"Arya, are you okay? Does your head hurt?" asked Lillian, her face fraught with worry.

"Let's go to Cassandra," his mother blurted out, the worried look on her face promising to never leave unless they got Cassandra's second opinion.

Arya had no choice but to oblige, after all, something might really be wrong with him since he was now hearing voices.

As Lillian dashed through the living room holding Arya, questioning faces and sighs of relief were passed around by his other siblings.

They were happy that he had finally woken up and that their mother would soon be back to normal. However they wondered where she was going in such a rush.

When Lillian got to Cassandra's cottage, she found a long line of villagers queueing to get treated. Cassandra was the only healer for miles around, and the best one this side of the continent.

But they wouldn't know, they thought all magi were as good as Argen and Cassandra were.

"There's a line, Lillian," shouted one of the men standing in the queue. For some reason, he had to look around before saying that. Perhaps looking out for her husband who had a reputation for dealing with disrespectful people.

"My baby, I just need to know if he's okay," said Lillian, her breathing heavy as she presented her baby to Cassandra.

'It seems his system has fully adapted to its new circumstances. This truly is extraordinary,' thought Cassandra as she used magic to inspect Arya's body.

As she was doing this, Arya could see the faint glow of a pentagram on the area where she was touching. It seemed as if it were sucking in the blue dust that floated around it, directing it into his body.

"The silver hair and the color of his eyes are just side effects of the treatment. They're nothing to be too worried about," she said, looking at Arya's golden iris.

"T-Thank you," sighed Lillian, a wave of relief washing over her.

"I don't need your gratitude. Do you think I helped you out of the kindness of my heart?" asked Cassandra in a cold voice as she took a look at the next patient.

The whole time Arya didn't pay much attention to what the people around him were saying, he was more intrigued by the pentagram that appeared every time Cassandra would inspect someone's body.

'Wha is that?' he wondered.

'I don't know, do you?' asked the voice in his head.

'You again? Are you real?'

'Are you real?' asked the voice back.

"W-What do you mean, Cassandra?" shuddered Lillian. She had no money to pay for life-saving treatment, even if she sold herself to rafters, she wouldn't be able to get enough money.

"Don't worry, I know you don't have enough money to pay me back. As payment, all I ask is that you bring the boy here every end of the month. I want to see how his body holds up from the treatment," she said.

But what she actually meant was, she wanted to see what the boy would turn out to be. She wondered if the millions of miniature cores could cast spells, or if their effectiveness was as little as their size.

"O-Okay," stuttered Lillian, confused by the odd request.

'If she only wants to check up on him, then that isn't really much of a payment, now is it?' Lillian wondered to herself. But she didn't say it out loud, out of fear that Cassandra might change her mind on her generous offer.

When Lillian got home, the first thing she did was apologize to her kids. She knew that she had been a bad mother by breaking down like that, but she couldn't help it. Seeing Arya unconscious had torn a hole in her heart, she couldn't have ignored it even if she wanted to.

"It's okay mom, we understand," comforted Gray.

However Streya seemed to have been really upset, as she stood up without so much as a word to Lillian.

Armin still seemed traumatized, as he had never tried casting another spell after that day.

The only semblance of normalcy left was Gray, but there was no telling what he truly felt deep down.

"It's going to take some time," said Gray finally, his head downcast now, before walking out of the kitchen

'I've failed my children,' thought Lillian, as her kids left her and Arya alone in the kitchen.

'It's my fault, isn't it?' thought Arya to himself, realizing that he had hogged all the attention for himself, when everyone else was struggling with their own issues as well.

Armin was traumatized, Gray had his inferiority complex, and Streya was the one stuck in the middle.

She wasn't the hard worker that everyone could rely on like Gray, nor was she the genius mage, like Armin. She was just Streya, the only girl amongst her siblings, basically, the outcast.

'I don't think it's your fault,' replied the voice in Arya's head.

Its androgynous voice was getting annoying, as he couldn't tell what kind of emotions were going through it due to its monotonous speech.

'Where did you come from?' asked Arya, realizing that either the near-death experience had caused him to go crazy, or something had gone wrong during his treatment.

'I don't know,' replied the voice, the lack of emotion in its voice hiding whether it was being honest or not.

'When did you get here?'

'During the treatment, I was... trapped here... I think,' said the voice, unable to properly string those words together in one go.

'Trapped here? From where?'

'I-I don't know,' replied the voice.

Meanwhile, Lillian began cooking lunch. The food reserves seemed to be going low, pretty soon their family would have to skip days without meals.

'I wonder what's taking Neel so long,' she wondered to herself.

'Do you know what those blue things are?' asked Arya, referring to the blue dust that floated through the air around him.

'I don't know. I don't remember anything,' the voice replied.

'Well, if I'm going crazy, there's nothing I can do about it now. If I tell my mother, she might overreact, and I've already torn the family apart as it is,' he thought to himself.

'Family?' asked the voice.

'Can you hear all my thoughts? To be honest, it's kind of disturbing,'

'S-Sorry,'

'You're like a child, you know,'

'I-I think I am,' the voice replied.