Tears welled in my eyes, unbidden, drawn by the violence etched into every ruptured surface. The sky above was a dull, bruised gray, as if even the heavens mourned the tragedy that had unfolded here. There was a heaviness in the air, a sense of loss so palpable it was almost suffocating.
“Welcome to a hundred years into the future,” Stephen said quietly, grieved by a sadness deeper than I had ever heard from him.
“Where are we?” I whispered, my voice barely audible.
“You don’t recognize it?” he asked before turning to me, his usually vibrant presence dimmed by sorrow.
I shook my head slowly, the unfamiliar landscape too demolished to resemble anything I knew.
“This is what used to be Cyclos,” he replied softly—and the nervous fluttering in my chest dropped like stones.
I gasped, the realization hitting me like a physical blow, the air rushing from my lungs. Cyclos—the Collective I knew, full of life and culture—reduced to no more than rubble. The shock was overwhelming, and for a moment, I could do nothing but stare, my heart pounding in disbelief.
“How?” I asked, barely able to push the word past the lump in my throat.
“War,” Stephen said, the emotional scars of memories to come already etched on his features. “War with Radicals, war with humans, war actions and retaliations. It will spiral out of control, until there is nothing left to save. No more Metasphere, it’s all part now of the Human World.”
“That’s all very fascinating, but what are we doing here? This isn’t where Sapere is located,” Caden remarked dryly, then crossed his arms—inked forearms flexing slightly, the curve of his biceps defined beneath his sleeves.
“Sapere?” I asked warily, still reeling from the devastation around us.
“Sapere Aude will be a mixed school in New York, where humans and magi reside,” Stephen explained. “It’s the place where we found what we were looking for.”
Well, at least he wasn’t being cryptic.
I frowned, trying to piece together the fragments of information swirling in my mind. “Sapere Aude. Like written on the gate at the First Layer of Cyclos?”
Stephen nodded, all seriousness. “Yes, exactly. That gate will be used in the future to protect the school. It will provide a Layer of Protection, though it’s quite different from what it is in our time.”
The gate at Cyclos had always appeared ancient, powerful, but the idea of it being connected to a place in the future, a school where humans and magi coexisted—it was both intriguing and terrifying.
“So what are we looking for?” I asked, feeling a mix of curiosity and unease.
“And why are we here?” James added.
“We’re here because Emma needed to see this,” Stephen replied, glancing my way with an intensity that made my stomach twist. “And we’re here because the students of Sapere have an outing here today, and very fascinating stuff is about to happen.”
He paused, letting his words sink in before continuing. “Let’s watch this scene unfold itself. I think, Emma, you’ll come to understand what our concerns are and why we did what we did.”
As if on cue, two buses appeared in the distance, their engines rumbling softly as they approached. They came to a stop, and the doors swung open, releasing a wave of students into the decaying landscape. Their voices echoed through the empty streets, clearly unaware of the shadows lingering in this place. It was as if they had brought a piece of the past with them, a small pocket of normalcy in a world that had long since lost it.
It made me kind of smile.
“You see those three?” Stephen pointed to a small group standing a little apart from the others. Two girls and a guy, their youthful faces illuminated by the soft light of the overcast sky.
I nodded, my focus following his gesture.
“That one is Mila,” Stephen continued, focused on one of the girls. “She’s the one we need to follow.”
I watched the whole group with keen interest. They all moved with confidence, almost too casual for high school kids.
The girl at the center of the group—Mila—had a striking presence. Her skin was pale, almost porcelain, and it made the deep black of her hair and the bright blue of her eyes stand out even more. There was a quickness to her movements, a kind of restless energy in the way she talked with her hands, laughed a little too loudly, and pulled attention to her without even trying.
Beside her stood another girl—quieter, but just as hard to miss. Her dark brown hair fell in thick waves around her face, and her skin was a warm, rich brown, making her dark eyes seem even deeper. She didn’t move as much as Mila, didn’t try to hold the spotlight, but there was a calm self-assurance in the way she watched the others. You could tell she was the kind of person people listened to when she finally chose to speak.
A little apart from them stood a boy, lean and quiet, with clean-cut features and a kind of understated grace. There was something soft about him—maybe the way his expression drifted or the way he held his arms too close to his sides—but it didn’t feel fragile. He stared out at the ruins of Cyclos with a look that hollowed him out.
I could hear the conversation between the girls as if I was standing next to them.
