(POV: Jakov Mullein)

  It was her, I'm certain of it. The feel of her mana was entirely unmistakable to me, even if it had been over two years since Blake took her from us. I thought it to be a desperate hallucination of my mind coping with the sudden loss of my obsession, but it felt so alien and yet so incredibly nostalgic and familiar to me that there was no other possibility other than Hanah being the very source of the phenomenon that could be seen from basically the entire coastline of the Kingdom of Astelios.

  It was located quite a few kilometers off the shore and took the form of a beam of light connecting the ocean to the sky. At first, they thought it was a potential second phase of the invasion, but nothing changed even after it subsided just a few hours later.

  I was the only one who knew the truth about it. I didn't know how or why it happened exactly, but at least I knew who caused it. My class [Walker of the Twilight], a high epic-grade tier three class, was special in that regard. The Twilight mentioned in the class was a very special dimension that revealed much of the usually unseen.

  One particular perk of The Twilight was the ability to observe mana and magic in a way that was impossible otherwise. As a dimension 'in between' the etheric plane of mana and the current realm we were in, it functioned as the connector piece, funneling mana into this world for us to claim and use. I wasn't too sure on all the obscure details, but that was the gist I extrapolated from the vague hints dropped by the system's descriptions of my class and abilities.

  Every magic that was cast and all mana used were facilitated through the Twilight plane as a conductor. As such, the plane carried the entirety of the information bandwidth instilled in the invoked magic. On the actual realm's side, only the direct effect of the magic and some minute traces of information could be observed and worked with to gain intel.

  My connection to this realm was not a new addition of tier two or three, even my very first class was already partially involved in this. It had carried the name [Shadowstalker], but the 'shadow' it referred to turned out to be a lot more special than it seemed like at first.

  Because of all of this, I always had access to one particular information that was entirely inaccessible to most, the mana signature. From what I could tell, it was basically the signature of the soul inscribed onto the mana, which was used for many things that actually made magic possible in the first place.

  Only through the existence of this signature could one influence the marked mana with will and intent, which was the core foundation of every type of magic out there. Another thing it was used for was making casters a lot more resistant to their own harmful magic. It was a bit more of a niche topic, but it was technically still an open question in research. I had an answer, though, even if I couldn't entirely prove it. Not that I wanted to do that, however. I honestly couldn't care less about advancing magical research right now.

  The only thing I really cared for was Hanah. Even two years after we all believed her dead, my heart was still bound, clinging to the stubbornly remaining shreds of hope that we didn't actually know for certain that she was dead, since we never managed to recover her corpse or anything.

  The amount of disbelief and relief I felt simultaneously upon feeling a wave of mana marked by her soul's signature wash over the ocean and through the Kingdom of Astelios was entirely unreal to me, and I still couldn't believe that she was truly still alive out there.

  All this time she had desperately fought to survive, though she never returned to the surface for one reason or another. I couldn't even begin to imagine the amount of pain she had to endure, all the challenges and struggles she had to overcome. I wanted to see more of her, but now I had missed basically the entirety of her life, a story I would never get to experience in its entirety.

  And it was all the fault of Blake, that son of a bitch. I had planned and schemed to get my revenge, but it was all for naught. He basically went his own way and didn't have much more interaction with the rest of us. While he couldn't know what I was capable of, I also didn't know what he was capable of. His class was superior to mine, and he even leveled much faster than any of us did.

  All the while, I could only barely keep up with the best of us: Jane, Leyvin, Dahlia, and even Aurelia, who quickly shot up in levels after making basically the rest of the world depend on her grenades, which could close rifts and were made possible only through her specific set of skills.

  Still, even they only reached tier three somewhat recently. Meanwhile, Blake has been in that tier for easily over half a year by now. Though even that's when we got wind of it. For all we know, he might have reached it even sooner than any of us thought possible. If that were to be the case, he could even already be homing in to reach tier four, joining the strongest fighters of this realm just a measly two years after arriving here.

  While completely unimaginable for natives of this world, a silver spoon like the legendary tier one [Hero] class allows for growth completely unmatchable by anyone else. We tried and we failed, and now he's almost unstoppable. While he has not shown his true side to anyone except for me (indirectly) and Hanah, he may just bide his time until no one is his match anymore.

  Fuck, I'm so goddamn useless, I should have gone for the kill the moment I knew that he was trying to murder my Hanah and not try to somehow outlevel him. That was impossible from the very beginning anyway, and I knew that very deep down in my mind.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Maybe I could have even told the others that he was the reason for Hanah's 'death' to attack him together, but I couldn't know how they would react to that piece of information. For all I knew, they might just try to detain him somehow, or, even worse, not believe me at all. While Blake was evil beneath the surface, he was 'friendly' towards everyone else and had quite a good reputation back in school.

  No, telling my classmates now would be senseless, and trying to defame the fabled [Hero] with no evidence apart from my words will get me killed quicker than I can blink.

  The only way of proving my accusations would be Hanah herself speaking out against him, but I also couldn't know how she would react when face to face with him again. The Hanah I knew from two years ago would never openly seek confrontation with him, but who knew just how much she changed over the time she was gone? For all I knew, she might attack him the very instant she lays her eyes on him again.

  Another possible option was an attempt at complete avoidance. Except for me, no one knew that she was still alive. From her perspective, since she didn't know about me knowing, she was the only one that knew about her continued survival. If she continued staying hidden, Blake would never get wind of her existence, and a confrontation would never happen.

  ... Should I go looking for her? While I was missing a lot of information, the second outcome was more likely from what I knew about her personality. The first option was more favorable for me, though. If we wanted any chance of defeating him, we needed to unite against him, no matter how much I despised the idea of teaming up with the others.

  But what would I even say to her? How would I explain how I managed to find her. Would she hate me for everything I did, or better, didn't do? How much did she know anyway? There were so many open questions here that it all was nothing more than a big gamble.

  Still, wasn't that better than doing absolutely nothing and just letting things play out? I mean, maybe? I should wait like a week or so longer, just in case she comes back to us on her own terms, but after that, I should go look for her, even if it's definitely going to end up like a search for a needle in a haystack at that point. I don't have an effective way of traversing the water, so it's all a moot point anyway.

  I sat on the coast pondering further as the sun slowly began setting. I liked coming out here occasionally, observing the way the waves washed on the shore and how the glimmer from the sun made the water sparkle so beautifully. It was enchanting in a way that I only ever experience when looking at one person in particular. Since the beam of light that erupted a few days ago came from the sea, it was honestly a bit funny that she was somewhere in the direction I had been staring at for so long.

  The wind picked up a bit, and I mentally prepared myself to head back so I'd arrive back home before the sun went completely below the horizon. Before I could leave, though, I saw and felt something very unexpected. Since I was always partially inside of the Twilight plane, I could feel things that others couldn't, even when I wasn't actively concentrating or diving into the Twilight.

  It still felt much too sudden, though, when the thing I had been absentmindedly staring at was suddenly right in front of me, hovering in the air just a couple of meters away from the cliff I sat on. Maybe it was just my mind refusing to comprehend what I was seeing, recognizing but not acknowledging any information my eyes fed to my brain, but it honestly felt like some sort of semi-lucid dream instead of reality.

  Hovering motionlessly in front of me was a person I could only describe as an angel, and that very literally. Atop her head of flowing orange-blonde hair that beautifully shifted in color like it was made of lava sat a spiked, three-ringed halo in which the second ring was slowly rotating in the opposite direction of the other two rings. The outer ring had five prongs like spikes that pointed outwards. The whole thing was a bright off-white and somehow truly resembled the color of the sun on a cloud-free summer day.

  It also seemed offset slightly, almost imperceptibly being tilted away to the back and the side of her head. In the same glowing off-white of her halo, a pair of fiery wings adorned her back, motionless yet keeping her aloft somehow. With both halo and wings present, calling her an angel was probably the most fitting literal description available.

  She wore clothes similar to ones she had always worn, a simple combination of blouse and skirt, yet it seemed to suit her almost impossibly well. They also seemed slightly unreal, like they weren't made of any actual fabric but of something else entirely.

  She was just as small as I remembered, though she had grown a couple of centimeters from the last time I'd seen her. The feeling of fragility you used to get when looking at her past self was entirely gone, though, replaced by an almost uncanny aura of regality and power.

  Especially to my senses, she seemed to figuratively be bursting with power, leaking the droves of mana that overshot her already entirely filled capacity into the environment, creating aurae of mana that mesmerizingly filled the space around her.

  After a few seconds of silence had passed between us, she opened her mouth to speak, and a familiar yet foreign voice filled my ears. While it betrayed an unfamiliar confidence, it also faintly sounded like she hadn't spoken in a very long time and had to quickly reacquaint herself with actually using her mouth again.

  "Ehm, could you perhaps tell me where this is? I was looking for the Kingdom of Astelios, have you heard of it before? If so, how do I get there from here?"

  ...She didn't recognize me. Not that unexpected, though. Maybe if the me from two years ago was standing here right now, but Hanah wasn't the only one who had drastically changed in appearance. While it wasn't as extreme for me, we had all matured a lot more and adapted into society with both hair styles and choices in clothing. While not entirely true for some, we were mostly indistinguishable from natives of this world for those who had never seen us before.

  I waited just a second before replying as her emotionless eyes observed me with expected caution. "This is the Kingdom of Astelios," I told her with a slight smirk on my face. I pointed behind me, towards the direction I originally came from before going here. "If it helps you, the palace should be somewhere in that direction."

  "Oh, yes, thank you, good to know." While her reply had seemed a bit uneager, her eyes betrayed the relief she felt at being told that she was already in the correct place.

  A few more seconds of awkward silence passed between us before I reluctantly spoke again. "...Welcome home, Hanah. It's good that you're back."

  She froze in midair the very moment my words registered in her mind, turning to face me again with disbelief evident in her face. Even the three-ringed halo above her head had stopped rotating momentarily, which painted a slightly funny picture in the heat of the moment.

  "Sorry, what did you just say?"