One month later, Helena was standing in front of Swordhold’s prestigious elementary school. Every kid with a Gift would be invited to the capital in order to nurture their talents from an early age. People with Gifts were rare enough to warrant this kind of dispositions. The bearers of Minor Gifts had to settle with schools in smaller cities, the power of their Gifts being way less impressive.

The Consortium, the leading head of Europia, had taken these measure in answer to the apparition of Hollows, powerful monsters that seemed to care only for death and destruction. Some scholars linked their sudden arrival with the lack of mana that Mearth experienced, but nothing was proved, and hypothesis were still hypothesis to this day. The goal was to nurture powerful elements in order to repel the always stronger Hollows that seemed to appear randomly all around the continent. Thus, Gift bearers were taken in very early and were taught first with games and other ludic ways before slowly changing to a more martial approach.

Already, Helena could see that the young children were separated into two classes, one with offensive Gifts and the other with more miscellaneous Gifts that didn’t revolve around fighting with weapons and magic. Helena was in the former group, ‘Headseeker’ being a clearly deadly gift. By reading the list, she saw the names of most of her former students, only Sive and Ciaran were not there. Again. The former teacher tried to repress the bad feeling slowly creeping in her chest. Something was not right.

Helena’s maid, Celestine, urged her to enter the class hall of the school with a smile. Her parents weren’t able to come, they were kept busy by some noble business and apologised to her in advance. Helena didn’t mind. She knew what being an adult meant and she wasn’t about to hold a grudge against her lovely new parents for that.

She entered the classroom were a couple dozen kids were already there. The first day of school was meant to allow the new pupils to get to know each other, so the principal of the school would do her little welcome speech the next day.

Helena’s green eyes were darting around the room, looking for familiar faces. She had tied her hair in her peculiar loose bun, hoping that it would reignite memories in her former students, memories that could have been clouded by five years and a slight change in height and general appearance.

Helena’s hopes got rewarded pretty quickly when a group of four children came toward her moments after her entrance. One of them, a blonde haired boy slightly taller than the others came forward. “Miss Helena?”

She looked in his golden eyes. “I’m sorry that we weren’t able to speak sooner at the Cathedral of Churdilt.”

“No, it wasn’t your fault Miss, we had to act the part and couldn’t reasonably meet with random kids when our relatives were watchi- ouch!” Cathal threw his elbow in Liam’s ribs, a small frown visible on his face, -though his smiling green eyes told another story-.

“Stop calling Helena ‘Miss’, how do you think the others will interpret a kid speaking to another kid using that?” His asian face cracked up in a full smile as he turned toward Helena. His peculiar features stood up even more now that globalization was a foreign concept. “I’m glad to see you again Helena.”

Aisling was barely holding her laughter, the special conditions of the day doing nothing to improve her carefree personality. ‘Looks like they are as close as ever.’ Helena was happy to find most of her students well and alive.

Cillian, as quiet as ever, was looking at the little group, a little spark in his grey eyes the only thing indicating he also was having fun.

Aisling was looking intently at the door. “Now, Sive and Ciaran are the only one remaining unaccounted for!”

Liam looked at her strangely. “I don’t remember having seen their names on the lists.” Helena confirmed what he said with a nod. The atmosphere grew a bit heavier.

*****

‘Maybe they had issues…’ Cillian was not one to care about others. Since he was a small child experiencing feelings for the first time, he never felt anything toward others. He was well aware that his mentality was anything but normal. Humans were gregarious creatures, it was in their nature to live and communicate together.

And yet, for all his life, Cillian never felt empathy for others. ‘Why should I care about others? Why should their issues matter to me?’ Those were his thoughts, though he never spoke about them.

He learnt his lesson early: humans didn’t welcome the oddity in others. So he waddled around in his life, bearing masks based on the situations he was in. A sense of morale and justice, nurtured by his readings and experiences, allowed him to get by unnoticed and pass for a normal, but calm, person.

Well, that was the case until Cillian met Liam in grade 6. Perhaps it was due to the kind facade the blonde-haired man had, or perhaps it was thanks to the cracks he felt deep down in Liam’s mind, but the bright young man’s feelings and moods seeped into Cillian’s mind without any resistance. For the first time in his life, he cared about someone.

So, when Liam seemed disturbed by the absence of two of their classmates, Cillian tried to find why by using his own experience.

Contrary to most of the kids surrounding him, he was born in a poor neighborhood. Life wasn’t unbearable, but food was scarce at the end of the month and clothes were used as much as possible before being reused as rags for cleaning.

So when the news of a Gift bearer living in a poor district, masked women and men came for him. Luckily, his Gift ‘Scholar of the First Sin’ allowed him to replenish his mana pool by absorbing other people’s negative feelings and a few spells taught by his new grandfather helped him getting out of this thorny situation.

His game of tag with the thugs lasted all night long, Cillian mainly losing them in the sinuous roads of the poor districts and occasionally launching spells when he could, and left the young boy utterly exhausted. He knew that if another group assaulted him soon after the first one, he would have been done for. So if the missing classmates were the owners of somewhat less combat-ready Gifts, them being captured wasn’t that unlikely to happen.

The first half of the day had passed, and now the children were eating at school before going for the afternoon nap. Cillian opened his mouth, breaking the silence the group was in. “Maybe they got kidnapped.”

Everyone looked at him with dumbfounded looks on their face. ‘If you stopped looking at me with those round eyes each time I spoke, maybe I would speak more often.’

“What do you mean, Cillian?” As usual, Liam was the one to pick up the quickest on what he said.

“I already said that I got attacked by a bunch of masked people and nearly escaped them. Maybe they got caught in the same kind of situation.”

Miss Helena interjected, her worries and teacher instinct outweighing her hesitations to speak. “So you mean that if they were also from poor families, they could have been abducted by unknown people.” Cillian nodded.

Cathal added to the debate. “It wouldn’t be unusual for shaddy organizations to look for easy preys to brainwash and enrol. That’s what I would expect based on what I’ve read… before all that.” Aisling was nodding frantically besides him. Their former selves were very interested in high and low fantasy stuff and were in their element since the moment they were born in this new magical world.

Helena muttered. “I really hope the reincarnation just messed up and threw them too far from here for them to be at Swordhold now.” Nobody, not even herself, really believed in her words.

Cathal suddenly stood up, throwing his child’s fist against the table, a new resolve visible in his eyes. “We need to get stronger.” Everyone else nodded at his words while a tinge of panic was looming the eyes of Liam.