Yesterday had been a busy day. Not busy in the way people say busy when they went out or had chores that took up their entire time. Busy in the way you have one specific repetitive thing to do.

  Today Melmarc woke up on the floor again. It was becoming a habit now, a worrisome one at that. He would consciously crawl into bed every night, receive a bump against the leg of his bedframe from Spitfire, then fall asleep. He liked to think of the bump as the demon’s way of saying goodnight.

  Then, somewhere in the middle of the night, his eyes would shoot open in the most violent way a person could open their eyes. He would find his breathing hard. Sweat would soak his brows. His grip would be tight, [Rings of Saturn] half activated in his mind.

  Melmarc would lay there in that state. It would be silent, a quiet night with no snow after a heavy winter storm. His chest would heave, rising and falling like a thing trying not to die. But it would be silent, quiet. He would heave like a boy trying to hide from his enemies… from his monsters.

  From the [Damned].

  Ark was never awake. Wrapped up in his blanket like someone with no worries in the world and no bond to an actual demon, he would be peaceful. Although, Melmarc always wondered if his brother was actually really peaceful. The scar on his side said he had been through his own traumatizing experiences.

  It would take a few minutes, three at the most, for Melmarc’s reactions to calm down. Even then, he would only lose the physically presenting symptoms. Once they were gone, the breathing, the tight grip, the sweat, he would find himself unable to sleep. His mind would be too alert while his body would not.

  The dissonance was always disconcerting, like being ready for a test mentally but being too tired to write the essay the test wanted you to write. As he’d often heard in church, the spirit would be willing, but the flesh would be weak.

  After minutes lying down in a losing battle with his dissonance, he would roll out of bed. There was never any standing up. He was never civil and decent about it. He would simply move. Rolling out of bed, he would hit the ground with a thump and roll some more. At some point—he never knew when—his body would grow as alert as his mind. It would be prepared for whatever was to come.

  Then, and only then, would sleep finally take him once more. And it would be peaceful.

  The entire uneasy midnight process could be avoidable if he just lay on the floor when it was time to sleep. But Melmarc never did. Whatever was happening to him, he was losing to it. But he continued to fight.

  Every night he would crawl into bed, knowing that when the night was old enough, he would wake up covered in sweat and ready for a fight, half-expecting to find the sun high in the sky and surrounded by dilapidated walls and vibrant green grass. One action away from summoning [Rings of Saturn], he would stop himself and fight his way to calm.

  If he just lay on the ground from the beginning, he would have a peaceful sleep. But he did not. He would not. Because doing so would be an admittance of his failure. Melmarc was losing, but losing did not mean that he was failing. So, every night he fought his losing battle.

  Every single night.

  And he went to sleep fearing that one day he would wake up with an activated [Ring of Saturn]. Or worse, back in the portal surrounded by the [Damned].

  Breakfast today was a microwaved pizza, leftovers from the night before. When Uncle Dorthna was in charge, they ate like bachelors or boys in a dormitory. Melmarc knew for a fact that Uncle Dorthna could cook a good meal and suspected that he only did this every now and again as some kind of change of pace.

  According to their uncle, it was not because he was lazy. The jury was still out on that one.

  “You slept on the floor again,” Ark said in passing as he pulled out a seat at the dining table.

  They were the only two people in the house. While doing the house chores, Melmarc had all but confirmed Uncle Dorthna’s absence. Once upon a time, not seeing their uncle in the house meant he was probably out getting something. Now, it easily meant that he was in the training room preparing something.

  Considering they had spent the entirety of the previous day learning the technique he called ‘Seikuken’ Melmarc could only imagine what he had planned for them today.

  Biting into a slice of pizza, Melmarc offered his brother a soft grunt.

  “Are you waiting for me to ask what happened?” Seated comfortably, Ark reached across and picked a slice of pizza from Melmarc’s plate. He took a bite and grimaced. “You didn’t microwave it long enough.”

  Melmarc took another bite of his slice. It was cold at the center but nothing that couldn’t be ignored. You were only aware of it if you were paying attention to it.

  “So, what happened?” Ark asked. “Because I’ll be honest, you sleep so peacefully on the ground so I don’t know how worried I should be.”

  “When I was inside the portal, I slept on the ground every night.” Melmarc intended the words to come out nonchalant, and they did, which worried him. The nonchalance was not fake.

  Ark leaned back against his backrest as if giving the words some thought. After a while, he nodded. “I guess that makes sense.”

  Melmarc agreed. Life was all about pretense. If you did something long enough, it would eventually become your new normal.

  “What else happened?” Ark asked as if they were having a normal conversation about the weather. “Any other fun thing?”

  Melmarc paused mid bite. “I was stuck with a B-rank [Sage].”

  Ark’s brows moved up in surprise. “I heard they are a real pain in the ass. Is that true?”

  “Heard from who?”

  Ark made a vague gesture with the slice of pizza in his hand. “My mentor really hates their guts. Says they like to act like they’re the smartest people in the room. Always looking down on everybody, eyes moving around like they know something you don’t.”

  With ten whooping points to intelligence, Melmarc would be pissed if those with the [Sage] class did not know something other people didn’t. Apart from the class, the only other class with a really high stat to intelligence when they gained their class was the [Mage] and they got three to five. And five was a rare occurrence.

  The [Sage] class was supposed to know something you don’t know.

  “So was the [Sage] a dick?” Ark asked.

  “Language,” Melmarc said reflexively. “Mom wouldn’t like that word.”

  Ark cocked a surprised brow. “Then thank God she’s not here. My question’s still waiting for an answer, though.”

  Was Naymond Hitchcock a dick?

  The answer to that question was on a spectrum. Melmarc didn’t think the man was going out of his way to be a dick. And now that he thought about it, the man probably wasn’t. If anything, he was eccentric, and a little bit reckless. Such behaviors tended to make people look at you a certain kind of way.

  People thought Delano was a dick when he really…

  Melmarc pursed his lips, terminating the thought.

  Actually, Delano was a dick. But Delano was a special case so it didn't count.

  “He wasn’t half bad,” he answered Ark in the end. “Just… different.”

  “Oh.” Ark looked disappointed, as if he had been expecting something more juicy. “Different how?”

  That was a question with an answer Melmarc didn’t need to think about.

  “So mine was not a detective or a police officer,” he said, the words coming to him easily. “He was something of a criminal consultant.”

  “I thought that only happened in the movies,” Ark said, surprised.

  “Me, too. Anyway, he has a supervisor. You remember that famous detective, Alfa?”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Ark nodded. “The Blight’s wife.”

  “She was his boss. Is his boss.” He took a bite of his pizza and chewed a little too quickly. It turned out he was eager to talk about it. “Anyway, on our first day, there was a bunch of us and we were assigned to other detectives.”

  “So, you had a partner?” Ark paused, eyes growing mischievous. “Is that the girl we talked about on the phone.”

  “Kpelumi,” Melmarc said, pronouncing the name the way it was supposed to be pronounced.

  “Kpelumi?” Ark said the name as if he was tasting how it sounded. “That’s a strange name.”

  Melmarc smiled. It was.

  “But it’s not spelt as pronounced,” he said. “Just an interesting tidbit.”

  “How’s it spelt?”

  “Without the letter ‘K,’” Melmarc was happy to say.

  “You’re saying it starts with a ‘P’?”

  Melmarc nodded. “And that’s only the short form of the name.”

  “What’s the full thing?” Ark was interested in this part of the conversation. Melmarc wasn’t surprised. His brother had always liked things that he didn’t consider everyday occurrences.

  “The full thing is Oluwa…” Melmarc brows furrowed as he realized that he didn’t remember her full name.

  “You didn’t ask?” Ark asked, with a gasp. “What kind of guy doesn’t get the full name of the girl he likes.”

  Melmarc bristled. “I never said I like her.”

  “But you don’t know her name.”

  “It’s a very long name,” Melmarc argued. “And complicated, too.”

  Ark shot him a wry grin. “Uhuh.”

  Melmarc would’ve argued the point if he didn’t know that Ark was just teasing him. “Anyway, we were talking about the [Sage].”

  Ark chuckled lightly. “Yes, we were. So, what happened?”

  “When the team found out my class, they didn’t really want me.” Melmarc could remember that moment as clear as day. Yet, it felt like a lifetime ago. “But the [Sage] stepped in and picked me himself.”

  Ark smiled. “So, he was a nice guy.”

  “He was,” Melmarc agreed, thinking about his time in the precinct. “On our first day, he took us to his office and was working on his system while we spoke.”

  “About?”

  “Our classes, skills. He was learning about us.” Melmarc smiled a little. “By the end of the conversation it turned out that it wasn’t his office.”

  Ark’s jaw dropped, his almost finished pizza dangling from his hand. “Whose office was it?”

  “The Blight’s wife’s.”

  Ark guffawed so loud that Melmarc thought his hearing had grown a little too strong.

  “I can’t believe it,” his brother said, still laughing. “You broke into your mentor’s office on the first day. And I’m supposed to be the delinquent.”

  “I didn’t break into her office. Naymond did.” Melmarc was smiling, though. “Naymond's the [Sage]. Then the next day we met at his office and tidied the place up, arranging scattered papers and everything. We practically cleaned the place up.”

  “As punishment for breaking and entering?”

  Melamarc shook his head. “Alfa didn’t catch us in her office. We were out by the time she got back.”

  Ark’s look turned knowing, anticipating. “What’s the twist?”

  Melmarc smiled as he delivered the news. “The office we cleaned up wasn’t his office.”

  Ark laughed again, enjoying the constant twists that came with Naymond. “This guy gives the [Sage] class a good name.”

  “He was a bit annoying to be honest. We cleaned a handful of offices, and I don’t think we ever entered his office.”

  “But you’re missing the real issue here,” Ark said, sounding like an investigator that had just cracked a case.

  “And what’s that?”

  “How sure are you that he even had an office? For all we know, he did not have an office.” Ark tapped the side of his head with a finger. “Think, Mel. Think. He was a consultant who just happened to be a felon. Why would they give him an office?”

  Ark had a point. For all Naymond’s job was, he didn’t really need an office. What if he really hadn’t had one?

  “Fair,” Melmarc conceded. “I guess when you think about it, that makes sense.”

  Ark slipped that last bit of his slice of pizza into his mouth. He took his time chewing it, as if savoring the cold hiding at its core. He grimaced when he was done.

  “Cold,” he muttered. Then he shook his head and returned his attention to Melmarc. “So how did the portal thing happen, then?”

  That was an interesting story. Melmarc was happy to tell it.

  When he did, he started from the beginning. He spoke of the first real task Naymond had taken them for. The chase for David Swan, Confidential Informant and inevitable betrayer. When he got to the part where Naymond had given them a plan that had started off exactly as he’d said it would, Ark laughed.

  “Well, they do say that [Sages] are smart,” he pointed out. “So we can’t really be surprised.

  Melmarc recalled what Naymond had told him on the subject. “He actually said that it had nothing to do with his class. Just a thing about being smart and being on the job long enough.”

  “Sounds like an arrogant man.”

  “He was,” Melmarc said, staring of in reminiscence. “In his own way.”

  He continued after that. The story of how he’d caught David was interesting to recall. As he told it, Melmarc wondered how bad the effect would be if he ran into the man at his current state.

  I’ll probably do more than just bruise him, he thought.

  As Melmarc told his story, he realized how easily he had forgotten about the house Naymond had offered him. A frown touched his lips when he remembered the woman that had used the skill [Knowledge is Power] on him. She had been rude about the entire process, using a skill to get information that she could’ve gotten if she’d simply bothered to ask him.

  But it felt trivial now, unimportant. Even now, he could not remember her name. Or her face. He just remembered what she’d done. The fact that he wasn’t experiencing the mental compulsion spurring him to pick out a suitable punishment for her action was another thing that told him it was no longer important.

  “So that’s one person that needs to get their head bashed in,” Ark muttered suddenly.

  “Sorry, what?” Melmarc was confused.

  “The lady,” Ark clarified. “Using a skill on someone that’s not an opponent without permission is obviously rude and uncalled for.”

  “Bashing their head in is not a suitable response, though.”

  Ark cocked a brow as if that was the stupidest response. “Is that Melmarc talking or the [August Intruder] talking?”

  Melmarc shrugged. “I don’t think the [August Intruder] finds it important enough to pay it any attention.”

  “I see.” Ark nodded slowly. “Well, the [Demon King] finds it important enough. But please, do not mind me,” he encouraged Melmarc to continue with a gesture. “Please, go on.”

  Melmarc did.

  He spoke of the delivery and the cloned phone, of the package he was handed and how David had asked for his class. Leaving a mystery in every story always caught Ark’s interest so he didn’t say anything about what David had used the information for. Since there was no actual mystery without hints, he made sure to point out that he’d lied about his class.

  Ark smiled like a proud teacher. “My little brother is finally learning not to trust people.” He mimed cleaning an imaginary tear from his eye with a finger. “I’m so proud.”

  Delano will be prouder, Melmarc thought but said, “I’m your only brother. You don’t have to add the ‘little’.”

  The delivery made Ark smile a little less. A frown creased his lips slightly when Melmarc told him about the three normal boys who’d ambushed him and tried to beat him up in the beginning. The way [World of Insight] worked caught Ark’s attention but his choice of practicing it on the boys did not please him.

  Ark said nothing until Melmarc told him of Naymond’s opinion on the issue.

  “He was right,” Ark agreed. “And I know he was because what you did was something I would’ve done.”

  What he had done with the Gifted boys who had attacked him with weapons, however, Ark had responded to with an applaud.

  Ark listened like a student at an important lecture as Melmarc continued. As the story moved closer to its climax, Ark grew more engrossed in it. He could tell it was about to end. Anticipation rose in his eyes, gathering like moths to a flame.

  Melmarc changed the cadence of his speech in an attempt to entertain his brother more. When he spoke of the woman who’d attended to him at the house, he tried to describe her, to give her details so that Ark could envision her in his mind. If he did poorly, Ark did not show it.

  Ark sat, eyes focused. When the man he had delivered the package to pointed a gun at him, Ark was practically on the edge of his seat.

  “He shot you.” There was a certainty in Ark’s voice. “He shot you and you survived.”

  Melmarc nodded. “I used [Knowledge is Power]. But it still hurt like hell.”

  “I can only imagine,” Ark said, thoughtful. “So that’s what happened. You were shot and you fell back into a portal. I was always wondering how you got into the portal. At some point I was thinking you just decided to be very daring, but that didn’t make sense to me.”

  “I can be daring,” Melmarc shot back.

  Ark dismissed his words with a nonchalant gesture. “Coming from a guy that won’t risk having fun before a test.”

  “It was mathematics,” Melmarc protested. “You know I’m not good at math.”

  “Gotcha.” Ark chuckled lightly. “So the portal. Tell me about that.”

  Melmarc shrugged. “That one was a doozy.”

  Melmarc watched Ark’s attention change. He was attentive as he’d been the entire story, but there was something else in his eyes. Sharper than usual, they watched and waited. Something about them was predatory. Searching. Hunting.

  “What was the first monster you saw?” Ark asked, his voice steady, patient.

  A small line creased Melmarc’s brows in a frown. He wasn’t sure what exactly was going on.

  “All the monsters where the same, except the boss monster,” Melmarc said, recalling the [Damned].

  “Oh…” Ark adjusted in his seat. “What did they look like?”

  “Tall.” Melmarc was slightly confused, so the word had come out as if he was unsure.

  “How tall?” Ark asked. “We are tall. How tall were they?”

  “Maybe seven, eight feet tall.” Melmarc felt himself falling into his mind as the [Damned] came to mind. They were so clear that he could draw every detail, every crack and blemish, every desiccation. “And dead,” he continued. “They had hollow eyes that were almost not there. And strong.” His voice was growing weak, a bit distant. Unsteady.

  “How strong?” he heard Ark ask from a distance. “How powerful?”

  “They could break a wall with a punch,” Melmarc answered. But he’d never seen them break a wall. The walls had been too strong. “One hit me in the…”

  Melmarc frowned when the word he wanted to say did not come out.

  “Hit you where, Mel?”

  “In the ches…”

  Melmarc turned his head, looked at the wall. The air was getting thin. His shoulders were getting tense. A sense of alertness slithered into him, wrapping itself around his heart. His breathing came faster.

  Off in the distance he heard a sound like the scraping of a chair’s legs against the ground. Then the sound of Ark’s voice echoed as if from far away.

  “I’ve got you, Mel. I’ve…”

  The remaining words were lost in the distance and Melmarc realized his vision had grown slightly blurry. He tried to focus on something, anything. Eyes squinted, there was nothing to see.

  Before he knew it the world began to rock. Back and forth, it moved slowly, rhythmically. He was sure he was hearing Ark, but he couldn’t make out the words, only a slight thing in his blurred vision.

  When he saw it—a person, perhaps—he locked in on it. It drew closer and his vision grew sharper.

  “It’s going to be alright, Mel,” someone said in the distance. “It’s going to be alright.”

  Melmarc sucked in a breath. It was unsteady, shaky.

  He tried it again.

  “It’s going to be alright, Mel,” someone said again, echoing from the distance. “It’s going to be alright. I’ve got you.”

  When the blur of a person finally took a sharpened and clear form, they were tall, seven feet, maybe eight.

  Melmarc recognized them. Melmarc could tell who it was. He just had to squint a little.

  When he squinted, the form came into frame…

  … And his world slipped into darkness.