A blanket of shadows surrounded her, its source being the backs of her closed eyelids. Each inhalation brought fresh air into her lungs. Her body became still enough to feel each heartbeat within her chest as that golden blood of hers flowed throughout her veins. Her thoughts emptied from her mind in preparation to delve into the past.

The blackness gave way to streaks of color, and Val moved through the tunnel of time, back to the point where the memory of Ross had been sealed off.

She stared at the sheet of ice, nothing but a consciousness with sense of sight and sound. Unlike all of her other attempts, Val made no move to touch the barricade. She allowed the colors of her vision to dim, a softer version of closing the eyes which she did not have right now. Val wanted darkness to aid in her attempt at meditation.

A blast of energy was required of her. Generated from nothing but her mind, Val wanted to fling an invisible shockwave at the barrier and make the tunnel of time quake under her might.

In many ways, this task seemed simpler than Keep the Peace. She did not need to connect her mind with that of another being and alter its mental state. Instead, the trickiest part would be creating a physical presence from her mind. Determined to make the most of her remaining seconds, she focused her attention all the harder.

The shattering of glass struck her ears. Val returned her vision to its full brightness so that she could watch with astonishment as the barrier broke. A long crack traversed its center, causing more chinks of smaller cracks to spread out along its sides. Then, everything shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. The colors of time glinted off each shard as they dispersed to nothingness.

If she had a physical form, Val would whoop and holler. She needed to celebrate in some form, so she let her vision twirl around like a top. All of the colors and lines of time swirled around her and that made Val feel like throwing up, without even having to express her time limit.

This was simply amazing. The joy lighted up across her mind at the ease of learning a new ability close to one that she had already developed. What she had done could prove indispensable in the real timeline too, so Val needed to name her new ability: Mind Blast.

Without further ado, Val let her conscience merge with the threads of time. The colors of time tore away like fog on the wind. In their place, the desaturated, muted tones of another time filled her vision. At last, she could see what had happened to Ross.

A familiar place manifested around her. Ross’s bedroom was the next room over. Nowadays, they kept the door to his bedroom closed, and all of his possessions inside had gone untouched. In this vision, he lay there asleep in his bed.

Ross looked peaceful with his eyes closed, lending him the innocent appearance of sleep. This had been the first time that she had seen her brother in months. An twinging ache passed through her heart as she saw the face of her brother again.

Why had he left her? How could he put her through all of this misery, just to see him again? While her emotions as his abandoned, little sister began to tear her up inside, Val knew that she needed to remain focused on the task at hand.

She had to figure out where Ross had gone. Assuming that he had left on his own free will, she expected Ross to rise from bed and slip out of the apartment, yet he never did that. He slept for a painfully long time.

Frustration bubbled within her. Val reached out with her mind by force, demanding for something to happen. Without ever realizing that she could do such a thing, the rate of time sped up all around her.

The only indication as to the passage of time was the rise and fall of Ross’s breath. His breathing quickened, making his chest lift and fall as though he were hyperventilating, but faster than that.

Val had absolutely no idea what she was doing to time, and she would yelp from shock if she could. Never having done this before, she could not risk losing this vision because of her impatience. Val tried to cease this nonsense and return time to its normal flow.

The rapid pace of Ross’s breath slowed back to its normal rhythm.

Val wanted to sigh from relief, and probably did so back in her physical body. Time almost seemed to tick by in her vision, because blood ticked through her ears in the effort to keep this vision stable. Her heart worked hard, trying to give her the necessary blood flow that supplied the mental power for this vision.

While Val had watched history unfold across many hours before, this vision took an undue toll on her. When would something happen?

As if on cue, the sound of the door clicked open. Her mind lit up with the sensation of hearing another sound that was not the pulse in her own ears.

From the peripheral of her vision, the door opened slowly. Val commanded her visual field to swing around, adjusting it to focus on the door. The shadows from the nighttime apartment appeared in the open doorway.

From that darkness, in walked her mother. Of all things, Val watched her mother enter Ross’s room on that midsummer night which had changed her life.

The bland colors of Ross’s bedroom became refracted and intensified to burn at the part of her conscience which was present in his room. The harsh light seemed to try to scorch this moment of time beyond Val’s perception.

Even after taking down the barrier of ice, another kind of block tried to forbid her from seeing this part of the past. Val had no knowledge if that was what she was experiencing, but never before had she felt this much resistance against a vision.

Val pushed back against the invisible, unknowable force with another Mind Blast. She refused to be turned away by anything after she had come this far.

It was something about her mother, she suspected. Her presence made Val’s brain ripple with the pain that would most definitely turn into a migraine after this.

Val was perturbed. She was angry. She wanted to terminate her vision screaming and go straight to her mother to demand answers. It was more than that, though. Val felt betrayed by her own mother.

Her mother had done something to make Ross leave her here without a word. On top of that, her mother had continued this ploy of an average, daily life for months.

Hoping beyond all hope, Val wanted to witness a good reason for her mother’s behavior that night. Her anger might just boil over with her, otherwise.

She could only watch the unfolding vision to receive an answer.

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

Keep the Peace

tactical

- calm agitated creatures

- can sense the baser emotions of others

- works on animals up to the size of dogs

- can manage multiple animals at once, according to their strength

Mind Blast

combat

- weak, physical blow from the mind

Past Insight

cognitive

- watch a replay of the past

- three pieces of initial information are required

- can stay in the tunnel of time for up to one minute

- real time passes slower in the vision

- can fast-forward through time in a vision

- one day cool down after a failed vision