn again.

  I chuckled, shaking my head.

  “You too, hm?”

  “Hmph,” Setsuna scowled, “remind me, if my path is ever to cross with the seniors again after graduation, I am to cut their tongues for their inane sayings about the ‘hell year’... there is no ‘heaven’ on the other side. ‘Tis all but a singular, long, extended affair. Two years of unbroken hell.”

  I smiled wryly.

  “Well, don’t blame them too much. It’s not like they came back to Nindo all that often to update us on how their apprenticeships were going. And besides, it’s not like they were all studying underneath legends like Mother or the headmaster.”

  “Tch,” Setsuna huffed, desperately wishing she could deny the headmaster’s talent and infamy, but it seemed like even her arrogance had an upper limit.

  Even she had to admit it was both an incredible privilege and incredible burden to be studying under someone like him directly, so incredible that it drew the ire and jealousy of many of our peers, especially from my fellow magi, who were beyond irritated that a stupid, brainless swordswoman of all people secured personal tutelage from one of the most legendary wizards in the Realm.

  I sighed as I got up, picking up my staff that I had brought along with me, getting off the river bank to hover over Setsuna’s back.

  “Right, should have done this before we left,” I mumbled.

  A flow of golden light trickled out of my hands, circling around my staff before pouring onto Setsuna’s back.

  “You know…” I dryly remarked, almost sarcastically.

  “I almost forgot I could use healing magic. My brain’s just been overtaken by dimensional physics calculations, runic equations and geomancy practices. I still see that stupid fucking rotating tesseract spinning around in my mind in my sleep,” I moaned.

  I missed the nights when I dreamt about Luna growing older. If I had to see one more four-dimensional hypercube in my sleep I was going to completely lose it.

  “Tch,” Setsuna clicked her tongue and nodded, “I understand thy feelings. Gone are the peaceful nights of meditation and envisioning higher sword forms. All that plagues my restless, sore nights are visions of the world’s compass.”

  She grunted in annoyance, commiserating alongside me.

  “At the very least, I had thought myself knowledgeable in Cardinal Theory, if nothing else, given all my master’s works and teaching surrounding it, and how fundamental it is to my art. And yet, I find myself like an ignorant child, tossed around on the training ground as the headmaster laughs at mine expense.”

  We sighed in unison, for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

  “How dost thou suppose Wadatsumi and Tsukiyo are faring? Dost thou think they are equally as tortured by thine own mentors?”

  Setsuna’s shoulders sagged lightly in relaxation as my magic slowly did its work, soothing the months of wounds, bruises and aches.

  “I doubt it,” I grumbled.

  I liked to believe I wasn’t coping or being petty when I said that.

  “They’re at least working within their areas of expertise. Hayate’s been raised his entire life to succeed his father, and the Tsukiyo family prides themselves on their ability to appease spirits.”

  Setsuna huffed.

  “It’s a wonder how any ancient spirits are appeased by Tsukiyo’s attitude.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Like you’re one to talk, miss ‘I stand alone on the martial peak’. You couldn’t talk anyone into anything if you didn’t have me to do all of it for you.”

  She huffed again, this time indignantly.

  “Because I have nary a need for such paltry skills such as diplomacy or negotiation. Mine art is all I need to travel.”

  “Really?” I raised an eyebrow, “that doesn’t match up with what happened last year on those B-Rank missions we did. You know, the ones where you almost got us put up on stakes and burned like good ol’ fashioned ancient witch hunts?”

  She winced, wilting slightly at the memory.

  That was not a particularly bright spot for her. She almost made me embarrassingly become the only witch to be burned on a stake in probably five hundred years because of her poor attitude when it came to talking to strangers.

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  I sighed.

  “Honestly, you’re hopeless. You’re lucky that I’ll be coming with you on your travels.”

  I giggled, nudging her with my elbows and teasing her.

  “Looks like I’ll be your mentor for a little while after we graduate to teach you how to talk to people. Who knows, maybe you’ll find me worse than the dreaded headmaster?”

  Setsuna blushed and bristled, pushing me away in embarrassment.

  I laughed her off.

  The two of us then continued our way further up into Yrd, climbing deeper into its forests and winding rivers.

  “So, anything you want to do today?” I asked to pass the time, holding up a branch as both of us passed underneath it, “Feel like wrestling and sparring the animals around here again?”

  The wildlife around this mountain was… well, strange to say the least. The nourishing springs and streams of Yrd, welling with primordial mana from the leyline inside and underneath it, spurred their evolution into fantastical creatures, each stranger than the last as climbed ever higher.

  If I had to guess, they would probably be ranked around Archfiend-class on average, with the more long-lived beasts surpassing even Cataclysm ranked threats. That fearsome nature was what kept these mountains so isolated from civilization, and part of why contact with the elven people of Tenmai had taken so long to establish.

  They weren’t hostile, though. Far from it; the almost divine water had blessed them with intelligence only matched by the spirits who lived in Tenmai’s forests, and many of them simply saw us as passing acquaintances, greeting us politely like we were neighbours who lived across the street from them.

  As long as you treated them and their land with friendliness and respect, and didn’t see them as monsters to be hunted down, they would treat you with respect in kind.

  Right on cue, across the treeline, softly glowing antlers peered out from the dark depths of the forest, gazing curiously at the visitors.

  I waved half-heartedly at the strange deer-like creature, whose antlers were shaped from solid gold, embedded with strange dazzling jewels that glittered with fairy-like lights.

  It bowed in response to me, before taking heed of my companion and blinking.

  It nodded in a playful, almost challenging manner, galloping and spinning in place as it teased her, beckoning her towards a familiar nearby clearing.

  I smiled at the familiar song-and-dance between Setsuna and the wildlife.

  They weren’t hostile, but they were very lively and full of attitude if you provoked them, which, of course, was something that Setsuna was effortlessly capable of.

  It didn’t take her long after her first trip here with me some few years ago to start recklessly challenging all of them to sparring matches.

  “Oh, look,” I nudged her as well, going along with the colossal deer’s lively challenge, “old Eikthyrnir wants another match with you, how about it, eh? What was your record again… five to six? One away from tying it up. Surely Nindo’s unofficial S-Rank isn’t scared of a deer, right?”

  The bejewelled deer whined from the trees, affirming my words and egging Setsuna on.

  Setsuna just grimaced and sighed, waving the deer away and shaking her head.

  “Alas, at this moment, the last that my body can handle is yet another spar, even if ‘tis with an old friend.”

  I just chuckled, finding the prospect of her calling the almost-divine creature a ‘friend’ amusing.

  She couldn’t speak to other humans or elves or beastfolk without aggravating them with her ego and loftiness to save her life, but when it came to befriending great, dangerous beasts, she was somehow second to none.

  Apparently, her childish arrogance and unrelenting pursuit of perfection just made her endearing to the elderly creatures on the mountain.

  The massive stag groaned in disappointment, tossing its head around in exasperation, before mimicking a sigh and trudging off, disappearing into the depths of the forest.

  “Well, what do you want to do, then?” I asked as I waved goodbye to the deer.

  Setsuna sighed.

  “Another simple day underneath the waterfalls shall suffice for now. The only thing my body desires is rest… I hunger for mere moments of peace and calm, meditation has eluded me for months.”

  I blinked.

  Oh, right, I had been wanting to ask her for pointers on that anyways. That was like… half the reason I had invited her out. I had forgotten in the excitement of catching up with her again.

  “Right, right,” I smiled tiredly, “I get that.”

  I chuckled as we resumed our walk, accompanied by the soothing trickle of the nearby stream.

  “You know, I just realised,” I idly mused, “you and I have been talking about being taught for months, but the school year just started a couple weeks ago… I guess the headmaster started early with you?”

  Setsuna just sighed.

  “After those wretched finals. Not a second earlier or later.”

  “Yup,” my lips pulled into a flat line, “same here. Mother didn’t even ask me about how finals went before pulling me into her room. My arms and legs were still sore from the practicals.”

  Setsuna raised an eyebrow at that.

  “I understand Lady Symphonia can be strict when it comes to tutelage as a classical Citadel witch, but I did not think her to be as sadistic as the headmaster.”

  I blinked.

  “Is that why you started early? Because the headmaster just thought it would be funny?”

  The only response I got was a displeased glower.

  Huh.

  Well, anyways.

  “Anyways,” I shook my head, “no, it wasn’t because of anything like that. It wasn’t because she wanted to start early… Mother was just… anxious. It was just a matter of urgency.”

  I didn’t really understand why Mother had suddenly barged into my garden halfway through last year with bloody smudges underneath her eyes with a deathly stare, declaring me to be her apprentice without an opportunity for me to respond…

  Not at first, anyways.

  Now, though…

  Well, I wished she did just start teaching me before the seventh year actually started just because of her strict upbringing and background as a Citadel witch.

  Setsuna shot me a curious look.

  “Urgency? Why? Why is the matter of thy tutelage so dire and timely? Dost thou not have all the time in the world as Lady Symphonia’s daughter to have her legacy passed on?”

  I chuckled dryly.

  I couldn’t divulge much, not even to her, as much as it pained me.

  She was my best friend, a sworn companion who I shared a sacred oath of camaraderie with, and someone I was soon to spend many years travelling with, and yet…

  Yet still, even with so much open communication between us, there were some secrets that were too dire to share.

  I recalled what Mother told me, about the truth of what I was, and the reason the Void was so attracted to me.

  Still, though, even if I couldn’t tell her everything, she deserved to at least know something. That was the least I could do for her as her best friend.

  “You and your master seek out the ‘Blade of the Sky’, no?”

  Setsuna paused, staring at me with a small amount of confusion at the sudden change in topic, a change that was very bleak and solemn in tone, at that.

  I just smiled sadly, and continued on.

  “That mysterious element, beyond the reach of the world, its wheel, and the Four Elements, untouchable, unknowable… You and your master willingly walk the path of the ‘Fifth Direction’, seeking it out, right?”

  I just shook my head out of morbid amusement.

  “I don’t have that privilege. I don’t want to walk on that path. I just want Luna to grow up well, I want to travel around Manusyara, maybe find someone to share everything with… but it doesn’t seem like I have that choice. It seems like I was destined to be pulled down this path ever since I came into this world.”

  Setsuna just looked upon my sad expression with a complicated face, countless tumultuous thoughts and feelings running through her mind and heart.

  I could see the sparks of her brain firing and flickering behind her emerald eyes, considering the possibilities of what I was implying.

  “A living ‘candle’?”

  “...”

  “Nay, ‘tis impossible, but… what else? A fracture of starlight? Is that why thou wast bestowed the name ‘Estelle’? Born from nothingness? A spoke of the wheel?”

  She uncharacteristically grit her teeth in worry and frustration, seeming to be actually intelligent about something besides martial arts for once.

  She ran through a dozen other possibilities in front of me, probing my expression as she bit her lip, concerned for me.

  I just chuckled.

  She was close a couple times, kind of, maybe.

  There was a possibility she could not consider though. It was too outlandish, too foreign for her to even conceive of.

  It was impossible.

  After all, she was operating under the assumption that I was born as Estelle Symphonia.

  Even if she had somehow found the correct answer, the reason Setsuna was asking these questions, in hopes that maybe she could be of help to my predicament, was futile.

  My path had been decided for me a long time ago. There was nothing that could ever have been done to change it.

  It would have taken a miracle; for my little sister to have been born.

  For me to have never slowly grown distant with my parents, for me to have never slowly drowned in guilt, nihility and pointlessness.

  For me to have not gone to France, and to have not died on that street.

  As long as I was me in my entirety, there was nothing I could have done.

  I came from Earth. A place entirely outside of the Six Realms, outside of the comprehension of any living or unliving thing in this world, beyond the laws of the universe itself.

  An utterly alien, unknowable existence.

  I was capable of comprehending an alien universe, crossing from or not just from one of the Six Realms to another, or dimensions or planes, but entire realities and infinities.

  That was why no one had ever discovered the ‘Sixth Spell’, Ain Soph Aur, before.

  The necessary catalyst for its invocation was an impossible ingredient; memories of worlds that did not exist, from other infinities themselves.

  Such memories, in such a mind that was capable of comprehending utterly alien existences, under the rule of foreign laws of foreign universes…

  That would be sufficient to open the eye to comprehend the Sixth Realm itself, to comprehend the Thing’s form and existence.

  And in doing so, one would open the eye and see ‘infinity’.

  I brought my finger to my lips and shushed her gently.

  Setsuna stared, blinking at me wildly.

  “Thanks, Setsuna, for being so worried, and thinking about me so much,” I smiled, “it means a lot, really. But beyond that much… I can’t really afford to tell you much more.”

  I really wished I could, but it was not a burden of knowledge that others needed to bear.

  They did not need to bear the stress of knowing that my existence was all that stood between them and their world being consumed by the Thing from Beyond.

  That knowledge alone would drive many to madness, no Nirvana needed.

  I laughed ironically.

  “Sorry,” I trailed off, “you know… for springing this on you all of a sudden. I know you just want to relax and all. Probably could have picked a better time and place for all this.”

  I shrugged helplessly.

  Setsuna just continued to bite her lip.

  She swallowed down the frustration.

  I just smiled nonchalantly.

  Setsuna gave my easygoing, carefree expression a pained look.

  “Thou art strange as ever, Estelle,” she sighed heavily, “thou art lucky beyond belief to have crossed paths with me, one who will eventually also tread that same path. Were it anyone else you were to confide in… thy head would have already fallen from thy shoulders.”

  She sighed heavily, trying to dispel those heavy feelings from herself as she shook her head.

  “Nay… ‘tis fine. I am honoured, humbled, that thou chose to share thy burden with me. ‘Tis a sign of thy trust and bond, and the ties that bind us. Know that mine heart and blade shall always be with thee, whether thou needst it or not.”

  It would be a lie to say I wasn’t sad.

  I wished I could tell her about it all.

  I really did.

  But I just couldn’t. Not after seeing the look on my mother’s face as she told me everything, not after all the gravitas that weighed down on me during those lectures.

  I recalled what she had told me about my existence, and my ties to the Sixth Spell, again.

  There was always something that was missing when it came to the Void.

  There was the beginning and the end.

  There was singularity and transience.

  And in Ein Sof, there were two points between the void, and the unknowable distance between them.

  The regular mind was not capable of bridging the points between Alpha and Omega. They could not comprehend the endless cycle of impermanence or transformation, or truly cease their being and blow out every candle.

  They would close their eyes, envision the world, its matter, its space and time, and try to create a star within it, invoking Genesis, and find themselves unable to actually process the amount of impossible information and energy such a task would require.

  Trying to process that information, something necessary to properly invoke the Six Spells, would irreparably collapse the soul and mind of any who tried it.

  The Void was always trying to complete itself, to force its hosts into unleashing the true forms of its Spells, but was never able to. They lacked the impossible ingredient required to stabilise its power.

  Because the number needed to bridge the two points of Ein Sof, the location of the sixth candle, and the identity of Ain Soph Aur itself, was ‘infinity’.

  ‘Omniscience’.

  That was the closest word that could be used to describe Ain Soph Aur. Knowledge of all things in the world. The exact state and information and potential of every last atom and molecule that comprised Manusyara.

  That was it, Ain Soph Aur was infinity itself – the eyes to see it, and the mind to calculate it – and through it, every Spell could be unleashed without consequence.

  Genesis was not just a way of creating stars, not underneath the omniscient prescience of Ain Soph Aur. And its mirror, Revelation, was not just a way to unmake the world either.

  It was the entirety of the universe itself, the infinity of existence at its very beginning as it expanded from a singular point outwards into the nothingness.

  Through Ain Soph Aur’s ‘infinity’, Genesis was not just starlight, it was mathematical divergence, the infinite and instantaneous expansion of an immeasurable series – the ‘series’ being the fabric and space of the world itself.

  And Revelation was similarly transformed, becoming convergence itself, representing series of infinities that condensed into a singular, impossible point, never truly reaching its destination.

  Through Ain Soph Aur, which revealed all truths in the worlds, the state of every individual molecule, every thought, every feeling, every word, Genesis and Revelation became methods to fold the fabric of space, infinitely repelling and attracting, infinitely expanding and contracting.

  And as Genesis and Revelation controlled space, Nirvana and Anitya controlled time.

  Nirvana, the 'cessation of being', the unbinding of oneself from the cycle, became halting all progress, freezing everything into nothing.

  And Anitya, the eternal churning of the wheel, became endless progression, until every second blended into the soup of meaninglessness.

  And through the method of comprehending and calculating infinity, the truth of Ein Sof would reveal itself.

  Only after the otherworldly memory was consumed, and infinity was manifested, would one be able to behold the Thing itself, and the full glory of its alien, reality-defying, incomprehensible form.

  And with its form revealed, and compelled by the madness of Nirvana, Ein Sof could be utilised for its true purpose; summoning the Thing to devour everything in this Realm.

  If its Null energy could reach me, it would forcefully try to steer me into realising the Thing and ending Manusyara against my will.

  I chuckled, waving the existential crisis away.

  That was enough of those depressing thoughts for now.

  I needed to recharge my Luna battery if I wanted to continue thinking about that.

  “Oh, but, enough of that,” I shrugged, nodding towards the distant waterfall, which we could hear gushing in the distance.

  “Come on, let’s head to the waterfall! I remembered the first time you came, you showed off your Suiheisen… well, I’ve also been learning a neat trick recently! I’m going to turn the waterfall into a mudfall!”

  Renovation stuff isn’t gonna be done until the 23rd, so it’ll be straight into the holiday season for me, so regular updates probably aren’t gonna be back until next year. Was pretty busy for this one.

  Hopefully I’ll at least be able to get the ball rolling for this arc this month since these first three/four chapters are mostly just setup/laying the groundwork for the rest of the arc.