「 episode 17; arc 0.9e 」 —fragments of cipher//concept— 「 historia v 」

“So, basically, you’re all picking a fight with an old man…?”

“Well, uh...yeah, I guess that’s one way to put it. Most people usually need a minute to process the other part, though. You know, the part about the multiverse? And the whole thing about there being an infinite amount of parallel timelines? That part…?”

“I didn’t forget that bit. Just didn’t find it hard to understand, I guess.”

“You take no issue with the idea, then? You believe us…?”

“I do, yeah. Makes enough sense to me. After all, she’s proof of it.”

Hyejoo’s exchange with Jungeun and Jiwoo came to a stop with her redirected focus towards Chaewon. 

The campfire at the center of the group’s seated circle danced with a steady sway as Chaewon became the center of attention. She blinked, pointing at herself and looking at Hyejoo. “Do you...do you mean me?”

Hyejoo nodded, holding her gaze on Chaewon. The girl of light was slowly becoming used to being intensely focused on by Hyejoo, enough so that she noticed that the necromancer no longer seemed to be emanating anxiety as they looked at each other. There was still a perceivable sorrow in Hyejoo’s eyes, but she was no longer avoiding eye contact. It was as if she had pieced together a missing key component which had been the source of her apprehension.

When Hyejoo explained herself proper, understanding branched across the sorceresses in waves as they made sense of the despondent gloom which tinted her hues. “Do you remember what I said when I woke up?”

“That Chaewon looks and sounds just like her, and that she was practically her twin?” Haseul recalled aloud, inciting nods from the others. She looked between Hyejoo and Chaewon for a moment as she shared in the epiphany. “Then by ‘her’, you mean to say that you know of someone who is—”

“Knew. And was.”

Hyejoo made a correction she so deeply wished she didn’t have to make, gently cutting off Haseul as she looked back to the dance of flames at their center. “She was someone I knew who was really important to me, but she’s gone now, just like everyone else. So the fact that you’re basically a carbon copy of her in both name and looks, sitting here alive and well when there’s no way she’s still around otherwise…”

Hyejoo’s train of thought paused as she considered it in full. It seemed absurd to be sure, but by due process of elimination, there was no other conclusion to arrive at. Her voice was especially quiet when she spoke what she could only see as the truth.

“...you’re another version of my best friend from another world. You’re her, but you’re not. Feels like I’m seeing a ghost, but it’s not your fault. I’ll just have to get used to it...”

“You know about even that part of the multiverse theory, then?” Sooyoung questioned, slightly surprised about the younger girl’s due acceptance of the facts. “We usually only mention it on a need-to-know basis since it’s a bit of a rare occurrence, but it seems like you’ve already put two and two together.”

“I’ve read up on this kind of thing, so yeah, I get the idea,” Hyejoo confessed, meeting Sooyoung’s eyes in full. “For every alternate reality out there, there’s versions of all of us that exist in them, native to each one. I wondered if that kind of concept could seriously be true, but to meet a replica of someone I knew...doesn’t get much more convincing than that.”

The sorceresses allowed Hyejoo a moment to collect her thoughts as she went quiet, still peering at the flames which kept them warm underneath Sooyoung’s roof of unmelting ice. In truth, Chaewon was just as much in need of a silent retreat into her headspace as the gravity of the situation settled into her mind. 

In time, Hyejoo found her voice again, announcing her thoughts as she looked up. “He’s really the reason for all of this, then? This guy called YG?”

Solemn expressions with heavy-hearted frowns stared back at Hyejoo. Haseul answered proper. “That’s correct. Though we still don’t know what exactly happened to this world between your first blackout and when you woke up days later, whatever occurred must’ve resulted in the spread of corruption in the sky. That corruption started at some point in this universe’s leyline, and it came from him.”

“Corruption this dense must’ve ended up in an unreal amount of fiends coming to life,” Jungeun commented. “Can’t imagine what the streets must’ve been like the moment it all went down, whatever ‘it’ was.”

“Fiends...you said that was your word for those monsters, right? The plastic dolls?”

“Yes, those would be the fiends we speak of,” Jiwoo confirmed Hyejoo’s inquiry. Curiosity took hold of her as she tilted her head. “You referred to them as the heartbroken, did you not? I must say, that is a title more unique than most we’ve heard for them…”

“Just another part of the Church’s ridiculous fairy tale that they spun for centuries,” Hyejoo dismissed with a roll of her eyes and a tired sigh. 

“It was some absurd idea that tied into how they viewed spiritus as the souls of those who couldn’t pass on after death. Since those things come from that messed up spiritus, they played it up as the heartbroken being those who died with regrets and sins heavy enough to bring them back to life. You can think of it as them being anchored to the world because they can’t let go.”

“I’m more thinking it’s complete bull.”

“Because it is,” Hyejoo agreed with Sooyoung’s assessment. “Just another excuse to make people follow God and confess their sins, I think. If you didn’t, you’d supposedly end up as one of the heartbroken yourself, which they liked to call a fate worse than death. Unfortunately, most people bought it. They really had a vice grip on the whole world’s way of thinking…”

“That would explain the rest of the terminology on this planet, then,” Haseul mused quietly, tapping on her chin. “Necromancy, necromancers, the deathstream...it all correlates to this core belief that mana is the leftover essence of departed lives. How grim…”

“In any case, I don’t think I’ll be much help. Sorry.”

An early judgment call paired with a sudden apology from Hyejoo brought rise to confusion from the others. A melancholic aura was beginning to seep from her being, her eyes dropping. “I don’t know how to fight. I don’t even know how to do necromancy. I’ve only ever done it once, and it was by complete mistake.”

“You’ve only done it once?” Chaewon asked, her disbelief reflected on the faces of her comrades. All due focus from LOONA’s sorceresses was drawn to Hyejoo’s lavender iris. “But your eye...that only happens when you’ve either utilized enough of your mana or on it’s own after a very long time. How did it change…?”

“I don’t know. When I woke up after being thrown into the portal, it was like this.”

“What?” 

Haseul’s voice broke through before anyone else could think to speak. Her face rife with shock, she was leaning forward slightly as she sought further explanation. “Hyejoo, how old are you?”

“Uh...if it’s the second moon of the tenth cycle, then I’m turning twenty-one in just over a month.”

“And when did you first breathe out mana?”

“Spiritus?” Hyejoo thought aloud, having to make a brief connection to the team’s wording that she had only just been introduced to. “It’s been eleven months. It was the same day all of this started...”

Haseul fell silent.

Almost without thinking, her eyes sought out Sooyoung, remembering their previous discussion. Much like before, she found the woman of ice already looking at her with the selfsame somber stare. As more and more of the mystery surrounding Hyejoo was unraveled, Sooyoung seemed to be gaining a steady amount of confidence in her conclusions.

Though Haseul was already formulating her own counterpoints and potential explanations, with zero knowledge of what actually transpired during the necromancer’s first blackout, the scientist held her tongue. With respect, Sooyoung did the same.

A wave of relief engulfed Jungeun as she watched Sooyoung break off from Haseul to engage Hyejoo instead, avoiding the resurrection of a still unneeded discussion. “So you’ve only ever used your mana once, and it was a mistake? Does that have anything to do with the accident you mentioned?”

“Yeah...yeah, it does.”

Hyejoo’s volume fell to a near murmur. Her gaze remained lugubriously downcast as a shadowy dread began to creep up on her. The atmosphere around her didn’t go unnoticed, inciting Jungeun to speak up. “Hyejoo, if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to.”

“No, I do. It’s something you guys should know, especially if you’re considering taking me back with you.”

As fearful as she was of sharing it and as much as she was already beginning to hurt from just remembering it, Hyejoo lifted her head out of the pool of sorrow which had drowned her past. With little hesitation, she spoke in a clear, concise tone while making eye contact with Sooyoung specifically.

“On the day I became a necromancer, I killed my mother in self-defense. That was the accident.”

Sooyoung’s expression was the only one not to begin an immediate descent. She held her funereal countenance as she listened to Hyejoo in full. 

“She wanted to cut my eye out like she did her own. In her mind, it was the safest way to live in our world as a necromancer, and to be honest, I don’t think she was wrong in thinking as much. But I was confused. They always said necromancers awaken during early to mid-adolescence, and I was already twenty. I thought I was safe, but then...there it was. My spiritus…”

Bringing her legs closer to her, Hyejoo rested her arms atop her knees and buried her face slightly in the sleeves of her jacket. Her sight wandered to Jungeun’s flames, their heat reminding them of her mother’s own. “I tried talking to her. Tried to settle on another possible solution. I was scared. I didn’t want to lose my eye. I ended up trying to run, but she grabbed me. I closed my eyes, and in the next second, she was dead.

“I still don’t know how I did it. I didn’t even mean to. No one believed me, but Mother was the last person I would ever want to hurt,” Hyejoo avowed. Tears began to well up in her eyes, and Sooyoung took keen notice of the girl’s refusal to cry with her swift wiping of them before they could fall. 

“Someone called the police. I was taken in and interrogated by a member of the Church. My spiritus had stopped coming out on its own by that point, but when I was talking to him, it happened again. I got angry and I just started breathing it out. Mother told me it could only be summoned through conscious thought, but…”

From behind the cover of Hyejoo’s sleeves, a muffled sniffle could be heard. Raising her head anew, Hyejoo brought an end to her tale. “So that’s what’s happened. I haven’t even bothered trying my hand at necromancy because I just don’t know how to do it and I’m scared of losing control of my spiritus again. I can’t fight. I can’t do anything. I’m not worth saving.”

Hyejoo’s conclusion drove knives deep into the hearts of her saviors. 

The sorceresses struggled to respond to her in any sort of fashion, and Hyejoo knew they were not at fault for it. They could only replay her words in their minds again and again as they made an attempt to comprehend the degree of pure misfortune that befell her. With the hands of fate robbing her of everything she ever knew and whatever future she might have had, Hyejoo’s suffering was seemingly without parallel.

Above all others, Chaewon’s spirit was especially strained. With Hyejoo’s head buried again and her gaze on the fire, she failed to realize the disconsolate depression that Chaewon stared at her with. The girl of light could not have predicted that the soul she sought to save would have been one born of such star-crossed affliction, and the fact that she could do little to truly help only dragged her spirit down further.

“Well, the idea of awakenings being tied to adolescence is just a misunderstanding resulting from the most common age range. Some magi don’t awaken until their early twenties. Others, before they’re even ten years old.”

A strangely calm voice acted against the silent moroseness that had swallowed the group whole. It was Sooyoung, oddly relaxed as she began to stand up from her cross-legged position on the ground. “It’s uncommon, but it happens. Until your body finishes fully maturing, an awakening can happen at literally any time.”

“Sooyoung…?”

“Your mana, your spiritus—whatever you want to call it—most likely manifested due to high levels of stress compromising your mental state,” Sooyoung continued, Jiwoo’s voice going unanswered. Everyone was looking at the Master sorceress in full now, Hyejoo appearing particularly in a daze with agape. 

“When you’re just starting out, you can lose control of it easily if you don’t keep your cool. It’ll take shape on its own and things will happen without you meaning to. This can happen if you’re sad, angry, scared...doesn’t matter what you’re feeling. If you’re overwhelmed, you lose control,” the swordswoman divulged as she began to walk forward, heading past the group. “Even years of experience won’t stop it from happening if it gets especially bad.”

“Sooyoung, where are you going?”

Coming to a stop a few dozen paces ahead as Haseul called out to her, Sooyoung turned around and faced the now approaching group. Hyejoo was at the center, and she was the recipient of Sooyoung’s focus. 

“You were scared for your life when your mother attacked you, so you produced an effect outside of your control. Likewise, whatever you felt during your interrogation made you draw out your mana without meaning to,” Sooyoung proceeded without explaining her actions, her elucidation bewitching Hyejoo. 

“Your very first hours as a magus coincided with extremely stressful situations. It’s no surprise you had zero control, and I understand why those situations made you too scared to try again, but you don’t need to be. You’re already capable of controlling it and fighting with it. You just don’t know it yet.”

“Sooyoung, is now really the best time to—”

The sound of cracking ice accompanied by a shimmer of bright cyan from Sooyoung’s eye interrupted Haseul’s question.

A small bed of ice at Sooyoung’s feet had instantly burst outwards, her mana coalescing so quickly it flashed into existence. More of her dust began to take shape in her outstretched open palm, extending out and creating the outline of her greatsword. With the gradual passing of a runic circle, she purposefully constructed it at a relaxed pace, leaving Hyejoo wide-eyed the entire time.

Her weapon completed, Sooyoung turned over the single-edged slab of frozen steel. Stabbing the ice at her feet, she let go of it, leaving it on display. In complete awe at the massive blade of frost, Hyejoo’s eyes were lost to Sooyoung’s massive armament. She approached it slowly, her bewilderment multiplying as she watched the runes along the center of the blade come to life with a soft glow.

“Sooyoung.”

For the third time, Haseul was in search of answers from her ally. She stood with Jiwoo and Jungeun a small ways back from the inquisitive Hyejoo and Chaewon attending her. 

Finally gracing Haseul with her attention, Sooyoung offered Chaewon a small nod before stepping away towards the other three. Chaewon was left to watch a curious Hyejoo walk around the greatsword slowly, silently inspecting it from every angle. If nothing else, Sooyoung’s motion to showcase her weapon seemed to incite a positive reversal on the ambience of the group, the drab mood thoroughly washed away. It eased Chaewon, allowing her the peace of mind to smile again while she kept a close eye on Hyejoo.

Approaching the three, Sooyoung finally graced them with a proper reply. She restrained her voice, keeping the conversation out of Hyejoo’s earshot. “We need to show her what she can do. She needs to know that she can be in control.”

“Well, yes, I agree with that sentiment, but now?” Jiwoo asked. Uncertainty was plain on her grimace as she pensively rubbed the surface of a gemstone attached to one of her necklaces. “Suddenly leaping from a discussion of her tragedy to teaching her how to engage in elementalism...it feels rather callous…”

“No...no, I think Sooyoung’s got the right idea.”

With crossed arms and a small smirk, Jungeun sounded off her approval while watching Hyejoo from afar. “You heard her. She doesn’t think she’s worth saving, all because she doesn’t know how to be what she actually is. We can show her right here what she’s capable of.”

“It’s either this or sit in awkward silence as she decides what she wants to do,” Sooyoung added, eliciting a supportive nod from Jungeun as the two looked to Haseul and Jiwoo. “We can let her darkness stew, or we can show her the gift of her own potential.”

“So long as there’s no pressure for her to come back with us or join LOONA just because of her abilities as a magus, then...fine,” Haseul submitted, her vision glued to Hyejoo with a look of worried concern. “As much as I don’t want to leave her here, if she decides that for herself, we must respect it.”

“You’ve got it backwards. If she stays, it’s all the more reason to teach her,” Sooyoung countered. “She should know how to defend herself against fiends. I’m amazed she’s gone on this long without knowing as much.”

“Yes, I suppose that is quite the fair point. Now I can’t help but wonder if she’s been lucky enough to simply avoid them or if they simply stopped appearing for some other reason…”

“How did you make this thing?”

Hyejoo’s raised voice brought an end to the chatter on the sidelines. She was looking at the secluded group, and Sooyoung met her glance as she walked back towards her.

“It starts with a concept,” Sooyoung began, coming to a stop next to her blade. Hyejoo listened to her words with an intense focus as the others followed. “It’s as simple as thinking of a concept and continuing to think about it until it becomes reality. Conscious thought powers everything, which is why not thinking straight due to being stressed or otherwise makes you lose control.”

“Making a weapon, though?” Hyejoo asked, still in disbelief at the personally crafted sword before her. “I don’t remember Mother or anyone else ever talking about something like this being possible…”

Sooyoung frowned slightly. “That’s what tends to happen in worlds like this where our persecution is a centuries old basis of life. Everything I’ve told you so far is extremely basic information, and summoning your weapon is one of the first steps a magus takes. Assuming the Church of the Sacred Fang was even aware of this themselves, I’m sure they kept it top secret to keep necromancers’ abilities at a minimum.”

“Wait, my weapon?” Hyejoo parroted with a blink. “Even I can make this…?”

“Not that weapon specifically, no, but you do have access to one.”

From Hyejoo’s side, a brief wave of heat passed her by alongside Jungeun’s voice.

Sooyoung smiled as the woman of fire stepped forward with her freshly materialized halberd in hand. She dug it into the ice right next to Sooyoung’s greatsword as she joined the spontaneous lesson. “You can summon it by bringing out your mana and focusing on the concept of a weapon. That’s all it takes.”

From the frozen steel to the heated iron on display, Hyejoo’s vision fell to her hands. She held them in front of her chest, her hues filled with careful optimism as she curated her thoughts specifically with the intention of ushering forth her spiritus.

Emotional pain rooted in her past began to vie for her heart as she watched her violet dust begin to materialize around her hands. There was a persistent worry that it would act on its own accord as it did before, but a mesmerizing relief claimed her as she witnessed it bending to her will by simply existing and doing nothing more.

Making an attempt to follow Jungeun’s instructions, Hyejoo began to focus on the idea of a weapon. Her thoughts began to stray, however, and a perturbed look washed over her face as she shook her head. “I’m not really sure what to think about for a weapon...I don’t know what’d be a good fit for me to fight the heartbroken.”

“When we speak of concepts, we mean it literally.”

With a smile, Chaewon shed light on Hyejoo’s confusion as their eyes met one another. “You don’t need to think of what sort of weapon you want to use or what would work best. In truth, you have already been assigned one. Whatever your mind most associates with the concept of a weapon is what will come forth. You need only to focus on that mere concept.”

“So I’m trying to be too specific?”

“Precisely.”

Looking at her spiritus once again, Hyejoo took in a steady breath and resumed her efforts.

It was a strange task, to purposefully think of a concept in as broad a scope as possible. Hyejoo found herself closing her eyes in order to focus better, erasing thought after thought of predetermined weapons and instead zeroing in on the idea of simply becoming equipped with one.

At a snail’s pace, the dust surrounding Hyejoo’s hands began to increase in density. The sorceresses watched closely as it thinned outwards, and Jungeun raised an eyebrow as it began to take shape. 

When she felt a sudden weight in her hands, Hyejoo’s thoughts came to a stop. Immediately opening her eyes, she was briefly overcome with shock.

“Huh...don’t see that too often.”

Jungeun’s surprise resonated with the rest of the group as they watched the final pieces of Hyejoo’s scythe manifest. Hyejoo went slack-jawed as she peered upon its completed form, her odd eye momentarily giving off a faint light in unison with the illumination of runes that ran across the curved three-foot blade. 

“There’s no way...”

Hyejoo’s astonishment was two-fold. While part of what shook her core was the fact that she had managed to summon a weapon as they said, the other aspect was making her mind race in baffled consternation.

It was the fact that she was looking at the same weapon she had spent years using in an online game.

“T-this...this thing isn’t even real,” Hyejoo stammered, struggling to make sense of what was in her grasp. Her grip on the scythe’s handles tightened, as if she was doubting its physicality. “This is something I used in a video game...I don’t understand…”

“Doesn’t matter where it came from.”

A dismissive pronouncement from Sooyoung cut Hyejoo’s doubt in twain. “Sometimes what we associate with the concept of a weapon is something real. Sometimes it isn’t. Even if it’s from some game, it was probably more than just a game to you, right? You might have a lot of good memories from it, maybe from playing it with someone important to you, all while using that scythe.”

Without meaning to, Hyejoo looked at Chaewon as Sooyoung continued. “At the end of the day, that scythe and your experiences with it are what defines your personal concept of a weapon, and that’s the foundation for all elementalism—using your mana to turn concepts into reality, all through conscious thought.”

Chaewon found herself stricken with second-hand grief as Hyejoo’s sullen eyes fell from their locked gaze back to the shade of violet she held in her hands. 

Hyejoo kept her vision trained on it for a moment, her mind recounting the countless hours she spent with the Chaewon she knew. Endless adventures and battles fought side by side, fulfilling her promise to protect her by defending her from harm with her weapon of choice—the weapon that now rested in her hands, actualized in full by her own power.

Lifting her head, a thought came to Hyejoo as she looked at the ice which acted as a pedestal for Sooyoung and Jungeun’s weapons. The thought persisted as she looked at Chaewon’s bridge of dust still connected to her, urging her to raise a question. “If everything is tied to concepts, what concepts do I think of for other stuff…?”

“You should start with two concepts primarily,” Jungeun instructed. Extending both of her arms, she showed her palms to Hyejoo. A short breath called forth two clouds of her crimson essence, one floating above each hand.

“The first is offense,” Jungeun said, her odd eye flashing as a sphere of hot flame took shape above her right hand. At the same time, the dust above her left palm spread across her forearm, coalescing until it engulfed it in a protective coat of swirling fire. “The second is defense.” 

“There are other concepts you can work with, but you can make do with those two as a beginner,” Jungeun concluded. Her flames dissipating, she placed a hand on her hip and gave Hyejoo a smile. “Once you know what you can do, you can replicate specific effects by thinking about the same thing. So, if you ever make something especially useful, you can make it again.”

“Give it a shot, Hyejoo.”

Encouraged by Chaewon, Hyejoo gave the group a small nod and continued her ongoing efforts of self-discovery.

At her behest, clouds of her violet dust began to aggregate in front of her with a slow exhale through her nostrils. Nearly losing focus as it began to coalesce, Hyejoo steeled her nerves as she wiped the resurfacing image of her mother’s fallen corpse from her mind.

Stay in control.

Her pockets of spiritus now measurably thick, Hyejoo did her best to consider the broad concept of offense. Thoughts of attacking nothing in particular filled her head, aimlessly striking a target which didn’t exist. Before long, her potential answered in a discomforting manner.

Spherical voids of black shadow were floating in front of Hyejoo. She swallowed in nervousness as they pulsed with life. Her saviors examined them closely with her as they abruptly ejected thorny, metallic spikes of deep lavender from their insides, lashing out at the air around them.

Exact copies of the same spikes which had rendered her mother lifeless, the trauma Hyejoo fought to subdue was quickly rising up against her once more. Fear drove her to wish for their cessation, and when they did just that by means of retracting back into darkness, Hyejoo could only blink in surprise.

With a still tight grip on her scythe, Hyejoo thought of a desire for the spikes’ resurgence. In response, they resumed, protruding once more and stabbing nothing. The cycle of them starting and stopping continued for a moment, Hyejoo dumbfounded by her own ability to influence them by exerting her own will upon it.

“I see you’ve already realized the degree of control you can exercise over an effect,” Jiwoo praised the necromancer with a warm smile. “You seem to be getting the hang of it, Hyejoo.”

Though she didn’t share it, Hyejoo was beginning to feel empowered.

The dark harbingers of death which took her mother from her, the subject of many a nightmare and the source of her own guilt...she was their master. All along, she had been capable of controlling them. Her fear of her own strength, though understandable, was ultimately misplaced.

Silently, as per Jungeun’s instructions, Hyejoo shifted her mind to the concept of defense. 

She thought of keeping herself safe, deterring an invisible attacker who might be coming at her. The spheres of nothingness answered without hesitation, moving closer to her. Their autonomous reaction involved them lining up in two columns, and what came next was a screeching sound of metal scraping against metal.

Elongated spikes of violet interlocked like a crisscrossed fence, creating a thorned barricade in front of Hyejoo. She stepped back, analyzing her own effect in amazement. “I didn’t even think of using them like that…”

“It’s merely what your concept of self-defense is at this moment in time,” Haseul explained. “And now that you’ve seen it, if you think about it specifically, you can recreate it, just as Jungeun said. That’s the basic idea—we focus on broad concepts, creating techniques and effects that we may not even realize we’re thinking of, and then we use them of our own volition.”

“Does that mean there are other weapons I can use?” Hyejoo asked curiously, her sight gliding over her scythe as her spheres of shadow began to dissipate. “What if a weapon isn’t the right tool for a battle? Can I just...create another one?”

“Do you recall when I said you had already been assigned a weapon?” Chaewon said, bringing Hyejoo’s attention to her. 

“That was also quite literal. Weapon manifestation functions a little differently. From the very moment you became a magus, your concept of a weapon at that point in time was essentially locked in. Deliberating on the same concept of offense or defense can develop different effects, but our concepts of a weapon remain constant. They stand as a personal testament to our experiences in life leading up to our first breath of mana.”

“There are instances of magi having access to more than one weapon, but that’s a rarity, and it’s also a topic for another day,” Sooyoung added on before addressing Hyejoo’s original question. “Even if it’s not the best tool, it’s yours. You can do more with it than you realize.”

“How? I don’t actually know how to use this thing in real life. I’m not some character in a video game...”

Hyejoo’s protest came in a dejected murmur. A cool breeze swept the grassy field by, shuffling her hair as she brought her eyes back to physical manifestations of fire and ice on display. “You guys use all sorts of different weapons...if none of you have something like this, who can teach me how to use it?”

“You don’t need to be taught.”

From a few paces behind Sooyoung, unanticipated sounds of ice bursting once again followed her voice.

With minimal effort, the woman of ice had birthed a series of frozen spires in a haphazard arrangement. Of varying heights and sizes, they appeared fairly brittle with cracks running over different parts of their lengths. Her comrades could easily tell that she had crafted them for the sole purpose of being destroyed, and they already knew why.

Hyejoo’s gaze was lost between the frozen formations and an expectant yet patient Sooyoung. “Am I supposed to break those...?”

“Yeah. Go on.”

“But I don’t—”

“I’m serious. You’ll be fine.”

Stepping next to Hyejoo, Sooyoung placed an encouraging hand on her back and showed her a genuine smile. “No one needs to teach you anything. You’ll see.”

For reasons Hyejoo didn’t understand, the swordswoman seemed to have the utmost faith in her. Said faith flowed outwards, showing itself in nods of encouragement from the other sorceresses.

With anxious steps, Hyejoo made her way towards the center of the icy constructs. Her fingers uncurling and re-curling around the grips of her scythe, Hyejoo eyed the ice, unsure of both where to start and how to go about her task. The possibility of somehow embarrassing herself in front of seasoned necromancers began to pull at her composure. With a breath, she steadied herself.

It’s not like before. I’m in control. Relax.

The fog encroaching upon Hyejoo’s mind dissipated. With a clear head and little more to do than trust their faith in her, she engaged her stationary targets.

The tall girl’s footsteps were heavy, her boots crunching down on dead grass as she closed in on the first statue of ice. With her weight on her ankles, she anchored herself in place and twisted her waist, slashing right through the middle of the spire while keeping her balance with well-calculated posture. Her unmoving enemy shattering into pieces, Hyejoo banked left and ran for her next closest target.

Using the range of her weapon to her advantage, she slid to a stop further away from it than the previous. She leaned forward with her scythe extended horizontally, ripping through the spire from a safe distance in a move that made Jungeun smile. When it crumbled to the ground, Hyejoo was already on the move again.

Transitioning into a mobile assault, the girl of darkness began a finely executed series of running slashes, taking down frozen target after frozen target while weaving her way between them all. Mindful of the random variance between the heights where their cracks were placed, she adjusted her grip on her scythe when necessary, flipping it over and striking from above or below as required.

By Hyejoo’s work, most of Sooyoung’s creations had been reduced to fragments. Several feet away at the end of the area Sooyoung designated for the exercise, only three remained in close proximity of each other. With all three in her field of view, Hyejoo exhaled a generous breath.

A sizable cloud of purple dust surrounded the three frosted figures, and with a vague thought of attack in her mind, Hyejoo’s amethyst eye gave off a brilliant light in tandem with her scythe’s runes. Her spiritus became thicker and thicker, coalescing into a network of black spheres. 

Expecting the same attack she had just shown off, the sorceresses were caught off guard as the voids at Hyejoo’s command suddenly shifted upwards. They came together, unifying into three separate spheres of a more worthwhile size. With one above each of Sooyoung’s spires, shards of ice flew out in every direction as they met their end from above.

Hyejoo witnessed her own might as her darkness rained down. Each of her voids released a torrential downpour of jagged lavender metal, small bits and pieces piercing through the ice like shrapnel from a bomb. In no time at all, each construct broke into thousands of fragments, leaving the field empty once more with only their remains.

Catching her breath, Hyejoo refreshed her lungs as her effect ended with the dematerialization of her shadowy spheres. It was only during her respite that she realized it—

“Wait...what? How did I…?”

—the fact that she had performed her feats without any forward thought or planning.

Footsteps approached her from behind. Turning around, her thoroughly awestruck expression was met with impressed smiles from all but Sooyoung. The swordswoman’s grin was one born of confidence instead, clearly happy that her faith in Hyejoo’s abilities had been proven.

“I don’t...I don’t understand,” Hyejoo said between breaths, appearing helplessly puzzled. “I didn’t plan any of that. I’m not even sure that I was actually thinking about those attacks. It just...happened. It felt like my body was moving on its own, as if I’ve always known how to do that...”

“I told you, didn’t I? You don’t need to be taught,” Sooyoung repeated herself. As she proceeded to answer Hyejoo’s due confusion, the younger girl’s eyes fell upon the fictional weapon made real in her hands.

“Like we said, what you’re holding is the physical manifestation of your concept of a weapon. But that concept isn’t just it’s form and appearance—it’s also the concept of using it. Moving with it, attacking with it, defending with it...your fighting style is already built in. There’s no basics for you to learn. You already instinctively know how to use it and what to do with it. You can only improve from here.”

“So...I can fight?” Hyejoo said mostly to herself, still struggling to believe what she was truly capable of. “I can control my spiritus...and I can fight…”

“Makes you worth saving, wouldn’t you say?”

Jungeun’s comment brought Hyejoo’s eyes to her, presented with an earnest smile. “You don’t need to worry about not being able to contribute if you want to help us out. And, like Jiwoo explained, you can still have a safe place to live if you decide you don’t want to join our fight.”

Reminded of the circumstances, Hyejoo went quiet.

A safe place to live…

Hyejoo was eager for the security of safety. 

It would allow her to live out her promise to her mother—her promise to continue living for as long as she was meant to. However, with her eyes set upon her bladed creation in her hands, the other oath she made became just as prominent in her mind.

“Hyejoo…?”

Chaewon’s voice brought Hyejoo’s eyes to her. Light and dark settling next to one another as they peered at each other, Chaewon felt her heart sink at the sight of Hyejoo frowning anew. From the moment she had woken up in her lap, the sight of Chaewon had been a constant reminder for Hyejoo of the second promise she failed to keep.

Feeling the cool metal of her scythe’s shaft resting in her palms, Hyejoo realized the chance she had been given. In her grasp was the opportunity to keep not only her promise to her mother, but also her promise to the only other person she ever cared for, even if it came with a risk.

“Chaewon, can we talk in private?”

An odd request from Hyejoo displaced the atmosphere of the group. Gazes shifted left and right, looking at one another with uncertainty. Chaewon focused on Hyejoo, sensing a shift in her disposition. Nodding slowly, she accepted the request. “Yes, of course. If you all would excuse us…?”

The group broke off in two, the lost soul and her healer returning to the broken tree which Hyejoo had woken up by. Sooyoung and the others headed back towards the campfire and, with watchful eyes on the pair, seated themselves and waited patiently.

“What would you like to talk about, Hyejoo?”

Coming to a stop, Hyejoo turned to face Chaewon. Her grip on her scythe relaxing slightly, she looked down at it with dispirited eyes. “The Chaewon I knew...when I said she was someone important to me, I was being modest. She was…she was much more than that. Aside from my mother, she was the only person I was ever close to.”

Chaewon couldn’t find words as Hyejoo paused. Knowing that she couldn’t relate to the degree of tragedy she had suffered, she did not deign to interject, allowing Hyejoo the stage.

“We met through unusual circumstances, both of us doing something that we’d never do otherwise...in a way, it felt like fate,” Hyejoo started, her voice quieter than usual. “We spent more hours than I can remember playing games together. That’s where this scythe is from—the game we played most. But Sooyoung was right. To me, it wasn’t just some game.

“It was the source of my happiness. It was where I met her, where I spent most of my time with her. We played that game every day for four years, and every day, it was what I looked forward to most. At some point, I started to feel like spending time with her was all I ever wanted…”

A sniffle from Hyejoo broke her train of thought.

The girl of darkness released a hand from her scythe. Refusing to cry once again, she wiped her tears before they streamed down in full and brought her eyes to a still Chaewon. “I never got to say goodbye to her. Ever since I first woke up eleven months ago, I’ve wanted nothing but to see her again. I lied to myself, thinking she might still be alive. I searched and I searched, but...I know she’s not here anymore. No one is.”

Unconsciously, Hyejoo’s hold on her scythe tightened again. “Do you remember what I said earlier? How I made a promise to my mother to continue living, and that’s why I want to keep surviving?”

“Yes, I do,” Chaewon answered with curt respect.

“That wasn’t the only promise I made.”

With Hyejoo’s following words, Chaewon pinpointed it—the shift in the younger girl’s aura was the emergence of an unyielding resolve that rushed from her being in waves, seemingly fueled by the very sight of Chaewon in front of her.

“The Chaewon I knew...I promised her that we would never grow apart, and that I would always protect her,” Hyejoo said, her words heavily dipped in determination. “Whatever happened that let me survive even when everyone else didn’t...it gave me a second chance to keep my promise to my mother, but I could never keep those promises to Chaewon. Even if it wasn’t my fault, I had broken them forever...but now, they don’t have to stay broken.

“If I can fight...if I can become strong, then I want to keep my promise to her by doing the next best thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re another version of her. I want to protect you,” Hyejoo confessed, a vivacious tenacity bleeding through her tone. 

“Not that you need protecting...you’re all probably much stronger than I am. Still, even if I have a lot to learn, even if it puts my promise to my mother at risk, and even if you aren’t the Chaewon I knew...I want to keep all of my promises. I want to get to know you as the Chaewon you are, and I want to help keep you safe.”

Chaewon could not immediately respond.

The girl of light was without words as Hyejoo’s pertinacious hues crossed her own. With each second that passed in her stunned silence, she felt every beat of her heart with pronounced force. A serene warmth was encompassing her, flowing out from her core like the smooth waters of a tranquil river.

This is something that needs to happen, because it can never happen again.

Jiwoo’s steadfast proclamation from her divination of Chaewon’s fate echoed in her mind. Doubts that had been growing in Chaewon’s mind were swiftly being tossed aside, and as she found herself anew, she gifted Hyejoo the most genuine smile she had to offer.

“Hyejoo...thank you.”

Hyejoo found ataraxia of her own taking shape as Chaewon bared her thoughts. The girl of light held her hands close to her chest, her eyes set upon the soil beneath their feet.

“The fact that I was a mirror image of someone so close to you...I couldn’t quite believe it. I feared my presence was only causing you pain, making you remember her face whenever you saw my own. Yet you’ve turned your sadness into strength, seeking to use it in order to fulfill a promise…Hyejoo, you’re already much stronger than you realize. You’re remarkable.”

Nodding to herself, Chaewon raised her sight up to Hyejoo’s. Reverence burst forth in the form of her relaxed countenance, visibly at peace. “I’ll rely on you, Hyejoo. I trust that you’ll keep me safe no matter what. It may take some time before you can join us on these excursions properly, however…”

Hyejoo’s eyes followed Chaewon’s. They stared at the tether of her mana linking them. “My sickness...corruption, right?”

“That’s correct,” Chaewon affirmed. “I need to continue purifying your manastream until you reach a low enough threshold. Due to the excessive amount flowing within you, it may take a few weeks, perhaps even a month or two. If I stop for too long at any point before that, your corruption will simply go back to what it was before I started. It would be similar to hitting a reset button.”

“That’s fine. It'll give me some time to adjust to being around people again..."

“Yes, that’s true. We’ll take our time with it. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about, Hyejoo?”

“No, that was it. We can go back. Thanks, Chaewon.”

With hearts beating in shared repose, the two girls began to make their way back to the campfire. Their departure from their meeting spot was instantly responded to with the four sorceresses rising and walking forward themselves, meeting the two halfway.

“Everything good?” Sooyoung asked first.

“Yes, everything is fine,” Chaewon reassured the rest of the group, easing their still worried expressions. “There is nothing to worry about.”

“Have you made up your mind, then, Hyejoo?” Haseul inquired, approaching the subject with care. “What would you like to do?”

“I’ll go with you.”

Hyejoo’s response was instant. She eyed her scythe in her hand, feeling its form one last time before she finally relieved herself of its weight. A conscious effort to will it out of existence saw the beginning of its vanishment, its edges turning to dust and the rest following. Hyejoo flexed the fingers of her now empty hands, closing one into a fist as she brought her mixed hues back up.

“My promises are important to me. I want to keep them until the very end. So I’ll go with you,” she repeated herself. Her conviction left a mark of impression on the others. Sooyoung especially found herself smiling widely at her effervescent indefatigability. “And when I’m ready, I’ll fight alongside you.”

Amidst the smiles which answered her stout resolve, Sooyoung procured a small crystal from the depths of her back pocket. Holding it between her fingers, she grinned as she showed it to Hyejoo. “Alright. Let’s get you home, then.”

At Sooyoung’s command, her frosty mana surrounded the crystal. Coalescing into a coat of ice which made it brittle, she crushed it with ease and released the mana within.

Hyejoo watched in a silent stupor as the mana moved of its own volition, taking a rectangular shape and becoming dense with haste until a door took physical form. She stepped forward, reading the ornate looking plaque which decorated its white front.

“Leyline-Oriented Organized Nexus of Alternatives, subset of the Broken Boundaries Coalition?” Hyejoo read aloud slowly, tilting her head more and more with every word. “That’s a mouthful…”

“Yeah, I know,” Jungeun agreed with her plight, rolling her eyes as she walked in front of Hyejoo and took hold of the door knob. “Save yourself the trouble and just call it LOONA and BBC. Anyway, Sunmi’s crazy naming conventions aside...”

A sea of light pouring forth from the door as Jungeun pushed it forward incited Hyejoo to raise her arms. Shielding her eyes, she lowered her guard as the light began to dim somewhat.

“...in we go.”

One by one, Hyejoo watched the sorceresses vanish into the sea of light. Jiwoo and Haseul followed Jungeun, and Sooyoung proceeded next. Chaewon approached the light, but not hearing footsteps behind her, she paused.

Turning around, she witnessed Hyejoo gazing out into the landscape. The girl of darkness was peering quietly at the horizon, her eyesight focused to its maximum. “Huh…?”

“Hyejoo? Is everything okay?”

“Just thought I saw something,” Hyejoo said with a shake of her head. “But it’s nothing, I’m sure. There’s nothing it could’ve been…”

Chaewon remained silent as Hyejoo came up next to her. She looked out to the rolling plains that surrounded them herself, and came to the same conclusion. “I don’t see anything either...the door will vanish if we take too long. Let’s hurry.”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

With nothing and no one to say goodbye to, the pair of light and dark pressed onward into the sea of luminescence which escaped the door. Shut closed once they were safely on the other side, the door began to evaporate into dust from the top down, flying away with a gust of wind which caressed a now totally empty world.

Rather, it would have been totally empty were it not for the person who had been watching their departure. Far into the horizon, beyond where Hyejoo had been looking, a lone figure stood atop a hill. 

It was a middle-aged man, dressed in a nondescript black suit with an exorbitantly lavish watch on his wrist. With a deep diagonal scar across his face and an odd eye of faded dark gray, he stared forward and gazed in the general direction of the group’s campsite. Though it was beyond his vision, he was entirely focused on it, as if he had always known they would be there.

A brief exhale from the sorcerer brought forth dust in an ovular shape in front of him. His mana was a dark gray of the exact same color and appearance as the corruption which plagued the sky above him. The shape was simultaneously mirrored by more of his dust summoned right next to Jungeun’s campfire, the sorcerer finding the task of calling forth his mana at even such a great distance away trivial.

A murky flash of marred light from his odd eye gave birth to his effect. At both locations where his dust had materialized, portals came into being. They seeped an aura of mana which spun clockwise around their edges, and in the center of each stood the view from the opposing portal, creating a connected gateway.

Looking down at the distant campfire from the portal right in front of him, the man stepped into it. When he stepped out, he was in front of the campfire itself, crossing the noteworthy distance that separated him from it with a single step through the tear in space-time.

Now stood in front of the gentle blaze, the sorcerer contemplated the sight of it for a moment. A perfunctory breath saw the logs and flames alike completely enshrouded by an already dense cloud of his mana, coalescing with great speed into a clear triangular prism which contained it.

His empty gaze remained free of outward emotion as his odd eye flashed once more, causing the prism to suddenly collapse inwards. Shrinking down into nothing in the span of a second, it took the logs and fire with it, reducing them to a subatomic level as they blinked out of existence.

With the fire removed, the sorcerer proceeded to unveil a small crystal from his pocket. He repeated his effect, entrapping it in a prism that then crushed it to nothing, releasing the mana held within.

As a featureless door of black took shape, he unhurriedly opened it. Walking into the dark light which flew outward, he murmured to himself with a dissatisfied sigh of disappointment.

“Such a shame that the faithful replication of history involves your forgetful tendency to put that fire out every single time, Kim Jungeun…”