Finally, the wind subsided, and a man with a scruffy beard and a somewhat relaxed demeanor stood before them, clad in a jet-black cloak. “Hey, Zenos, Velitra. You two doing good?” he asked.
“Master!”
“Gramps...”
As the pair rose to their feet in awe, their mentor cleared his throat. “Okay, so... I wanted to leave a record in case something happened to me,” he explained. “This circle’s made with both illusion magic and regeneration magic, and is one of my masterpieces. I drew it in invisible ink to keep it hidden, but I figured you two would find it. I set it to activate once you guys’ mana reached a certain level of proficiency.”
So this was a recording from the past. Velitra and Zenos exchanged glances, then turned back toward the figure of their mentor.
“I tried to tell you everything I wanted to during our time together, but there were things I couldn’t say. But I thought once you were fully-fledged healers, you had the right to know the kind of man your magic teacher was. So I decided to leave you this.” Their mentor went silent for a moment before continuing. “I was originally an elite healer working for the Royal Institute of Healing. Which means I was actually way more important than either of you knew. So show me some respect! You especially, Zenos.”
Despite being a recording, the illusion of their mentor pointed accurately at Zenos.
“There were hardly any injuries I couldn’t heal, and I think people at the Institute liked me well enough. Back then, there was this brazen kid in my neighborhood who often badgered me, saying he wanted to study under me. I kept brushing him off, saying ‘some other time,’ but being an elite healer meant I had to deal with royalty and nobility, so I was honestly very busy. Eventually, he stopped coming to my house.”
Their mentor looked into the distance.
“One winter day, I learned that the kid had a complicated family situation. Not that I should be telling either of you this, but he lived alone with his grandmother, who had trouble walking. She hobbled over to me with her cane in hand and said the kid had died. I couldn’t believe my ears,” he explained, his voice echoing softly in the silent underground space.
“The grandmother didn’t seem to know what I did for a living, only knowing me as the kind neighborhood man who played with her grandson, so she’d come to tell me out of courtesy. From her, I learned that the kid had been severely ill for a long time. That was when I understood—he’d wanted to study healing magic under me to cure himself. They couldn’t afford treatment, and he didn’t want to be a burden on the grandmother, what with her mobility issues and all.”
Their mentor smiled sadly.
“It was a somewhat rare illness, granted, but I never noticed at all. I was doing cutting-edge research on healing magic and circles day and night to better treat the patients at the Royal Institute, and still I didn’t notice. In short, I wasn’t paying proper attention to that kid. I would puff up my chest at the gratitude I received from the upper-class citizens, nobles, and royalty, but...I couldn’t notice a kid right in front of me was sick.”
A long silence befell the underground chamber before their mentor let out a deep, regretful sigh. He’d witnessed life and death many times over, but this one death he’d never been able to move past. He went on to explain that the kid’s death had sparked his obsession with resurrection magic.
“I don’t want you to follow in my footsteps, so I won’t go into details. But after spending a lot of time on it, I perfected the theory—or so I thought—and I attempted to bring back that kid using resurrection magic. However...” He paused momentarily, then continued, “Next thing I knew, the magic circle had vanished and half a day had passed. It hit me then, hard, that a number of terrifying curses had befallen me.”
The word “curses” echoed heavily in the air.
“I won’t claim to understand the logic behind them, but one of the curses was that everyone who knew my name would eventually forget about me. The other was that I needed to follow two rules, or I would die. One rule was that I couldn’t tell anyone about the resurrection magic or the curses. The other was that I could never cast healing magic again.”
Velitra and Zenos silently stared at their mentor’s face.
“Well, I am telling you two about the curses through this magic circle, but by the time you see this, I’ll probably already be long gone, so it’s fine. You must think I’m an idiot, brooding over some kid and losing everything because of it. In the end, I had nothing left and nowhere to go, so I went to the slums.”
He went on to explain that, while the uniform of the healers at the Royal Institute of Healing was a pure white, he’d donned a jet-black cloak—the complete opposite—as punishment for his sins.
“My plan was to just die somewhere, but to my shock, what did I see but a kid trying to cast resurrection magic without even needing a magic circle! I panicked and smacked him in the head. That was you, Zenos.”
“Gramps...”
The illusion crossed his arms in an exasperated manner. “I didn’t want you to make the same dumb mistakes I had, so I decided to at least teach you how to control your power. But then you went and brought a friend—Velitra. And the both of you turned out to be so talented that I found myself enjoying being your teacher. So much for my plans to just go and die somewhere, eh?” His tone was resentful, but his gaze was wholly warm. “But I’m a cursed man. Anything could happen to me at any moment. So I decided to leave you this message.”
With a dramatic sigh, he continued, “Zenos. Velitra. Thanks for calling a man like me your master. You two were the best students, and the best sons, I could’ve asked for.”
Their mentor’s last words as he lay dying, having broken one of the curse’s rules and used healing magic on the pair, echoed in Zenos’s mind. “I have no regrets, though. I didn’t fail this time.” This man, who at his peak had failed to save someone close to him and lost everything for it, had perhaps found salvation in the end.
With a flickering light, the illusion of their mentor began to fade.
As Velitra sobbed beside him, Zenos said the words he’d always meant to say, that somehow he’d been too embarrassed to, once upon a time. “Thank you, master.”
Although the illusion shouldn’t have been able to hear him, Zenos still felt as though their mentor, wrapped in a faint light, nodded and smiled at him one last time.
The pair sat there for a while after the light had completely faded.
“That was just like gramps, wasn’t it?” Zenos said finally, breaking the silence.
“Yeah...”
“Though he was kinda missing something important there, huh? I always thought he was perceptive, but he didn’t know you—”
“He sure didn’t,” muttered Velitra in annoyance, cheeks streaked with tears. “What did he mean, ‘the best sons’? I’m a woman!”
Zenos chuckled, and Velitra broke into a laughing fit. The sounds of the two former best friends’ laughter filled the air, bright as a memorial flame that could never be extinguished.