“Quin?” spoke a voice. “Quin, where are you?”

  He opened his eyes and found himself surrounded by tall and colorful stalks, the only thing he could see as they obscured everything else.

  On his hands and knees, Quin scanned the confounding scene. The scent of earth came from every direction as he wiped dirt over his trousers.

  He could hear rustles in the distance as someone disturbed the still stalks.

  “Quin come on,” the voice ordered. “Mom and Dad’ll be mad if we don’t show up soon.”

  In an instant, the voice became recognizable and Quin quickly took himself off the ground to travel in its direction.

  His legs carried him through the stalks when cleared himself of the crops and reached his destination; a little girl in a plain white blouse with plain white hair and a mocha complexion similar to his. Under orange skies and orange leaves, he saw his older sister who stared at him crossly.

  A huge sense of relief swept Quin’s heart as if he had lost track of her. As if a great deal of time passed since he last saw her. So joyful he was to see her in front of him, he almost cried.

  “What were you doing over there?” she asked. “Dad has some big news he wants to tell us.”

  “We’re trying to find the limerock,” Quin replied...except that’s not what he wanted to say. So why did he say that?

  “Find it tomorrow,” his sister told him as she turned toward the leafy path. “You have plenty of rocks back home. It’s not like it’ll walk away.”

  Quin remembered. He used to collect rocks back in his younger days. If anything about the unassuming stones caught his eye, it would have a place in his small room.

  Such an old pastime of his that laid dormant in his brain. After a quick glance of the countryside, it dawned on him, he was a small kid again.

  “Will you help me find it tomorrow then Sis?” he asked with straight eyes and a wide smile.

  Again, that wasn’t what he wanted to say. He wanted to ask where she’s been, what she’s been up to, and when she returned.

  He couldn’t utter a single thing about it, unable to even say his sister’s name.

  A side of her lip curled before she told him, “Ask me again tomorrow. We have to go now.”

  She set foot to begin her trek when Quin finally discovered something off putting, he had limited control of his body.

  He followed her involuntarily. Whether he wanted to or not, he moved one foot in front of the other.

  “Ooooy!” yelled someone from among the stalks. “Fouund it!”

  A kid ran out from the stems, his arm stuck out to display a light colored stone.

  Quin disobeyed his mind once again and ran a few steps toward the kid before he stretched his arm out to the twilight sky.

  “Al-right!” he exclaimed. “Toss it to me, I have to go home!”

  An old friend from his old past, Quin recalled the times of youthful play he’d have with the boy across from him although he completely forgot his name.

  As much as he tried, he couldn’t get the pertinent questions out of his mouth.

  The boy lobbed the white stone into the air toward Quin. His hands remained over his head as he readied himself to catch it when an old memory intruded his thoughts.

  If he remembered correctly, the stone fell between his hands and violently landed on his nose.

  Memories of pain and blood foremost on his mind, Quin tried to adjust his arms when they remained in place. He desperately tried to move them as the rock dipped closer and closer.

  He just had to move.

  He then felt a tinge in his body. Familiar and foreign at the same time, Quin felt like it was the only thing he could actually control.

  Something told him to send it out and from his heart to his arms, he felt its travel through his body.

  Finally, it exited out from his hands and a force of wind suddenly emerged to knock the rock out of its trajectory.

  Both the friend and his sister gasped in shock, neither were more surprised than Quin whose eyes widened in disbelief.

  Smoke exuded out from his hands, a phenomena that only meant one thing: he had just stood out. Quin became a Sentar’i.

  Wait, he thought. That didn’t seemed right. People didn’t stand out during childhood, it would happen when they neared adulthood.

  Also, he felt like the location and moment were different. Why did it happen here and now, he wondered.

  “Unlike any other, your aura is,” he heard off in the distance.

  The scene had frozen over as Quin looked for the source of this new voice. Soon, he’d find it as she walked out from behind a tree.

  Her hair floated as if she were underwater. Solid red covered her body from the neck down.

  Even though she stepped over the dried leaves, not a single crunch could be heard beneath her.

  “Find it you must,” she told him. “Keep searching.”

  Quin wanted to address this strange lady, but no words escaped his mouth. He felt stuck.

  “Quin, wait up!” he heard his sister yell as she ran off.

  If he remembered right, after the stone pelted him in the nose, he ran away in tears, his attempt to run away from the pain.

  He ignored the lady in red as he pursued after his sister. For the first time in forever, she was back in his presence. He didn’t want her to leave his sights again so soon.

  The two sprinted down the singular path, many leaves succumbed to their weight as they trampled over them. Despite his efforts, Quin couldn’t close the distance. He tried more and more until his lungs demanded he stopped that very instant.

  He hunched down in exhaustion, sweat dripped from his forehead and dampened a spot on the ground. Aside from his huffs and breaths, he heard the calls and tweets of the birds above.

  A sweet, floral scent traveled up and stung his nose to force his view off the ground.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The scene had changed.

  The orange sky became a sea of blue with little clouds in between. The autumn leaves he just stomped over returned to the branches in a vibrant series of green.

  The tall stalks he just saw were replaced with tall grass, they swished in unison under a steady breeze.

  Despite the oddness of the change, Quin had little qualms with it. One thing stayed the same, his sister remained beside him.

  She too was exhausted and rested her hands on her knees. Her white hair covered most of her face as she tried to breathe as much air as she could.

  Overall, Quin was glad she didn’t leave his side. The moment he caught his breath, he took in sights of this new location. Where were they he wondered, and where were they going?

  “Sis, I don’t think we’re going to make it,” he told her.

  “...we have to,” she responded as she panted. “For mom’s sake...we have to reach that mender...”

  It all came back to Quin. One summer morning, their mother had fallen ill and moved little from her cot.

  As he and his sister tried to figure out what to do, word came of a Shanli mender in another town.

  Without a second thought, the two siblings dropped everything in their rush to find that mender.

  Except, there was no mender. The trip and the mad dash it took ended up as a fruitless endeavor. The siblings returned fatigued and demoralized but to their pleasant surprise, they found their mother back in good health and good spirits. In the end, the whole trip wound up being unnecessary.

  Quin wanted to inform his sister of the future but once more, his thoughts failed to translate into speech.

  His sister rose up, she finally had a better command of her breaths. “You ready?” she asked.

  Quin’s mind wanted his head to shake in refusal. Instead, it nodded in affirmation.

  Before he had a chance to think of anything, his body moved on its own again as he and his sister went back to their sprints.

  Quin tried mightily to tell her about the vain travel, but it seemed like he couldn’t do nor say anything to stop their trek.

  In his attempts to get her attention, he couldn’t even yell his sister’s name.

  He looked around for anything to help him, only bugs, dirt, and shadows appeared in his view. Quin noticed his shadow was closer to her than him and tried to exert more effort to close the gap.

  As he rushed closer and closer, his own shade moved closer to hers.

  Inch by inch they neared one another until they finally linked, then all of a sudden, they both stopped as if something came over them.

  Quin rested some more before he saw his sister frozen in place. Did everything around him stop again?

  He checked his surroundings, the grass still rustled under the wind. The clouds continued to crawl across the sky.

  Actually, Quin realized he could move on his own somewhat. The only thing that didn’t move was his shadow, it remained attached to his sister’s.

  Now that he thought about it, he saw something like this before. The use of one’s shadow to affect the physical world around them. There was a term for that, shadow arts.

  Quin had just employed shadow arts to halt his sister’s movements. But he thought he was a wind artist.

  When did he learn shadow arts? From whom? How did he use it and what told him that he could?

  “All stems from your aura, it does,” he heard off to the side.

  Quin looked behind him and saw the lady in red once again. Unbound by gravity, she floated over the tall grass.

  Her calm smile was juxtaposed with Quin’s alarmed face. Never had he felt so confused.

  Red smoke started to flow out from the strange woman. “Adaptable your aura is. Shift and change, take any form, it can. But find it you must. Keep searching.”

  What was this woman trying to tell him, Quin questioned in his head. He tried to get a handle on his lips and communicate what he wanted to say. No avail.

  So many questions jammed into his brain, if only he could get just one out of his mouth.

  “I’ve been looking for you this whole time!” he heard his sister say behind him.

  He turned and once again found himself somewhere else entirely.

  He saw his sister, no longer under the influence of his shadow but he also saw many buildings all around. The large field had been replaced by a large city environment.

  Crowded streets and crowded structures, all seemingly built on top of one another.

  Stalls and shops dotted his view, many with symbols and signs that indicated their business. One such sign had three prongs of a letter “M” surrounded by a circle.

  “Where have you been?” his sister asked, arms spread out. “You never came back last night, I was worried!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry Sis. Lymon had us on a job that took all day. We just came back this morning.”

  Lymon? The name sounded familiar. Quin noticed a large satchel beside him when he pieced together the clues. They now stood in Sirqu: the city he called home for the majority of his life.

  He looked at the exasperated face of his sister when he noticed he was closer to eye level with her, he had grown taller.

  Their childhood lives out in the field were long in the past and their daily lives were dominated by the hustle and bustle of the peninsular city.

  His sister covered her face before she drew a huge breath. “You gotta let me know about these things.”

  “Lymon didn’t tell us anything before we left. I didn’t know.”

  “Well...you’re fine now, so I guess it’s fine.”

  All was well with the two siblings. Long acclimated to the city life, they each did what they could to make it through another day.

  It might not have been an extravagant life, but it was theirs to live.

  “Out of the way!” they heard someone bellow.

  Down the road, they saw a man on the run from some shady looking people shrouded in black and with their faces covered in masks. Frightening as they appeared, they also appeared familiar.

  Their cloaks flapped in the wind as they chased this strange man and that’s when the dots connected, they were the cloaks, the Cosondera.

  An intimidating group of Sentar’i that Quin long decided to leave alone, they rushed in the siblings direction.

  More than aware of the little regard they had for Yerps, Quin grabbed his sister’s arm as he tried to get them out of the way.

  They moved at a snail’s pace. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t go any faster as the chase barreled ever closer.

  At this rate, it looked like the siblings would be bum-rushed. Quin tried to think of some way to avoid the collision, the only thing in his head weren’t thoughts but hopes that somehow they’d run past the siblings.

  The chase reached the two children; Quin’s face clenched as he braced for hard contact. Just as the Sentar’i collided, they merely phased through him and his sister.

  As if the two didn’t exist, the chase simply continued on without interruption.

  Quin’s eyes widened in shock as the pursuit faded away from his sights. What happened, he thought.

  Why did the cloaks travel through them like they were ghosts or something? There was a term for that as well, ghost arts.

  Wind arts, shadow arts, ghost arts. It seemed like Quin could do it all, but how was he able to do it at all?

  “Your aura the secret is,” he heard someone say. He turned back and saw he held the arm of the lady in red instead of his sister.

  Disturbed to see this person and not his sibling, Quin acted on the first impulse sent to him.

  He released his grip of the stranger, scooted off to the side and in a zip, lifted his leg with a hook kick to her face.

  She stopped it with the back of her hand and the loud clap of contact appeared to wipe away all life. In a flash, everyone disappeared. All except him and the mysterious woman.

  She displayed a smile while her hand blocked Quin’s boot. A boot? When did he wear boots, he thought. That’s when he noticed the black pants he now wore.

  His sights traveled up his leg when he saw the white shirt over his torso but more alarming than that, he saw a black cloak over his body.

  Quin planted his foot back down and looked himself over before his hands traveled to his face or more specifically, his mask.

  He peeled it off and when it looked back at him, it became crystal clear. He was among the cloaks and had been for a while now.

  He looked back at the lady in red, nothing about her appearance came off as threatening, yet Quin felt a compulsion to strike her. Was it because of his Cosondere background?

  “Fret not, you should,” she told him. “Alike, you and I. Ability to link, is why. But find your aura you must. Deep inside, dormant within you. Inside your soul, inside your heart. Center and source of all your strength, it is. A source to find, only, you can.”

  Her words. It sounded like something out of All for Heart. The words of Naim Noma flowed back into Quin’s head.

  How could he forget about the book when it carried him for the past couple of years? Years without his sister.

  Quin rapidly looked to his left and right, his sister disappeared with everyone else. His senses replayed that fateful morning.

  Her abrupt departure, an exit by boat. Hopelessness for the future; a sudden solitude amid a sea of civilization. It all seemed to happen again.

  Just the lady in red stood beside him, all with a smile that couldn’t compare. A distressed look on Quin gave way to gloom. Who was she?

  “Attained, clarity will be. In time,” she stated. “For now...”

  She swiftly slid a foot back then with all speed, popped a kick right at Quin.

  His arm snapped up to intercept her leg. He blocked the kick, but couldn’t stop the red aura that flowed from her to him.

  Panic returned in a hurry as Quin tired to put it out like fire. Much like a fire, it was no use.

  Red smoke encircled him from head to toe. Innocuous, it still put him on edge as he watched it flow around him.

  “Find it you must,” she told him. “Keep searching.”

  In a blink, a force pulled her out Quin’s reach. The buildings. The stalls. Even the sky.

  Everything seemed to repel away from Quin and just like that, he was surrounded by nothing. Once he saw no ground, gravity pounced.

  A great terror befell Quin as his body fell through nothingness. His arms stretched out with vain hope his sister would catch them.

  Maybe she’d catch them, he wished. Maybe she could. If only he could call out his sister’s name.