After she arrived at her house in Maplesprings, Skye took Noi's scroll out of her bag and opened it. Then she scanned through the words on the scroll, which were inked on the stained brown paper in a neat and flowing script:

  Creator, know your end is nigh

  Because the North star of the sky

  Its shine much needed, come and quell

  The darkness from your rule, dispel

  You'll wander down a twisted path

  Fighting to keep your reign intact

  Alas, your fate is marked by ice

  Long is the wait for your demise

  So the "Creator" is Blanche and the "North Star" is Polaris? Skye thought. Makes sense. This is actually quite straightforward compared to other prophecies I've read about in fiction. But the North Star prophecy never says when Blanche is going to die… wait, but it does say "Long is the wait for your demise" at the end. How old is this prophecy? Is it due for fulfillment anytime soon? It never specifies a time frame, nor does it mention how Blanche is going to die, or if she will die at all for that matter— never mind, it does have the words "demise" and "end," and both words strongly imply death. So I'm probably gonna have to kill Blanche sooner or later, although with prophecies like these, you never know. Even if it were to explicitly state the words "death" or "die," they could mean something entirely different in this context!

  Suddenly Skye heard a knocking on her door, so she put away the scroll and opened the door. "Ivan?"

  "Have you found a way to fix my aura yet?" Ivan asked.

  "I don't know," Skye replied.

  "You don't know?"

  "I did find something for your aura, but I don't know how useful it is."

  Ivan entered Skye's room. "Show me what you found," he said.

  Skye rummaged through her backpack and retrieved a teal bottle. "This is gonna sound crazy, but your friend grows auralilies in the school garden."

  Ivan shrugged. "Honestly, I'm not surprised," he remarked. "Growing illegal substances in the school garden sounds exactly like something Luka would do."

  "Auralily nectar isn't illegal in Avriya, though," Skye clarified. "Socially acceptable? Probably not, but you said you were looking for a way to strengthen your aura and this is what I found. I don't know if it will work though. When I tried taking auralily nectar today, it did not go well."

  "What happened when you took the nectar?" Ivan asked.

  Skye sighed. "When I tried taking it, everything went horribly wrong," she lamented. "First I lost control of my aura, and then my right arm started shaking involuntarily, and then a blast of ice shot out of my hand and broke my classmate's water structure, and then I got my arm stuck in a block of ice, and then I slipped and fell on the floor, and then my foot made a huge pillar of ice that went almost all the way up to the ceiling. Auralilies don't improve your magic skills, they just intensify your existing magic, which means that if you can't control your aura, auralilies will only make your mistakes bigger."

  "I'm sorry that happened. That must've been rough," Ivan responded. "But I don't think I'll have the same problem as you because I'm able to control my aura just fine. My only issue with it is that it's too weak. Back when I tried out the mage course, I couldn't make any progress because of my weak magic, and eventually quit my training because of it. My classmates were all leveling up while I remained stuck in the beginner's class, wondering what was wrong with me and why my aura never behaved as it should. It was embarrassing."

  Skye gave Ivan a look of surprise. "You? Falling behind?" She asked incredulously. "Ivan, I always thought you were the gifted one! Compared to me at least haha. I know the feeling of wondering what is wrong with me all too well," she acknowledged. "But to think that this whole time I thought you quit your training because you were bored of it, not because you were struggling…"

  "Actually, I won't be struggling anymore thanks to you," Ivan announced as he snatched the bottle from Skye's hands. "Now I can finally be on the same level as everybody else in Avriya—"

  "Hey!" Skye protested, reaching for the bottle as Ivan held it above her. "Give that back! Or at least wait until we're in Avriya to try it so we're not BREAKING THE LAW!"

  "Oh, sorry, I thought we both agreed that the law is stupid," Ivan replied as he unscrewed the bottle and downed the nectar in one sip. "And if getting caught is what you're worried about, remember that we're the only ones home and our parents won't be here until much later. And even if our parents do come home, they wouldn't turn us over to the police. Thanks for the nectar, by the way!"

  "You're not welcome!" Skye shot back as she ran out of her room, flopped onto the living room couch, and buried her face in a cushion. "And if you do get busted for drinking auralily nectar, I'll have nothing to do with it— OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS?!"

  Skye sat up on the couch— or what used to be the couch— and gathered her bearings. From the looks of her surroundings, it would've appeared that she got transported to a place somewhere in the sea, surrounded by coral and rocks where the floor and furniture should've been. Above her a school of fish flickered through the water, and a giant squid, which was actually moving in a convincing manner unlike the stiff pencil squid she saw on the ferry to Avriya, swam over her head.

  "Whoa," Skye marveled as Ivan bounded through the sandy reef before climbing on top of the rock where Skye sat. The rock felt strangely squishy, and oddly enough, Skye did not feel wet at all despite being at the bottom of the sea. "Ivan, did you do this?"

  Ivan nodded, his eyes gleaming. "Yeah," he replied, giddiness in his voice, taking in the extent of his newfound abilities. "Do you like the illusion?"

  "Like it? Ivan, this is incredible! I'd say it's your best one yet," Skye complimented. And then, in a more suspicious tone, she added: "is it really the nectar behind all this?"

  "Yeah, it's the nectar," Ivan admitted. "This whole scenery would look like crap without it."

  Skye lay down on the rock, which was actually the couch, and stared up at the sunlit surface of the water, which was actually the living room ceiling. She never thought that her brother could create something like this, yet here she was. True, Skye knew that Ivan had a way of making life look easy, of succeeding without even trying. He was popular. He had natural talent at almost everything he attempted. He could achieve high grades without trying and would frequently beat Skye whenever they played video games against each other. Yet it was his aura that was his Achilles heel. Ivan, who spent all his life hiding his existence as a curse-bearer from the public, blending in to whatever environment he was placed in, casting illusions and lies for the sake of keeping himself safe in a society that didn't accept his kind, had ironically forgotten how to cast real illusions, ones that weren't born from words, but from magic. So once he started going to Avriya, it must have been a shock for him to be an outcast among his own people, the one lagging behind and sticking out like a sore thumb. Ivan was a shapeshifter in a way— not literally, but metaphorically. He could be everything except for what he actually was.

  For Skye, the auralilies were a failure, and she knew she wouldn't be trying them again anytime soon. But for Ivan, they were a way to unlock the one skill that was always out of his reach— the ability to use his aura effectively. Even if Ivan could be annoying at times, Skye was still happy that he was able to regain his powers. Even if taking auralily nectar did not work out for her, at least it went well for him.

  Too well.

  ***

  As the sea on Avriya's west coast swallowed up the sun and sprayed its misty waves onto the shore, Lucian made his way down the shoreline. Stopping at a rocky jetty, he peered out at the horizon and encountered a peculiar sight: sheets of ice floating on top of the water. As far as he knew, it wasn't winter yet, and Avriya's climate wasn't that cold, so it would be unusual for the sea to freeze around this time.

  After a minute or so of standing by the seaside, Lucian was met with an even stranger sight: a harp seal, with a plastic bag full of clothes and other items in its mouth, drifting toward the shore on a floating sheet of ice. The seal appeared to be steering the ice block with its fins, pushing itself through the water like a person on a rowboat. After the ice chunk hit the sand, the seal flopped onto the beach. Lucian couldn't help but crack an amused smile at the seal's awkward movements, but then the recognition hit him.

  "Polaris?" Lucian asked. "Is that you?"

  The seal dropped the bag and barked.

  "Is that a yes or a no?"

  The seal barked again, picked up the bag, and continued to flop its way inland as Lucian followed it. "Hey, do you need help?" He asked the seal.

  The seal raised its fin and pointed to a thicket of trees on the beach. Lucian gave the seal a confused look. "Why would you want to go there?" He asked. "Shouldn't you be in the water?"

  The seal shook its head— or at least it tried to. Then with a lot of shuffling, bouncing, flopping, and grunting, it resumed its journey inland.

  "You look like you're struggling with that bag. Here, let me carry it for you," Lucian offered. He tried to take the bag from the seal's mouth, but the seal held tight to it before continuing to bounce in the direction of the thicket. Lucian followed the seal and tried to pet it, but the seal dropped its bag again and barked at him.

  "Hey!" Lucian yelped. "What was that for?!"

  A blast of sand hit Lucian in the face, so he shut his eyes and shielded his face with his arm. A moment later, he opened his eyes. The seal was gone, and lying in its place was a girl wrapped in sealskin. "Skye?" Lucian asked, slightly offended that she had barked at him while in seal form, and even more than a bit flustered.

  Skye got on her knees. "Hey… Lucian," she sputtered, coughing up a mouthful of sand. "Please bear with me. I need to put on my clothes." The girl bent over, grabbed her bag, and hobbled off to the thicket in her wet sealskin blanket. A few minutes later, she re-emerged from the trees wearing a dry sweater and a pair of pants, her sealskin over her shoulders. "Let me just say that being a selkie is overrated," Skye commented. "The myths always portray selkies as these fair and beautiful maidens, but whenever I shift from my seal form into a human, I end up looking like a sea burrito. A wet and fluffy sea burrito."

  "Well you do look like a sea burrito," Lucian agreed, laughing. "But who said that sea burritos couldn't be beautiful?"

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  "I don't know, sounds like a stretch," Skye doubted. "If you put a burrito in the water, it would get really soggy real fast. It would be quite hard to make one look remotely decent, let alone pretty."

  "That's where you're wrong, Skye," Lucian responded. "And I know because I just saw one even more beautiful than all the maidens from myths and fairytales combined."

  Skye stopped in her tracks and stared at Lucian, a bewildered expression on her face. Lucian stared at her back. From the looks of the situation, it would have appeared that Skye didn't know how to respond to Lucian's comment, so her brain simply crashed and had to reboot, momentarily stopping her from functioning as a human being.

  Oh shit, Lucian thought. I think I broke her.

  ***

  After walking on the beach for a while, Skye and Lucian stopped at a grove of trees with rust-colored leaves scattered beneath them, their branches half bare for the fall. Skye laid out the sealskin on the sand before taking a seat on it, and Lucian sat on the blanket beside her. "Sure this won't cause you to revert back to seal form?" Lucian asked. "Not that I'd mind, but it would be terribly inconvenient if you suddenly turned into a seal while on land."

  "Don't worry, I'll be fine," Skye reassured him. "The sealskin only works when wet."

  "Oh." Lucian responded. "That's good to hear."

  Skye ran her fingers through the sealskin's fur. At this point the sun had sunk well beyond the horizon, and above the grove the night sky sparkled with thousands of stars. In the north, one star shone brighter than the rest. Skye and Lucian recognized it all too well.

  "Hey look, it's your preincarnation!" Lucian exclaimed, pointing in the direction of the north star, Polaris.

  Skye laughed. "Did you make that word up just now?"

  Lucian shrugged, a light smile creeping across his face. "Perhaps I did."

  Skye pointed to more stars, tracing the shapes they made. "Look. I found Pegasus," she said. "No idea how astronomers got a flying horse out of a square with antennae, but I respect their creativity. And look, there's Pisces right next to it! That's my zodiac by the way." Skye turned to Lucian. "When's your birthday?" She asked.

  "I don't have one."

  "You don't?"

  "Yeah. Spirits and gods don't keep track of birthdays. That's only a tradition among humans," Lucian explained. "Plus I wasn't exactly born in the first place. I only got spawned into existence because Blanche needed more slaves."

  Skye's face drooped. "Gosh, that's so sad!" She remarked.

  "What is?"

  "You not having a birthday. And the fact that you only exist to be a slave."

  Lucian chuckled. "Actually, not having a birthday never bothered me," he admitted. "Being forced to serve a cosmic entity for what could be the rest of my life did, though. Fortunately I escaped the spirit realm, so it's all good now." But it was at a cost, he added inside his head. And it cost me everything.

  "You know what, Lucian?" Skye interjected. "Pick a month. Any month."

  "Okay. July."

  "Now pick a number between 1 and 31."

  "23?"

  "That's your birthday now. July 23. Congrats, you're a Leo. I think it suits you."

  Lucian sighed. Humans and their strange practices, he thought. "Thanks for letting me partake in your… human ritual," he said. "It's very interesting."

  "Lucian?" Skye asked. "Speaking of cosmic entities, is it true that Blanche came from a black hole? I think I read it in a book somewhere."

  Lucian paused for a moment. "Probably. Quite a few spirits believe in the black hole theory, myself and Noi included," he answered. "You see, it should be impossible to escape a black hole. They're literally endless, empty voids left behind by stars once they collapse on themselves, explode in a supernova and die. Nothing can escape a black hole, except for Blanche, possibly. Some think she was supposed to stay in the black hole yet somehow escaped, and that's when she started her quest for total domination, giving humans auras so they would worship her and so she could create spirits, and then creating spirits so she could control them. Noi took this theory a step further: he suspected that the reason why auras are failing could have something to do with the instability caused by Blanche escaping the black hole. Maybe this instability wasn't noticeable at first, which was why aura magic remained reliable for so long, but the longer Blanche remained outside the black hole, the more instability followed her, and eventually all of that ended up causing the downfall of aura magic."

  "Wow." Skye remarked. "Is that why Blanche is known as the void angel? Because she came from the void?"

  "Yeah," Lucian responded. "People say she's the only one of her kind, and that no other void angels were discovered before or after her. I find it kind of funny, actually. Blanche says I'm an anomaly among spirits for not wanting to live under her control—" Lucian turned to the night sky, cupping his hands over his mouth, "BITCH, YOU'RE AN ANOMALY BY THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE!" He yelled. His voice echoed throughout the night.

  Skye laughed. "Did you just call a godlike entity a bitch?"

  "Yes."

  Skye sighed. "I was reading about void angel bloom the other day," she told Lucian. "Supposedly they spring up from a void angel's tears and are incredibly rare. Anybody who consumes these flowers will travel into the depths of their own mind. Some people were reported to have gone insane after eating, or even just smelling these flowers for too long, but there had been one case where a person experienced their effects and finally recovered from trauma they've been battling for years."

  "I've heard of void angel bloom before," Lucian replied. "No wonder they're so rare. Blanche's the most stone-faced bitch I've ever met. I never thought she could cry until I found out about them."

  Skye smirked. "You did it again."

  "What?"

  "Called her a bitch."

  Lucian laughed. "Is that not what she is?" He asked. "Though I'll admit, I've always wanted to know what it was like to try a void angel bloom, just out of curiosity. But now that I think about it, I bet if I entered my own mind, it would be quite messed up. So I don't know if I actually want to do it."

  A gust of wind blew through the grove, rattling through the empty tree branches and making Skye shiver. Skye leaned close to Lucian, who put an arm around her. A warmth spread through Lucian's chest. My God, he thought. If only I could stay like this.

  "Lucian?" Skye interjected a few moments later.

  "What?"

  "You can keep my sealskin blanket. Add it to your hoard or something, I don't know," Skye offered. "I don't think I'll be needing it because all it does is make my life harder. Don't get me wrong, seals are adorable, but it's terribly inconvenient when you randomly turn into a big ball of blubber that can only communicate through barks and can't even move on land without bouncing or shuffling awkwardly. Also, I'm afraid of swimming so it's not even that useful in the water." Skye and Lucian stood up, and Skye wrapped the sealskin in a bundle. She gave it to Lucian.

  "Uh… thanks," Lucian said as his cheeks burned. "Also, if it's as inconvenient as you say, why were you in seal form earlier in the first place?"

  "It was for an experiment," Skye explained. "You see, Noi had another theory that me being reincarnated from Polaris could be affecting my aura, so I wanted to see if that was true. Since the sealskin blanket is the strongest connection I had with my past life, I thought that maybe, if I tried it on and used it to transform, it would fix my abilities somehow. To be honest I doubted it would work, but at this point I'm kinda just throwing things against the wall to see what sticks, so yeah."

  "Did the sealskin work?" Lucian asked.

  Skye shrugged. "During my after school practice session today, I had a slightly easier time than usual controlling my aura, but I don't know if it was because of the sealskin or not. And even then, the sticky ice problem was still there, so I don't really think I improved all that much."

  "I'm sure you improved more than you thought you did," Lucian replied as Skye turned her eyes to the stars.

  Skye smiled. "Thanks, Lucian," she said. "Also, have you seen the Andromeda galaxy? I noticed it just now—"

  "Sorry Skye, but I have to go!" Lucian yelled as he ran off into the woods bordering the beach, feeling his throat tighten and a pit steadily gnaw at his stomach. What was doing? Was he reckless? Was he blind? Every spirit knew about the doomed fate of Andromeda and her forbidden human lover. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Echoed in Lucian's mind over and over again. Can't believe I got caught up in the moment again and failed to consider the consequences. Like the idiot that I am.

  While he ran, the cautionary tale that had been drilled into Lucian for as long as he could remember came to the forefront of his mind again. Remember Andromeda. You don't want to become like her, it started. She was a dolphin-spirit, a spirit of water, and a fine spirit, too. She used to live a happy and comfortable life as an advisor of Blanche, but now she's gone forever due to her fatal mistake of leaving the spirit realm and getting too close to a human. All that remains of her are the Andromeda Falls in Misty Glen.

  As the story went, Andromeda always did what was expected of her, as a good spirit would do. But one day, she got tired of the spirit realm, and wished to travel beyond it. So she descended, down to the mortal realm, and encountered a human, whose name was Jasper. Andromeda fell in love with Jasper, and would sneak out from the spirit realm each night to meet him.

  Now Andromeda was a clever spirit, a master of magic and trickery, and somehow she got away with her escapades for many years. She ended up marrying Jasper, and the two lived happily ever after— until Jason died of old age. Even with her intelligence, Andromeda was too blinded by love to see that spirits and humans were incompatible. She had failed to consider the impact of her relationship with a mortal, one with an infinitely shorter lifespan than hers, and would now end up living for all of eternity without him. Andromeda couldn't bear the thought of that, so she sat on the edge of a cliff and cried for hours. Her tears would form Andromeda Falls, a waterfall in Misty Glen on what is now the island of Avriya.

  After she cried, Andromeda returned to the spirit realm. She tried to continue her normal life, but failed to carry out her duties to Blanche because of her grief. Eventually, Blanche caught on, and since Andromeda was no longer useful to the goddess, she destroyed the spirit's core, and the water-spirit herself along with it. Before she was killed, Andromeda was asked if she had any last words, so she confessed her story to the rest of the spirit realm. After that, Andromeda was no more. And if Lucian wasn't careful, he could meet the same fate.

  At this point, Lucian was panting. He didn't know how long he had been running for, just that he needed some rest. So he stopped running, and checked his hands. Once he saw what he was holding, Lucian felt a sense of relief wash over him. Apparently, he had been carrying Skye's sealskin blanket with him the whole time. Not knowing what else to do, he hugged the blanket.

  After realizing that he still had the blanket, Lucian scanned his surroundings, and broke into a cold sweat. Right in front of him, a cascade of water poured into a pool at the bottom. Ugh, why now?! The dragon-spirit thought exasperatedly. Why am I such an idiot?!

  One by one, Lucian began going over his mistakes. First was his embarrassing, reckless, and out-of-pocket comment about Skye being more beautiful than all the fairy-tale maidens combined. Why the hell would he say that?! Congratulations, Lucian. You ruined your friendship with Skye, and now she thinks you're a creep, the voice in his head berated him. You're beyond stupid if you think she will ever feel the same way about you as you do about her.

  After that was the fact that Lucian just left Skye behind, by herself, in the dark. Are you blind?! The voice in his head berated him again. Who knows what's out there?! Skye's gonna get attacked or worse, and it will all be your fault.

  One by one, Lucian felt the weight of his mistakes pile onto him. Escaping the spirit realm, being punished for escaping the spirit realm, starting the Inferno of 2004 and killing tens of thousands of people— no, I didn't do that. Or did I? He thought as he shook his head. I don't even know the truth anymore.

  Unfortunately for Lucian, his sins didn't end there, and he thought if any more came up, he'd suffocate under their weight. Yet there were more, and Lucian felt like he was being crushed. Using Skye and her ties to the North Star Prophecy for his own selfish ends and then having the audacity to fall for her, getting attached to humans when he knew, from experience and common sense, that humans and spirits were to stay separate, being foolish enough to think that he deserved to be loved and happy and could be anything more than a nuisance— all of those were crimes he was guilty of. And karma would soon be coming to bite him in the ass.

  The waterfall poured, its rush flooding Lucian's ears, mocking him. If only he lived in the universe where the Greek myth of Andromeda was real instead of the cautionary tale he got, the story of the chained lady who got sacrificed to a sea monster before being saved by Perseus and living happily ever after with him!

  But alas, that was just a myth, and the story of Andromeda the water-spirit was real. The waterfall right in front of him was its evidence.