The residential district of the mid-island was a maze of narrow alleys and stacked, modular housing. It lacked the grandeur of the floating villas near the docks, settling instead for a utilitarian grey that matched the overcast sky.
Aiven led the way, his boots heavy on the iron-grate stairs that spiraled up the side of a weather-worn tenement building. Virelle followed him, her feet never touching the metal. She drifted lazily, her luminous silver hair catching the dull light and making the rusted railings look even more pathetic by comparison.
"Master, I was expecting a grand tower or at least a spire that touched the clouds. This... stack of grey boxes seems very fond of the ground, doesn't it?" Virelle asked, floating upside down to peer at a particularly large crack in the concrete. "Is this a trial of humility? Or perhaps you're hiding your vast riches in a basement I haven't seen yet?"
Aiven didn't look back, his hand tightening on the gritty railing. "It's called an affordable apartment, Virelle. And stop peering into the cracks. I'm not hiding riches; I'm hiding from the landlord's complaints if he sees you poking at the foundation."
"A hero who lives in the shadows of his own rent. How mysterious," she giggled, performing an effortless mid-air spin as they reached the fourth-floor landing.
They walked down the long, outdoor corridor toward the corner unit. The wind whistled through the gaps in the floorboards. Just as Aiven reached into his pocket for his key, a door halfway down the hall creaked open.
A man stepped out, lugging a heavy bag of trash. He was older than Aiven, with a permanent five-o'clock shadow and a stained undershirt.
"Oh, Aiven? You're back late—" The man stopped dead, his eyes bulging as he spotted the girl floating behind Aiven. His gaze traveled from her glowing violet eyes down to her boots, which were currently six inches above the floor. "Uh… whoa."
Aiven suppressed a groan. "Hey, Dax."
Dax leaned against his doorframe, a slow, knowing grin spreading across his face. "Taking a pretty girl home, are we? And a mage, by the looks of it. Didn't know you had it in you, kid. Is she… uh, a 'work' friend?"
Virelle's eyes lit up. She drifted forward, bypassing Aiven before he could stop her. "Pretty? Oh, I like this one, Master! He has excellent vision for a commoner." She gave Dax a playful, exaggerated wink. "I'm Virelle. I'm super strong, and yes, I'm with him."
Dax's jaw dropped. "She's 'with' you? Aiven, you dog!"
"She's not—it's not like that!" Aiven hissed, his face heating up. He grabbed the back of Virelle's bodice and hauled her toward his door. "Don't engage with him, Virelle. Dax, go take out your trash. We have things to do."
"I bet you do!" Dax chuckled, waving as Aiven shoved the key into his lock and practically forced Virelle inside.
The door clicked shut, cutting off the sounds of the hallway.
Aiven leaned his back against the wood, exhaling a long, shaky breath. He surveyed the room, and his heart sank. The apartment was a single, cramped room. A small kitchenette sat in one corner, a bed in the other, and a single wooden chair by a window that looked out onto an alleyway.
It was also a mess.
Unwashed plates sat on the counter. Adventuring magazines were scattered across the floor, and a layer of dust had settled on almost everything. It was the physical manifestation of the days Aiven had spent in a stupor of grief.
Virelle drifted into the center of the room, her prismatic orb illuminating the dark corners. She looked at a stack of cargo manifests on the table, then at a dried-up crust of bread on a plate.
Only then did she notice the soft scuff of movement behind her.
Aiven had slipped off his shoes near the door, setting them aside out of habit before stepping further into the room.
Virelle watched him for a moment, expression unreadable. Then, without comment, she lowered herself until her feet touched the floor. She removed her own footwear and placed them neatly beside his.
A heartbeat later, she rose again; floating once more, light as ever, while her shoes remained by the door, as if they had always belonged there.
"Sorry about the state of the place," Aiven muttered, looking at the floor. "Something happened recently… I haven't really had the motivation to keep up with things."
"It's fine," she said, her voice uncharacteristically soft for a moment. She looked back at him, a sassy spark returning to her eyes. "Though, I must say, Master's 'castle' is more of a 'storage closet.' I could fix this in a heartbeat, you know."
She raised her hand, a swirl of violet mana gathering at her fingertips. "One little pulse and all this 'lack of motivation' will be deleted. I can make this place sparkle like a palace floor."
"No!" Aiven said quickly, stepping forward. "Don't. The last time you 'cleaned' something, it ceased to exist. I actually need my bed and my manifests."
Virelle pouted, the mana dissipating into harmless sparks. "Hmph. Fine. Be boring. I was just trying to be helpful."
Aiven gestured to the room's only chair—a sturdy, if plain, piece of oak. "Just… sit. Please. I'm going to make some tea. We need to talk, and I think I'll collapse if I don't sit down soon."
Virelle looked at the chair with suspicion, as if it were a low-level monster, but then she shrugged. She drifted over and settled onto the wooden seat. To Aiven's surprise, she actually stopped floating, her weight pressing into the chair as she folded her hands neatly in her lap.
"Tea," she mused, eyes following his every movement. "Is that the traditional tribute for a summoned mage? I was hoping for something… glowing. Or at least served in a chalice."
"It's all I have," Aiven said, moving toward the small stove and checking the flame. "So it'll have to do."
He poured the dark, slightly murky liquid into a chipped ceramic mug and handed it to her. Virelle took it gingerly, sniffing the steam with a dramatic wrinkle of her nose.
"Master, I'm fairly certain these leaves were floor sweepings from a warehouse in the lower districts. It has the distinct aroma of budget-cuts and disappointment." She took a tentative sip, her expression shifting from a playful pout to a look of surprised curiosity.
"Hmm. And yet... it's actually quite delicious," she added, a faint, genuine smile touching her lips as she cradled the mug. "I suppose even common dishwater tastes like a vintage blend when it's poured by my Master's own hand. You have a talent for the mundane."
She gave him a playful wink over the rim of the mug. "But don't expect me to settle for this forever."
Aiven let out a long, weary breath and sat on the edge of his bed, finally allowing his shoulders to drop. He stared at the steam rising from his own mug, his mind churning.
"Virelle," he started, his voice quiet. "Who are you? Really?"
"I already told you," she said, looking at him over the rim of the ceramic. "Virelle. Super-strong mage. Expert at floating. Your dedicated protector."
"That's not what I meant," Aiven said, looking at the crystalline sigil on his wrist. "Are you a legendary familiar? What kind of being are you that you can just... appear in an F-rank dungeon and defeat a probably Boss-Class monster in seconds?"
Virelle lowered the mug, her gaze drifting toward the dusty window. For a moment, the sass vanished, replaced by a hollow, pensive stillness. "I... I don't know."
Aiven blinked. "You don't know?"
"I have no memories of before the summoning," she admitted, her voice soft but steady. "There's just a blank space where my past should be. All I know is that you called for me. I felt your voice, Master. It was like a singular point of light in a very dark place. I wanted to follow it. I wanted to stay with you and help you with whatever it is you're trying to do."
Aiven looked down at his tea, feeling a strange weight in his chest. "That doesn't make sense. I'm a normal human. My mana pool is shallow, barely enough to light a lamp. Summoning a high-class being like you should have killed me instantly. Even A-Rank mages can only sustain super-strong familiars for a few hours before they collapse from exhaustion. You've been here for half the day and you're still... well, you."
Virelle's eyes sharpened. A faint violet sigil flickered deep within her pupils—the appraisal spell. She leaned forward, her gaze sweeping over Aiven with an intensity that made the hair on his arms stand up.
"Hmm," she hummed, the orb at her side chiming a high, clear note. "Interesting. Master, your internal readings are... fascinating. According to my appraisal, you have nearly unlimited mana."
Aiven nearly choked on his tea. "Unlimited? That's impossible. I've been tested. My capacity is F-rank. Bottom of the barrel."
Virelle leaned back, her smug smirk returning in full force. She tapped the side of her mug with a pale finger. "Well, the barrel must have a false bottom, then. Your core is like a star trapped in a bottle. It's to be expected, though, you are my Master, after all. It would be quite embarrassing if you were actually as weak as you look."
"Virelle, I'm serious," Aiven insisted, his hand trembling slightly. "I've spent my whole life being exhausted by basic spells. I couldn't possibly have 'unlimited' anything."
"And another thing," she added, ignoring his protest as she wagged a finger at him. "I am not a familiar. I am my own self. I'm not some magical construct tethered to your life force. I can move far away from you, live alone on different islands, and we would both be perfectly fine." She paused, her eyes softening as she looked at his small, messy room. "Not that I have any intention of doing that. I want to stay with you at all times. You're far too interesting to leave alone."
Aiven tried to ignore the last part, focusing instead on the revelation of his own power. It felt like a fever dream. A week ago, he was calculating airship fuel routes; today, he was being told he had the potential power that even A-Rank mages could only dream of.
"If what you're saying is true..." Aiven whispered, looking at his hands. "How? Why now?"
"Maybe that weak version of you is in the past," Virelle mused, taking another sip of the cheap tea. "Sometimes, a catalyst is needed to open the floodgates. Perhaps my appearing caused a resonance... an 'upgrade' within you. You called for a miracle, Master. It's only natural that you became someone capable of holding onto it."
Aiven stared into the rising steam of his mug, watching it curl and vanish. The more he turned her words over in his mind, the more a knot tightened in his chest.
"Listen, Virelle," he said at last, voice low. "If what you're saying about my mana is true… then it has to stay a secret. No one can know. Not about the 'unlimited' part, no matter how close it is."
Virelle tilted her head, her prismatic orb pulsing with a curious green glow. "Why?" she asked lightly. "It's a wonderful thing. With the right guidance, you could level a mountain."
"I doubt that," Aiven replied. He let out a slow breath. "Having a massive mana pool doesn't mean much if I don't have the skill to use it. It's like owning an enormous sword without the strength or technique to lift it, let alone swing it. All it really does is paint a target on my back."
He looked up at her, expression grim. "People would see it as a resource to exploit. The government. High-ranked adventurers. Someone would decide I'm better locked away, studied, or 'protected' for the greater good."
Virelle scoffed instantly, violet light flaring in her eyes. "Ridiculous. No one would dare harm my Master with me at his side, let alone try to imprison you."
"I know," Aiven said quietly. "But I still don't want to find out who's reckless enough to try."
For a moment, Virelle studied him, really studied him, before her lips curved into a small, approving smile.
"Very well. If discretion is what you desire…"
She raised her hand, fingers weaving through the air as she traced a complex, spiraling rune. The symbol hummed with a low, resonant vibration before shattering into a fine, shimmering mist that drifted down and settled over Aiven's skin.
"There," she said. "A masking veil for you and myself. To any standard appraisal or detection spell, our mana will appear slightly above average. Enough to mark us as a promising prodigy—"
Her orb chimed softly.
"—but not enough to label us a threat."
She folded her arms, hovering smugly. "Does that satisfy your cautious heart, Master?"
Aiven exhaled, the tension in his shoulders finally breaking. "Thank you. Truly."
"So," Virelle said, leaning back and resting her chin in her hand, her eyes sparkling again. "Since you aren't going to be a lab rat, what do you want to do now, Master?"
Aiven went quiet, his gaze drifting to the window. "I don't know exactly. But I've made up my mind about the first step. Tomorrow, I'm going to the logistics office and submitting my resignation. No more manifests. No more cargo routes."
He looked at the broken short sword leaning against the wall, the nicked blade catching the faint light. "I'm going to focus on adventuring. For my own sake... and for Lyra's." He smiled faintly, a sad, weary expression. "If I fail, at least I'll fail doing what I actually love to do."
Virelle scoffed, tossing her silver hair back. "Fail? With me around? Master, you really do have a vivid imagination. You couldn't fail even if you tried. I simply wouldn't allow it." She paused, her eyes narrowing slightly as her playful tone took on a sharp, curious edge. "But... who exactly is this 'Lyra'?"
Aiven's smile faltered. The name still felt like a physical weight in his chest. "She was... someone very important to me. My childhood friend." He looked away, his voice barely a whisper. "But she's gone. She was in Hearthport when it was erased."
The sassy sparkle in Virelle's eyes vanished instantly. She looked down at her mug, her expression softening into something uncharacteristically quiet and apologetic. "Oh. I... I see. I'm sorry, Master. I didn't know."
The room fell into a heavy silence, the only sound the distant whistle of the wind through the tenement's floorboards. Aiven stared at his tea, and Virelle sat still in the wooden chair, the playful banter of the afternoon replaced by a cold, lingering grief that neither of them knew how to bridge.
"I didn't mean to make it awkward," Aiven said eventually, breaking the quiet. He set his empty mug on the small bedside crate. "It's just… it's the reason I'm doing this. Why I went into that dungeon today."
Virelle looked up, her violet eyes soft. She set her mug down on the table, the chipped ceramic clicking against the wood. "Master… if she was the one who saw the 'spark' in you, then she had better eyes than most. I can see why you'd want to keep your word."
She stood up, her feet hovering an inch from the dusty floorboards again. The somber mood didn't vanish, but it shifted. She looked around the messy room with a renewed, slightly more determined focus.
"Well," she said, her voice regaining a bit of its melodic edge. "If we are to begin this 'adventure' of yours, we can't do it in a room that smells of prolonged sadness and unwashed laundry. It's offensive to my sensibilities."
Aiven let out a short, dry laugh. "I told you, no magic cleaning. I don't want to wake up in an empty room because you 'deleted' the dust and took the floorboards with it."
"Trust me a little, Master," Virelle pouted, though there was a hint of a smile there. "I won't delete anything. I'll just… encourage the dirt to be elsewhere."
Before Aiven could protest, she snapped her fingers. A soft, lavender pulse of light expanded from her, gentle as a ripple in a pond. As it touched the stacks of manifests, they neatly aligned themselves into a single, organized pile. The dust vanished, not by disappearing, but by gathering into a small, compact ball of grey lint that zipped out the open window like a shooting star. The unwashed plates on the counter suddenly shone, the grime lifting away and evaporating into steam.
Aiven blinked, looking at his room. It wasn't a palace, but it was suddenly, startlingly clean. "You... you didn't break anything."
"I told you," she hummed, drifting toward the window to watch the night sky. "I'm super strong. Precision is just a side effect of mastery."
Virelle turned back to him, her expression shifting to one of mock disapproval. "Now, Master, you look like a half-dead zombie. You should sleep before you drop. Honestly, watching you struggle to stay upright is exhausting for me."
Aiven rubbed his eyes, the weight of the day finally crushing down on him. "Yeah... I think I might need that sleep. Too many things happened today. My head is spinning." He stood up and gestured to the narrow bed. "You can take the bed, Virelle. I have no problem sleeping on the floor. I've done it before during long delivery layovers."
Virelle's brow arched. "Why would you do something so foolish? The bed is perfectly functional and certainly large enough for two. We can just share it."
Aiven froze, his exhaustion momentarily replaced by sheer bewilderment. "That's... that'll be weird, Virelle."
"Is it?" she asked, tilting her head as if he were explaining a complex mathematical theorem. "I don't find it weird at all."
"I'm sleeping on the floor," Aiven insisted, already reaching for a spare blanket.
"Absolutely not," Virelle countered, her voice taking on a firm, authoritative tone. "I cannot allow my Master to live in such a miserable way under my watch. It is an insult to my status and your core. If you sleep on the floor, I'll simply hover over you and poke you every time you close your eyes."
Aiven stared at her, realizing that arguing with a high-class mage was a battle he was destined to lose. "Fine. Things are going nowhere with this. I'll sleep on the bed. And if you... if you really want to, then fine."
"Good," Virelle said, her smug smile returning. "You sleep first. I'm not particularly tired yet. I'll stay here for a while, daydreaming or perhaps watching the sky through this remarkably clear window."
Aiven sat on the edge of the bed, the clean sheets smelling faintly of ozone and lavender. "There are some books around. Mostly adventuring journals and old maps."
He tried to say more, but the words died in his throat as a wave of weariness swept over him. He lay back, his eyes closing before his head even hit the pillow. Within seconds, his breathing slowed into the deep, rhythmic pull of someone who had finally found a moment of peace.
Virelle watched him, her prismatic orb chiming a soft, protective lullaby in the quiet of the room.