"It doesn't really seem like I have a choice... Can I still take some time to think about it?" Altair asked, in a moment of clarity realizing that he was unable to make a sound decision right away.

"You can. We will meet again once you are ready," she answered. For some reason, despite the apparent time crunch they were under, the old lady appeared calm and composed. "I am going to send you back to your world now."

Altair had no qualms about that, eagerly wanting to get as far away as possible from this place and the associated responsibility that was being thrown upon him.

"But how will I come back here next time? Are you just going to summon me again?" he asked reluctantly, after acknowledging that a miniscule possibility of him deciding to return out of his own volition did exist.

Yeah right, only if my class ends up being full of Kamars... and even then...

"Oh, that. No, since I won't know when exactly you make your decision, it is better to give you the tools to be able to visit us here on your own."

The witch stood up and lit the rustic fireplace at the corner of the hut with a supernaturally blueish fire. The resulting flames resembled those in his world that would glow under very hot temperatures, but he could feel no difference in the heat in the room. The old lady retrieved a branding iron from a stand and exposed it to the wild flames. Then, like it was the most natural thing in the world to do, she pointed it at the young man, sending him running for the door after realizing her intentions.

"Whoa there. What are you doing?" he asked, unable to hide the panic as she stepped towards him.

"Ah... I realize how this must like from your perspective, my bad. Don't worry – this is unlike any fire you have ever experienced. I promise it will not hurt."

Suspicion remained deeply rooted in Alt's eyes, but then again, he doubted that the pain a fire could inflict him would be much worse than the merciless agony he had suffered repeatedly over the past twenty-four hours.

"Will you trust me?" the witch asked patiently.

Not like I have much choice, if I want to ever get home.

"Okay... Do what you have to do," the boy finally conceded, nodding in agreement. "But I don't want to see it," he said, shutting his eyes.

"Your loss," the witch stated, as she placed the iron against his left shoulder before he could change his mind about the procedure. "You will miss quite a show".

Alt had been on high-alert, instinctively ready to dodge and scream, but surprisingly he only felt a light warm tinge massaging his skin. After daring to look, he found his shoulder glowing with all seven colors of the rainbow, finally settling on a uniform orange tone and beginning to cool down.

"Is this a tattoo?" he asked, bewildered at the sight of fresh ink covering his formerly plain deltoid.

"Not just any regular tattoo," the old lady answered. "Think of it as a sort of... telephone, was it? That your people use to communicate? It will allow you to send me a signal, and I can then summon you back here."

"And just how do I use it?"

"As you barely have any mana in your body to leverage right now, the options are limited. For now, your best bet is to fall asleep with a powerful intent of returning here whenever you are ready. In our dreams, our connection with the Universe and Fate is at its strongest, so that may be the only way for you to reach me at this point."

"Sounds pretty inconvenient," Alt commented.

"You can just remain here for good right now if you think so," she said with a veiled threat.

"No, no! Thank you for arranging this," he hurried to reassure her.

"I will try to come up with a method for you to be able to come and go at-will between our worlds eventually, but that will take time and most likely require you to develop your mana core first. Also, keep in mind that your mark will resonate whenever you are experiencing strong emotions, so you may want to either hide it or keep your thoughts under control."

Alt quenched the urge to ask the new questions that appeared after the additional information she presented, to avoid delaying his return any further. With a polite bow, he gave his thanks again, signaling he was ready to go.

***

The young interplanetary traveler found himself back in his room, in the dead of the night. He had crashed at the same place he had disappeared from, finding himself crouched on the mattress, in heavily battered pajamas that appeared straight out of a dumpster. The sudden teleportation felt like he was falling from a cliff and was very disorienting, leaving him with a major headache that his exhaustion accentuated. He opened and shut his eyes several times, as if to make sure his own world would not just disappear again.

The alarm clock indicated it was now a little past four a.m. Other than that, the room had been exactly like he had left it.

Was this all just a terrible, horrible dream? he thought, sitting down on the bed. The ruined clothes on his torso begged to differ.

I really need a shower, he thought, realizing just how sweaty and dirty he had gotten through his escapade.

Alt went to wash himself, not having to worry about waking anybody up in the empty apartment. His eyes fixated at his silhouette in the mirror after he undressed. The tattoo, in the shape of a symmetrical star with ten points and a circle in the middle was glowing dimly as if it was made from radioactive materials. After he took several deep breaths, the glow continued to fade away.

Oh right, that witch lady said it would react to my feelings... I wonder what the meaning of these ten ends is? he thought, leaning in to inspect it. He rubbed his fingers against the design to check if that would cause any reaction, noticing that the texture was tingly, as if from a minor electric shock.

She said I need mana to use it? I wonder if it works the same as in video games...

After a long, hot shower he felt refreshed and had calmed down a bit. He could still feel phantom pain in the areas where the mystical fox had chomped on him, but there wasn't even a scratch remaining to serve as proof of the encounter. To his surprise, the cut in his palm that the nanobots had treated had also completely disappeared. He was particularly glad to no longer feel any mystic energies, specially not the darkness emanating from his Twin.

Alt attempted to fall asleep, but to no avail. He kept rolling from side-to-side, replaying the events from earlier. It was too much to process at once and to start believing in magic, demons and the upcoming end of the world from one moment to the other. The question the witch had asked him during their initial encounter kept popping in his mind, with him being unable to come up with an answer even to his inner self.

If you had a chance to become an actual hero, would you take it, or is it just a fantasy for you?

If only he had anybody he could share this burden with, or someone to get advice from. But who would believe him? In the best-case scenario, they would just laugh him off for being delusional, and more realistically, he would just be reported to the authorities and end up interned in a mental institution or worse, especially if he insisted on this supposed doomsday due in ten years’ time.

Ten years, huh, Altair mused. That would barely be enough time for him finish school and go to university and get a job. Was it even worth trying to overcome the everyday struggles, if he and everybody dear to him were going to die anyway? Ten years...

A thought struck him; in ten years, it was supposed to be the year 3000 of the current era. Is there any connection with this symbolic number? he wondered. And what about the duplication of Arcalis? That old lady said my planet was created only a few thousand years ago, but how come then does the history of our country and civilization extend centuries beyond that?

Finally, the sun rays started passing through his window, leading him to eventually abandon his fruitless attempts at catching some shut eye and get up. A new day had come, and he was no closer in deciding on whether to get involved or not.

Maybe I can ask Sattan hypothetically about this situation. He likes this sort of stuff.

After his morning conditioning routine that allowed to keep his mind away from internal philosophical debates, Alt reached for his phone, and to his surprise found an unread text from Ronel. He instinctively beamed up at the sight of her name, and even more at the contents of the message.

"Hey you! Turns out I am staying after all. What are you up to?" it read.

He tried to come up with something witty to reply, or at least with some cool activity to pretend he was doing, rather than admitting he was still in bed, half-naked.

She beat him to the punch with a second text.

"Don't fry your brain playing hard to get :P Come meet me at the station at ten. I will need some strong, manly hands to carry some shopping bags!"

Alt hated that she saw right through him, and even more how she planned to use him without his prior consent for some selfish purpose but didn't want to pass the chance to see her. Besides, he really needed a distraction as he felt that he otherwise he would just end up spending the entire day pulling his hair out while trying to find answers that he could only get in the other world.

"Cya then," he texted back, trying to regain a bit of his dignity by replying curtly like he imagined an actually busy man would. The earlier boost to his mood took another hit after seeing that Sattan hadn't checked his messages still.

He should be alright, Dr. Raisa promised she would take care of him, Alt again tried to quench his guilt. He opened his closet looking to put something nice on. He gazed several times from side-to-side as if trying to materialize something new in his near empty closet, finding only a pair of plain T-shirts and generic shorts. He wished he could wear something nice for a change, if not to impress, then at least not to embarrass Ronel in public, but alas, money was tight, and fashion had been one of his lowest priorities in life considering previously he sometimes had to choose between getting lunch or school supplies.

After finishing putting on his brandless attire, completed by a pair of worn-out sneakers and a generous amount of gel to get his messy hair under control, he stuffed himself with breakfast to avoid having to eat out later. Outside, the weather was setting up for a glorious day, and he sought shelter in the shade of the trees planted across the sidewalk to hide from the already strong sun. The campus was a ghost-town, and for the first time since arriving here he felt truly at ease walking here without having to watch his back. The station connecting the campus to the blue line of the metro network was located in the southwest corner, past the main arena and was a good fifteen-minute walk by foot from his dorm. Usually, there were shuttles making the rounds between the key buildings on campus, but they were clearly out of commission during the break.

He had the basics of the campus’ layout down but didn't know it intimately yet. During the summer prep camp, they had mostly concentrated on the lecture halls immediately surrounding the dorm buildings, and on the backup training halls that during the camp had been re-purposed for various activities, including some of the practical etiquette lessons that would not go down well in a regular classroom.

Alt still felt like he didn't really belong here, with him being labeled a bottom of the barrel commoner in a prestigious Academy traditionally reserved for the offspring of the Levantian elite. Walking among this fancy architecture, with its majestic domes and spires interspersed with statues and fountains just exacerbated this impression. He had flashes of his own hometown, which originally could rival Darsenius’ classiest neighborhoods in terms of historic value, only to be razed to the ground as means to purge his countrymen's sense of identity and heritage during the Levantian occupation.

Walking slowly so as to not get sweaty, he finally arrived at the monorail station where he was supposed to meet Ronel, only to find it virtually empty. Ten minutes later after their supposed meeting time, he heard light footsteps approaching.

"Wow, you look like you were run over by a bus." Ronel could be quite blunt with words whenever they were alone, he had long discovered. She was carrying an iced latte and wearing a light pink tank top and jean shorts with flip flops on.

Somebody clearly didn't put as much effort into this as I did, Altair thought, disappointed that she didn't dress up for him. But damn, she is still pretty, he admired as he threw a look at her petite oval face, made more delicate by her pale skin and soft features. Her glossy lips contrasted nicely with her long dark-brown hair. And her emerald eyes, looking at him with a faint twinkle... Alt had to look away, so she didn't catch him blushing.

"Thank you for the compliment, you sure know how to make a guy feel special," he retorted.

"I try," she smirked, patting him lightly on the shoulder. They headed to buy tickets at the vending machine, with her purchasing one while he just watched, whistling a tune.

"I have a pass," he answered the unasked question. As they reached the turnstile, he made a gallant gesture to usher her forward. Once she was on the other side of the barrier, he drew his lungs full of air, and after making sure no security guards were around and the rotating cameras were facing the other way, ran forward and leapt over the gate to join her.

"This is my pass," he stated in a cool tone, overcompensating on purpose to make it look like a joke.

"Wow, what a bad boy! I like it," she squealed mockingly while raising her hands to her face.

"I knew you would," he replied, hoping that she wouldn't connect the dots about the real reason behind his fare dodging.