After walking for more than an hour, the city thinning out into quieter, narrower streets around him, Eric finally arrived back at his apartment building, the familiar shape of it rising up dark and solid against the night sky.
He paused for a moment on the sidewalk, just breathing, letting the last of the evening settle into his lungs before heading in.
He'd stopped using Truth a while back now. The silver that always crept across his skin whenever he leaned on it too long had already been cut off and healed. He'd handed the Imperator's Cross back too, returned to the golden hand that reached out from the dimensional rift whenever he hung it in the air. He didn't fully trust himself carrying a Rank 0 relic around any longer than necessary, not with the gap between their ranks sitting somewhere between heaven and earth, not when there was a real chance the thing was doing something to him he had no way of detecting yet.
Tired didn't quite cover how he felt. His bones ached with a dull stiffness, and his muscles carried the kind of soreness that came from a day spent constantly moving, constantly giving, constantly solving one small crisis after another. Yet standing there in the quiet outside his own front door, he felt something closer to satisfaction settle over the exhaustion.
It had been a good day, all things considered.
There was the sheer volume of good deeds he'd managed to stack inside the Imperator's Cross, and beyond that, everything he'd learned today about how to fill it more efficiently, patterns he'd only started to notice through trial and observation. There was Adrian too. Weak for now, still fumbling through the basics of a world he'd only just discovered, but with the right guidance, Eric could already see the shape of someone worth investing in. Not someone he'd trust with his life the way he trusted Max. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But an ally, in time, and a genuine one.
And then there was Edward, and the reward waiting once his mission there was properly closed out.
And then there was Sasaki.
The fourth one.
He still didn't understand what any of it meant, what thread connected him to Adrian, to Max, to Sasaki, what these numbers were even counting toward. But knowing even this much felt like real progress against the alternative, which had been knowing nothing at all.
The trip back to the Meditation Realm had turned out useful in more ways than one, giving him the excuse he'd needed to tie up loose threads and catch up on everything he'd missed. The marriage of Sasaki Alberich alone had been enough to send real ripples through the Aura region, the kind of announcement that didn't just make headlines but shifted things underneath the surface. A legendary genius of his generation, settling down. It was the sort of thing that pulled powerful people out of hiding, that got influential figures across Lumenia suddenly making time to meet each other face to face, and Eric could already feel the outline of the changes that would follow, even if the details hadn't fully surfaced yet.
Security had tightened considerably across the Auralis Solar System in response too. Nobody wanted a single mishap staining an event this significant, not with so many important eyes about to be watching Lumenia at once, and certainly not with the other three great bodies always ready to seize on any perceived failure.
Lone Aura users without backing, criminals drifting under the radar, all of them had found the ground shifting under their feet lately, swept up in a wave of arrests nobody had seen coming just a few weeks earlier. He'd noticed the same tightening happening quietly in the Meditation Realm too, though nowhere near the scale of what Lumenia itself was dealing with.
He'd gotten to see Visie again while he was there, too, which had turned into one of the more valuable parts of the trip. She'd worked through his world of consciousness and subconsciousness properly this time, stabilizing both it and the subconscious layer of his Aura beneath it, and for the foreseeable future his odds of losing control had dropped significantly. It was, he reflected, one of the genuine perks of having a Mind Pathway user as a close friend. Her Aura wasn't built specifically for that kind of work, not in any dedicated sense, but the raw uniqueness of the Mind Pathway made any user of it a natural expert in exactly this: therapy, mental architecture, the delicate work of holding a fracturing mind steady.
If not for her, who knew how many times he and Max would have come close to losing control?
A faint smile tugged at Eric's mouth as he thought back on his teenage years, though it curdled almost immediately into something more uncomfortable. He'd been inexperienced back then, careless in the particular way only teenagers managed to be, constantly poking fun at Visie and her pathway, dismissing the value of what she could do with an ease that made his skin crawl now, looking back on it. It was a genuine kindness, he thought, that she'd never held any of it against him.
Then the memory surfaced properly, the one he usually kept folded away somewhere quiet, and his chest tightened around it before he could stop it.
Sixteen. She was sixteen.
He remembered that day with agonizing clarity, especially his own carelessness in the heat of the fight. The sound she made still haunted him. Worse was the look on her face afterward. It wasn't anger. Anger might have been easier to carry. Instead, it was a quiet, resigned pain, as if she already understood, far better than he did, exactly what it would cost her.
It was my fault. That was entirely my fault.
The injury had sealed her rank permanently after that day, locked her in place at Lysi Nova with no path upward left open to her, not through any failing of her own talent, but because of one careless mistake he'd made and never quite managed to forgive himself for. He'd apologized more than once, and she'd waved it off every time with the same easy grace she waved off everything, but the guilt had never fully left him.
He pushed the thought down gently, the way he'd learned to over the years, and let his mind carry on.
It wasn't purely sentiment that had kept Visie close to him and Max all these years. Relationships between Aura users rarely worked on sentiment alone. Every bond like this existed, at least in part, to serve some mutual purpose, an anchor against the isolation that so easily curdled into losing control. Visie needed protection as much as she needed friendship. Maybe more. With her rank locked where it was, with the Mind Pathway never built for combat or defense in the first place, she needed people who could stand between her and whatever the world decided to throw at her. And he and Max needed her just as much, whether either of them ever said so out loud.
That was the shrewdness of it, Eric thought. Knowing exactly what a relationship was built on, and choosing to keep it anyway. Most people flinched from truths like that. Aura users who survived long enough to matter learned not to bother with the dressing.
If circumstances had been different, some quieter thought surfaced: he might have actually married her. Visie wasn't just useful. She'd been beautiful too, sharp-tongued in a way he'd always liked, with a presence that turned heads without her ever trying, and a mindfulness toward other people that Eric, if he was honest, rarely managed himself. They'd dated once, briefly, years ago. Even that felt like a small, sentimental footnote next to the deeper, more practical value her friendship still carried for him.
Beauty didn't move him much these days. He'd trained himself deliberately away from lust, from bodily desire in general, ever since a certain accident in his youth had taught him exactly how dangerous that kind of weakness could become if left unchecked.
Everything that had happened. Every mistake. Every scar he'd handed out or taken. All of it had shaped him into whoever he was now, standing here outside his own front door, tired down to his bones. He couldn't undo any of it, Visie's injury least of all. But he could carry it properly, at least. He could let it teach him something instead of just weighing him down.
There was also this mysterious Paris operation that had been going on. Except for some members of the four great bodies, most Aura users weren't even aware of it. The four great bodies held onto every scrap of information about it with an almost paranoid tightness, hoarding it so completely that even someone officially inside the fold could go weeks without learning anything real. Their combined focus on Paris had at least paid off in one clear way: trouble across the rest of the region had dropped noticeably while all that attention stayed pinned in one place.
Eric was still turning the day over in his head as he climbed the stairs toward the thirteenth floor, footsteps slow and heavy after everything he'd put his body through since morning. He reached his apartment, slid his key into the lock, and pushed the door open.
The sound carried through to the bedroom, and a moment later Ruby stepped out to meet him.
Something in Eric eased at the sight of her, some low, constant tension in his shoulders finally letting go, though he couldn't have said exactly why. Ruby, for her part, felt a small flush of warmth creep up her neck under his gaze and looked away, fingers twisting idly through a loose strand of her hair as she offered him a soft welcome home.
"Thank you," Eric said, for no particular reason at all, holding out the umbrella he'd bought that morning from a branded shop for five hundred dollars. He only wished for Ruby not to find out about it. She took it with a curious little tilt of her head but didn't push for an explanation.
His first instinct, as always, was a shower. He disappeared into the bathroom and stood beneath the cold spray longer than strictly necessary, letting the day sluice off him along with the sweat and dust of the streets, his mind clearing bit by bit until it felt properly his own again. He left the black suit folded neatly for Ruby to deal with later. As far as he knew, the Mike Jackson persona wouldn't need to come back out until Monday.
His hair was still damp by the time he emerged, and he made his way to the dining table and settled into his usual chair, content to wait.
Ruby came out of the kitchen a few minutes later, balancing two plates, the smell of seared steak trailing after her. Simple, but good. She set his plate down and took her own seat across the table.
They ate slowly, trading small talk back and forth the way they usually did, though tonight Eric found himself far more generous with his compliments than usual, telling her twice how good the steak was, asking after little details of her day he wouldn't normally have thought to ask about. Some quiet, guilty part of him was trying to make up for having vanished on her the entire day without much warning.
"How was your day?" he asked eventually, keeping his tone light, though there was a careful, probing edge underneath it he didn't bother to fully hide.
Ruby brightened immediately. "It was good, actually. I finally talked myself into going out with Zoe today. We walked around, talked a lot, ended up at the mall near us." She smiled, cutting into her steak. "We actually met someone new there too. A woman named Kalamine."
Eric's fork paused, just slightly, before continuing as if nothing had happened. "Oh?"
"Mm-hmm." Ruby nodded, chewing thoughtfully. "She had green hair, watery grey eyes, and she was actually really pretty. She said she just moved here, looking for work." She let out a small laugh. "She's also the hungriest person I've ever met in my life, I swear. We ran into her because her stomach literally growled so loudly the whole entryway could hear. She ate so much today, Eric. It was honestly impressive."
"Where's she staying?" Eric asked, keeping his voice easy, curious rather than pointed. "Does she know anyone else here?"
Ruby shook her head. "No, she said she didn't really know anyone yet. That's actually part of why we invited her along; she seemed a little lost, honestly. We ended up spending most of the day with her. Shopping, eating, more shopping." She smiled fondly at the memory. "She's really easy to talk to, though. Funny too, in this dry sort of way."
"Did she say anything about why she came to Paris specifically? Work, or..."
"She just said she was looking for a job," Ruby said with a small shrug, clearly not thinking much of the question. "She didn't really go into detail, and we didn't want to pry. She seemed a little private about it, so we just let her be."
Eric nodded slowly, filing the details away without letting any of his real interest show. A newly arrived woman with no connections, appearing out of nowhere at a mall his wife happened to visit on the same day that so many other things had been quietly shifting across the city. He didn't say anything more about it, not yet. He let Ruby continue about the rest of her afternoon, the clothes they'd tried on, some small argument over lunch, things that mattered far more to her than they did to him right now.
She never mentioned, not once, the conversation she and Zoe had shared earlier about their husbands, about the strange changes both of them had noticed since arriving in Paris. Some things, Ruby had quietly decided somewhere along the walk home, were better left unsaid for now.
After dinner they moved to the sofa together, splitting a tub of ice cream between them while some movie neither of them was really watching played out on the screen. Eventually Ruby excused herself, changed into something more comfortable, and went off to bed, leaving Eric alone in the soft glow of the living room. She'd long since grown used to his habit of staying up well past midnight, some restless part of him that never seemed to fully switch off, and she didn't ask any questions about it tonight either. She simply kissed him goodnight and left him to it.
Eric sat there for a long moment, letting the quiet settle around him. Then he stood, rolling one shoulder and then the other, working a small ache loose between his shoulder blades, before making his way toward his office.
He opened the drawer slowly, almost carefully, and there it was: the pink bodysuit Edward had sent over. He and Max had both received theirs early that morning, teleported in while the city outside was still dark. Eric had already been up and gone by the time his arrived, too early to bother putting it on before heading out. Max, waking later, had gotten the chance to actually wear his, slipping into the guise of a woman before entering the Meditation Realm on Eric's word, making his way to Visie's house to wait for the two of them.
Eric picked the fabric up and turned it over once in his hands, checking the quality out of old habit more than real curiosity. It wasn't as if this was his first bodysuit. He'd worn one before, back when he was young.
Eric Heisenberg had awakened his Aura naturally at the age of twelve.
He set the bodysuit down slowly, his fingers lingering against the fabric a moment longer than necessary.
His Meditation Aura had awakened naturally too, that same year. This was a secret he had buried deep, deeper than almost anything else in his life. Not even Max knew.
He stood there for a moment, staring at nothing in particular.
Why would he hide something like that from Max, of all people? Max, who was closer to him than actual family, someone he'd bleed for without hesitation, someone he told nearly everything to. And yet here was one truth Eric had never once let slip, not in all their years together.
The reason was simple enough, if uncomfortable to sit with. It was too dangerous a truth to share with anyone.
Most people who awakened their Aura naturally did so around sixteen, and even that was rare enough to mark someone as talented. Those without the aptitude never awakened at all, no matter how many awakening relics they tried. Among the small number who did awaken naturally, most unlocked only their primary Aura and nothing more. Unlocking a secondary Aura, the Meditation Aura, alongside it, and doing so instantly, was rarer still. As for the Plasma Aura, it couldn't be triggered naturally at all, not without specific training methods the Hoshina family guarded jealously as their own.
Eric exhaled slowly, sitting down at the edge of his desk.
He'd survived this long, he knew, mostly because nobody had ever paid him much attention. That, and the simple fact that he trusted almost no one. In his youth, that trait had run far deeper, sharpened into something closer to paranoia after an accident he still didn't like to think about too closely. He'd spent years convinced, somewhere in the back of his mind, that danger was always one step behind him.
He'd even come close, once, to deciding Visie needed to die for what she knew.
His jaw tightened faintly at the memory. Max had talked him down from that, though it had taken more effort than either of them liked to admit even now.
Everything he'd done in those years, every closed-off, careful choice, had come from that same place. The quiet. The coldness. The habit of watching everyone and revealing nothing. None of it had been an accident. He'd built it all deliberately, because the alternative had felt like a death sentence waiting to happen.
Talents like him rarely got the chance to grow up properly. Most were killed long before they matured into whatever they might have become. Eric had already brushed against that danger himself, more than once. And if word ever got out that he'd naturally awakened his Meditation Aura on top of everything else, that he wasn't simply talented but a talent among talents, the risk would only multiply. A bounty. Assassination. The odds of either weren't small. They were close to certain.
There were organizations out there, small and mid-sized alike, whose entire purpose revolved around hunting people exactly like him. They identified talents early, placed bounties on their heads before they'd even had the chance to grow into their own strength, and let desperate, lone Aura users do the rest for a price.
Eric rubbed absently at his jaw, the memory pulling him further back than he usually let himself go.
He'd joined a small organization in the Meditation Realm when he was fourteen. That was the same year the voice had first spoken inside his head, quiet and unfamiliar, settling into a corner of his mind it had never fully left since. It was also, he realized now, around the same time his old dream had slipped away from him entirely, gone so completely he couldn't even remember losing it. He suspected there were other things from that period he'd lost too, fragments he could feel the shape of but couldn't quite name anymore. He just didn't know what they were, or how long the voice had actually lived in his head, whether it had been there since birth or had only settled in when his Auras first awakened at twelve.
After joining that organization, he and Max had each been given a bodysuit, pink for him, purple for Max, both cheap, low-quality, worn thin at the seams. The one he held now was nothing like that. It shone faintly under the moonlight spilling through the office window, light as a feather in his hands, silk smooth beneath his fingers, its weave tight and precise in a way the old one never had been. He stretched it experimentally between both hands, and no matter how far he pulled, it gave without ever threatening to tear, snapping back into shape each time. It would fit anyone who wore it, comfortably, seamlessly.
He decided he'd wear it Monday, for Voyage. For now, he folded it back into the drawer.
It didn't escape him why Edward had chosen to deliver it here specifically, into this exact drawer, in this exact apartment. It meant Edward knew precisely where they lived, down to the smallest detail. Eric wasn't surprised by that. Edward was a Hypernova. Information like this would have cost him nothing to obtain. If Edward meant the gesture as quiet pressure, some reminder of how easily he could reach them, Eric let it slide off him without much thought.
He sat down on the cool white tile of his office floor, folded his legs beneath him, and closed his eyes to meditate. It steadied his mind, and more importantly, it sped along the recovery of his Meditation Aura, an Aura with no subconscious of its own to fight against him, though it carried its own quiet limits all the same. Those limits were a matter for another time. What mattered tonight was simpler: he'd burned through a great deal of it today, powering Truth, the divination coin, the Imperator's Cross, healing the silver damage on his skin, ferrying Adrian back and forth from the Meditation Realm. Left alone, it would recover slowly. Meditation sped that process along.
An hour passed before he finally opened his eyes and stood. His reserves weren't full yet, not quite, but close enough that sleep would finish the rest.
There was nothing left to do tonight. Eric turned toward the bedroom and went to sleep.
After stepping into his bedroom, Eric found Ruby already long asleep, curled slightly on her side, one shoulder bare where the blanket had slipped down. He crossed the room quietly and lay down beside her, pulling the fabric back up over her shoulder with careful, unhurried fingers, mindful not to wake her.
For a few seconds he simply looked at her. The soft rise and fall of her breathing, the loose strands of hair fallen across her cheek, the quiet, unguarded stillness of her face in sleep. He searched himself, the way he sometimes did in moments like this, trying to name exactly what he felt looking at her. Warmth, certainly. Something close to affection. But underneath it, something harder to pin down, something that never quite resolved into a word he trusted.
He let out a long, quiet breath and let the thought go, the way he'd learned to let most uncomfortable thoughts go these days.
He turned onto his back, closed his eyes, and let sleep take him, expecting nothing more from tonight than the ordinary blankness of any other night.
He was wrong.
A few minutes later, Eric's eyes opened again.
Not in the bedroom. Not in his body, lying still beside Ruby with the blanket pulled up around them both. Somewhere else entirely.
His brows drew together as he looked around slowly, taking in his surroundings before glancing down at his own hands, turning them over once, then reaching up to touch his own cheek, testing the solidity of it.
A dream.
The realization settled over him without much alarm. He'd grown used to this over the years, ever since the voice had first taken root in his mind at fourteen. Visions like this had followed him ever since, unpredictable, sometimes vague, sometimes startlingly clear. It had been exactly this kind of dream, back in Moscow, that had first shown him the Eiffel Tower rising against a pale sky, the very thing that had eventually driven him to move his entire life here to Paris.
He took a slow breath and let his eyes adjust properly to the space around him.
He was standing on a road, pink beneath his feet, stretching out ahead of him in both directions further than his eyes could follow. Thin white winds curled and drifted around his ankles, soft and cool, carrying no real chill despite their movement. And beneath all of it, a strange, deep calm settled into his chest, unearned and unfamiliar and yet somehow completely his own, a nostalgia so thick it nearly made his knees weak.
He stood there for a long moment, simply breathing it in.
Then it broke.
Memory surged up all at once, fast and overwhelming, flooding into spaces in his mind that had sat empty and unnoticed for years without him ever realizing they were missing anything at all. His eyes widened. His breath caught hard in his throat. His mouth fell open slightly, no sound coming out, as one memory after another slammed into place inside him, pieces of himself he hadn't even known were gone finally clicking back into position.
This is.
His heart pounded, each beat louder than the last, understanding crashing over him in waves too fast to properly process, each new realization birthing three more questions in its wake.
This is that dream. The one I had when I turned fourteen.
That was where the nostalgia had come from. That was why this place felt less like a dream and more like a memory he'd simply forgotten he owned.
His head turned sharply to the right, some instinct pulling his attention there before his conscious mind had caught up, and his breath stilled completely in his chest.
A shadow stood there, vague and indistinct at the edges, difficult to fully focus on no matter how hard he tried. But its shape was unmistakable all the same, tall and narrow, one long line extending outward and curving gently at the top.
An umbrella.
Black, and utterly still, waiting there in the pale, drifting wind as if it had been standing in that exact spot for years, patiently, for exactly this moment.