Theodore POV

Well. That had gone... terribly.

He'd been genuinely impressed with her, honestly. The girl had serious talent. More mana than most adults he'd met, and her control was actually pretty damn good for her age. She had natural instincts for magic that most people spent years trying to develop. He'd been about to tell her that, too. He had been planning to explain that she was already better than half the mages at the Academy, that with proper guidance she could be—

I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!

His thoughts cut off. Right. That had happened.

"Well, that was... something." Maximillian said.

Arms crossed, their father just stood there with an unreadable expression on his face.

"Oh dear," their mother said, hurrying past them toward the door. She paused, looking back at Theodore with something that might have been sadness. "I'll go talk to her. This... this will take time, Theodore."

And then she was gone too, leaving him alone with Maximillian and their father.

Shit. He'd really fucked that up, hadn't he?

But how was he supposed to have handled it? What was the right move there? Let her beat him up? Actually fight back and hurt her? Pretend to lose? None of those options seemed right either.

"She's not wrong, you know," he said finally.

"About what?" Maximillian asked.

"About me," Theodore sighed. "I was horrible to her."

It made him sick.

Logically, he knew he wasn't really responsible. He was Ethan from Earth, not the bastard who'd tormented a child for years. He had different values, different morals, a completely different personality. The original Theodore was gone, replaced by someone who would never hurt a kid like that.

But logic didn't seem to matter much right now.

Those were still his hands that had made her feel worthless. His voice that had called her worthless. His face she saw when she remembered being hurt.

How do you even begin to fix something like that? How do you convince someone that you've changed when you look exactly like the person who hurt them?

And the worst part was that he actually cared. Somewhere along the way, without really noticing it, he'd started thinking of these people as his actual family. It started with Juliana and now, to him, Leona wasn't just some random noble brat. She was his little sister. His brilliant, talented, hurt little sister who deserved so much better than what she'd gotten.

Weirdly, it genuinely hurt to see her in pain like that. To know he was the cause of it, even if it wasn't really him. Was their relationship even fixable at this point? Could you recover from that level of damage? Theodore sighed.

***

Theodore walked through the estate grounds toward the gardens, his mind half on where he was going and half on the irritating thing attached to his soul. The rune. That damn thing had been bugging him for a while now, ever since the encounter with the woman in black on the sandship.

He'd figured out a few things about it during the journey to the capital. Mostly through careful prodding when he got bored, which was often. The thing really was like a bookmark, just like she'd said. Passive most of the time, just sitting there doing absolutely nothing. But he was pretty sure it would activate the moment she decided she wanted to find him again. And when that happened, his location would get broadcasted straight to her.

That thought made his skin crawl. Nobody should have that kind of tracking ability over him. Nobody.

So he'd tried removing it. Obviously. First attempt had been the direct approach—just trying to dissolve the damn thing with his slime abilities. That hadn't worked. The rune had just sat there, completely unaffected by anything he threw at it. Then he'd gotten clever and actually cut off part of his shoulder, letting his slime body regenerate the entire area from scratch.

The rune had reappeared exactly where it had been before.

That was when Theodore realized this thing wasn't just attached to his physical body. It was deeper than that. Attached to something more fundamental. His soul, maybe? He wasn't entirely sure how souls worked in this world, but it seemed like the most logical explanation.

After that failure, he'd started being more careful about his approach. Instead of trying to destroy the thing outright, he'd begun nudging it. Poking at it with tiny amounts of mana, seeing how it reacted. Testing its boundaries.

And slowly, very slowly, he'd managed to isolate it. Not remove it—every time he tried that, he got this overwhelming sense of danger that made him back off immediately. But isolate it, yes. Separate it from the rest of his internal systems. It was still there, still attached to whatever fundamental part of him it had latched onto, but now it was contained. Quarantined.

If push came to shove, he could probably rip it off entirely. It would hurt like hell—literally tearing apart part of his soul wasn't going to be pleasant—but it would heal eventually. That was his nuclear option. For emergencies only.

Because honestly? He was planning to meet the woman again anyway. Sure, he'd grumbled about it at the time, but the encounter had been genuinely interesting. Terrifying, but interesting. She hadn't seemed malicious, just... curious. And Theodore could understand curiosity. Hell, he was curious about her too.

But he also wanted to crack the puzzle she'd left behind first.

The rune had two main functions, from what he could tell. The bookmark feature, which was passive and annoying. And some kind of storage space, which was where things got interesting. She'd mentioned leaving a skill in there, locked away behind some kind of security measure.

The storage seemed to involve spatial magic. Dimensional stuff. There was definitely something in there, but accessing it was the problem. The lock wasn't physical—it was pure mana patterns. Complex ones.

Theodore paused in his walk, finding a quiet spot between two hedges. He had some time before he reached the gardens proper. Might as well take another crack at the puzzle.

He closed his eyes and turned his attention inward, focusing on the rune. There it was, that small knot of foreign magic sitting in his spiritual structure like a splinter. He approached it carefully, extending tendrils of mana toward the lock mechanism.

The security system was ridiculous. Layer upon layer of interconnected pathways, each one requiring a specific sequence of mana inputs to unlock. It wasn't just about having enough power—though it definitely required significant amounts—it was about precision. Threading mana through exact patterns, maintaining perfect control over dozens of simultaneous flows.

Theodore started working through the outer layers, following pathways that twisted and branched like a maze. Some led to dead ends that would reset his progress if he pushed too far. Others required him to split his mana into multiple streams, each following a different route while maintaining perfect synchronization.

It was actually kind of fun, in a masochistic way. Like solving a puzzle where making a mistake could potentially fry your brain.

He worked steadily as he walked, part of his attention on navigating the estate grounds while most of it focused on the intricate magical lock. The patterns were starting to make sense, sort of. There was definitely a logic to them, even if it was alien logic designed by someone with a completely different understanding of magic than his own.

By the time he reached the gardens, he'd made progress. Not much—maybe cracked through two or three of what felt like hundreds of layers—but progress nonetheless. The puzzle was definitely solvable, it was just going to take time. Lots of time.

Theodore sighed and pushed the problem to the back of his mind. Actually, better idea. He reached out through his connection to his clone back in Holden and dumped the entire puzzle onto it. The clone had been handling administrative work and skill training anyway, it could multitask.

Plus, the clone had the same rune. Theodore had checked. Apparently when something was imprinted on your soul, all your duplicates came with it too. Wonderful.

The gardens were peaceful. Carefully maintained paths wound between flower beds and ornamental trees, leading to small clearings with benches and fountains. Theodore followed the main path deeper in, heading for the spot his mother had mentioned.

He found his grandfather exactly where she'd said he would be. Sitting on an old wooden bench under the shade of a massive oak tree, looking out over a small pond. The man looked old—really old, with white hair and lines on his face that spoke of decades of experience. But he didn't look weak. There was something solid about him, like he was carved from stone rather than flesh.

And his mana signature was absolutely ridiculous.

Theodore had sensed it from halfway across the gardens. The old man was like a walking magical reactor, power radiating from him in waves. Theodore couldn't even begin to guess what Rank he was—whenever he tried to analyze it, his senses just kind of gave up. But he could say with absolute certainty that his grandfather could crush him without even trying.

"You've grown older, Theodore," his grandfather said without looking away from the pond. "And changed. Sit."

It wasn't really a request. Theodore sat.

"What are you looking at?" he asked.

His grandfather gestured toward the pond. "Ducks."

Theodore looked. Sure enough, there were ducks. A small family of them paddling around in the water, occasionally diving down to hunt for food. Pretty standard duck behavior, as far as he could tell.

"Your grandmother used to love watching them," his grandfather continued. "She'd sit here for hours, just observing. Brought them food scraps sometimes, though I told her it wasn't good for them. She said they looked happy, so what was the harm?"

Theodore waited.

"Ducks are simple creatures," the old man said. "They wake up, they eat, they swim, they sleep. No grand ambitions. No complex plans. They live in the moment, responding to what's directly in front of them. There's something pure about that, don't you think?"

"I suppose."

"But they're also survivors. When winter comes, they migrate. Thousands of miles, following instincts carved into them over generations. They adapt. They endure. They find a way."

His grandfather's eyes never left the pond. One of the ducks had climbed onto a small rock and was preening its feathers, completely unconcerned with being watched.

"Your grandmother saw something in them," he continued. "She used to say they reminded her that sometimes the most important thing was just to keep swimming. Even when the water gets rough. Even when you can't see the shore."

Theodore thought about that. "Sounds like she was wise."

"She was. Wiser than me, certainly. I always wanted to fix things, to take action, to solve problems with power and determination. She understood that sometimes the best response is simply to endure. To adapt. To keep moving forward even when you don't know where you're going."

Another duck had joined the first on the rock. They sat together, occasionally making soft quacking sounds at each other. Simple communication. No hidden meanings or complex emotions.

"I used to think they were boring," his grandfather admitted. "Just ducks, after all. What could they possibly teach me? But after she died..." He paused, lost in memory for a moment. "I found myself coming here more often. Sitting where she used to sit. Watching what she used to watch."

"And what did you learn?"

His grandfather smiled, the expression transforming his weathered features. "Who knows?"

The ducks continued their lazy patrol of the pond. Theodore found himself oddly comforted by their presence. There was something peaceful about watching them go about their simple lives.

"She used to talk to them. I thought she was going a bit senile at first, but then I realized she wasn't expecting them to answer. She was working through her own thoughts out loud. Using them as... what's the word... a sounding board."

"Did it help?"

"Apparently. She always seemed calmer after spending time here. More centered. Like she'd found some kind of clarity." He chuckled softly. "I tried it myself a few times. Felt ridiculous talking to ducks. But I understood the appeal."

Theodore watched as one of the ducks suddenly dove underwater, disappearing completely for several seconds before popping back up with something in its beak. It swallowed whatever it had found and continued paddling as if nothing had happened.

"They don't overthink things," Theodore observed.

"Exactly. They see food, they eat it. They see danger, they fly away. They see another duck, they either ignore it or swim closer."

His grandfather finally turned to look at him directly. "People could learn from that, don't you think? We spend so much time worrying about the future, regretting the past, analyzing every possible outcome. Sometimes we forget to just... be."

Theodore nodded. He could definitely relate to that. His mind was constantly spinning, always planning, always calculating advantages and contingencies. When was the last time he'd just sat somewhere and watched ducks?

"Your grandmother would have liked you," his grandfather said suddenly. "This version of you, I mean. She always believed people could change. That everyone deserved a second chance to become who they were meant to be."

Something in his tone made Theodore look at him more closely. There was an odd weight to those words, like they meant more than they seemed to.

"She used to say that sometimes people get lost," his grandfather continued. "They forget who they really are underneath all the expectations and pressures and mistakes. But the real person is still there, waiting. Like a seed that's been buried too deep to sprout."

Theodore felt a chill run down his spine. "A seed?"

His grandfather's smile widened, and suddenly his eyes seemed much sharper than they had moments before. "The seed inside you has finally blossomed," he said quietly. "I was wondering when the dam of memories would break. Should I give you a proper welcome, grandson?"

***

Read 10 Chapters Ahead on Patreon! - /itsnectar