“I can’t imagine how it’d be like for the people in stories who are supposed to save the world and stuff,” I muttered, pointing at the book that was currently sprawled across my desk. “It must be horrible. The books are fun to read… but the pressure, Jongin. Can you imagine it? Everyone either wants you dead or to use your power. One mistake, and bam. The world’s screwed.”

Jongin shuddered slightly, like reliving an unwanted memory. “Honestly, I can imagine. It would be a huge burden. I wouldn’t want to be in that place.”

Chapter 4

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I stared ahead at Jongin, who looked like he was doing anything but joking with me. He had a good pokerface, I knew, but even this was too good. “Okay, first you tell me that you people have superpowers and stuff, sure. Kind of believable -- even then, not really -- seeing what happened to Mr. Lim. I mean, I saw. But now you’re telling me that I’m powerful or something or whatever? That I’m supposed to change the world? Because excuse you, have you even seen me? Whatever it is, you’ve got the wrong person. I’m not one of you guys, whatever-you-call-yourselves, and I’m not capable of glowing golden and--” I hadn’t even noticed now loud my voice had become, but by now, even to my own ears, I was sounding close to the hysterical side.

“Mira, calm down. I know it’s a lot to take in, but--”

“But what? Jongin, I’m not capable of these things!”

“Kai,” he corrected, like it was his top priority or something. I could feel my whole body trembling; I didn’t even know what I felt anymore -- fear? Anger? Betrayal? Maybe a mixture of all those things? It wasn’t a pleasant emotion, that was all I knew. “There’s a reason behind everything, and there has to be one of how and why you’re like that.”

“Do you see me glowing gold?”

He didn’t reply to that one, and for a moment, I thought I had finally got him. Then, the silver light around Jongin flared again, not as bright, but still visible, and I would’ve jumped back in surprise if I could even react at all. Without a second word, he reached over and laid his hand on my shoulder. There was a jolt when he made contact with me; a jolt of shock running down my spine, and a snap -- not the snap of something breaking, but more of a snap of something snapping together.

The result was instantaneous. All of a sudden, the room was bathed in golden colour, the shadows shrinking away to nothing. When I looked downwards, that colour was originating from me -- every inch of my body that I could see was shining. I stared down at myself in disbelief and surprise, and when was able to respond, jerked away from Jongin in a mixture of emotions. The moment his hand left my shoulder, the glow faded abruptly away to nothing again, leaving me to stare at the opposite wall in shock. I wanted to curl into a bed and stay there. When I turned my gaze down to my hands, they were trembling visibly, and in vain, grasping at the blankets.

“Mira. Look at me.” The sheer will in Jongin’s voice made me turn around before I could think twice. He met my eyes without wavering, and the level of seriousness was so high that it was shocking. He rested his both hands on my shoulders, forcing me to stay in place. Somehow, I found myself unable to look away. “Now do you believe me?” he asked again.

Despite everything that I had seen, the only word that I could manage out was a small, simple, “No.” Denial seemed easier than simply believing.

Jongin didn’t argue with it. “Well, you better. This is the world you live in now, and it’s best if you do believe it.”

***

“Breakfast!” Baekhyun announced cheerily, setting a plate of food down onto the table in front of me. “Well, brunch, actually. It’s ten thirty. Also, Kyungsoo cooked the food, not me, because I can’t cook.”

The food that Kyungsoo had cooked looked and smelled delicious, though I didn’t feel at all hungry. The thought of eating, in fact, made me feel slightly nauseous. Baekhyun observed from the side as I poked a chopstick at the food, head propped up on his hand. “Is something wrong?” he asked, actually sounding worried, and I wanted to flip the plate of food at him -- was something wrong? Everything was wrong; did he not understand that?

“Let her be,” Jongin -- or Kai, he had been insistent on me calling him -- said. He was leaning on the wall, and I wasn’t quite sure if he was observing like Baekhyun seemed to be doing, or if he was just standing there. “It’s natural. Remember Chanyeol hyung? He had trouble with it too, but he’s used to it by now. It just takes time to adjust.”

Time, my , I thought.

“Speaking of Chanyeol, where is he?” Baekhyun asked, turning away from me to look at Kai.

“Ignis,” he replied simply. “We’re joining him soon, though. With Mira.”

I dropped my chopsticks. Despite my protesting stomach, I doubted that I could swallow food at the moment without choking. “What is Ignis? And where are we even going? Just because you--” I jabbed an angry finger at Kai’s direction, and he raised an eyebrow and studied me. “--saved my life, doesn’t mean that now you can go around dragging me in your magicky business. I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“It’s not just anywhere,” Baekhyun told me with wide eyes, and the insult I had thrown at Kai remained undetected, or at least, ignored. “See, there’s a lot of things that you don’t understand, but Ignis is like, the capital of where we live. Kind of. We need Luhan to open a portal for us though, since neither Kai or Kyungsoo or I are Spellcasters. Most of us actually live there; it’s the grandest dimension ever created and--”

“Baekhyun, I haven’t explained that far yet,” Kai deadpanned in a tired voice. “So if you could stop making it even more complicated?”

“It already is,” I grumbled, and he sent me another unreadable look. “It’s a miracle I actually believe you guys.”

Thinking back, however, Kai’s behaviour (or was it Jongin, when I was thinking of the past? I was suffering a dilemma with his name right now, along with a thousand other things) had been a little bit out of the ordinary. All the little things that I had brushed off suddenly seemed to finally make sense, to fall into place. The questions I had thought of as “weird,” and had ignored and put into the back of my head finally began to make sense. The time he told me fantasy books ‘weren’t well written.’ How he had never brought up his childhood. Why he didn’t make any friends but me.

“You’ll get used to it,” Baekhyun waved a hand in the air, voice light. “Kai, explain Ignis to her at least.”

Kai turned to give Baekhyun a look that I translated into why do I have to do it? but ultimately, heaved a long sigh. “This is going to be a lot to take in for a day,” he told me slowly, like how one might explain instructions to a child. “Though when we get there, we’ll get you a couple books from the archives and you can read and understand it a bit more. In short--” Everything that had been explained -- if what he was doing could even qualify as explaining -- had been in short today, and frankly, I wasn’t quite satisfied with in short. “--there’s hundreds upon thousands of dimensions that are linked to earth. Dimensions are worlds that other Athanatoi -- ones from both past and present -- created with their power, though all of them are linked to the earth. I guess you could see them as small pockets of air, all connected to Earth.”

“Thanks for the load of information. I’m not sure if I understood any of that.”

As if I didn’t say anything, he continued. “Each dimension is a different place, designed whatever way it’s creator wanted it to. It’s size depends on the strength and will of it’s creator. Time flows differently there: one minute could be one hour on earth, a day, or vice versa. The way to move through dimensions is through portals; invisible doors that only Spellcasters can open.”

“Don’t ask what a Spellcaster is,” Baekhyun suggested oh-so-helpfully. “You’ll get to know that when we find someone better at explaining.”

Kai sent him an irritated look, as if to say, like you’re much better than I am? “A dimension can be determined how stable and safe by the number of portals it has connected to Earth. Portals are the only thing that makes it reality; if that portal that linked it was to be destroyed, then the dimension and whoever in it would be destroyed too, with no means of being retrieved or restored -- the whole thing would simply collapse on itself. So the more portals it has connected, the better.”

“Moenia is one of those dimensions!” Baekhyun chirped. “It means stronghold in Latin. It’s said to be the largest, grandest one ever created, and to make it took decades, and many people’s powers combined to do so. It’s possibly half the size of Korea? It’s extremely secure, and there’s portals leading into it from all around the world -- hundreds of portals -- for Athanatoi to use if they ever need to gather, though all of those are guarded really carefully. Not many people actually live there year round, and there’s small camps set up here and there, but most of it is actually unexplored save Ignis. That’s the city; it lights up during the night, so it means beacon. Yeol and I went to watch it at night, and it truly looks really nice.” He stopped talking for a moment, and looked at me with wide eyes. “You understood all of that, right?”

I wasn’t sure what to reply with, because truthfully, I understood very little of what Baekhyun was currently talking about. It all sounded like gibberish of some fantasy novel, and those were the parts -- the explanations -- that I always skimmed over when reading. “Kind of…?” I tried tentatively, but it came out more of a question than an actually answer.

“She didn’t,” Kai translated helpfully, eying Baekhyun like he very much wanted to run him through with a sword (which wasn’t as impossible as it had been a little while ago). The kitchen was silent, and everyone (excluding my stomach) had seemed to forget about the food. “Just understand this: we’re going to go to one of those dimensions, which happens to be a meeting place for people like us.”

My heart skipped a beat at the way he said it. People like us. That sounded odd to hear, like I was something different -- and even though I had been told that uncountable times already today, I still couldn’t get the thought through my head. I had powers. I was different. Just yesterday, everything had been boring and normal and now? Kai, formerly known as Jongin, knew martial arts (some weird form of it) and killed someone, and casually got away with it? I was supposed to be powerful? There were people with superpowers living among us and killing monsters? It didn’t quite compute yet, and I couldn’t help wonder if it ever would. It didn’t feel like it would. “So. We’re going to go t