Day in the story: 1st December (Monday)

"That was awesome!" Malik shouted, practically bouncing in place. "Are you Usagi?! The one who fought off the fire lady and the Terminator dude?!"

Nick blinked. "You saw her stream?" he asked, though of course he had. Dumb question.

I cut in. "Who are you and why are you here?"

"Yeah, I watched it! It's really you! I'm a fan, I wasn't sure you survived. Why did you stop the stream?"

"I had my reasons," I said, leveling my voice. "You said your name's Malik?"

"Oh, yes! Malik. Malik Reyes. I'm a superhero too." He puffed out his chest like he expected a theme song to start playing.

I gave him a tired smile. "I'm no hero. I'm just someone with a Domain of Power… like Nick here."

Nick gave a quiet nod, still brushing ash off his shoulder.

"So," I continued, "how did you end up in Suburbia?"

"Suburbia? That's what this world's called?"

I exchanged a glance with Nick. He gave me a shrug that screamed Don't look at me.

Malik went on, oblivious. "I saw these cracks in the air, looked like glass breaking and I got curious. Next thing I know, my neighborhood flips into a horror show. I ran from some gangers for way too long and ended up here. Honestly? This place is worse. I can't even find my way out."

"Great," I muttered, crossing my arms. "He's fresh. Probably just Awakened."

"Feels like it," Nick added. "He got in through an opening."

Malik looked between us, a flicker of confusion on his face. "Wait, so this is normal? You guys just… do this?"

Nick sighed. "Define normal."

"How long have you been a superhero? And how old are you?" I asked, skeptical but curious.

"About three months. I'm seventeen."

So young. Probably a sourcerer like me, if he weren't, he'd know more.

"Listen, Malik," I said, voice steady. "This world is called Ideworld. Suburbia's just a tiny corner of it. Everything here is a twisted version of something from our world. Next time you see those cracks, don't go through them. You might not find a way back."

"But… you're here too, right? You're stuck like me? Maybe I can help you get out."

So sweet. Too sweet. Probably still thinks this is a comic book.

"We have… different ways of returning," I said. "I could send you back to Earth right now, if that's what you want."

"L. O. L." He literally spelled it. Nick chuckled beside me as Malik gave me a once-over like he was hoping I'd peel the mask off myself.

"You're awesome," he grinned. "Can I see your face?"

"No, you can't," I said flatly, already moving to collect what was left of my cards and removing authority from them. Always clean up.

"So… can I stay?" he asked, trailing me. "I wanna learn. From you guys."

I sighed internally. I could already tell he'd be a headache.

"What can you do?" Nickolas asked, ever the practical one. Very Leben of him.

"My powers? My superhero name is Echo. I can repeat stuff."

He punched the air dramatically and a second later, an ephemeral, spectral arm appeared beside him and mimicked the move. Unlike his own hit, though, the echo strike cracked the air with force. I felt the air pressure change as it passed.

"Bitchin', right?" he grinned.

Nick raised a brow.

I just stared. „Why didn't you help us fight those shadows?" I asked, then corrected myself before he got confused. "I mean, monsters."

Through one of my last still-infused eye-cards, I saw him watching me. Specifically: checking me out while I bent to collect the remaining shadowlight from the scorched painting.

Gross.

"Sorry! I got scared and… froze." He tried to grin. "No pun intended, guys. I'll do better next time."

"Next time, you could die. You're a liability, kid." I pulled the last card from the pavement.

"I ain't a kid," he shot back, puffing up his chest like that would change anything. "I'm just… new to this."

I stood and looked him dead in the eye. "I've had my powers for about three months too."

He blinked. That didn't land the way I wanted it to.

"Maybe we were destined to…" He caught himself. "I mean, meant to work together?"

Nick laughed and slung a massive arm around him. "Come on, Malik. We'll give you a shot."

"No, we won't," I snapped.

"Yes, we will," Nick said firmly. "My father would've. So I will too."

Oh, my fucking Reality.

"Great," I muttered, rubbing my temple. "Now I've got two guys to babysit instead of one."

"Are you a superhero too?" Malik asked Nickolas as they walked ahead of me through the cracked, shadow-stained streets of Suburbia. Of course, the kid still managed to sneak another glance at me, his neck practically did a full rotation from the effort.

Nick chuckled. "No, Malik. We're not superheroes. We're mages. We use magic, same as you."

"Mages can be superheroes too. Who cares where the powers come from?" he said with that unshakable, bright-eyed optimism that already gave me a headache. I could probably banish him with a single touch, but Nick would frown at me for the rest of the week.

"Maybe," I admitted, "but using magic openly on Earth can land you in real trouble."

"What kind of trouble?" he asked, slowing slightly.

"Earth's god doesn't exactly love magic. When too many people witness it, he gets cranky, starts stripping magic away temporarily. And he wipes the memories of anyone non-magical. So your heroics? They don't stick. No one remembers."

Malik's face twisted in realization. "Wait — that explains everything! For the past three months, I kept telling my grandma about my powers and the next day she acted like I never said anything. I thought it was part of being an Echo, like I had to keep repeating it or I'd lose it."

I facepalmed. Hard.

Nick sighed beside him, patient as always and started explaining how things actually worked. I tuned out and focused on the sounds of this unfamiliar environment.

And the sounds were… unusual, to say the least.

Somewhere in the distance, a meow echoed through the air, but it wasn't the call of any ordinary cat. It had a sinister edge to it, like a feline howl fused with the eerie lilt of a wolf's cry. Birds could be heard here and there, their chirps sparse and strangely melodic, more like a scattered flute section warming up than actual birdsong. Somewhere beyond the rooftops, a horn honked once, then again, the sound oddly hollow.

Most of the cars were parked haphazardly by sidewalks or frozen on slanted driveways, as if caught mid-commute. Earlier in the day, we saw some of them move, when the shadows were pretending to go to work or whatever parody of routine they performed in this place. That's why we had decided to head in the opposite direction from where they seemed to "commute," hoping that the woods lay beyond.

But now I heard something different. A strange sound, like a wind-whistle tangled with faint chimes and… whispers. I narrowed my eyes, letting the noise guide my attention. It was subtle at first, but it was growing louder. Closer.

"You guys hear that whispering?" I asked, slowing down.

They both turned their heads toward me.

"Nah, not yet," Nick said. "Describe it."

I gave him what details I could: the wind-like pitch, the chimes that didn't quite sound metallic and the voices that felt too quiet and too many.

"I don't know what it could be," he said. "Is it getting closer?"

"Yes," I answered, already tensing.

Malik shifted awkwardly, rocking from one foot to the other, clearly unnerved.

"I can hear the whispers too," he finally said.

"Yeah, me too now," Nick added.

"Let's hide somewhere and watch," he suggested. I nodded and we moved quickly toward a car parked on the sidewalk, a suburban soccer mom's dream ride: oversized, practical and cluttered with forgotten errands.

I painted a small circle on the window, whispered for it to become real, then reached through the opening to unlock the door. With a satisfying click, the whole thing opened up and we piled inside. Nick and I took the front seats, Malik settling into the back like the teenager he was, though within seconds, he had his head wedged between our shoulders, peering out the windshield.

We didn't have to wait long.

At first, they came one by one, small beings drifting down the street, not walking but floating, weightless and strange. They resembled Seers in some ways, but twisted, more abstract, more alien. They looked like voids wrapped in suggestion, silhouettes of nothingness. Small ghost-like forms, each with a large, bulbous head and tapering bodies that ended in ragged, fluttering threads. Where arms might have been, there was only trailing vapor. Horns, some like twisted ram's spirals, others sharp and devilish, jutted from their heads, but they too were made of that same void-matter.

Light didn't touch them. It bent around their forms like gravity pulled it sideways. That bending formed a pale white halo that traced their outline, an absence defined only by distortion. Their eyes were huge and glowing white, casting a faint, eerie beam in front of them. It was the only real light they emitted and the way it warped the air around them made them look like living holes torn into reality.

We sat frozen, breath held. Even Malik stayed still, awe rendering him silent, until, finally, he leaned closer between us and whispered, just loud enough to break the silence:

"Look, guys, there," Malik whispered, pointing to the far end of the street.

Nick and I turned our heads and what we saw froze us in place. A tide of them. Hundreds, maybe more, of those void-things, gliding through the street in a slow, quiet migration. They filled the road from one end to the other, drifting like a silent river of shadows stitched into the world.

Some veered toward our car. A few floated right up to the windows and stared inside. Their white eyes shone softly, casting curved beams of light that bent in unnatural angles. One of them lingered, motionless, for nearly a full minute. Then, as if by some shared decision, it floated away, joining the others in their silent exodus.

"You know those things?" I asked, my voice low. "They don't seem hostile."

"I'm not sure," Nick said. "They might be Voidlings. I remember hearing about them… but I thought they were fairytales."

"Seriously? You knew Ideworld was real and still thought your father was selling you bedtime myths?"

"It was my mother, actually," he replied, squinting as he tried to remember. "I think."

"What are they doing?"

"I… don't remember. Just that they aren't dangerous."

That and the fact that they stared at us in total silence without a hint of aggression, was enough for me. I opened the door and stepped out.

As soon as I did, the Voidlings reacted. They swirled around me, slowly and gently, as if I had walked into the center of a dream. They hovered, their ghostly forms drifting around my body, their white eyes casting fractured halos in every direction. They didn't touch me, but it felt like they did, like the air between us was being rewritten, or remembered.

For a moment, everything fell away. The fear. The fatigue. The pressure. I didn't feel cold, or hot, or worried, or even human. I just was. A quiet presence in the middle of something vast and unknowable.

I reached out a hand.

One of them floated closer, drifting forward until its oversized head hovered just inches from my outstretched palm. It paused there, studying me, almost as if it were sniffing, though it had no nose to speak of. Slowly, delicate tendrils of blackness unfurled from its tiny body, wrapping around my fingers like hundreds of gentle threads trying to hug or hold me. The light pouring from its eyes bent and twisted around both the tendrils and my own hand refracting in impossible ways.

Without warning, my own shadowlight responded, surging up from within me, reaching out to meet that alien glow. Their lights intertwined, merging and dancing in a quiet communion. For a heartbeat, or maybe an eternity, its vast white eyes met mine and in that moment I felt stripped down to my essence: no body, no mind, only pure soul and my Authority woven together with a fragment of endless nothingness.

Time became meaningless. It could have been seconds, minutes, hours, or lifetimes. Eventually, though, the creature pulled back. Its dark tendrils unwrapped from my hand retreating in perfect silence. Then, without a sound, it drifted backward and rejoined the flowing river of its kin, disappearing into the night.

"Come here!" Nickolas called out from where he stood by the car. I hesitated for a moment, but finally wove my way through the drifting Voidlings until I reached him and Malik.

Stolen novel; please report.

"What were you doing back there?" he asked, a note of exasperation in his voice.

"Honestly?" I sighed. "I don't know. I just… felt peaceful with them."

We watched as the last lone Voidling floated after the rest of its kin, vanishing into the night.

"I really don't understand how you can be so reckless with your life," Nick said.

"You told me yourself they were peaceful," I protested.

"No," he corrected, "I said I barely remember them and thought they were peaceful. I wasn't even sure they were the same creatures my mother told me about."

He was right, of course.

"You aren't wrong," I admitted. "I shouldn't have gone, but it felt like they were calling me."

"That," he snapped, "should have been your first clue to stay the hell away. Sometimes you're careful, cunning, a master strategist and then there are moments like this, where you stop thinking altogether."

I smirked. "I like to go with the flow sometimes."

Suddenly Malik chimed in. "I like to go with the flow too!"

Both Nick and I shot him a hard look.

"What?" Malik shrugged. "It's true, I swear."

I sighed, shaking my head. "What do you think, Nick? Should we call it a day?"

Nick glanced around. "I'm not that tired, but if you want to rest, I'm good with that."

"I'm down for anything," Malik piped up eagerly, earning another pointed stare from me.

"You don't get a vote, kid," I muttered. Then I turned to Nick. "You have any of those crackers left?"

Nick dug through his battered backpack and tossed me one. I took a bite and the familiar surge of warmth and energy flooded through me. His mother really was an angel.

"Okay, I'm good," I said, wiping my mouth. "Let's keep going."

Malik watched me with open curiosity. "Those are, like, magical energy bars or something?"

Nick chuckled, reaching into the bag again and throwing one Malik's way.

"Take a bite," he said. "Find out yourself."

"That's so delicious, man!" Malik mumbled around a mouthful of cracker. Before he'd even finished, he shoved another bite in, then another. We kept moving along the main road and I found myself peeking through the windows of the houses we passed. Sometimes it really felt like normal Earth families could have been living in there, acting out their typical suburban lives. It made me wonder: were the shadows just pretending, or did they have their own inner worlds? Maybe they thought the same about us.

"Have you ever heard of a shadow visiting Earth?" I asked, curiosity nagging at me.

"Yeah," Nick replied. "My father once fought a nasty one, with a group of hexblades, back when he was younger. Some eldritch spawn had crawled into a kindergarten of all places, started corrupting both the kids and the staff with blood-rage. Let's just say it wasn't pretty."

"You mean monsters like the snowman?" Malik asked, equal parts wonder and dread in his voice.

"Yes," Nick confirmed, "but the ones we fought wouldn't cross the veil. They don't have the intelligence or self-awareness. The ones that do — those are much, much worse."

"Wouldn't reality just throw them back out?" Malik wondered, showing he'd actually been listening to Nick's earlier explanations.

Nick shook his head. "It usually only scrambles people's memories in cases like that. Maybe it doesn't have the same authority over shadows as it does over us. Who knows?"

I considered that for a moment. "What if someone was actually born here, would they still be under Reality's rules?"

"Born to human parents from Earth?" Nick asked for clarification.

"Yeah."

"Then most likely, yes. Their origin is Earth, not here."

"You think these shadows have their own version of Reality keeping rules in place?" I pressed.

Nick gave a shrug. "You'd have to ask someone smarter than me."

I laughed, then turned to Malik. "What do you think?"

Nick shot me a glare, but Malik didn't even notice.

"Huh?" he blinked, snapping out of it. "Sorry, I zoned out. I was thinking about my own abilities."

"What about them?" I asked.

"I was watching you on the battlefield, the way you move and use your… what do you call it? Authority, or shadowlight?"

"Shadowlight is the light your soul emits," Nick explained patiently, "It connects your soul core through your soul to your magic or creations. That light is what carries your Authority."

"Yeah, that." Malik nodded, then looked back at me. "So I watched you, Usagi, how you move around and place your light through touch. Why do you do it that way?"

I frowned, caught off guard. "What do you mean, why? How else would I do it?"

"I do it differently," Malik said, sounding almost shy. "I can feel my past movements through the shadowlight and command it by thought to repeat a motion of my choice, if I'm close enough. Sometimes I can even echo a movement I did days ago, as long as I return near where it happened. I don't have to be in the exact same spot."

"Oh, I see what you're saying." Nick nodded thoughtfully. "It comes down to shadowlight control. Different soul cores and soulmarks develop different instincts. Because of your Domain, Usagi, you learned to infuse through touch, like a painter with a brush. Malik's is more movement-based, so he works by commanding within his aura."

"Aura?" I asked.

Nick explained, "Think of your aura as the radius of your soul's perception. Its size scales with your skill. Inside your aura, you can precisely sense and guide anything infused by your shadowlight. Beyond it, you only feel a vague direction."

"Oh, I've noticed something like that before, I didn't know it was called an aura. So you're saying I could learn to infuse identity or connection within my aura, without touching?"

Nick shrugged. "Of course."

"How would I even start with that?" I asked.

Nick shrugged. "I don't really know. My Domain doesn't need any range. Most of what I infuse is food, I do it by touch and once I eat it, it stays inside me anyway, so it's all close-range."

"True," I admitted.

"I guess you'd have to ask my father about it," Nick went on.

Oh, I would ask. Infusing without touch would be amazing and even being able to remove infusions remotely would save me a ridiculous amount of walking.

"I'll ask Dam first thing in the morning," I decided.

"You're going to train again? We still haven't even reached the woods," Nick pointed out.

"I'm starting to think the woods might be a fool's errand" I sighed. "But we have those two carrots, at least. They should be worth something, right?"

"Most likely," Nick agreed. "Carrots are used in a lot of dishes and those ones are packed with some kind of authority, even if they aren't proper soulmarks."

"What are you guys after, anyway?" Malik asked.

"My father, Dam, sent us here to train," Nick explained. "We were supposed to reach the woods and find an old oak bark there. It's used for dishes that boost durability. Anything else we pick up on the road is just a bonus."

"So you're in, like, a school for super-powered people?" Malik said.

I laughed, but Nick handled it more patiently. "No. A school would be almost impossible, Domains vary too much from person to person. Authority control through shadowlight is the only thing all mages share and that's what my father teaches Alexa here."

That was classic Nick, never subtle.

"Alexa? That's your name?" Malik asked, peering at me.

"It's one of the names I use, yes," I said, giving Nick a look sharp enough to cut steel. He had definitely slipped up; unlike him, I didn't need every random to know who I was.

Malik wasn't deterred. "May I finally see what you look like under the mask?"

"I'll think about it, kid." I still didn't like him very much.

We kept moving and Malik pointed ahead. "The street curves here, do you think it's a cul-de-sac? We saw a crossroads earlier. Should we go back that way?"

"Cul-de-sac?" Malik repeated, puzzled. "Is that some kind of magic thing?"

I sighed. "No, it's an urban design thing." Then I glanced at him, thinking. "But actually, I have a question for you, Malik."

Instead of following the street, I motioned for us to climb to the roof of the house ahead. I vaulted up easily, Nick helped Malik scramble after me, then pulled himself up too.

"You told us you could feel your past selves through your shadowlight," I reminded him. "And you could order them to repeat something if you were near the same place, right?"

"Yes, that's it! Cool, right?" Malik beamed.

It was pretty cool, honestly, though I wasn't about to encourage him too much.

"I wanted to ask," I continued, "doesn't it get overwhelming in places where you've been a lot?"

"Not really, no. It's like… I know I was there and if I focus I can quickly scan through each possibility. But in the heat of the moment, it's like a different mind helps pick one out for me."

"An anima, most likely," Nick explained. "It's the unconscious part of your soul, like how your body's unconscious mind makes you breathe automatically. Your anima filters options so you don't drown in choices."

"That's so cool!" Malik said, practically bouncing.

"Can you talk with your anima?" I asked, wondering if I was really the only one.

"Talk with my soul? No, never happened," Malik shook his head.

Nick turned to me. "Your case is unique, Alexa. You've lived through so many different personas that your anima might have partially disassociated from your soul core. Or it could be a side effect of your Identity soulmark. You treated your personas as works of art and gave your magical one its own identity."

I liked that theory, in fact, it lined up with things I'd thought before, though I wasn't about to tell him about naming it.

"You're pretty smart, Nick," I teased. "You shouldn't hide it."

"Funny again?" He sighed, but there was a hint of a smile.

I liked being around Nick. He was a solid companion, had knowledge where I lacked it and I felt sure he'd protect me if something went wrong. He always had so far, without complaints. Maybe it was part of his Domain, what kind of personality would a Cooking Domain nurture? Which traits did it need to thrive?

"I like studying science, physics, chemistry, it actually helps with cooking, to a degree," Nick said suddenly as we all climbed onto the rooftop. "Some theories can even apply to magic."

The view ahead was bizarre: a shimmering, mist-like mirage of suburban houses stretching in every direction. At first glance, it looked like an endless neighborhood, but from up here, it was clearly a lie. Like vaporous clouds sitting low on the ground, disguising what lay beneath.

"I remember you making some quantum physics remark about Reality during dinner with your family," I noted.

Nick nodded. "Yeah, he sees through the eyes of people, so if nobody witnesses magic happening or recognizes it as magic, then it both exists and doesn't exist. Schrödinger-style."

I jumped down from the roof into a backyard, heading for a wooden fence where the mist pooled like a curtain. Without hesitating, I kicked a hole through the boards.

"You shouldn't destroy someone's property on a whim," Nick chided, landing beside me.

"It's just a few planks," I shrugged. "I wanted to check if this weird weather effect would kill us or something."

Malik jumped down too, rolling to break his fall, but stayed oddly silent as we approached the mist. I took one of the broken planks and waved it through the fog, the mist parted or evaporated around it, revealing a wooded area beyond.

I stepped through the opening, emerging onto the edge of a forest, where towering trees rose higher and thicker than they should in this climate. I glanced back; from this side, the mist was perfectly see-through.

"Whoa!" Malik exclaimed as he stepped out behind me. "I've never been in a forest before. Look at those fireflies!"

I scanned the tree line, noticing the warm orange and yellow lights drifting among the trunks.

"Those aren't fireflies," Nick corrected.

"They aren't?"

"No, they are wisps." He said. Malik's confused face made me laugh a little.

"Whips? Like… BDSM stuff?" he blurted out, innocent and completely clueless.

"No, no," Nick sighed, patient as ever. "W-I-S-P-S. Wisps. They're spiritual entities, living in remote places. They feed on a person's sense of wonder or fear and lead them toward things that trigger those feelings. Best not to follow them on principle."

Watching Nick patiently spell it out, I realized again how his entire family carried that same calm energy. It had to come from their Domain, I thought, patience, nurturing, the desire to feed and care for others. Cooking demanded that. A warm, protective instinct.

"How can you tell if they lead you to something that can scare you or not?" Malik asked.

"That's exactly my point," Nick answered. "So it's better not to follow them at all. Besides, we are here to find old oak bark and any nuts we can collect, then we're out."

I moved into the forest first, taking out one of my light cards. Let there be light, I asked it with a slight chuckle in my mind. It started shining a bright cone of light ahead of us. I handed the card to Nick, then did the same with two more, one went to Malik and the last one stayed with me.

"That's so cool," Malik said. "By the way, I was supposed to ask you earlier, but I got distracted, why weren't you using cars to travel?"

"We tried," Nick said and oh boy, it was a wild ride, but I let him finish. "But it proved too dangerous."

I decided to explain it better. "We hopped into one at first, since Nick had a driving license, but apparently not the one needed in this world. The car didn't behave like it was controlled at all. It accelerated too quickly and didn't react at all to Nick trying to slow down. It crashed violently, soon after we bailed out of it." Well, I had teleported us into my Domain, then back to Suburbia after I painted the place.

"Could be that cars consider themselves to be kings of speed, or people think about them that way and it gets distorted in Ideworld. I don't know, just my guess," Nick added. I liked that theory as well. „So we decided that walking would be safer."

"I walk everywhere as well, never made a license. It's easier to run in my hood than to drive, most of the time anyway," Malik said, as he shone his light frantically back and forth between some bushes that moved slightly.

Nick was leading the way now, probably having enchanted his senses with some food, maybe those carrots we'd found, since apparently carrots are good for eyesight and that's all you need to make them do exactly that if you're a cook-mage.

"This is an oak root," he said. "We should follow it to reach the trunk."

"Really?" I asked with a sarcastic tone. He didn't take the bait.

"Is it bad in your hood, Malik? I noticed you're a pretty good runner and acrobat," Nick asked, concerned.

"Yeah, gangers, drugs, just bad folks, man."

"Yet you turned out just fine?" I asked, earning a grunt from Nick.

"Nah, man, it's a fine question," Malik replied. "I ain't an angel, but I learn from each mistake and try to be better, see? My brother taught me that, so I try to do best by him, to make my actions echo his words."

"He died?" Nick asked.

"He was learning to become a nurse, to help people like our gran, but he caught a stray."

And I just caught a stray feeling as well. I can be such a bitch sometimes, but it's a risk of not trusting people easily.

"Sorry to hear that, man. If you ever need help when we're done here, I'm offering mine," Nick said.

"Thanks, Nick! You rock, man," Malik replied, brightening a bit, though he looked at me as well, probably expecting something more.

"Losing people sucks," I said flatly. I wasn't going to pity this guy, just as no one had ever pitied me. At least he had his gran. "Your parents are gone too?"

"Dad's behind bars, for a crime he sure as hell committed. Mom left one day and never came back, I don't know what happened to her."

"That sucks even more, I guess. Not knowing. Eternal limbo."

"For me it doesn't. I have hope that she's okay somewhere, while my brother is dead for sure."

He was certainly a positive guy, given what happened to him. I liked that.

"If you have any problems that Echo can't handle alone or with Nick's help, you have my permission to ask Nick for my help too," I added. I wasn't ready to offer anything more.

"Thanks, Alexa, I mean Usagi. I'll take it," Malik said.

Nick looked at me with a trace of pity in his eyes, expecting maybe a kinder word, but he said nothing.

We wove through the thick trees and brush. This place felt claustrophobic, branches crowding in from every side. A few wisps drifted toward us and hovered, but when they realized we wouldn't follow, they floated away again. Up close they looked like something between a fat round beetle and a living flame.

At some point, Nick and Malik exchanged numbers.

After a few minutes, we reached the place where the Old Oak grew. It was almost a clearing, in the sense that we could finally stand straight under its enormous crown, easily two hundred feet across. Beneath it, only its own roots, some fern and occasional patches of grass survived. No other trees dared to live here, or even could, given how dark it was under that dense canopy, not a single star shone through. A few wisps occupied nooks and crannies hidden among its giant root system.

As we stepped closer, a handful of Voidlings danced around the trunk, but when they noticed us, they scurried deeper into the forest.

There were some old, dry acorns scattered on the ground and I began collecting them into my bag along with Malik, after Nick confirmed his mother could still make something useful from them, apparently she could restore even rotten food to its prime.

Nick himself moved closer to the trunk, carefully cutting pieces of the bark with his knife, slow and reverent. I moved closer to him.

"Why are you being so careful? Will this tree attack us or something?" I asked and Malik came over as well.

"Trees this old have their own authority," Nick explained, carefully tucking a small piece of bark into his bag before moving to cut some more. "I'll do everything I can to avoid triggering a negative response."

"What kind of authority?" Malik asked, beating me to the question.

"It varies with each tree. Depends on their character."

"The character of a tree?" Malik repeated, clearly confused.

"Yeah," Nick nodded, focused on his knife. "Each living thing and even some nonliving things, has a soul. This oak has a soul and that soul has a character of its own. Judging by how much space it took and how far its roots reach, I'd say it's territorial and probably proud. I'd rather not anger it."

"A fair assumption," I agreed.

"I didn't know souls worked like that," Malik said. "Are they like… I don't know, how Christians describe them?"

"I don't know, Malik," Nick said, his tone cautious. "I try not to get into religious debates. I know the soul is your true self, stripped of both mind and body. But of course, it's influenced by both."

When Nick finished removing the bark without incident, our little mission finally ended. I was glad we had decided to power through and not prolong it for another day after all.

"We'll be getting back now, Malik. Looks like you didn't get a chance to fight alongside us after all," I said.

"It doesn't matter," he replied, grinning. "It was still a walk to remember. I learned so much and I gained at least one friend." He glanced at Nick, who nodded and smiled, then looked at me. My mask hid my face, so I just shrugged.

"It wasn't so bad," I said instead. "Where should I drop you back on Earth?"

"Send me and him to my home," Nick said suddenly. "I want to introduce him to the rest of the Lebens and talk a bit more. I'll drive him home afterward, if that's okay with you, Malik?"

"You kidding, bro? That sounds fantastic!" Malik beamed.

I wondered for a moment if a man like Dam saw me in the same way I saw Malik, a rough but well-meaning stray to take in.

"You sure?" I asked Nick.

He smiled again and nodded, a comforting sort of smile. If he wanted to make someone else his problem, I wasn't going to stop him. I just hoped Dam wouldn't drag Malik into my morning trainings now.

"Okay," I said at last. "Tell Dam I'll meet him first thing in the morning."

I walked over to them and placed my hand on Nick's shoulder. Nick slung an arm around Malik like a gentle giant. I opened the Grimoire to the page showing the Lebens' training hall, focused my shadowlight on it and thought send them there. I tried to follow my authority, seeing how it really worked. The feeling was strange, as if my artwork was the transmitter and the destination point the receiver, connected by a sudden, ephemeral link of shadowlight.

Would it be possible to switch that around? I wondered. If I could manipulate shadowlight within my aura, could the art itself be the receiver next time?

They were gone a moment later, though it took some effort on my part, two people were harder to send than one and Nick carried quite a few authority-infused objects.

Afterward, I dropped down under the shadow of the enormous tree and set up a quick workspace. I placed a few light cards to illuminate my Travel Grimoire, then pulled out my watercolor pens and decided to paint this place: the vast root system that was a world of its own, crawling with the shadows of insects and tiny scurrying critters; the colossal trunk, like a pillar holding up the night sky; and the dense canopy that let through no starlight at all.

When I was done and satisfied, I collected my things and went home.

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