Ross never came home. While summer passed into August, Val's calendar stayed frozen in July. The ink of a thick, red marker circled the date in which he had disappeared. Whenever she sat at her desk, Val stared at that day with glazed-over eyes.

Most days she made an attempt to look for him but could never find him. More than the migraines drove her mad. Her brother was missing, and she felt absolutely helpless to do anything about it.

What if something terrible had actually happened to him? As guilty as taking a day off made her feel, sometimes she felt too exhausted to endure another splitting headache.

Her mother was even more of a wreck than her. From the stress, her mother's migraines worsened too, and she lost her job. Luckily they had access to most of Ross's savings in a joint account with their mother, because they needed it. The fact that he had not withdrawn the money or scratched their mother's name off of the account proved that Ross had not chosen to disappear by his own free will.

As for Val, she had no other choice but to go about her summer routine as the days of August dwindled. Once school started, it would be a lot harder for her to carry on like this. For now, she only had the shifts at her part-time job to worry about. Earning more money put her at ease, because she would probably have to help with the bills at some point during the school year if Ross failed to return.

Val had finished with work for the day and breathed a sigh of relief once she had the door to the apartment shut behind her.

Her mother sat there, waiting for her at the kitchen table. "Val," she said, gesturing a hand to her usual spot, "would you sit down for a minute?"

Instantly, dread swept over her. Between the way that her mother had been waiting for her and the dismal expression on her face, this was not going to be a pleasant conversation. They must have received news about Ross—bad news.

"Uh, yeah, sure." Val sat down robotically.

"Rosamer called me today while you were gone."

Her mother should not have bothered asking her to sit down because Val jumped right back to her feet. "He called you today?" She exclaimed this in exuberance, but quickly shifted to anger. "Why did he not call me?"

Her mother averted her gaze. "Well, he asked me to pass along the message to you. He thought that it might be too hard to tell you this himself…."

"Tell me what?" Her anger flared while she waited for the explanation that she deserved to hear.

"Rosamer left for the Summit of Ascension."

"No," she said, shaking her head weakly at first. Her heart practically plunged down to her stomach. Ross went to the Summit without her? "No!" she said louder and slammed a fist onto the table.

Inadvertently, some of the wood splintered away and left a new hole in the table. There was a reason why their family had designated this spot at the table as belonging to Val.

"I refuse to believe that he went to the Summit without me!" At once, she tromped to her room with each step heavy in rage.

"Val, please calm down. You know how Rosamer can see the future. He thought that it would be better if you stayed here for a while longer and learned more abilities."

Sharply, she turned around to face her mother and the useless excuse that she parroted. "Ross only has one more ability than me. He can read people's minds and see the future. I can see the past! We are practically even in our skill level." Darkly, she stated the truth. "We are both weak."

Val crossed her arms over her chest and sulked. At least if they had gone together, they could have looked out for each other.

If he had gone to search for the Summit of Ascension as her mother claimed, then Val would use that piece of information in Past Insight from now on.

"Val—" her mother tried.

The door slammed behind her. Val flicked off the lights and went over to her bed.

After so many unique tries of Past Insight, she had her preferential pieces of information memorized—the same ones that she had used on the first day of his disappearance. These, she retried with the new 'why'. Ross had left for the Summit of Ascension without her.

When her eyelids fluttered closed, the tunnel of time instantly blurred around her in a rainbow of its colorful threads. An electrifying sensation ran through her brain. This was how she always felt when she successfully initiated a vision.

Val arrived at the point of interest in the past, yet her conscience did not merge with the new timeline. This part had always happened instantaneously in previous uses, so she began to panic. That did not help the oncoming nausea at all. Pinpricks started all over her mind, yet she refused to abandon this attempt when she was so close to finding Ross.

Her vision stayed suspended here, forcing her to look on at these threads of time which were different from all the rest. A jagged sheet of ice had coated them and locked them together. Never, had Val witnessed such a thing before. She wanted to reach her incorporeal being out to it and touch it.

The curiosity would have to go unexamined though, because Val had already stayed in the tunnel of time for too long. With a flash of blinding light and searing pain, her conscience returned to her physical body like a rubber band snapping onto the base of her spine.

One hand shot out to grab the bucket that she always kept nearby. Her body contorted, and Val threw up the contents of her churning stomach.

"Ow, ow, ow," Val moaned. She put the stinking bowl back onto her nightstand and slumped over.

Excruciating pain lit up along her skull to the point where Val doubted that she could do so much as lift a finger. She was paralyzed by a migraine with nothing to do but wait for it to subside. Her enhanced physique as a demigoddess meant that she was unaccustomed to pain aside from that which assaulted her brain. The whole experience was nothing other than self-inflicted torment.

That had been the greatest duration in which Val had stayed in the tunnel of time to date, a full second longer than ever before. While she lay there crippled by pain, the power of her divine blood also flowed through her veins. Her breath quickened along with her pulse in this rush. It was a sensation all right—positively invigorating.

Something about that icy barrier had awakened new power in her. Though she could not explain why, Val knew what she felt. She thought that she could stay in the tunnel of time for an additional second in the future, and already, she looked forward to pushing past the limits of her abilities again.

After all, she was a demigoddess. While some might find this experience akin to torture in the Nether, Val wanted to be a demigoddess one day. When she activated her abilities and pushed past her prior limits, she felt so addicted to the surge of power from her divine blood that it made everything worthwhile.

This agony of a screaming migraine, she would endure so that she could try to find Ross again tomorrow.

Character Update:

* New information is marked in cyan.

* All entries are based on what Val knows.

Valentine (Val) Title: None Rank: Demigoddess Attributes: None Abilities Name Class Description

Past Insight

cognitive

- watch a replay of the past

- four pieces of initial information are required

- can stay in the tunnel of time for up to two seconds

- real time passes slower in the vision

- one day cool down after a failed vision