Cypher spent most of the night thinking about this new revelation. It had taken him completely by surprise and he couldn't even think of anything to say. How do you hide the fact that you're the only family someone has left, even if not by blood?

Old feelings of inadequacy popped up in his mind, remnants of his days spent at the Galvan manor wondering why his family had abandoned him to that fate. At that time he hadn't known who his father was, and as far as he was concerned his mother had died. But what of other family members? Uncles? Aunts? Siblings? If Alvin was his Godfather why hadn't he tried to find him? Why hadn't he reached out?

Surely he should have known that Tyrina was Serenade's sister, right? Then again, not many people knew that due to Serenade's removal from the family. Something like that might be understandable then.

In any event, Cypher wasn't sure he was ready to forgive Alvin for this. He still cared about his former mentor, and he was even still willing to help with this exploration. But he was confused and hurting. On top of that, Alvin had compromised his trust for the first time.

Trust was hard to come by. Cypher realized this in full after the betrayal of Fergus and Itzel. Cypher didn't imagine Alvin was working for the Order, nor that he was even capable of such a tremendous betrayal, but it would take Cypher some time to restore his trust in Alvin.

He crawled from his tent and saw that Alvin was already awake and reading a scroll. Alvin lowered it cautiously, and he looked at Cypher apologetically. Cypher only nodded a good morning to Alvin and went to relieve himself outside.

After he returned, Alvin had packed up their tents and was relighting the torches leading down the corridor to the locked area. "Cypher I just wanted to say that-" began Alvin, but Cypher shook his head and headed down the corridor to the sealed doorway.

"Right... well, my assistants should be arriving soon. I suppose I'll just go wait for them to get here near the Slingate if that's alright with you. Feel free to uh... look around," said Alvin carefully. There was no sign of the usual cheery tone in his voice, only one of careful trepidation.

Cypher grunted and continued walking. He grabbed one of the lit torches and carried it along with him. The dim glow illuminated the walls, and Cypher took note of many depictions of Conductors, Zightbeasts, and other things he didn't recognize. He wasn't as well versed in studying ancient ruins as Alvin was, but even he could see that these carvings were made very carefully and with much attention to detail.

They seemed to be telling some kind of story. From the looks of it, as he took note of seven large figures more prominent than the others, it was a recounting of the Arkwar. "These must be the Guardians... and these," he said to himself as he moved his hands lower and ran his fingers along two familiar-looking items, "must be the Arks of Ages and Blood..."

Cypher was interested but had no idea what this could mean. He looked up to see that while he had been admiring these carvings, he had arrived at the large stone doorway. Nothing about it seemed too imposing but as he pressed his hand against it, he could feel that it wasn't cool to the touch like the walls or carvings had been.

He raised his torch to get better light and then saw a handprint in the middle surrounded by raised rays of light carved directly into the door. He went to reach for the handprint but stopped when he heard voices approaching.

"I don't know why I even thought you'd be useful in here. If you keep stumbling around like that you'll break something... AGAIN. Maybe keep your eyes on the ground, yeah? You know, watch where you're going?" Said an obviously annoyed woman.

"Look dude, who knows what we'll find here! Last time we went ruin diving with Professor Lardok, I found that sweet ass arrowhead. I didn't have to do assignments for a week straight! Best believe I'm gonna look around to find anything I can! Maybe this time I'll find something that'll get me out of assignments for two weeks! Ooh! Or maybe even get me out of class altogether!" Replied a young man in a laid-back tone that was all too familiar to Cypher.

"One can only hope. A day in class without you would be a Godsend. Maybe then we could all get some work done!" replied the woman and the man simply scoffed. The sound of someone stumbling could be heard next, followed by a groan of annoyance from the woman.

Something about those two voices reminded Cypher of someone, two someones actually, and he almost couldn't believe his ears as the realization clicked into place within his mind.

"No, Mister Kazen, you won't be getting out of class no matter what artifacts you find. As for you Miss Cilan, please don't encourage him. He's enough of a handful as it is," replied Alvin with an exasperated sigh.

The three of them stepped into the light of Cypher's torch and he continued to stare nervously at the wall. Why was it these two? Alvin hadn't mentioned anything about it being them so why the hell were the two of them here? Panic overtook him for a moment and he lowered his head and waited for them to notice him.

"Hi there, you must be the friend Alvin mentioned. I'm glad to see you're joining us on this..." Melodi stopped dead in her tracks as she stared at the back of Cypher's head and Alex bumped into her from behind.

"Hey, what the hell Mel? Why'd you stop so suddenly..." Alex began to complain but went silent as well, and Cypher could feel their eyes burning into him.

"Hey guys... long time no see," Cypher turned to face them as he spoke and held out his hands as he flashed them a shy, apologetic smile.

Alex scowled, and Melodi frowned as they stared at him. Cypher felt bits of shame gnawing at his stomach, but Alex quickly dismissed them as he reared back and socked Cypher right in the jaw. It had hurt, but not that much thanks to Cypher's rank-one body. He rubbed his jaw and Alex looked at him angrily.

"FIVE. YEARS! Five years and not ONCE did you even bother to send so much as a postcard. What the hell is wrong with you man? I thought you had gotten yourself into some kind of serious trouble and been expelled. Nobody would tell me anything about where you went!"

Alex was yelling quite loudly and Alvin and Melodi stood silent as Alex went on, "Why didn't you say anything? I thought we were friends. I thought we had gotten past what happened! I was stuck thinking that maybe you had gone and left because of that. But no! All this time I've been worried for nothing, you little shit!"

"Alex that's enough!" said Melodi and she pulled him back by his collar. Turning then to Cypher she looked him over and nodded as if deciding something, "I think you owe at least Alex an explanation, but what happened to my tour hmm? You were supposed to show me around or did you forget after you found your special tree?"

Cypher let them get it out of their systems and stood still while they berated him. He deserved it if he was being honest, and it had been a whole five years since he had just up and vanished in their eyes. Alex was obviously more upset than Melodi, and it was made quite clear by the fact that he kept calling Cypher a dumbass every other sentence.

"So, care to explain what you've been doing all this time?" finished Alex.

Cypher nodded slowly, "Look there are reasons why I had to leave the Academy and I can't talk about them. I'm sorry I can't say more, but one day I'll explain everything if I can, okay?" Alex scoffed and looked even more upset.

Cypher suddenly wasn't so mad at Alvin anymore. Having to keep secrets from people in his life was more difficult than he had imagined. When he had chosen to leave, he hadn't been face-to-face with Alex and Melodi. That had of course made it all the easier to follow through and decide to keep his departure a secret.

But now that he was facing the consequences of that decision, it was much harder to pretend he was somehow sparing them from the harm of knowing him. Melodi less so, but Alex had every right to be upset with him.

If they were going to be working together, Cypher knew that he needed to make amends if he could. Beyond that, he also wanted to at least try to repair their friendship if possible.

He had missed Alex in those long years, and if not for Spark, Cypher felt that he would have gone crazy from the loneliness. That said, he knew that what he had done was wrong, and if he applied how he felt about Alvin to how Alex felt about him, he could understand how it wouldn't be easy to resolve this.

You'll notice a clear lack of messages in the author's notes. That's because I need your help. I'm facing an emergency and if you can help it would mean the world to me. I won't go into details here but I will leave this link https://gofund.me/3eeb6afa If you can't help directly, sharing the link around is just as helpful. I absolutely hate doing this but the dire situation calls for dire action.

Given the circumstances, I won't have access to my PC for what might be quite a while. During this time I won't be able to upload chapters as regularly or possibly even at all. As such when I return I'll be dumping a lot of chapters to make up for the lost time, so I hope you guys don't mind the wait. I have chapters lined up for the next week. I'm hoping that by then things will be clearing up for me IRL but if not we'll go from there.