It wasn’t long until the end of the ninth month when my sister would take time out of her school break to come visit me in prison. She was ten years older than me and the only one who had ever come to visit me in prison. She didn’t care that I had been labeled as some sort of mentally unstable time bomb and would come visit me whenever she had a break from her schooling. I didn’t hold it against the rest of my family though because I had been mentally unstable and literally mind controlled in my past life, so I never gave any indication that I even wanted to see the rest of my family let alone ask them to visit me.

  Considering that my parents in my first life on Earth pretty much neglected me in favor of playing video games, it was no surprise that I didn’t put much stock into my family relationships in my first run through of this life either. However, after interacting with Mystdell when she came to visit me, I came to realize that maybe I should put more effort into my family relationships and not judge them based on my previous life. This breakthrough in my perspective came much too late though, and I soon after became completely mind controlled and forced to focus on other things.

  This time however I was determined to change and put more consideration into my relationships. However I didn’t hold out much hope that my family situation would be that different from the one in my past. The first major obstacle would be that my family operated a fairly successful business within the black market selling artifacts. This meant that they couldn’t risk drawing attention to themselves by interacting too much with a potentially dangerous individual like myself.

  This could’ve changed in the future, but over the course of the past month I had been knocking myself out on a regular basis, plus I had been silent and unmoving in my room the rest of the time. So even if they wanted to interact with me I wasn’t giving them many reasons to do so.

  These were the kind of thoughts that went through my head as I waited in anticipation for my first visit with Mystdell.

  Then at the beginning of the tenth month, two guards came to my room and went through the familiar process of turning on my prison collar and moving me through the prison halls as they took me to the children’s meeting room before leaving me there alone. The room was nice and colorful with bookshelves full of children's books, bins full of toys, and a variety of different drawing and coloring materials on a short table in the middle of the room.

  I knew that Mystdell wouldn’t get here for a while if things went the same way as they did in the past. So, knowing there wouldn’t be enough time to do something productive like visiting The Archives or practicing my magic, I just walked over to the table and started to draw a simple enchantment design to relax while I waited for Mystdell to arrive.

  After doing this for a while I heard a door open along with the sound of my sister’s voice, “-I swear it’s like they try to make everything as tedious and boring as possible.”

  I looked up from my drawing and met the eyes of my sister who I hadn’t seen in forever. I could feel tears coming to my eyes as I smiled and almost choked on the words, “Mystdell.” I had more I wanted to say, but the words got stuck in my throat.

  Mystdell took one look at my face and started running towards me and embraced me in a hug, “Radiant! Hey, I know this is all hard to handle but you’ll be out of here in no time. I know you must be scared, being all alone here, but I’m here now, everything’s going to be ok.”

  I could tell that she misinterpreted the reason behind my tears, but I didn’t feel a need to correct her and just hugged her back and enjoyed the moment. After a while I got a reign on my emotions and we separated.

  “I’m alright Mystdell. I was just happy to see you.”

  Seeing that I wasn’t crying anymore she visibly relaxed. The artificial spirit that had piloted my body before it turned 5 had never been one to show many emotions, so Mystdell didn’t really know how to handle a situation where I was being emotional.

  After she took a moment to probably feel proud of herself for handling the situation appropriately, Mystdell took a look at my drawing on the table and said, “Did you draw this?” She picked up the paper and looked at it closer before saying, “This looks like an enchantment. Since when did you learn about enchantments? I didn’t learn about enchanting when I was five. Although I didn’t really want to anyways…” The last part was mumbled and almost imperceptible but I could still make it out.

  I almost let a smile come to my face as she tried to start a different conversation. Mystdell was always very prickly when it came to the family inheritance, and anything related to it, which included enchanting. I didn’t want to start her along that particular path of conversation, so I focused on smoothly answering her question, “I haven’t been taught enchanting yet. I saw this on the blade of a sword I once saw and just wanted to draw it for fun.” The sword I saw it on was being wielded against me, but there’s no need to tell her that.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Well it’s still impressive that you can remember and draw it. I remember that Dad would always get after me when I couldn't remember everything perfectly the first time. But anyways,” She shook her head and continued, “Speaking of Dad, Him and Mom were worried about you and wanted me to ask why you were fainting all the time. Are you sick or something?”

  “Mom and Dad know that I've been fainting?” I was always under the impression that they wouldn’t bother with checking up on their worthless son.

  Mystdell seemed to take my question differently though, and she said, “Yeah this place allows families to check the recordings they take here. Mom and Dad saw that you were fainting through those. They didn’t say why you were fainting when Mom asked them, so I was told to ask you about it when I came here.”

  I scratched my head and said, “It’s nothing really. I was just practicing magic.” I could’ve elaborated further but I was a five year old, and a five year old wouldn’t really elaborate on these kinds of things.

  My answer seemed to confuse Mystdell and she said, “What kind of magic would you be practicing that would make you pass out like that?”

  I thought she would be more surprised by the fact that her five year old brother was practicing magic, but I guess this just showed that she cared more for my safety than my anomalous abilities.

  “I was trying to make that system, that everyone talks about, show up.”

  “The System? But that won’t be unlocked until you go into a dungeon. You won’t even be able to see that until then so it’s no use trying to pull it up.”

  I could explain to her that I was trying to practice divination magic and not trying to open up my system, but that wasn’t necessary. Instead I said, “Yeah I know. You don’t have to worry I won’t practice that anymore.” This could be interpreted that I had already given up, but in reality I had already succeeded and therefore wouldn’t need to practice that anymore. My response seemed to mollify her and we went on to discuss some other things, things like what was going on back home and what was going on in the family.

  After talking for a while my sister brought something interesting up while talking about her school saying, “So I was assigned to help out this privileged Count’s daughter as her Auxiliary Support. At first I wasn’t happy about it, but as I got to talking with her I realized that she wasn’t that bad despite her high status.”

  “Hm? I thought you didn’t like talking to kids.”

  “What? You think I wouldn’t talk to someone just because they’re younger than me?”

  I raised my eyebrow at her, and she rolled her shoulders and looked away like she was shaking off any negative misconceptions.

  “Well I just prefer talking to more mature people. And, admittedly, she was the one that started the conversation.” She said, “But that’s besides the point. I got curious when she started talking about The Archives…”

  She looked at me like she was evaluating my young age before continuing, “The Ever Present Archives are a really special place that’s like a magical library that needs a super special pass to enter. Usually someone as young as her wouldn’t be able to go to such a place, so I started talking to her and learned that she was actually a nice girl.”

  Hearing Mystdell talk about The Archives was particularly jarring, and I said, “Wait, how old is this girl?”

  “Actually she’s only a few years older than you. I think her name was Genesis Rotthall? You know she also asked if I knew anyone her age that went to The Archives.” she said, “Of course I obviously don’t know anyone besides her that would be going to The Archives at such a young age.”

  The Archives? That’s strange, I don’t remember anyone with that name being in The Archives before. However I do know about a girl named Genesis. Though I remember finding out that she was kicked out of her family for some reason… Wait a minute, wouldn’t it have been possible that the Genesis I remember lost her access to The Archives when she was kicked out of her family?

  Like a bolt of lightning, multiple ideas connected in my head at that moment, and I came to a conclusion. Beginning of Creation… Genesis Rotthall… Beginning of Creation, Genesis. Holy Jilly, it's the same person!

  I was a bit dazed at the conclusion I had come to, but my sister seemed to take it a different way, saying, “Ohoh, you look a bit dazed there little light. You wouldn’t happen to be interested in this girl would you?”

  I knew she was just teasing me, but as a brother I couldn’t let her get away with it. So I threw a punch at her to try and make her regret teasing me, but I only managed to make her laugh with my pitiful five year old strength. We continued to talk with each other about different things and spent time with each other until our time was up and we had to say goodbye.

  Mystdell embraced me in another hug as we said our goodbyes, “I’ll come and visit as often as I can, Radiant. Be strong and be happy, ok?”

  “I will. I’ll be waiting for your next visit. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye Radiant.”

  With that we parted ways and I was once again filled with determination. I vowed once again that I would do what it takes to escape from this prison and gain the strength to be with and protect those I loved and cared about. Who knows, maybe I could help Genesis prevent the future where she was kicked out of her family. I didn’t know why or when that would happen, but I would keep an eye out as I go.