The fire of the lantern casts my shadow against the castle wall. The same shadow watches the moon as I look at the books, enchanted by the pristine beauty hidden behind the clouds. Snow covers the lawn in the last days of winter, proof of the strangeness and insistence of the weather. I know the reason for that. Memories are bright as the sun, stuck in my pupils every time I close my eyes since the day I entered Hilda's mind. Mountains of bodies, rivers of blood, black thorns pointed to the sky. An attempt by my former self to make the world an image of his soul. The storm on that beach still calls my name.

  My brain doesn't agree with what I do. Unfortunately, the heart muscles seem to have more strength than him. Unstable feelings that I have never experienced explode and alter the sensation of touch. A variety that I never had and that part of me wishes I never had again. It is precisely because of these feelings that I force myself to stay awake, intensify my resistance to sleep and cognitive ability; of why I turn the pages with a speed that borders on despair.

  But no decent King was raised for comfort, and no warrior won a battle by resting in bed. So I take notes until my callused fingers feel the pain of weakness, but I don't intensify them. I want to carve the feeling into my bones until it reminds me forever.

  Next page.

  Chaos will be my primary weapon, since it would be foolish to waste the two manifestations that amplify it. Therefore, I need to learn the laws of the world to know what I can and cannot affect. Emission destabilization, control, range, and efficiency were my main uses, but negating attacks and influencing enemies is a basic use that I should have outgrown by now. There are other more complex options that I must train and know: probability manipulation, butterfly effects, logic alteration, unpredictability, and confusion or even impact causality. Some of these are very complex, but it is certain that I will study some additional effect. This, however, will have to be left for later.

  I need some help with the chaos. For a ton of reasons—time, affinity, and efficiency, for example-I decided to stick with using pyromancy. I will also use illusions, but everyone does it to a lesser or greater extent. Intensification is my worst typing, and because of the fragility of my body and my risky fighting style, it's a problem I need to combat. Training with Hoffstein helped, but I obviously failed to carry an entire ox on my back until the end of our mission in the fairy world. There is no point in having extreme strength on one side and being vulnerable on the other. A sorcerer needs to be complete, and my biggest problem is lack of variety: additional specializations to go along with fire magic.

  My task is to answer what kinds of magic they will be, and how they will help me properly defend myself. Something that is not destructive—this is no longer lacking —, but versatile and useful.

  I write down a list of typings on a piece of paper with the pen and ink I picked up at the front desk, so I risk umbrakinesis. Macabre spells are bad for my mind, and I want to distance myself from as much darkness as I can. Using my own wickedness against the enemy is only useful as long as it does not corrupt you, and I do not want to resist one more temptation.

  Because of this, also risk invocation. Not only because it has the same principle, but because it doesn't matter if I spend ten or twenty years collecting monsters. The Lion has been in this world for thousands or millions and will have a much larger and stronger army than mine. They will be overtaken in a short time by the least enemies, since their natural power will not increase much anyway. Clearly, the army is useful, and I'm not going to throw it away. I will think of another way to use it, I will not let all my effort be in vain. For now, though, it doesn't make sense to focus on him and forget about me.

  Electricity, ice, and wind are also out. These will be tertiary helpers, a little better than the rest, but only. I like these manipulations, but they are already used by Morgana and Hoffstein. I want something unique, and they're not what I'm looking for.

  Radiation? Gravity? Time? Space?

  Too complex. A sorcerer or uses several simple manipulations or a complex one. Perhaps it has some auxiliary forces, but as a rule, it is not worth studying so much if your body cannot keep up. Chaos is enough for me.

  Something. Something. Something. Something that I can identify, strengthen, manipulate and make my own. What would my other I say about it? What common theme am I missing?

  Maybe…?

  I get up suddenly. I take the flashlight and walk through the corridors of the Great Library until I almost lose myself in the sea of books. I pull out medical books, biology books, and command the wind to levitate them and turn their pages. However, one after another, I do not find what I am looking for. Still, they will come in handy, so I send them back to the table as I continue my journey. I sail through the columns, bookshelves and stairs, but find nothing.

  The theme keeps coming back. Crimson symbols, so easy to recognize that for a moment I doubted my intelligence for not noticing them. The Lion has used this magic in the past to unite the bodies of the Demiurge, so I assume it has an affinity with it. It is versatile, its nature is not malignant, it can strengthen my body. In my dreams, it surrounds the black beach like an ocean, and in my visions, it squirts from the mountains of bodies and red rivers.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Hemomancy.

  “But you won't find It here.”

  I turn around. Footsteps echo from the darkness, and from her, Wander emerges, in a white uniform. His black hair almost disappears into the shadows, and gray skin does not help to recognize him. He approaches, seeing me underneath as I climb one of the columns at the top of the library. Realizing how I look, I let go of the column and land against the white brick platform below. So I stand up and face him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “… You look awful when you do that kind of thing, you know?”

  “…”

  “W-Well, I couldn't sleep, so I tried to talk to you, but you weren't in the dorm. What are you doing here?”

  “Studying. What do you want to talk to me about?”

  Silcence.

  “I came to apologize for what I said in the fairy world.”

  “… Yes, surely. There's no problem.”

  “No. I want to do it the right way. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything about Dufae and-”

  “The more you remind me, the more you make the situation worse. Forget it and be a man. We don't talk about that kind of thing.”

  Wander laughs and shrugs. “… Right.”

  We begin the descent back down the stairs. I look through the ranks to try to find something I missed, but I don't find anything useful.

  “You said something about hemomancy books not being here in the library. Why?”

  “You must know the history of the Red Forest, right?”

  The Red Forest is next to Praelior, the capital of the Empire, and, as the name implies, its leaves are red. Unlike other forests, its nature devours corpses directly, absorbing their blood and nutrients without needing external agents such as worms or animals. Because of this, everything that dies in their domains disappears in a very short time.

  Apparently, the Red Forest was found sometime after the fall and before the flood, when Angra the Great was still conquering the lands for the Empire. Its effect is natural, but it caught the eye of wandering Barbarians. They met strange gods in the deep woods of that place, practiced cannibalism, rituals and sacrifices, until they were expelled and fled to the mountains of the southwest. But they never stopped. Inbreeding, mutations and other rites made them vampiric beasts that, despite being fought by the first King, never ceased to frighten the minds of the peasants.

  But that…

  “It means nothing. If we stopped using magic because some savage people used it the wrong way, we would never cast another spell in our lives. I understand hiding this from the middle peasant, but from trained soldiers?”

  “When in battle, blood magic is dangerous, Sieg. You can remove your health to increase your power and break stress from your body, you can become anemic and catatonic, among several others. Not only that, but it is complex and difficult to learn and master. In the vast majority of cases, it's not worth it, so why allow it?” He inspires. “Blood is the symbol of life. It shouldn't do that.”

  We came to the table and sat down on the chair. Wander reclines while I keep both hands in front of my face. He looks up, scanning the darkness of the library with apathy. I know the meaning of those eyes. Conflict.

  “It shouldn't, but it will. That's what it takes.”

  “… Have you ever felt that this is wrong? That what we're doing isn't actually good? That all this will be in vain and only being lying to ourselves as a way to justify ourselves?”

  “Every day. But if I had called the police, I would have gone to Aldwyn.”

  “And yet, here you are, obsessed.”

  “A King-”

  “Stop it. You are fifteen years old. None of us should have that responsibility.”

  I shrug.

  “What about the humanity you decided to have in the fairy world?”

  “It's because of her that I'm here.” I breathe in. “Whatever, we are running away from the topic. Focus, Wander, I need the hemomancy. And you can help me.”

  He frowns. “I can't. I'm a doctor, but I have no affinity for life. The little I can do with hemomancy is reconstruct tissue. All my hand does is kill.”

  “Great. We're not going to use blood to heal anyone. I just need a guide to make my learning easier.”

  “You can learn from all the other doctors smarter and wiser than me at Solace.”

  “They won't teach me how to kill. Not like you will.”

  Wander stands up and punches the table. “Do you think this is funny?! That my mission is a joke?! You know how many people I-how many people I should-”

  “It's not a joke. You came to me because you want an answer. An alternative. Well then, I say you are right not to use necromancy, the attempt to imitate life with death, but not all death is bad. You know that. No matter what you have to go through, use death against death to stop others from using it against you.”

  “… I shouldn't have to do that. None of us…”

  “I don't know what Andreas said to you, but all demons operate the same way. He offered you to make your wish a reality, a world without death, and promised you with gentle words that it would help you, lessening the obvious consequence that is to become like him. The Lion did the same. I accepted, and Dufae was destroyed. Don't make the same mistake as mine. Follow the right path.”

  Silence.

  Wander sits down, then faces the table.

  “… Is this my destiny? Kill? Why? Why? I'm a coward. Why me?”

  “… I also wondered the reason for all this several times. Morgana didn't need to kill Hilda, but what she did wasn't wrong, either. Still, sometimes it's necessary. If I had not suffered in the Unknown, I would not have the tolerance for horrors that I have lived and will live; if my power were not high enough to destroy me, I could not overcome Aldwyn or Hilda. A coward wouldn't do half of what you did. You cherish life. People like you would think twice before withdrawing one. Maybe that's why. I'm not sure.”

  “…”

  “You have a good heart, Wander. Don't let them use you against you. Raise the sword against your enemies. React. You're a soldier. Be a soldier.”

  The boy's hands tremble, but he clenches them. Wander presses his face against the table and tugs at his hair in despair, just as I did when faced with the thorn path. For people like us, though, it's the only one available. I don't expect him to make up his mind today or tomorrow. I believe some never do.

  After discounting his despair, however, he inhales and sits normally, watery-eyed and frustrated but convinced.

  “… How?” He says.

  The wind howls, and the fog comes through the window. It is Dawn, and the candle in the Lantern will need to be changed soon. Still, we have five hours until sunrise.

  “I will help you. We will find out what you can wear until dawn. You, on the other hand, will help me.”

  Medicine, biology, intensification. I open the books and spread them on the table.

  Wander breathes in.

  “Where do we start?”