“What are you talking about?” Ty managed to sputter.

  The entire time, she had wanted to protect the Ancients and the magic they shared with the world. The how was not something she had figured out yet, but the answer would have come one day. The solution to everything all along could not be to destroy the rightful owners of the land.

  “What are you talking about?” she whispered again, looking at the Ancient with nothing but fear. She turned to Theo when he did not reply, saw her fear reflected in his own baffled eyes, and breathed, “What is he talking about?”

  When Theo could do nothing but stare back helplessly, she turned to Darius. “How is this…how can you ask me to destroy everything I’ve ever known and call it hope?” She put her hands down on the table. “I’m just a kid,” she insisted, leaning forward, voice meek and cracking. Was this what I was missing, all along? This could not have been the reason why she was here. It was all wrong. If this was where she was meant to be, what she was meant to do—could she turn back now, pretend it all never happened? Go back to her own ignorant life, by her mother’s side on the house by the sea? Until death seized her and judged her for a selfish existence?

  There were no more tears to cry.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  Darius took Ty’s hands in his, and he held them tightly. “Right now, you must live. That is all. Live.”

  His hands were warm, and the glow emanating from it seemed to envelop her. For her collapsing world, it was an unreachable, steady beacon.

  “If…if that’s what I have to do, what does it have to do with everyone acting like they know what’s going to happen? It has something to do with me, doesn’t it? That’s why you need me to live. You need me to do something, just not right now.”

  “Ah,” the wise Ancient spoke slowly, retracting his golden hands. “That, I cannot say. It is not my place.”

  Intent on leaving with at least some answers, she insisted, “But can you at least tell me if Theo has anything to do with it?”

  At the sound of his name, Theo finally broke out of his reverie. “Oh?”

  Darius returned to smiling faintly again. “How to…how to say. Many people born with aura. Some small, some big. Ancient, big. Ty special, not one color. Outsiders, small. Every aura mean something. Theo, his kind, very rare. Closest I see only once before. Same kind, meaning.” The smile grew wistful. “The Outsider.”

  “The Outsider, my mother,” she confirmed hesitantly.

  “Yes.”

  “She’s alive.”

  He nodded. “Yes. But I cannot tell you where.”

  Ty buried her face in her hands and groaned loudly.

  All this time, her true mother had been alive. There must have been a reason why she had been led to believe that there were no longer any traces of her; maybe it was safer that way, maybe that way posed the least risk. What am I supposed to do with all this information? she wanted to scream. It wasn’t like she was going to hunt her down and find her—what, then?

  “Could you…give us a bit more information? I’m not quite sure why the aura would be important?” asked Theo skeptically without trying to sound rude.

  Darius turned to the scholar. “All auras documented. It is not only color. It is also feeling. Yours, light red. Love. But, like Outsider, there is also null.” The Ancient cocked his head, speaking a singular Ancient word. “Miyen’amo.”

  “Miyen’amo,” repeated Theo curiously before glancing at Ty, who let her arms fall at hearing the familiar word.

  “It is non-color. Null. Nothing. It is loss.”

  Squinting, trying to understand, Theo surmised, “So love with loss?”

  The Ancient looked frustrated by the language barrier. “No, null is difficult. It is like…death. Damage. Like soul part gone. Not zero. Cannot fill again. Cannot repair.” His eyes lit up. “How love without part of soul? How love with loss? It is hard, with death, no?”

  Theo seemed to still be processing the analogy, nodding slightly but not replying.

  Ty, however, focused on the more important point: “What about fully null?”

  Darius’s face darkened, and he answered solemnly. “Trauma inflicted on soul by other cannot be in whole. Always in part. Cannot have whole null inflicted. For whole, it is user fault. You must know your Soul-killers. Very shameful. No good. It is curse for power. I do not wish—”

  “Oh!” Ty exclaimed. “Uncapping anima?”

  “Ah,” breathed Theo as he watched the Ancient nod at Ty’s outburst.

  “Once uncap, no more aura. Completely unseen. Academy have few.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “Very bad.”

  Pondering the words for a moment, running her head through the list of people she had met at the Academy, there was one person she was curious about. “Nate doesn’t have an aura, does he? He feels…different, somehow. Have you met him? Professor Moriya?”

  The Ancient nodded, albeit hesitantly. “Yes. But…” He looked down, silent for a while. “But…” he tried again. “Him, very unfortunate. Usually I do not approve of uncap. But Professor Moriya…it is…”

  And then he could only turn to silence, shaking his head with a downcast look before taking the opportunity to return to the topic at hand. “Theo, this important because it is special, not normal…this color, this null. Do you remember how? If lose people?”

  “I guess I…lost my parents, if you could call it that,” he replied thoughtfully, eyes scanning the room. “Before I turned six, I think?”

  “But you love?”

  Theo slumped over the workbench with his head resting on the palm of his hand. “I was young. A lot of it is fuzzy, but I remember my parents arguing over me being sick very often. For some reason, I also remember some old…lady who came to visit sometimes. Guess they just had enough one day and sent me off to an orphanage.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “The orphanage up north wasn’t bad, and when I eventually got too old and was sent down south, it was also fine…”

  Sitting there, dumbfounded, Ty wondered how he was able to talk about such life-changing events so casually. But a simple glimpse at Darius’s compassionate and empathetic look told her all she needed to know.

  “Lots happened after, I guess,” Theo continued with a sigh, turning his head away from Ty and Darius. “Ended up in the west. Befriended some other kids. Did a few jobs for Emrys before he kept me. Didn’t know who he was, just that he knew magic. Guess he saw something, or maybe he was bored, wanted a successor or a project. Either way, I never saw my friends after that.”

  No one dared move, staring at the shadows dancing on the walls Theo faced.

  “I wonder if they’re still alive,” the child finished quietly.

  The ensuing silence lasted a long time. Darius kept his head lowered as if in shame, and Ty could only stare at the shadows, always considering saying something but never letting anything out.

  Only the small pitter-pattering rain finally broke the spell as Theo exhaled loudly. “This is precisely why I don’t bring it up. I don’t want to be pitied, as if my life is some kind of tragedy.” He slid off his stool and adjusted his coat. “Anyway. It’s late. I should get going.”

  Scrambling to get off her seat too, Ty considered stopping him, telling him that she still had questions to ask. But she froze at seeing Theo put on his hood and hurry away far faster than she had ever seen him go.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  She considered his past. His parents. His lost friends. The Ancient’s words, her ineptitudes. All that she could not see, all that she could not hear, all that she could not understand.

  Ty looked to Darius. An unreachable, steady beacon.

  “What do I do?” The words were so quiet that even she barely heard them leave her lips.

  He put a hand to his heart and patted it gently. “Do what your heart say. Remember: there is never right or wrong path. There is only you.”

  Without even thinking twice, she bolted out the door.

  * * *

  “Wait!”

  The rain was falling harder now, and her voice was lost in the pitter-patters as she chased the distant shadow.

  “Theo!” she yelled again once she had entered the Great Hall, only to see him disappear through the side exit leading to the dorms.

  In truth, she had no idea what she was going to say to him. She had no idea what Darius had meant when he told her to do what her heart said. Her heart kept sending her mixed messages and conflicting thoughts, none of which made any sense to her.

  And then it was that nagging feeling again. The one that told her that there really was a right path, and that Darius was giving her the illusion of choice. That somehow, somewhere, in those dreams again, there was the wrong path. The wrong decision that would make the difference of several lifetimes.

  All the information she had been given so far, all the veiled hints, the dreams. They all pointed to one thing: she could not stand idly by and do nothing.

  “Theodore!” she yelled now, over the rain and the burning in her chest, “Theodore val’ne Emrys, you will listen to me!”

  And then everything stopped.

  Theo, the rain, everything.

  The sky turned red, her vision grew blurry, she was in the courtyard again.

  There was a heavy weight in her hands as she looked down and found a rapier. It was bloodied to the point where she could no longer see the original color of the blade, nor her hands that were clutching it. She no longer had her cloak on; her clothes were dirty, a deep red to match the heavens.

  She raised her head, and Theo was on the ground far away. No one else in sight. Without checking, she knew he was dead, leaving her as the last one in a world of ruin. Alone.

  Pointless, if alone was all she had.

  I’m done with this, she thought bitterly to herself as she dug the sword into her chest.

  The dreamscape faded as quickly as it came, but all too late as she ran, gasping, straight into Theo near the end of the field.

  Laying on the grass next to him, out of breath and still trying to recover from the dream, Ty forced out whatever words she could find. “You…you can’t—you can’t run out like that. Not without…answering.”

  Sitting with a knee propped up, pushing his wet hair out of his face, Theo replied scathingly, “Have you ever considered that this is all just a joke? My friends? My parents? I don’t feel anything for my friends. Or my parents. But for Darius to tell me that they’ve somehow made enough of a dent in my life that I’m scarred by it—well,” he laughed, looking up to the dark sky. “Well, clearly they’re more important than I think they are, or this must be some kind of horrible joke.”

  Remembering what Theo had done for her, Ty focused on her breathing and observed him, his face barely illuminated by the spell-candles at the entrance to their dorm. The pelting rain hit his face and raced back down to meet the earth.

  “I want to think that none of this is true, that this entire night was a dream. That whatever Darius said about my aura was a lie, because I can’t see it for myself.” He used both his hands to wipe away the rain from his face as he continued to laugh almost hysterically, waving his arms around, wildly. “I mean, it might as well be! Look around us. There’s no one here. Why is there no one here? This is a school, there’s plenty of students around and awake. But why is there precisely no one around to witness all this? What if I’m the crazy one, and you’re right?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe in the Earth Mother, in destiny, karma, reincarnation, in any of that crap. I believe in what’s real, what’s here right now, the life we’re living. So no, I don’t think your dreams are true. I don’t think we’ve met before, I don’t think we’re somehow intrinsically linked, and I don’t think that everyone is hiding some ultimate truth from you.” He inhaled sharply. “If you think your dreams are telling you something, then do it. If you think there’s something you need to do, then by all means. But stop acting like you have no choice, like you suddenly can’t live your life because of some silly predetermined outcome you think exists. If you don’t want to kill people, don’t. If you want to stop your friends from dying, then do something about it.”

  Theo took a moment before continuing to push his way through. “You don’t seem like a bad person. You’re not incapable of action. So…I don’t…I don’t understand.” He finally hung his head. “I don’t understand you, Ty. There are so many things I find fundamentally wrong with you, so many things I disagree with, so many things that I think make you a terrible class lead and that frustrate me to all hell. But somehow you’ve managed to drag me along with you on this Graces-be-damned ride.”

  With an incredulous look on his face, he continued to shake his head hopelessly.

  “And despite it all, against all I’ve been taught, everything I believe in, I want to believe you.” He rubbed his eyes in frustration. “How do you do it? How is it that I can’t bring myself to tell you to go away? To tell you off, to report you, to do anything other than help?”

  Soaking in the rain, Ty sat there, hearing Darius’s advice drown out the storm. “Maybe because you want it to be true, too,” she responded.

  Theo raised his head to meet Ty’s eyes, completely lucid, not having expected her answer.

  “That somehow we have a bigger role to play in this world than to just live and fight, that maybe we can actually do something,” she continued, her chest stirring with newfound drive, “that maybe all this pain and sadness is worth something. How long has the world been in conflict? Do we just watch it all crumble? How much is happiness worth in the moment if we can’t live to make it last?”

  “Hope,” he replied weakly before finally laying down on the grass beside Ty, succumbing to the fatigue.

  She took a shaky breath. “I don’t want my existence to mean nothing. I don’t want to die thinking I could have done something. I want to do the right thing while I can.”

  “You heard what Darius said.”

  That was the only thing she was trying not to think about. “Yes.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  After a brief pause, Ty finally said, “I can’t do nothing.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  I’m scared, she didn’t say.

  Theo did not press her. “I think Darius is wrong,” he finally admitted, sitting up and wiping the droplets off his face before staring off into the distance. “Love?” He laughed in disbelief, eyes wide and clear, devoid of all doubt. “The world that’s abandoned me expects me to be capable of something other than hate? Forget love, I want revenge.”

  Stupefied by the anger in his words, Ty, who loved her mother dearly even though she could not love herself, who could not imagine having survived without the love and care she gave her, could only ask, “What about your parents?”

  He stiffened, responding coldly, “If ever loved my parents, I no longer remember how it feels.”

  The decisiveness of his response stung. “Does that not make you feel sad?”

  “Love does not help you survive. Neither does being sad.”

  I can’t imagine what he’s gone through, Ty admitted soberly.

  “I made up my mind a long time ago,” he grunted, standing up. “I’m going to live. I’m going to prove everyone wrong. I’m going to survive, no matter what it takes, and no one’s going to stop me. Not you, not fate, not the world.” He extended a hand to Ty. “It sounds like you should do the same, too.”

  Just as she started to lift her hand off the ground to reach for him, there was a loud bang and a voice.

  “Ah, so I wasn’t going crazy.”

  Letting her hand drop, Ty turned her head to the figure in the doorway to their class dorm.

  Faris crossed his arms with a severe, confused look on his face. “What are those looks for? It’s raining. Get in here.”

  The magic was gone.

  “Coming,” replied Ty promptly, pushing herself up from the floor and brushing her cloak. It was wet—she’d have to use magic to dry it for tomorrow.

  As she started walking toward Faris, she glanced briefly back at Theo, who had since retracted his hand. He also patted his clothes to make sure they weren’t dirty, saying nothing else as he walked past her and Faris.

  “Hey, lead,” called Faris, shutting the door after they all made it in.

  In the middle of taking off her cloak and noticing that Selene and Korinna were both reading at the study desk in the back, Ty distractedly asked him what he needed.

  “I wrote up that revised rotation.”

  Theo was walking past her toward the end of the room where the fireplace and hallway to the rooms were.

  “Ty?”

  He didn’t stop by the fire, just kept trudging toward the passageway. She wanted to call after him.

  “What, do you—”

  “Theo,” she called.

  The physician stopped. He turned his head to face Ty. “Yes?”

  As she observed his unreadable, blank expression, she was at a loss for words. What had she wanted to say to him?

  “Alright then,” nodded Theo after a few empty seconds before disappearing through the corridor. “Good-night.”

  “For Graces’ sake, Ty,” snapped Faris impatiently.

  “Yes.” She spun around, blinking and remembering to breathe. “Yes, Faris.”

  “I wrote up a revised rotation,” he repeated, slower this time while holding out a piece of paper.

  “Thank you,” Ty nodded, reaching into her pocket to grab a handkerchief but only able to produce a soaked cloth and ring. “T-Thank you,” she echoed, a bit frantically this time as she hurriedly dropped the items back into her pocket and wiped her wet hands on the plush couch.

  After a few uncharacteristically patient seconds on Faris’s part, he placed the paper onto her dry hand. The paper was soft, and his writing looked neater than any she had ever seen as usual. “I’ll take a look at it and get back to you by next week.”

  Faris turned around and waved his hand dismissively. “Good. Let me know.”

  Watching him walk to the kitchen to rummage through some drawers, tucking some of his dark, mid-length hair behind his ear and making no comment about her and Theo, she wondered to herself about the world she wanted to protect. The peace she wanted to protect. The small, infinitesimal instances of happiness she would have to sacrifice.

  Small, infinitesimal moments that she had always dreamt of. All alone, she dreamed of the friends she would have one day. People who could depend on her. People she could call her family.

  Leaving a trail of wet footsteps on the plush carpet that would eventually disappear, Ty walked through the same passageway Theo had disappeared into, thinking about what her heart wanted to say.

  Are you going to do it?

  You must live.

  Unspoken, secret words.

  I wanted to tell you that I will. Live.