It was the middle of the night when Gust finally returned to the world. He quickly decided to remain in Saith’s home. He didn’t know who might be waiting for him outside, but Gust didn’t want to find out quite yet.

Overwhelmed didn’t even begin to describe the way he felt.

Were Isaac and his friends still waiting? Did they take shifts, eager to catch the Demon as soon as he appeared? Would the Masters step in to help this time, or would they be so angry Gust killed someone that they put him down themselves?

Gust knew he acted in self-defense. If anything, he expected Isaac’s group to get in trouble, but Gust learned weeks ago that he couldn’t assume anything about this place.

His head was a storm. Gust wanted to be excited about his new cultivation methods, and he was, but a small part of him wondered whether he would live long enough to reach even the first level of the Wolf Star body. If his father had formed ten stars, he wanted to do eleven, if not twelve.

But there was no point in having such dreams if Gust couldn’t survive the month. He wanted to use that time to progress as much as possible. He wanted to astound his father’s soul sliver with the work he was willing to put in, but in order to do that, Gust would need to leave the safety of his father’s home.

When Gust laid down to sleep in the bed beside Saith’s sword, he was hoping to relax for the night before he dealt with the unknowns of tomorrow.

But when he looked up at the ceiling and his eyes grew accustomed to the change in light, instead of simple wooden planks shrouded in darkness, Gust saw an immense cloud of colorful, swirling dust amidst a sparse landscape of dark red stars.

It was oddly splotchy with some portions of pure black which would only reveal their stars when he looked at them from a different angle. He blinked several times and rubbed at his eyes, but the image wouldn’t go away.

Quickly, Gust noticed that it wasn’t just on the ceiling, either. He saw himself floating in the abyss of space, though he saw far fewer stars than he was used to, and they were a deep maroon. He looked down and noticed one such maroon star that was far larger than the rest, but still just a dot in the night sky.

Gust lost his breath and became disoriented. He looked down into the vastness of space and was struck with intense vertigo. His head swam until he slapped the bed beneath him and wrapped his fists in the sheets, just to be sure they were still there.

When he steadied himself, Gust laid in bed and watched the majestic night sky in detail he had never thought possible. Gust initially thought it was a spell Saith cast on the room, but if that had been true his good eye would have been able to see the illusion too.

But it couldn’t.

As such, Gust didn’t know what he was looking at. It didn’t match the night sky either at home, or in this world. It was entirely different, and sparsely populated at that.

Gust recognized the form of a galaxy, though he had only seen them in pictures. It was the largest object he could find, but something about it was wrong.

Gust was no astronomer but had seen the Hubble ultra-deep field image. It showed numerous galaxies within a portion of the sky that scientists considered ‘dark.’ The longer they looked, the more galaxies they found, and that concept held true for every direction in space.

No matter where he looked, all Gust could find was that lonely, maroon galaxy. It struck him as strangely disturbing, but the beauty was undeniable.

For over an hour, Gust sat there with his hands behind his head. He didn’t think about the boys plotting to murder him, nor the gods he plotted to murder himself. All he cared about were the purples and pinks and reds that seemed frozen in place so many light years away.

It was only when Gust closed both eyes to sleep that he understood what was happening.

The surrounding image didn’t go away, but it did change. The dark spots that slightly obscured his vision were gone and Gust suddenly made a connection.

The very same dark splotches had appeared in his vision earlier that day. They went away after several hours, as his brain grew accustomed to the new, albeit blank, information his black eye was sending it.

Gust thought he finally understood. This wasn’t a spell Saith left behind, it was a side-effect of his black eye!

“So, my left eye can see during the day and the right sees at night? Or maybe one eye sees light and the other sees darkness?” Gust realized this didn’t fully make sense, but he didn’t have any other way to explain it.

The right, black eye was blind, but not completely blind. The black splotches his good eye noticed during the day were just his brain putting together two images. One nearly pure darkness, the other completely normal.

Now, he was in almost the opposite scenario. One eye saw the nearly empty universe around him, despite the house that should have been in the way, while the other saw the dark room he laid in.

As for why this was happening, Gust was at a loss. He knew it had something to do with his strange eye, but that was it.

All night, the unyielding galaxy mocked Gust with its image. It hung above him looking down like the eye of Sauron, whether he wanted to see it or not. Even when he turned over, there was the bright red star to dominate his vision. It was much smaller than the galaxy, but the brightness made up for its diminutive size.

At first, the beauty was overwhelming. After a few hours, it became cloying like cake that was so sweet it made you want to vomit. Gust longed for pure darkness so he could sleep, but nothing helped.

Just when he was beginning to accept that what he was seeing was real, Gust noticed one glaring problem with that theory: where was the sun?

Night only happened because the sun couldn’t shine on the entire earth at the same time. Well, Gust couldn’t see any of the earth with his right eye. It should have been blocking his view of the stars beneath him, and the sun with them, but since the earth wasn’t there, why didn’t he see this huge ball of fire in the middle of an inky sea?

Gust was sure he wasn’t seeing an illusion, and yet it didn’t make sense. This was just one of the thoughts that plagued his mind all night.

Gust didn’t always wear glasses. For years, he wondered how the other kids in class could read what the teachers wrote on the board. He would sit in the front when possible, or copy another student’s notes, but eventually his mother realized he had terrible vision.

It was just normal to him, after all. Gust had no idea everyone else saw the world in such clear detail. Everything changed when he received that first pair of lenses.

And now, it was like he had taken several steps backwards. Gust was half-blind, and it brought up feelings of frustration that he thought were finally gone. Losing vision in one eye was massively disorienting and it threw off his depth perception entirely.

The worst part, though, was this new dichotomy. “Why couldn’t I be blind at night and see space during the day?” he wondered. At least then he would be able to sleep.

But no. It was an inconvenience all day and night long and Gust’s frustration only grew until morning.

With the very first rays of light, however, the universe faded away. Whether he had one eye open or two, it seemed his vision returned to normal. His new normal, anyway.

When Gust rose from bed, he closed his right eye. When it was open, and not seeing anything, it threw him off and filled the right side of his vision with black fog. Over time, as he learned yesterday, Gust’s brain would get used to it and correct his vision, but he wanted a better way. By leaving that eye closed, it seemed to signal his brain to turn it off.

Gust assumed this didn’t work at night because the eye could actually see then. Now, the black eye didn’t register anything but the faint aura his core emitted, so the brain could safely ignore it. That was how Gust understood it, anyway.

When he was sure he could function half-blind without making a fool of himself, Gust calmed his nerves and wedged the front door open just enough to peek out.

No one was there.

While he wasn’t exactly looking forward to the confrontation with Isaac and his friends, Gust found himself oddly disappointed. He slowly crept outside and looked around. People filled the paths, running their usual chores, but none paid him any attention.

With a sigh, Gust spun in place several times. He finally shrugged and gave it some thought.

Well, if it were him, he would probably let his enemies think they were safe. “A frightened turtle would never leave its shell,” he thought. Isaac and his friends were probably just waiting.

While Gust knew that had to be it, there was very little he could do about it. If the Masters didn’t step in when that boy tried to kill him, why would they step in next time? Gust might be able to cultivate next to his father’s house, and collect his meals quickly, but he would still need to leave to perform his duties.

When they finally came for him, Gust just hoped the threat of the Swordsman’s wrath would be enough to keep him safe.

Before leaving, Gust walked around to the back of the house. There was no body, but a dark blood stain remained. It sent of jolt of fear through Gust’s heart and he resisted the urge to flee back into the house. It was his only safety, but if Gust ever wanted to be strong enough to no longer need any safe place, the first thing he needed to do was stop hiding.

Just as he turned toward the courtyard, however, he found Master Ephraim with his hands clasped behind his back and a small smile on his face.