In the darkness, there was nothing. Not quiet nor loud, only the peace of oblivion.

From that nothing, a blurry idea bubbled forth. A memory, from a time before Leven's tragedy, before he'd even met Emily and a time when Taj was nowhere to be found. Just a year and a half before high school graduation, in his Junior year, Leven walked into Precalculus, not exactly the most popular nor particularly caring about that fact. He'd always been a big guy, so he didn't really suffer from bullying or anything adjacent.

After all, even if Leven didn't hurt you, you'd still look like a complete dunce for picking a fight with him.

In this particular class, he knew two people. Amber and Barett. It wasn't super far into the school year, so they didn't know each other well, but the three of them were okay-ish friends, though Amber didn't like Barett all that much. Barett was one of the 'weird kids,' which Leven never paid any mind to as he didn't dabble much in the rumor mill.

Still, weird kids did get their reputations somehow, either through unjust bullying or… bare truth. Sometimes, they were just weird.

This particular day, Amber was absent for one reason or another and it was a collaborative assignment. Much to Leven's annoyance, Barett was ignoring the work, instead giving him a fast-track on why he was not liked all that much by others.

He'd made some offhand remarks about Amber a few times before, and Leven always told him to cut it out, but it was once or twice in the past month or so. A bit too much to ignore, but not enough to do anything about it.

Today, with Amber gone though, whatever little filter Barett had seemed to fall away.

"Dude I'm just sayin," Barett told him quietly while groping the air. "The things I'd do to her. You just gotta help me out here, put in a good word. You're a bit closer to her than me so I'm sure she'd trust you."

Leven looked at him with disgust, and his unknown-at-the-time Wrath flared. Amber was, after all, his friend, and Barett was making himself out to be a threat.

Unlike on Avium, he couldn't just punch a hole through Barett's head.

"Don't talk about her like that," he spoke in a low voice with complete seriousness. "It's awful, and she wouldn't want you to. If you can't say it directly to her, don't say it to me either. Better yet, don't say it at all."

Barett rolled his eyes, "What are you, gay? You can't at least acknowledge that she's hot?"

"She's pretty, but that doesn't justify saying stuff about her."

"It's not like it matters. Women that sexy usually get passed around anywh-"

Dei, now aware of his outside view, watched Leven's Wrath flare, hard. It looked like he was ready to attack, but that couldn't be right. After the first few words out of Barett's mouth, Leven smiled cruelly, making Dei reevaluate his initial impression of if Leven would attack the boy or not.

'Why don't I remember this whole memory? This… I should know what happens, but it's… fuzzy.'

The Wrath mana swirled through Leven's body, touching upon his mind as he cut Barett off. They were whispering before, but now Leven spoke just a tad louder. "Maybe if you weren't so busy being a pervert, you wouldn't have gotten a sixty percent on the last test."

Anger flashed through Barett's expression, then the two people in the group next to them let out raucous laughter, interrupting the entire classroom.

'They heard what Leven said, and… he did that intentionally. He WANTED to embarrass Barett for saying that stuff.'

Dei watched as the Wrath mana, now satisfied with its "attack," willingly pushed itself into the Pandora's Box. It wasn't a punch, but for a highschooler, it was probably worse.

Barett shrank in his seat, realizing two people had been listening in on their conversation, heard everything he'd said, and heard Leven's insult.

"Billy! Garett! Mind sharing what was so funny with the class?" their teacher called out with a scathing glare.

Barett paled, realizing everyone else was about to hear it too, but Leven was the first to speak up. "Sorry Ms. Terrence. I told a joke and they overheard it, I'll stop."

Unlike Billy and Garett, Leven was a star student and one of her favorites. She wouldn't push him to say whatever it was as much.

Ms Terrence's lips pursed, but all she said was. "Very well, get back to work."

Leven nodded and did just that, Barett still looking wildly embarrassed. Leven didn't want everyone laughing at him, just for him to shut the fuck up about his friend.

Shortly thereafter, Barett left the classroom without a word and didn't come back. Ms. Terrence didn't even stop him from leaving, just sighing. Barett would do that sometimes anyway, so it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

With Barett gone, Leven joined up with Billy and Garett for the group work. They were a lot nicer, and didn't comment on what he'd said, but it was clear they respected him for it.

Amber was back the next day and asked why Barett was avoiding them now, Leven shrugged and said he didn't know but she was flat out relieved.

A week later, she said she'd heard what he'd done and thanked him. He just nodded, said it was fine, and they never spoke of it again.

Dei took a moment to process what he'd seen. 'Huh… I didn't think of it like that, but the Wrath seemed completely satisfied with Leven's actions. Even after the Wrath left his mind, Leven didn't regret his words for a moment either.'

What confused him the most was how surprised he was at Leven's actions. Dei was so sure that he held all of Leven's memories, but he couldn't predict that memory. More than that, Dei didn't expect Leven to act that way at all. It was completely at odds with everything Dei knew about Leven. He'd always seen Leven as an incredibly gentle and kind man, which he was, but Dei understood what the echo meant when it said he was flawed. Dei had an incomplete understanding of Leven.

The next memory started up, and Dei watched far more curiously now.

This time he was in college. He watched someone trip another in the hall, and thought it was a comically evil thing to do. When he saw the rude guy in one of his classes, he partnered with him. Helped him all year and did virtually every group assignment by himself.

Dei was confused by that, but the montage slowed down as joy sparked at every exam. The guy had no idea how anything in the class worked, but his grades were passing- barely. Just above seventy percent.

Having never done any of the work, he failed the final exam tremendously, getting only twenty percent. Leven was unaffected, but secretly overjoyed.

Leven… intentionally helped him so much that he didn't learn anything himself. It was borderline obsessive to go out of his way so much for a random person in the hallway he'd never known nor ever spoken with again.

It was a revenge so petty, Dei didn't think he had it in him to go that far. While others might consider Dei's aggressive response to certain things as overblown, Leven's response was a social mirror of it, fitting within the acceptable expectations of others yet just as overblown when put under a microscope.

And the montage continued. Again and again, Leven would put up a front of being kind- just the nicest person anyone had ever known. Internally? He took joy from the accidental harm he caused to others. He wasn't planning weeks or months into the future, but a stray thought would occur to him. A simple "What if?" and he'd jump right into action. He was calculating and thoughtful enough to be cruel, know what he was doing, and still do so.

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But in each instance, Dei couldn't even blame him. Someone would gain his ire, and he'd kill em with kindness. Not the sort where he helped the person so much that they felt bad for being rude, more that his harm would either be called unintentional after everything he did for them, or he'd wait for the perfect moment where he could not be blamed for a few harsh words, aimed directly at the person's insecurities.

"Still… I stand by my words" he said to the other observer, the echo. "Your understanding of Leven is more flawed than my own, because you utterly lack the ability to see his other half.

"Oh?"

"In the first memory, with Barett. He embarrassed his 'enemy' because he was protecting Amber, not because he hated Barett. He couldn't possibly have cared less about him. It was the same with the college class, and all the others after that. He didn't draw joy from being cruel, he drew joy from hurting those that he considered evil."

"That's a bit arbitrary and self centered, isn't it? To judge others by how nice they are rather than some objective? He could reason out being rude to anyone if that were the case. It was the joy of acting, the thrill of hurting them mentally. He planned out these things, then gave himself freedom to act on his impulses without being caught."

Dei shook his head, "That isn't true, not even in the memories listed. This is Kindness, not Justice. Calling it subjective would be an understatement. He didn't care about what was objectively correct, he just loved his friends or those he considered under his protection, and wanted to help them, being fully willing to hurt others for them.

"I will admit, I see now that I do not have a complete understanding of Leven, but yours is far more limited. I can see the reasoning in his Wrath because I hold a connection to both it and Kindness, I can see both sides of him. You are unable to see his Kindness because you are only Wrath."

"So what?" it asked angrily. "You're the last will of Leven, the final say? You're his true inheritor and will tell me now to give up this grudge, his grudge, and disappear without a fight?"

"I don't want you to disappear. You're a fragment he left behind, and I am one he pushed forward." Dei put his hand on the echo's shoulder. "Join me instead. I don't understand Leven's Wrath, but I'd like to. Though I'd forgotten these memories, I do not disagree with his reasoning or actions, and I understand what you mean now when you say that I am weaker. Leven… When he wanted something to happen, it was as though he couldn't fathom failure. No matter how casual the desire nor how long it would take. He was decisive, comfortable in his own skin, and accepting of who he was.

"There is a piece of myself that I am missing, something of Leven's that he left with you, just as I have that which you lack. He tore himself in two, and both of us are incomplete."

"Do you not fear it then?" the echo insisted. "Leven returning, taking right over his soul once more? Right now, his identity is broken, scattered. If Leven becomes complete, do you believe you will still be Dei?"

"I am Dei, Dei is Leven, but Leven could never encompass Dei. he is an aspect of myself, and his incompleteness becomes a hole within me. I wish only to become my full person."

The echo looked pained. "I don't want to give it up, and I don't think Leven would either."

"That is not for us to say. Not as we are right now."

It sighed, accepting that it was over.

"At least…?" the echo trailed off.

Dei chuckled, "You don't even need to ask."

The last vestige of its will fell, and the echo flared, losing its face and shape to become an inferno of rage.

The heat and light pressed into his soul, boiling it as it dove deeper, shifting Dei something more.

The bridge between his Wrath and Kindness began to blur, and Dei fell to his knees, barely holding back a scream as the two waged a war, merging and separating. Chaining each other in an unbreakable bond.

Pandora's Box was never meant to contain his Wrath alone, nor was it a simple box as he'd first thought. It was a symbolic stalemate of the battle between Wrath and Kindness, both vying for his heart, pulling him in opposing directions.

The war between his two sides was never ending, nor should it. Dei was defined by neither his Wrath nor Kindness, but the cycle between.

When Leven perished, he'd split himself, leaving a fragment of his Wrath on Earth. Dei became a lopsided identity, skewed to be Kinder than Leven ever would have; he was born with a deformity he'd never considered.

It wasn't a conceptual monster Leven left behind, but a vital part of who he was. A grip on Earth he could never let go, something linking him to the moment of his death. When his soul departed, it'd ripped a piece out of his affinities, spells, and memories.

Pandora's Box, imbalanced from the disconnect between his two main affinities, broke into its core components and simplified its processes to be better withstood by the crippled soul.

Now, with all his pieces, Dei saw Pandora's Box (Sealed) and Pandora's Box (Unleashed) reach a new symbiosis, becoming whole once more and merging into a higher, better spell.

Twin chains of red and pink held the squabbling forms of both, Wrath and Kindness trying to escape each other but neither able to get the upper hand. When other affinities came along to upset the balance, the babbling became unified, striking down the invader and sealing them away before continuing their endless fight.

Pandora's Box, both versions of it, were no more. He hesitated for a moment, but knew its name instinctively, speaking it into existence.

"Cycle of Sealing."

The complexity and power of the spell was staggering, circuits glowing along its surface and depth in patterns that made his head hurt. He'd be shocked if it was below Historic rarity, perhaps even into Fabled- definitely not into Legendary though. Not yet.

His awareness slowly returned to his body, and he fought to open his eyes, not remembering when he'd even hit the ground.

"Ugh…" he groaned, then switched to telepathy, asking "Perumah, how long have I been out?"

"About a minute."

"Not bad at all."

Slowly bringing himself to his feet, he stretched his sore muscles, wondering what changes his physical body had gone through in that time.

"There's something odd about your magical signature," Perumah told him unprompted. "It was far angrier before, now it feels like there's a… softness to it. The anger is still there, but it's matched by something else."

"That makes sense. I think… I think I just absorbed a Wrath Convergence. I'm pretty sure Leven sheared off part of his Wrath affinity, leaving it with the echo. Now that I've regained that connection with Wrath, my Wrath and Kindness affinities are going to be perfect equals of each other."

"Would that not make your presence more Wrathful? This feels like Kindness."

"They're in balance now. My affinity for Wrath is equal to Kindness now and, in turn, Kindness gained some power over my physical body to match Wrath's hold."

"That seems ridiculous, you gained Kindness from absorbing Wrath?"

"Yea, I don't claim to understand how it works. I think Leven had, and now I have, some sort of pseudo-affinity. Something between Wrath and Kindness, but I can feel that there isn't an affinity between Wrath and Kindness, so they didn't join concepts. There's a blank space where an affinity should be between the two, and I think that's because an Ascender hasn't yet taken a domain for what I am doing now."

"What domain is that? What affinity would be between Wrath and Kindness?"

"I'm… not actually sure. Either way, I'm in balance, have my pseudo-affinity back, and have successfully exorcised the house," he said, but silently thought 'though the echo did have one last request before rejoining back with my soul.'

He silently looked around one last time at his old house, noting that all his pictures had been taken down and shrugged. 'Not really my house anymore anyway.'

Walking out the front door, the six people on the lawn looked at him. Taj gave him a skeptical glance before his eyes widened and he stared at Dei's face. "Wasn't your left eye purple before? And you were in there for only five minutes! There's no way you did anything"

Dei shrugged and walked towards his moms car, ignoring Taj. Halfway across the lawn, he stopped, turning to face Emily who also looked upset at his supposed failure.

"Oh yea, before I leave. Leven said that he regrets ever meeting you."

Emily's face dropped, and Dei had to stop himself from laughing. 'Man, I forgot how good it was to be petty like that.'

Taj fumed, looking ready to hit him but Dei wasn't particularly threatened. Dei continued walking towards the car and his family walked with him.

"That was mean and unnecessary," his mom told him disapprovingly. "She's beat herself up a lot about everything and still does. No need to throw salt on the wounds."

Dei shrugged, "I didn't get my revenge though. Besides, I cut out a lot of what the echo wanted me to say anyway in consideration of Jenny. The girl didn't need to hear all of that"

Getting in the car, his mom gave him a look. "That echo wasn't Leven, I know it was just you saying that."

"Eh, hard to explain. It was a piece of Leven, and it definitely wanted me to say a lot. I'll give you all the rundown later, but I'm exhausted right now. I need a nap. Also, what did Taj mean when he asked if my left eye used to be purple? Is it not anymore?"

"Look at me," his mom told him, then studied his face for a few seconds. "Yea your left eye is pink now. It looks very… fractured-ish. Like a quartz."

"Pink quartz?"

"It is pink and quartz, so yes."

'Damn, mom- er, other mom. Avium mom is going to be upset. She really liked my amethyst eye… Though I do still technically hold the Amethyst gene. If I ever have children, I'll focus on having enough that at least one or two have Amethyst eyes. God, that sounds weird. Whatever, It'll be a while til I get there anyway."

They rode home in silence, but Dei's mind kept turning the issue of Jenny and her parents over. Kept looking for angles he might come at the issue of ensuring she was protected, but let him retaliate.

No matter what he thought of, he was coming up blank.

Shaking his head, he just dropped it, slipping into Meditation to calm himself down.

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