GUARDIANS NEVER DIE

Three Guardians are said to have defended humanity and the Traveler in their most dire hour. A Hunter, of flesh and blood, torn from his past into the future. A Titan, of metal and circuit, searching for her true purpose and identity. And a Warlock, born of both Light and Dark, eager to prove herself to her comrades. This is their legend.

"Legends are carved across history by the brave."

- Grimoire of the Guardians

There are many tales, told throughout the city that speak of Legendary Heroes, Guardians who stood out in history as the most adept

warriors the light had ever had the pleasure of shining upon. The Hunter of flesh and blood, his memories bringing knowledge of the

forgotten past. The Titan of metal and circuits, always searching for her purpose and identity. The Warlock born from light and

darkness, always seeking to prove herself to her comrades. But every Legend has a beginning, and these heroes were no exception.

The scene ahead of the Ghost was that of tragedy, of panic. An old highway from the Golden Age, still packed and blocked with the cars of those who had attempted to escape the collapse, the end of civilization. As she flew closer, she could see that some still contained skeletons within them. One car held two skeletons, a male and female judging from their bone structure. Their skeletal hands still held each other in their final embrace before death. Giving a slight rotation of her rear half, she moved on. She had to stay focused.

As a Ghost of the Traveler, she had to find someone to be her partner, to take on the title of a Guardian. Someone dead, that is. Or she could search in the City, of course. There were plenty of live citizens hoping to have a chance at the recruitment process. The armies of the Fallen were not enough to deter people from their choice to fight back, but it was enough to bolster the courage of volunteers. It'd be easy to venture into the City and simply ask someone if they'd like to become a Guardian.

But she had a feeling. Ghosts were able to revive those who had enough light in them when they died, using said light of their souls to regenerate them. Nobody had been revived in quite a while though, it had been nearly a decade since the last one. Very few humans had much light within them to begin with, and it took a soul mostly pure of heart in order to generate enough light to be revived, especially with how long it'd been since the collapse and the rate of deterioration for light.

However, when someone with enough light in them WAS revived, and then proceeded to become a Guardian, they usually became the best ones. They learned how to harness the power of the light quicker, how to repel the darkness better, and they were ferocious fighters, always leading the charge on Fallen enemies and opponents of the light. That's what the Ghost wanted, to be the Ghost of someone who would go on to be the best Guardian that there could be. She wanted to be the Ghost that found the next leader of the Vanguards, or something similar.

Unfortunately, it looked like there wasn't much to look at here. Quite a few skeletons, but none had nearly enough internal light to be revived. With an exasperated sigh, she turned to leave, planning to head back to the wall. With some luck, she'd be able to evade the Fallen Pirates, and manage to not be humiliated when she returned without an accompanying Guardian. Everyone had said that it'd be a fool's gambit to think that anymore dead could be revived from the Golden Age, and it looks like they'd been right-

Suddenly, she felt something. It was a warm feeling, as though she'd suddenly floated into a ray of sunshine. She looked around, but couldn't see anything. Finally, she aimed her eye at the ground, and immediately her sensors overloaded. The body and bones had completely disappeared from years of erosion and decomposition, but a soul's presence was still there, burning bright with light. Quite a lot of light, actually. This was the break she'd been hoping for. The Ghost prepared to perform a revival, full of excitement. This individual had obviously been dead for quite a while, and still had managed to retain an enormous amount of light within them. They were bound to be destined for greatness, they had to be!

The Ghost made ready to generate a new body out of the light surrounding the soul, and some extra that she'd stored just in case. Focusing her energy on the soul, she concentrated on harnessing all of her light towards the revival. A blue light began to emanate from the air, and she split into a spherical form to expand the radius of the light a bit. The light grew brighter and brighter, until it looked almost white rather than blue.

Suddenly there was a flash, and a human lay on the ground in front of her, wearing a black undersuit and pads of basic armor she'd generated from the surrounding spinmetal. He was a male, likely around twenty years old. This was a good sign, younger usually meant fitter, more physically adequate bodies. She'd have to get him back to the City as fast as possible, or risk him dying again from the Fallen pirates. He began to stir slightly, giving a soft grunt, and she waited for him to wake up.

"Our old worlds have grown feral - rabid beasts with teeth of rust and ruin. But such beasts are meant to be tamed. Or broken."

- Grimoire of the Hunters

Hunters stalk the wilderness beyond the City, harnessing the Light to reclaim the secrets of our lost worlds. They are daring scouts

and stealthy killers, expert with knives and precision weapons. Hunters blaze their own trails and write their own laws.

Ow. His head hurt. His arms hurt. His legs hurt. Everything just… hurt. All over, he felt as though his skin had been burned, like he'd stood in the sun too long. But as quickly as the pain had come, it began to fade away. It was replaced with a cool feeling of a breeze on his skin. He was wearing something, he could feel it tight on his body. Some kind of skintight suit. Curious, he wanted to see what the situation was. Ignoring the blinding light of the sun on his eyelids, he forced them open. There was nothing but bright light for a moment, and then his vision began to adjust. He could see trees and grass, he was outside. There were a few rocks nearby and-

He saw the cars. Destroyed, burnt to rubble, rusting away. Hundreds of them. Why were there so many cars that looked so… old? What happened? Where was he-

Things came rushing back to him, flashes of memory. An enormous white orb, the Mars discovery. The technological advances, scientific breakthroughs, human lifespans tripling. He saw it all as it came back to him, along with personal memories. His family, the twins and his parents. His trip to Russia, to meet with a friend of his to go trekking across the country. And he was-

"Guardian?" He heard a voice, feminine, and somewhat robotic sounding. "Eyes up Guardian!"

What was this thing she kept calling him? A Guardian? He turned his head to face the voice, and jumped a little. Hovering in front of him was a polygonal, metallic… thing. It wash't a robot, but it wasn't organic either. The front looked somewhat like a star, with four points. When it turned, he could see that there was a reverse side to this thing as well, making it symmetrical. Whatever it was, it was sentient.

"It worked… you're alive!" The floating object sounded giddy, as though it were happy. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He furrowed his eyebrows, and tried again.

"He…hello?"

"Oh good, you can talk." Now the object sounded relieved. He didn't like not knowing what was going on.

"Who are you?"

It turned its blue eye to face him, and rotated its polygonal segments. "I'm a Ghost. Actually, now, I'm your Ghost." It moved a little in the air, still giving off the vibe of just being given a present. "You've been dead a long time, so you're gonna see a lot of things that you won't understand." He looked down at his hands, and flexed them, to make sure they were working. Dead? He couldn't have been dead. It was only a few moments ago that'd he'd been driving down the road towards the highway exit when… when…

The Ghost looked at him, examining him like a child. "Are you alright?" it asked curiously.

"There was another car," he said aloud, helping his mind remember the details. "It stopped in front of me, I was forced to pull over. They took me out of the car, and told me they wanted my tech. I gave it to them, all of it. And then…"

The Ghost now looked eager for more details. "And then?"

He shrank a little, remembering clearly. "And then they stabbed me anyway, and threw my body onto the side of the road. I watched them steal my car and drive away as I… died." He said the last word carefully, as though saying it too recklessly would cause him to do exactly that. He turned to look at the Ghost. "I guess I did die. But how am I back then? Is this the afterlife, or have we found a cure for death now?"

The Ghost spun its segments around the spherical blue orb that connected all of it together. "Not exactly a cure, but… I can do something pretty close. Kind of a special case here though, you're the only one I've been able to revive." He looked around the landscape, and began to appreciate the desolateness of it. He saw the bones of those who had fallen, some still in their cars. He shivered a little.

The Ghost eyed him again. "Do you have a name?" He looked at it, confused. Then he realized what it was asking. He struggled to remember.

"I'm uh…" It was just out of reach, like a buoy in an stormy ocean. Suddenly it flashed in his mind, and he held onto it like one would a life preserver. "Matt," he said. "My name is Matt." The Ghost moved a little in the gain of this new knowledge. "What's your name?" he asked it.

It flew back a foot, stunned in light of the question. "Well, I… I'm a Ghost, I don't really have a name. You can give me one if you'd like. You are my Guardian, after all."

His eyebrows came together again, scrutinizing this term. "What is it you keep calling me? A Guardian? What is that?" Almost on cue, an animalistic roar sounded off in the distance. It didn't sound too close, but it didn't sound far off either. Matt had no clue what could make that noise, but he didn't want to find out.

Apparently the Ghost had the same idea. "I'll explain later, but for now, we need to get you back to the City. To do that, we're gonna need a ship. We are near the Cosmodrome after all, so there should be some kind of ship in there. Probably old though, likely a relic at this point." Matt had no idea when a cosmodrome had been built here, but the Ghost seemed to know what it was doing. It did make him wonder though, how long had he been dead?

The Ghost suddenly disappeared in a flash of blue light. A blue grid materialized itself around Matt's head, and turned solid into a helmet. "Don't worry, I'm still with you. I've used some of the surrounding spinmetal to build most of your suit. Quickly, we need to get inside the wall." He didn't know what spinmetal was, but he could see the wall clear as day. It had to be twelve stories high, and he could see that the structure continued for miles. Spying an open door with a staircase roughly 200 yards in front of him, he began to run towards it, meandering through the tight spaces of the jammed cars.

"So," he began, attempting to make conversation, "I can name you, you said?"

"If you'd like," said its voice in his head. It seemed to come straight from his mind. It still sounded feminine though. Maybe it was a girl?

"Okay, so I need to stop thinking of you as an 'it', and more as a she. You sound like a girl."

The voice came back, this time sounding a bit short. "Well, I'd hope so. I am female, after all."

Excellent, he'd guessed right. "So a ghost… ghost like a banshee, or like, a holy ghost, from the bible?"

It was becoming impatient with his banter. "I am a Ghost, and I used the power of the light to bring you back from the dead. Whatever category that falls in."

"Holy ghost it is then…" he muttered. He walked through the building, his footsteps impacting against the metal floor. "I can think of a few things off the bat, in that case. There's Angel, though I think that's a bit cliché. Mary, mother of Jesus, but that sounds a bit too… human for you I guess."

The Ghost said nothing, listening to him. "So that leaves me with Seraph, or Gabriel, and Gabriel doesn't sound too feminine."

"The first one," said the Ghost. "What was it again?"

"Seraph?" he asked. "It's the highest in the hierarchy of angels. You like that?"

It was silent for a moment, and then responded, "Yes, I do. You may call me Seraph." "

Excellent, now I can call you something other than just 'Ghost'," he said.

Matt stepped into an open room. Shadows assaulted him, blinding him to anything else in there. He could hear a few clangs as something metal in the darkness above fell below into the void. "Fallen thrive in the dark, we won't. I need to find us more light." Seraph instantly materialized in front of him, and began to emit a white glow, like a flashlight. She flew off into the distance, and Matt saw that the chamber was at least a few hundred feet in length, with maybe a depth of forty feet below him and sixty feet above him from his balcony. He watched as she stopped at a panel on a wall, and a blue beam blazed from her center. It hit the panel, and he assumed it was messing with the power source. Sure enough, the large lights overhead came on, and illuminated a terrifying scene.

Creatures with four arms hung from the ceiling, on pillars in the chamber, and from just about everywhere else in the building. They wore red garments, and shouted in a foreign tongue. There were so many, he couldn't even hope to count them all. He glanced back to Seraph, and saw two flying drones chasing her through the air.

"Fallen!" she cried. He would have usually retorted with something sarcastic due to the obviousness of her statement, but he still remained in awe at the sheer number of them. Seraph flew down to him, having lost the two drones. "Quick, through here! I can see a rifle on the floor!"

She opened a mechanical door that slid upward into the ceiling. He slid under it and saw the rifle she was talking about. He picked it up, and felt the weight of it, bracing himself to fire. It wasn't unlike the automatic rifles he'd had experience with in his time, and he was used to how it felt. He sprinted through the corridors, frantically trying to reach an exit.

Two of the fallen jumped in front of him. He shouldered the rifle, and pulled the trigger. Luckily there were still bullets in the magazine. The projectiles ripped through their bodies, and they fell with consecutive thumps. Another at the end of the hallway attempted to fire on him. This one was missing its two bottom arms, with stumps instead and little caps over the severed limbs. Aiming again, he let off a few shots. The Fallen's head exploded in a shower of white, with some ethereal vapor trailing from the hole in it's neck. The body slumped to the ground, and did not move. Stepping over the corpse, Matt continued on.

It took him a while, but managing to evade most of the Fallen required some effort. He finally reached the exit through a broken wall in a large tunnel. He stepped out into the sun again, and saw that it was beginning to set. "Alright Seraph, where's this ship of ours?"

A pulsing green light emitted itself on his helmet's HUD, until Seraph said, "Through that building over there. I'm detecting low levels of energy from a vessel. It's not gonna be enough to break orbit, but it can get us to the City." A grey objective marker appeared on his screen near the doorway of the building. Once again, he entered a full sprint, only pausing to acknowledge a red flare that shot into the sky.

"What's that?"

"A signal," replied Seraph. "The Fallen are pirates. Any kind of technology they can get their hands on, including me, is a profit for them."

He smiled. "Well, don't worry. They'd have to get through me first."

Suddenly the air in the sky began to ripple as light bent around it, and what was presumably a Fallen ship appeared in the air. "I know! That's what I'm afraid of!" exclaimed Seraph, now with worry in her voice. "Move!"

Not needing to be told twice, he continued to run towards the building. He cleared the doorway, and entered a hallway that took him to a large room. The floor was almost completely dirt, but sure enough, a space-faring ship was entangled in some wires. He recognized the model too.

Seraph appeared. "We're lucky the Fallen haven't completely picked it clean, this thing's ancient already. It's-"

"An Arcadia Class Jumpship," Matt finished.

Seraph spun quickly in place to stare at him, alarmed at something. "You know this model?!"

A roar echoed from behind them as the Fallen began to enter the building, and cut their conversation short.

"Seraph, if you're gonna do something, do it now!" He could see her disappear, and begin to power the ship up. Blue lights winked on along the sides, and an orange glow emitted from the engines. The wires holding it began to snap, and suddenly it was free.

"Bringing you in now," he heard Seraph say. Turning, he saw two of the four armed Fallen about twenty feet behind him, having just entered the room. Behind them stood a massive one, standing around nine feet high, and looking tougher than a tank. This one's armor was different, and it held a mean looking cannon in its hands.

Just as it growled at him, he saw blue grid lights glow around him, and the next thing he saw was the interior of the ship. "Hang tight!" Seraph said over the comms. The ship raised itself out of the crumbling building, and blasted off without a second glance at the Fallen behind them.

"Strive for honor. Stand for hope."

- Grimoire of the Titans

Titans are warriors - heroic defenders of the Light, channeling the gifts of the Traveler to wage war on the Darkness. Steadfast and

sure, Titans face any challenge head-on, blunt force instruments of the Traveler's will.

A Ghost floated through the City outskirts. Just on the boundary of the Traveler's protection, spinmetal was abundant. It was used for crafting weaponry, armor, and a handful of other useful items. Fortunately the material was so plentiful that the City never truly had a shortage, and they took advantage of the fact. They sent out inactive Ghosts, Ghosts without a Guardian, to harvest the plants and bring them back to the tower for supplies.

This particular Ghost was not alone, and a few other Ghosts could be seen nearby, absorbing the spinmetal growing out of just about any metal source available, wreckage from crashed vessels, spent ammunition casing, even the shell of a long since deactivated missile. He was nearly full on his quota, and would only need to find a few more specimens before beginning his journey back to the City. He detected a large quantity a few yards to his right next to a run down shack, and promptly hovered over. The plant was somewhat thick, and he began to harvest it in large amounts. Suddenly, he stopped.

After absorbing some of the spinmetal, he was able to make out the shape of a face, metallic and rusting. Clearing away more of the spinmetal, he eventually discovered an entire body that had been hidden behind the foliage. It's limbs were robotic, composed of metal sheets and circuits. It was definitely an Exo, though why an Exo was so far out here, he had no idea. What was more, he saw that it was a female model. Large chunks of vital components in the torso were missing, and chunks of the head looked as though they'd been completely blown off. The spinmetal grew from inside the body, wrapping around machinery and puncturing outer seals until it reached the sunlight. The Ghost detected something else as well; light. This Exo was definitely not a stranger to the Traveler, and though he did have a mission, he couldn't just leave it out here.

"What's going on over there?" One of the other Ghosts had called out, and began to make its way towards him.

"I found an old Exo," the first Ghost replied, "I'm going to try to revive it."

"Don't be daft," scolded the second. "We don't have nearly enough components to even get that hunk of machinery to keep functioning, should you manage to revive it in the first place. Exos don't just rely on light, you know. It'd probably fall apart as soon as it was reborn." The Ghost flew back to its business, leaving the first to realize it was right, that they didn't have any kind of components they could use to replace the damaged ones inside, or any supplies to repair the metal sheets on the outside.

He sadly began to float away, until he realized that he DID have resources available to him. He would be disobeying his current mission, but an exception could perhaps be made this once for the exchange of a new Guardian. He retreated back to the Exo body and absorbed the rest of the spinmetal inside, until not one circuit was entangled in the leaves. Then, he began the process to revive the Exo.

"What are you doing?!" he heard the Ghost from earlier yelp. He paid it no mind, and concentrated on using the light of the Exo to revive the life within it.

He could see lights start to glow on various electronic lights throughout the "skin", but they wouldn't be able to be sustained without proper vital components. Then came the second phase of his attempt, using the spinmetal he'd harvested from today to begin building new working components, and materialize them within the skeletal body. The lights began to wink out, and then came back brighter than before. He continued to dissolve the damaged circuits inside, and immediately replace them with brand new ones. His body expanded, allowing a larger radius of his light to shine on the Exo.

The glow around the Exo grew brighter, until it stopped and began to fade. The "skin" lights remained on, and he could see that it was activated. He heard the sound of rusty metal grating against more rusty metal, and he moved in to dissolve what rust he could from the metal shell. Eventually he had removed most of what he could, and the inorganic being began to move.

She raised herself up on one knee, and from a kneeling position, moved into a standing pose. She glanced around, and saw the Ghost hovering around her. He made note of her appearance. Though the rusty red color still added a small filter to most of her body, he could see that her original color had been a mixture of white and silver, with white covering most of the body including all of the head, and silver adding in secondary highlights along the body, arms, and legs. Her eyes were a piercing cool blue, with small auras of light emitting from the electronic lenses.

She made a movement with her mouth as though to speak, but nothing came out of her vocal speakers except garbled white noise. "Oops, my bad," said the Ghost apologetically, and he moved in to scan her vocal processors and clean out the gunk that had accumulated on them, muffling her speech. When all of the resin had been cleared, he flew back, and looked expectantly at her again. She made another attempt.

"Tha- thank you."

The ghost closed his eye and angled himself slightly, akin to a bow. The other Ghosts simply looked on in amazement. "It was my pleasure, Guardian."

Her eyes blinked a few times, attempting to focus on him. "Guardian? Is that my name?"

The floating polyhedron chuckled ever so slightly. "No, it's what you are. It's more of a title than a name, a job."

"A job? What kind of job?"

"Why, to protect the City and its people, of course! To use the light of the Traveler to fight against the Darkness!"

The Ghost stared into her face, and saw no sign of recognition. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, but I don't know about any of that. All I remember is-" She stopped, and grew wide eyed. "I- I can't remember! I don't remember anything, where I am, what I was doing, who-" Now she sounded frightened. "I don't even know who I am!"

The Ghost moved towards her, in an attempt to calm her down. "Hey, it's alright. It's probably normal for someone who was in your condition to not have any memory. With the amount of rust and scarring you had on your body, I'd say that you've been sitting out here for quite few years. And with the amount of components in your head I had to replace, I wouldn't be too hopeful that long term memory will return at all."

He hovered a moment, then probed a bit, to see what she did know. "Do you know who you are? What I am?"

She pondered a moment. "I know that I'm an Exo, a robotic organism designed by-" She struggled for a moment, then continued. "-humans. That's it, humans, the creators made of flesh and bone." She looked back at the Ghost. "That's about it, I'm afraid. I'm not sure what you are, or what this Traveler of yours is."

He rotated his body segments. "That's a shame, because from all the battle damage your exoskeleton- no pun intended- has suffered, I'd say you fell in a skirmish, likely fighting for the Traveler. But if it's been as many years as I think it may have been, I doubt anyone will recognize you. I think it's kind of saddening that you can't remember the very thing you may have been fighting for."

She just stared blankly at him.

"Ah well. I suppose you'll have to find a name for yourself, people can't just call you 'the Exo'." He began to float away, and he heard her footsteps trailing behind him.

"So where do we go?" she asked.

He eagerly flew to the top of the hill obstructing the sight he wanted her to witness. "We'll we've got a long way to go…" She jogged up the hill, and upon reaching the top, looked out on the horizon and gasped. "But we're heading to the Last City on Earth, under the Traveler."

She saw an enormous white orb hovering over the surface of the Earth, heavily scarred and damaged on it's underside. Tiny pinpricks of light winked in and out of existence in the night sky around it, and as her sight panned downwards, she spied a large city underneath it, maybe fifteen miles from her, and at the forefront was an unbelievably tall tower, it's top extending into the clouds above, like a hand reaching for the silent moon-like structure that watched over all of it.

"What is it? How- how did it get here?" Her jaw was lowered in awe of the god that loomed over the landscape.

"That's a question you'll have to ask the Speaker about. C'mon, we're not going to reach the Traveler by staring at it." The Ghost began to fly towards the City, and with nowhere else to go, the Exo followed him, intent on finding out some answers for herself.

"We have found new ways to weaponize curiosity. Pathways into the darkness."

- Grimoire of the Warlocks

Warrior-scholars of the Light, Warlocks devote themselves to understanding the Traveler and its power. A Warlock's mind is

an arsenal of deadly secrets, balanced between godhood and madness. On the battlefield, those secrets can shatter reality itself.

"Aria! I will not ask you again, come down for supper!" Aria cringed at the commanding nature of her mother's voice. Knowing that her patience was wearing thin, Aria gave a small sigh and closed the book she'd been studying out of. She took one last look out of her window, staring at the beautiful sight she had from her window of the Traveler hovering over the City, and made her way downstairs.

She brushed her Lilac colored hair behind her and back into the "punk" sort of hairstyle that she had, and descended the steps towards the dining room. "Mother, you know that I've been trying to study for my evaluations, why do you keep bothering me?"

Her mother glared at her sternly, her emerald green eyes blazing with authority. "You are not of age yet, young lady, and until you are you follow my rules. And my rules state that we eat together as a family." Aria groaned. Her mother refused to acknowledge that Aria was turning of age tomorrow, and would be given a light evaluation that she'd been requesting from the vanguards for nearly half a year. She'd had to wait until she turned eighteen until she could even be considered for possible guardianship.

It was her dream to become a Guardian, to become one of the legendary saviors of humanity- and the other migrant Awoken families as well, such as her own. Her grandparents had left the Reef to live on Earth many years ago, and they'd lived out their lives raising her mother, until they'd passed on and her mother had eventually met her father and thus she'd been born. Considering she and her parents had been born on Earth, the normal humans here were much more accepting of them than the Awoken in the reef would have been, had they tried to return. They only cared for other Reef-born Awoken, and considered everyone else an outsider. Not that she was complaining, she liked her life here on Earth, and she was excited to have the chance to repay the City for the generosity that her own family had been granted so many years before.

If the Traveler chose her as a potential Guardian, she'd be welcomed to the Tower, where she would live, fight, and save humanity alongside other Guardians. With the background that the subspecies of Awoken had, they were naturally more in tune with the light having been changed by it so many centuries before, and she was studying to become a Warlock, one of the three available classes of Guardians. With her adept skills at using the light due to being an awoken, she was a prime candidate for it, and she studied the arts of these particular Guardians; from their walking on the path of the Void, to small magical abilities they were able to perform. She wasn't nearly strong enough in her studies to harness the sheer power of the Void like Warlocks could, but she was able to channel the light to an extent. She'd often entertain her human friends with small light shows, as wavy beams of purple light danced around her hands and through the air in front of her. Small things like that.

Taking her seat at the table, she gazed over at her Father. She shared his ice-blue eyes, much unlike her mother's green ones. He approved of her decision to join the Guardians, and believed it a worthy cause. Her mother however, only thought of the safety of her daughter, and it was a common topic of arguments amongst them. Hoping to avoid another outburst before tomorrow, Aria began to eat her food, intent on not giving her mother any chance to dash her hopes before tomorrow came. Though she felt bad for not talking with her mother the day before she left the house, she knew that if her mother started a discussion, there'd be no end to the arguing until the last possible second. At least peace and quiet was better than hurtful words and shouting.

Dinner was uneventful, and passed by in silence. When she finished her meal, Aria walked over to the sink, washed her dish, and ascended back up the stairs to her room. She heard a loud sigh from her mother downstairs before she closed the door, and she was left alone with her thoughts. She sat down on her bed, opened her book back up, and began to read about the concentration required to summon power directly from the Void, and the care one must take to discern between the powers of the Light and the Dark.