The walk back to the Academy passed in a blur, his feet carrying him automatically through empty corridors until he reached his room and the door clicked shut behind him.
Darkness waited inside the dormitory room - familiar dimensions, familiar furniture, familiar silence that pressed against his ears. His legs carried him two steps before they simply stopped functioning. He stood in the center of the room, moonlight painting a pale rectangle across the floor, his mind still circling through everything that he learned.
The bed called to him. Not with comfort - he’d never needed sleep since the Eternal Witness trait eliminated that requirement - but with the promise of stillness. Of stopping movement for a few hours while his thoughts caught up to his body.
He sat on the edge of the mattress. Springs creaked softly under his weight.
His mind turned over Silas’s words, examining them from different angles.
Bringing light to darkness.
Choosing happiness as resistance against the weight of what they did.
The philosophy made sense in a way that felt both obvious and profound. Simple on the surface, but carrying implications that extended far deeper.
His gaze drifted across the room, landing on the mirror mounted on the wall. Cheap glass, slightly warped, the kind provided in commoner dormitories because it was functional without being valuable.
The reflection still showed a stranger - pale skin, white hair, glacial blue eyes that carried no warmth. A face the Moon Goddess had crafted when she’d granted him new flesh.
When was the last time he’d truly smiled?
Not the careful expression he used at the Golden Hart when the bartender told stories or the maniac expression he wore in the mirror realm when he destroyed the reflections. Not performance or politeness to achieve social objectives.
When had he last smiled simply because he was happy?
Cel tried to remember.
The Academy provided no examples. Every day here was careful deception, measured responses, the constant awareness that one mistake could expose his true identity. No joy in that. Just survival wearing a different face.
The Reckoning offered nothing either. Training with Silas was productive but not happy. Zara’s contempt made genuine emotion impossible.
Before the Academy then. Before Stella. Before the Reckoning recruited him.
The Hollow Realms? No. That had been endless darkness, constant danger, the certainty of death stalking every moment. Raven’s presence had made it bearable, but bearable wasn’t the same as happy.
The torture chamber. Obviously not.
Further back. Before the Children of the Voidmother. Before his father sold him to them like defective livestock.
The memory surfaced with uncomfortable clarity.
His room in House Solmar’s estate. Larger than this dormitory room and infinitely more comfortable - soft bed with too many pillows, walls painted in colors his mother had chosen specifically because they made the space feel warm. A window that looked out over the garden with a big oak tree where he’d played.
The night before his fifteenth birthday, before the Divine Calling, before everything fell apart.
His mother had come to put him to bed. He’d sat on the edge of his mattress, smoothed his hair back from his forehead with cool fingers.
He couldn’t remember what she said at that time. But her voice had carried warmth that night. Pride, maybe. Or hope that her son would be chosen by the Sun God or Ocean Goddess.
That night, he’d dreamed. About an endless frozen sea stretching to every horizon, the moon hanging vast and silver above, spilling light across the surface like liquid mercury. No voice. No proclamation. Only silence so complete it seemed to have weight, and beneath his feet, through ice clear as glass, shapes moving in the depths - vast, graceful, and utterly beyond him.
He'd woken with frost crystallized across his blankets, fine as scattered diamonds, and a feeling so enormous it had no name. Being seen by something infinite, though it had said nothing at all. Being chosen by a deity who could have picked anyone, anything, and had chosen him.
That morning, when the Moon Goddess’s mark had appeared between his shoulder blades - for one perfect moment - he’d been happy.
Purely, completely, without reservation or calculation.
He’d smiled then. Hadn’t been able to stop himself. The joy had been too large to contain.
Cel’s reflection stared back at him from cheap glass. How long ago was that?
It seemed impossible. Like it was a lifetime ago.
He tried now. Attempted to recreate that expression. Lifted the corners of his mouth, let his lips part slightly, arranged his face into something that approximated joy.
The reflection smiled back.
‘...So Silas was right.’
It looked wrong. Deeply, fundamentally wrong. Like a corpse animated by someone who’d heard smiling described but never witnessed it. The expression held no warmth, carried no genuine emotion. Just muscles moving in patterns that suggested happiness without containing any.
Creepy. That was the word.
Cel’s face fell back to neutral. He stared at his reflection for another moment, then turned away.
Better not to try.
He leaned back, mind already shifting elsewhere.
To Esrin’s words. The wrong approach she mentioned.
Maybe Selina would know. She was his Divine Oracle, his guide, the Moon Goddess’s voice within his soul. If anyone could explain what Esrin meant, it would be her.
Cel closed his eyes. Breathed deep. Let his awareness turn inward.
The transition happened with the ease of long practice. The dormitory room faded. His body became distant, less immediate.
His awareness slipped into his soul realm.
Dry, cracked earth stretched beneath him, split by deep fissures that webbed across the ground like old scars. Jagged stones jutted up at irregular intervals, remnants of ruins that belonged to no history but his own.
The moon hung vast and luminous overhead, its light painting everything in shades of silver and shadow. Mist curled low across the ground, drifting between the fractures where small flowers with bluish-white petals bloomed, reaching toward the moonlight from the deepest cracks.
And there, standing in the center of it all, was Selina.
She wore her flowing robes that seemed woven from moonlight itself. Her silver mask covered the upper half of her face, hiding eyes he’d never seen. Her lips curved in that serene smile she always carried.
“Chosen One.” Her voice held its usual warmth. “Welcome back.”
Cel approached slowly. The mist parted before each step, then closed behind him, leaving no evidence of his passage.
“I need your guidance.”
“You always have it.” She tilted her head slightly. “What troubles you?”
He stopped perhaps five steps away. Words arranged themselves in his mind, then fell apart, then tried to reform into something coherent.
“Esrin came to the Reckoning’s hideout tonight.” The statement emerged carefully. “She said something that I can’t stop thinking about.”
Selina waited, her expression patient and attentive.
“She said the failure in my progress lies not with me, but with the approach to my training.” Cel’s hands clenched at his sides. “Is she right? Is my training approach wrong? And if so, what is the right one?”
Silence stretched between them.
Then she spoke, her voice carrying that same measured certainty it always did.
“Your approach is not wrong.” A pause. “But it is also not the path you should continue walking.”
Cel’s brow furrowed.
“I don’t understand. If it’s not wrong, then—”
“There is a difference,” Selina interrupted gently, “between an approach being incorrect and an approach being incomplete.” She moved closer, the mist swirling around her robes. “What you have been doing - the drilling of basics, the study of technique, the constant physical conditioning - is not wrong. It is necessary. It gives you tools. Understanding. A framework to build upon.”
“But?”
“But it is not sufficient. Not for you.” Her masked face tilted slightly, as if studying him. “You are not like other Chosen. Your path cannot follow the same trajectory that works for them.”
Frustration built in his chest. The same circular reasoning, the same vague implications that left him with no clear direction.
“Then what should I do?” The question came out sharper than intended. “If continuing what I’m doing isn’t enough, what changes?”
Selina fell silent again. This time the pause felt different - not searching for words but reluctant to speak them.
Finally, she sighed. The sound was so unexpected, so at odds with her usual serene composure, that Cel went still.
“You should create your own fighting style.”
The words hit like stones.
Cel stared at her, the question only tangling further in his mind.
‘My own… style?’
Not copying others. Not following established forms. Building something from nothing, designed specifically around his unique circumstances.
“The techniques you learn from Silas, from your Academy instructors - they are frameworks built by others for their own capabilities. Useful for learning fundamentals, but ultimately insufficient for someone whose blessings, whose very nature, differs so drastically from theirs.”
She took another step closer.
“You have abilities they lack. You lack senses they possess. Your body moves differently, responds differently, exists differently than theirs do.” Selina’s voice remained gentle but firm. “Trying to force yourself into their molds will only result in a pale imitation of what they can do. But developing something entirely your own - something that leverages your unique advantages and compensates for your unique disadvantages - that could allow you to reach heights they cannot.”
The explanation made sense on an intellectual level. But practically…
“I don’t know how to do that.” The admission came quiet. “I don’t have the experience or knowledge to—”
“You are correct.” Selina interrupted again. “Which is why you should not concern yourself with it at this point.”
The confusion deepened. Create his own style but don’t concern himself with it? The two notions seemed fundamentally opposed.
“I don’t understand.” His voice came strained. “What am I supposed to do then?”
Selina’s smile returned, carrying that patient quality that suggested she’d expected this exact response.
“First, you must discover who you are.”
The words hit like a physical blow.
“Until you understand that,” Selina continued, “until you can answer that fundamental question - continue training the basics. Build your foundation. Learn everything you can from those teaching you. But know that true growth, the kind of development you need, cannot happen until you understand yourself.”
The circle closed. Everything led back to this same impossible question.
Who was he?
Desperation crawled up Cel’s throat, bitter and sharp.
"Help me." The words escaped before he could stop them. "I've asked myself that a hundred times already and I never once found an answer. I don't... I don't know how to answer that."
Selina’s expression remained serene, but something in her posture shifted. A softening, maybe.
“Tell me what you think.” Her voice stayed gentle. “When you consider the question, what answers surface?”
Cel’s thoughts scattered. Tried to organize themselves into something coherent.
“I’m...” He forced the words out. “I’m the Heir to the Moon. I’m a Chosen One. I’m an abandoned noble. I’m—.”
“Stop.”
Selina’s interruption was soft but absolute.
Cel’s jaw snapped shut.
“Those answers...” She moved closer, until she stood directly before him. “Do they feel right to you?”
The question landed with uncomfortable precision.
Because no. They didn’t.
Each description was accurate in its way. They were true statements. But none of them felt like they touched whatever truth Selina was asking him to find.
“No,” he admitted quietly. “They feel wrong. All of them.”
“Do you understand why?”
Cel shook his head.
Selina held his gaze, steady and unwavering, the moonlight around her seeming to still.
“Because you are describing what you are,” she said gently. “Not who you are.”
Something in Cel's chest tightened, a knot pulling closed around a truth he couldn't yet name.
“Aren’t they the same thing?” The question came out desperate. “How can what I am be different from who I am?”
“They are very different.” She paused. “But that is all I can tell you. The answer means nothing unless you discover it yourself.”
She stepped back, the mist swirling around her robes.
“Think about it. And when you find the answer...” Her lips curved into a small smile. “You will know. Because it will feel right in a way that you’ve never felt before.”
Cel nodded slowly. His mind was already turning over the question, examining it from angles he couldn’t quite define.
“Thank you.” The words came quiet but genuine. “I will think about it.”
“I know you will." Something almost fond colored her voice.
Silence settled between them. Comfortable despite the weight of everything unsaid.
Then Cel’s thoughts shifted. Moved away from impossible identity questions to something more immediate. More concrete.
“There is something else,” he said. “Something I need to think about first.”
Selina tilted her head slightly. Curious.
“My little sister.” The words emerged soft. Almost reverent. “Her birthday is coming soon. I need to find a present for her.”
The statement hung in the air between them. Not grand or dramatic. Just a simple fact that suddenly felt more important than divine mysteries or training approaches.
Because this - choosing a gift for Lyra, making sure she had something to mark another year of life - this was something he could actually do. Something achievable and real.
Who he was could wait. Creating his own fighting style could wait.
His sister’s birthday could not.
Selina’s smile widened slightly. Not mocking. Something that might have been approval.
“Then you should focus on that first,” she said gently.
Cel nodded once. Then he let his awareness shift, pulling back from the soul realm.
“May the Moon Goddess light your path.”