The sun was peeking above the horizon when Gaius finally returned back to Sundown Residence. Isabelle was talking to someone at the door, and she looked up in surprise when the little boy came scooting back.

“Welcome back, M— Gaius.”

“Good morning.” Gaius looked at the woman she was talking to. “And you must be the caretaker. Thank you for taking care of this house for the entire time, and I hope we can continue working together in the future.”

“Of course, Your Excellency.”

Gaius wrinkled his brows and turned to Isabelle. “Have you been telling her something that you shouldn’t?”

“Of course not!” Isabelle stuck her tongue out, and the boy relaxed. She’d grown less formal, after what amounted to brainwashing on Nexus’ part wore off…although the boy couldn’t claim to be entirely innocent in making his stature bigger than it should be. His grandiose first true introduction, as the Master of the Library, had laid a foundation for Nexus to build up his image on…

The caretaker bowed. “It is not hard for me to guess that you are a distinguished personage, given its former owner.”

“Excellent.” Gaius nodded at the caretaker, and then turned to Isabelle. “I’ll be inside, so come in after you’re —”

The world shuddered, and the orange glow brought in from the sunrise retreated abruptly as a pure blue flooded the heavens and coloured the ground below with the same colour. Its origin was a mass of bright, bright blue, one packed together so densely that it looked like a solid cube of light.

“What the…” Gaius looked at the mass of blue floating in the sky. It reminded him of the recording he’d seen when Liamar descended, and as he continued to gaze at it, enthralled, rings of blue luminescence pulsed outwards from the solid glow at regular intervals. The sight reminded him of an insect trying to make its way into a membrane stretched tautly, creating ripples through the thin film as it forced its way through.

A disrespectful comparison, to be sure, and Gaius had the feeling it wasn’t the most accurate one either. In fact, now that he was paying attention, he had the indelible image of an insect trembling and struggling as a spider’s web caught it.

“Heads down, Your Excellencies!”

The caretaker’s voice roused Isabelle from her reverie, and Gaius forced her head down. A purest blue dyed the world, and Gaius could feel an incredible source of power bear upon the world. His mind rapidly constructed an image as the rings of light pulsed with an even greater intensity. It was that of a man, clad in a garment of silk. Water sprung out from the cup he was holding, overflowing onto the ground and splattering on the ground below. Two orbs rotated rapidly around his body, and as Gaius watched as the image raised the book in his left hand. The falling water dispersed evenly and fell like rain, feeling up crevices and craters with water.

No.

Not crevices and craters.

They were ponds and lakes, seas and oceans. What the boy was seeing right now was part of Orb’s creation, the Orb as he knew it, as the elemental gods shaped the world to make it conducive towards life. It was history. History as he knew it.

Historians should thank me or something, I guess. The presence dwindled as the rings of lights stopped emanating from the mass of blue, and the boy judged it safe to look up again.

The heavens had gained a new fixture. An azure star was shining in the eastern skies. It was, by his estimation, nearly ten thousand kilometres away, somewhere high above what Nexus called the Never-ending Ocean. As the glow weakened and receded, rain fell from the cloudless sky, and Gaius herded Isabelle into the house. He’d extended the offer to the caretaker, but she’d refused, on the grounds that she had more houses to clean.

“So, that was the God of Water. Conrah, He-Who-Grants.” Gaius tapped his finger on a nearby table.

Isabelle, whose face was pale, clenched her fist. “The Lifespring…”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Nakama and I felt Liamar descend a few weeks ago, but it wasn’t intense. We were in Heritage at that time, and all we felt was a presence slightly stronger than a Paragon. But…”

“It feels far more…scary, doesn’t it?” Gaius got and walked towards the sleeping Nakama. An equally asleep Nexus — the artificial intelligence had been knocked out ever since it tried some water from the Fountain of Life — was asleep beside her.

The little girl stirred to life after a few pokes on her cheek. After making a few lovable noises, she sat upright and rubbed her eyes.

“Morning, Nakama.” Gaius patted her head. Since when did she have a case of bad bed hair?

He turned to Isabelle, who was already shoving him aside to flatten the girl’s messy head. It was a silent statement of innocence, a “Nothing to do with me” and a “Shut up and let me work” rolled together and tossed at his face.

“Morning, Gaius!” Nakama smiled, as Isabelle continued to work on her hair with a small bowl of warm water, her free hand squishing the little girl’s cheek at her side.

She sniffed at the air. “Something’s different.”

Her attempt to sound serious made a smile appear on Gaius’ face, and he had to hide a grin when he replied.

“Really? What changed?”

“There’s another star now! It’s the cooling kind.”

Perplexed, Gaius exchanged glances with Isabelle, who asked, “What do you mean by ‘cooling kind’?”

Nakama mulled for a moment. “Like water, I guess. I felt it before in my long dream!”

Just what kind of dream did you have, O little sister of mine? Surely you didn’t go waltzing around the Divine Kingdom of every single god out there, did you? Gaius restrained an urge to retort, and settled for messing up her hair. Isabelle’s glares were rather painful, and after a while, Gaius had to stop.

The Knight’s glare was on the verge of scalding the boy, and it was the kind that came from psychological pressure rather than anything else. After reminiscing a bit about how life was so much easier before he picked up Isabelle, Gaius suddenly remembered something.

“That reminds me,” said Gaius. “I found a nearer school for Nakama…”

Isabelle’s eyes glittered, and the two huddled together as they began to discuss the little girl’s education.