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  Ryan walked into the hidden village with a smile and a stack of papers in his hand. It was a prototype that Silvia had been working on to help Ryan scout out the area around him, and though it would still take a while to be fully completed, these test versions were a great tool to do something else entirely.

  He smiled and approached the centre of the small village, and was immediately surrounded by a large group of people. Over the past few days, with the exception of yesterday for obvious reasons, Ryan had come here every evening to let the people down here experience spirit week. Though, to make up for yesterday, it seemed like they had set up some projectors down here and just made it a sci-fi movie night for everyone to enjoy together while Ryan was out. Since most of the people down here had to make do without access to things like the television or internet, that was still pretty special to them.

  But today, Ryan wanted to do something a bit more special, something that was a lot more in line with what a Spirit Week celebration was supposed to be. According to Silvia, each of the sheets of paper already had enough mana in them to activate on their own. They were supposed to just fly around for a while, and once they ran out of mana, their bodies would stop working.

  It might be a little sad to see them just turn into paper figures right after they were moving, but Ryan was sure that it wouldn't be too much of an issue for the people here. Everyone that lived down here had a much deeper, innate understanding of magic than Ryan did.

  "Is everyone here?" Ryan asked, looking around, and judging from the crowd size, it seemed like all the people that were going to come had gathered around him. With a smile on his face, he said, "In that case... today is fairly simple, but I do still hope you enjoy yourselves!"

  With that, Ryan threw up the sheets of paper, and in front of everyone's eyes, they crumpled or folded themselves, taking on the shape of different birds. Most of them were doves and pigeons, but there were a few that looked like crows or finches. At the very least, they were all able to fly, though some of them moved more smoothly than others.

  Some of the birds didn't even flap their wings and just flew around in circles, while others actually looked quite life-like, though they moved in rather jarring ways. But none of that really mattered to the people down here. It had been far too long since any of them had seen a bird flying around, and Ryan smiled, though he was really just suppressing his bitterness.

  Mugir was the Great Spirit of the Sky; he shouldn't be celebrated by staring at the ceiling of a cave, but by bathing underneath a blanket of clear blue and fluffy white.

  'Next year... next year, I promise that Spirit Week is going to be better for you all,' Ryan thought to himself. He didn't really have a ton of time to prepare for this Spirit Week, but if he spent the next year even just casually planning proper celebrations for everyone, especially with the help of the spirits that were with him, he should be able to make something special for everyone that was left behind down here.

  "That's not all, though!" Ryan explained, quickly rushing over into one of the nearby buildings, Runar's office. He brought out a stack of kites with him and handed them out, especially to the kids. It didn't seem like they had a lot of chances to fly kites before, so this might be especially exciting for them.

  "Runar placed some wind runes on each of them, so they can fly on their own, even down here," Ryan explained as he handed them out, "Just throw them into the air, and they should start flying. But be careful not to run into anyone! And make sure to share, alright?" he said, and the young kids looked up at him with bright, beaming smiles, nodding their heads as they ran off.

  Ryan watched as everyone here enjoyed themselves. Smiling, laughing, crying in relief... seeing everyone here so emotional made Ryan feel just the same. This is what he wanted to do. This is how he wanted to help people, since he still didn't have the power to fight for them otherwise.

  "Oh, and could I buy one of those lamps? Yeah, exactly, one of those," Ryan smiled, and the employee quickly brought it over to him. It was an old-looking lantern, clearly enchanted with special magic. There were plenty of them placed around this town today, celebrating the day of the Great Spirit of Shadows, Porsa. When a candle was lit within them, wisps of light would appear in an area around them, flying around like a swarm of fireflies.

  Ryan's mother looked him over the shoulder as he grabbed the lantern, asking curiously, "What are you planning on doing with that?" and Ryan just smiled awkwardly.

  "Well, it's for later tonight. We can't turn off the luminescent crystals in the caves, so we'll wait until night time and then start a celebration. I even convinced Maximus to do a small show with his flame sword-arts," he explained. Mary looked at her son with a soft smirk, proudly patting his shoulder as the two walked out of the shop.

  "That's wonderful, Ryan," she said, as the two of them joined back up with the others outside. Liam was standing there, looking around with wide open eyes. Of course, the day of Porsa was one of the few days that he was able to walk around without lathering on layers of special sunscreen or wearing thick clothes. On especially sunny days, Liam even had to walk around with a parasol, though it embarrassed him quite a lot.

  That was why today was such a great day for him. He could just walk around freely without worrying about things like that. After all, the entire part of town here was covered in large tarps that were blocking out every bit of sunlight that could shine through. Instead, the area was illuminated by lanterns or magic, and at basically every street corner, you could see people doing shadow plays.

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  "Look, over there!" Liam exclaimed, pointing at the middle of the street which had been blocked off so people could walk there. Walking through a crowd of people was a young giant woman, wearing a dress that was glowing brightly, shining light onto everything around here. This was one of the big traditions all over Riveria. It happened even back in Ryan's hometown, where people were dressed up in luminescent robes to walk around town while it was dark. It always gave some kind of ethereal vibe to Ryan. These days, beside the one that took on the official position for these events, especially kids liked to run around with glowing clothes, though they were usually just made with regular glow-in-the-dark materials, rather than that sort of magical light.

  With a slight grin, Ryan looked at that giant woman walking past him. Maybe he could prepare something similar for everyone in the hidden village. Though, those kind of clothes weren't easy to get, especially not the day of. They were usually tailor-made as well, so there weren't any shops that just sold ready-to-wear clothes like that. Plus, Runar wasn't very likely to be at home right now; he's been out ever since Ryan spoke to him yesterday morning. And Silvia wouldn't be able to prepare something that fast either.

  As Ryan walked through the roads with his mother and Liam, he kept on finding small knick-knacks that seemed like they would be great to bring back. And then, after buying some kind of small glowing toy, he noticed that Jester was getting pretty excited about something. He seemed to be particularly interested in something that was happening just a few steps away; one of the shadow plays.

  An Aktorione was using her four arms to make complex shapes on her own that wouldn't usually be possible without help. A pretty large crowd of kids had gathered around her, watching what was happening in front of them.

  'Do you want to watch?' Ryan asked him, but Jester quickly shook his head. Rather, he seemed to want to do something else entirely. A little curious, Ryan let Jester out of his domain, and the spirit basically leapt toward the stage. The Aktorione was currently setting up for another part of the shadow play, and instead, Jester jumped in front of the light shining against the canvas. And from the front, where the kids were sitting, you could see a quite mysterious display. Shapes that were definitely not possible if this were just regular shadow play were being shown.

  A whole shadow landscape with a castle and even waving blades of grass in the front. A knight on horseback riding past the road, approaching a castle with a massive dragon coiled around a half-crumbling tower. And at the top, a princess was yelling out for help. It was a classic story. And Ryan could see a few other things infused into the shadows as well; they were shimmering with a shifting blue colour that was moving between different shades. When Ryan peeked behind the canvas, he could only see a surprised aktorione watching what was happening, and a tiny harlequin making simple shapes with his hands that threw impossible shadows.

  Without hesitation, Liam jumped forward to watch the shadow play with bright eyes. If he were any more excited, he would probably end up lighting up the darkness around him unintentionally.

  Ryan's mother looked at him a bit confused, "He can do things like that?"

  Ryan smiled, "It's probably one of his spells. I imagine he has quite the range," he explained, quickly walking around the play's setup and walking up to the aktorione in charge, "Sorry about that. He's a contracted spirit, and he tends to get pretty, uhm... excited about stuff."

  The aktorione laughed and shook her head, "Don't worry, as long as the kids are enjoying themselves, I don't mind. But that sure is a unique-looking spirit."

  Trying to avoid her asking too much about him, Ryan laughed it off, "Yeah, he's unique in a lot of ways. Uhm... by the way... is that a special type of canvas? Or will any kind do?"

  Curious, the aktorione crossed her arms, "They're not special, they just need to let through light. And the light itself needs to be strong enough. If you want to do this stuff in your own time, you need to make sure that no other light can bounce around and mess with the clean shadows thrown onto the canvas."

  Ryan laughed, "Thanks, I guess it was pretty obvious, huh? I've got some friends that are stuck at home today, so I figured I'd do something special for them. Do you know of a place where I could buy one of those canvases around here?"

  "There's a shop around the corner, actually. If you just want to do a small private show, don't let yourself be upsold," she advised, and Ryan nodded his head. He thanked her and quickly returned back to his mother, so that they could wait for Jester to be satisfied with the play. But as he got back to her, Mary seemed almost shocked.

  "You've... gotten quite social since you came here, haven't you?" Mary pointed out, and Ryan smiled awkwardly.

  "I guess so. One of my stats is 'sociability', so that's just part of it, I guess," he explained, "Usually, when I would talk to people I don't know, my mind would sort of fog up a bit, so I would try to do everything I can to get out of that as quickly as possible, but it's gotten a lot better since I awakened. I don't feel as uncomfortable talking to others anymore. Maybe it also just has something to do with the fact that I'm never really alone anymore."

  Mary smiled, and gave Ryan a slight side-hug. She was just so happy to hear this.

  Ryan hooked up the light to the generator's plug and tested it out. The light from the crystals at the top of the cave was starting to dim, so it would be time to get started with Porsa's celebrations soon.

  People were starting to gather in front of the small stage, and Jester was excitedly waiting to start as well. However, since it was still too bright to really do a proper shadow play, it would still take a little while. In the meantime, Ryan made sure that everything else was properly set up. The Geodes in particular were more than happy to help out with that. Porsa was the Great Spirit of Shadows, so he represented a special relationship between light and darkness. It seemed like the Geodes, who communicated through pulses of light, enjoyed this day by far the most because of this. They were already a lot more 'talkative' than usual, and their bodies' light was illuminating the area in beautiful ways. Really, Ryan hoped that he would be able to talk to all of them soon... they seemed like real special fellas.

  Rather, everyone down here seemed pretty damn nice, though there was probably a reason for that. This was not the only hiding spot in New Riverside, so some of the others might hold some more shady folk. According to Silvia's father, there were plenty of Vampires that illegally attacked and trafficked others to be able to feed on their blood, and Ryan was sure that they weren't the only troublemakers around. If a species was nothing but purely kind, there would be little to no reason to keep them hidden. But with just a few bad apples, the entire batch can seem rotten.

  The White Shadow Society would surely try to take advantage of the fact that some of these hidden people committed crimes to be able to survive in this world, so that was probably why the Aglecards were trying to introduce them slowly but surely into society to let everyone acclimate to each other and prevent friction. It was frustrating to watch everyone down here suffer while that was happening, though.

  Frankly, many of these people might not even be around anymore by the time they, as a species, were allowed to live under the sky instead of the crystal ceiling. Ryan was sure that there was another way to help them, but he was also just a 19 year old, freshly awakened nobody that has only been part of this world for a little over a month, so there was no way he could just change how all of this worked right away.

  The only thing that he could do right now was give them a shadow play to watch.

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