Chapter Two

The night before his birthday, Bam goes to bed early. He'd started dinner for tomorrow to slowly cook and his limbs had felt heavier than usual. He notes this before bed, so the doctor can check into it when he goes in the morning.

At midnight on the twenty-fifth, Bam wakes up in agony.

This isn't new. At least once a year he wakes up in pain, horrible sweat turning his sleep pants translucent, even his hair hurting in time. Usually his eyes are shut throughout and he eventually passes out. He tells the doctor, he hems and haws (Bam is never sure if he means it or not, despite his kindness), and it doesn't happen for another year so life goes on.

This time, his eyes are wide open and he's stuck looking at the pale ceiling. It will need a new coat of paint soon, he thinks through his hoarse screaming, rather like it's happening to someone else.

It hurts.

And then his vision is obscured by his favorite book. His mother's book.

The book has never had words, filled instead with blank pages that felt like thick parchment and yet seemed to have no end. And yet now it does, spidery text flying by in a language that means nothing to him. None of his writing utensils had made much of a dent in those pages either. And it glows a soft violet steadily as the pages spread, further and further, engulfing his vision and filling the room with pain and pain and pain.

He closes his eyes to relieve it and wakes up in a void. The only light is golden and soft beneath his legs, which haven't moved in so long, he can't imagine why they would now.

A hand brushes his cheek, soft and gentle and Bam lifts his head. It doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts. For the first time that he can remember, nothing hurts in him. He looks up and sees a man's face, eyes almost hidden by short red hair. There are tears falling down his face and he strokes Bam's cheek with a careful thumb.

"Jue Viole Grace," he says, like the name is the most important treasure in the world. "We finally meet, terrible as it is."

"Who are you?" Bam asks, shivering despite not being cold. It's been so long since he had heard his own full name, since he'd met Mister Jinsung and the rest so long ago.

The man smiles and it's so sad and beautiful that Bam also wants to cry. "That doesn't matter anymore, my little master. That has been long lost to time. Still, I shouldn't cry. This is a joyous occasion for you. You have a choice, little master. Do you want to live on alone, or do you want to die surrounded with love?"

Their master slumbers.

Such a tiny master, really.

Albelda doesn't mind this though, her memories are flimsy and paltry at best, the memories of thousands of masters, millions of Belkan lives, of lives around the dimensions. It's not so strange. But this era does not seem to be filled with war or sorrow, or even if it was, it is such tiny little fragments that she can't even imagine it being longer than a century or two. Minor, planetary things.

And yet here this child has the quality of such a master.

The basic information of the world they live in filters in quickly as the Book of Darkness closes and slowly falls from its cautious bob to rest on their master's frail chest. Should he be so unhealthy?

He sleeps, pained. There's a strange contraption to the side of the bed, folded carefully.

'Elaine?' she says quietly. 'Are there any enemies?'

She is silent at first, the tallest of them even kneeling like this. 'None,' she reports back after a moment. 'I thought I smelled something moments ago but I might have been mistaken. There's hardly any signs of magic at least in this location.'

Well. That's certainly different, isn't it?

'Then why were we summoned by this pipsqueak?' Anak's voice is irritated in all of their heads in a way that leaves no room for misunderstanding.

"Anak, he's taller than you," says Elaine.

'Shut up.'

He doesn't stir even once and Albelda squints. 'Sachi, check his vitals.'

'On it."

And they are silent. They are still. They wait patiently for their master to awaken, even as they scan him.

When he opens his eyes, Bam barely manages to scream.

Five confirmed magical signatures. The Book of Darkness has awoken. Khun dares to yawn, since no one can see him, since no one is watching. Even if someone was, he was thirteen. He could yawn if he wanted, he was a fully fledged mage. Or something.

He sighs and finishes his report. Well, he could sleep now at the very least. Sending it off, Khun crawls into the bed, the soft futon better than headquarters and blissfully quiet. There are no other Khun running around outside his room, no one tries to steal his things. There is no competition for elite seats here. Just… quiet. Something like peace that probably came at the loss of many, many lives.

Why would the Book of Darkness choose to come here? To a backwater (by TSAB standards mind, not necessarily living ones, clearly the beds were better here) planet with so little magic, what had summoned it here?

Or maybe it was who? A single planet without magic could be sacrificed, hell this was listed as number ninety-seven, not low nor high. It was too random in the middle of nowhere. He wonders if Father knows. He wonders if Father cares.

It isn't uncommon for Khun to fall asleep thinking, it often gave him answers the next day. But he is a very precocious… thirteen-year-old, so he is also prone to things like leaving his window open or sleeping without changing.

Thus when the doorbell rings at nine am the next day and he wakes up cold, Khun is too startled to remember why he is in that situation for a moment, let alone that he nearly goes down the stairs in his barrier jacket.

So he opens the door, cursing his own disheveled hair and the looseness of the pajamas he rarely wears on duty, only to meet the brilliant golden eyes of his target holding a pot of crab stew.

"Good morning!" greets Bam with a sweet smile, and the hulking form of a tall woman with green hair behind him. "My relatives surprised me by visiting last night and I uhm, made too much food. Would you like some?"

It is, in Khun's honest opinion, too early to deal with this.