Finding herself unable to interfere in her own world once again, Mana decided to see if she could find any answers in her world. She rose to her feet and turned to face the waterfall that surrounded her entire island. She held her right hand out and snapped her fingers. The waterfall instantly disappeared, revealing the vast sea that laid behind it.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve stepped foot out of my realm.” Mana said to herself quietly as she walked onto the small beach that outlined her island. She snapped her fingers once again and a small wooden dock appeared from beneath the water and rose to the surface. She walked towards the bridge and said loudly, as if someone could hear her, “Vesalius. I’m stepping away for a while. I’ll be back eventually.” She walked onto the bridge as a dark shadow in the water below her faded away. She snapped her fingers one last time. The result this time was teleportation: Mana was teleported to the mainland, one of the seven continents in the world of the gods, called Anvance.

  Mana appeared on the beach in the western side of Anvance by a city called Heron (name after the god Heron, the same god that raised Mana). Mana turned to her left to walk north towards her friend’s library. Her friend, Lia, is known as the Goddess of Knowledge. The god or goddess of knowledge is tasked with preserving the history of all gods in the world as books and storing them in a library. The purpose is to allow future gods to learn about the deeds of their predecessors.

  Lia’s library was located a small walk to the north of Mana’s designated teleport location. She had known of Lia’s library before but had never actually visited before to learn about her predecessor, Aura, but with the ongoing hardships Mana is facing in regards to her world she thought that there may be some clue hidden in Aura’s records. The problem was going to be that Aura had lived a very long time, so looking at her world’s extra long history was surely going to be tedious.

  The library looked like a large stone tower that one would find as part of a castle. Mana stepped through the door to be greeted by no one. The room she had stepped into appeared completely desolate. No people, no furniture, nothing -- just a door on the left and a counter on the wall opposite the door. Behind that counter was a curtain hanging on the wall that covered an entrance to some other room.

  “Lia!” Mana called out. She heard no response. She felt quite welcomed for her first visit to a friend’s. She walked behind the counter and walked through the curtain. The room she found herself in was the main library section that was one big circular room with bookshelves aligning each and every inch of the wall. There appeared to be many floors of which she could see because every floor besides the first floor was just a balcony, so from where she was (the second floor) she could walk to the railing in front of her and look up and see the top of the tower (which was glass to give the room natural lighting). She then turned her head down to see Lia (a short girl with pink hair styled in two buns) on the first floor messing with some of the books on the shelves.

  “Lia!” Mana cried out as she turned to her right to walk downstairs. Lia jumped in

  surprise at the sound of Mana’s voice.

  “Mana!” She cried out as she turned to see Mana walking down the stairs. She instantly put the books back onto their shelves and ran over to greet her. “I haven’t seen you for weeks! Not since you cut your realm off from the rest of the world! What happened?”

  “Well… a lot happened for sure, and is still happening.” Mana walked past her and began to look at some of the books on the shelves. “Lia, where’s Aura’s book?”

  “Oh, Aura? It should be on this floor. This floor is reserved for the history of each of the first gods and goddesses in Anvance.”

  “Well, at least that saves me from having to check any of the other floors. Any indication of which shelf?”

  “It’s alphabetical in terms of what that person was a god of, so you should be looking in the Ws.” Lia pointed to one of the shelves nearest Mana.

  “Ah, thanks.” Mana continued to look for Aura’s book and completely ignored Lia’s intention to talk.

  “Mana… are things not going very well?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say they’re going well.” Lia was shocked that she said it so bluntly.

  “EH? What’s going on?”

  “Something gave one of my human’s the power to alter the world. I was able to kill that human with the help of another human but whatever gave that first human his powers is overriding my ability to alter my own world. Any ideas what it could be?”

  “Eh! I have no idea! Isn’t that, like, super bad?”

  “Hm? Did I say things were going well?”

  “Ah! That’s right! You said they weren’t going well!”

  “Jeez, Lia. Even now, you’re still an airhead. When was the last time you stopped working and went outside to take a breath of fresh air? Oh, there it is.” Mana reached out and grabbed Aura’s book. The book was extremely thin and appeared to be only… one page! “Wait, Aura lived so long! Shouldn’t there be more than one page!”

  “The books here all only have one page. To navigate the book you just need to think of what you want to know. For example, when the book is first opened it will show the first page of the table of contents. To go to one of the places listed in the table of contents all you need to do is think about going there.”

  “Oh, so it’s willpower based. That’s simple.” Mana opened the book and saw that the page was blank. “Wait, didn’t you say there should’ve been a table of contents?”

  “Hm?” Lia walked over to Mana and looked at the book. The page was completely blank. “Strange. The table of contents should’ve appeared. Try wishing for the table of contents to appear.”

  “I already tried that but it’s not appearing.” Mana then thought about the year it would currently be in Ren’s original world. If she thought about the year eighteen years before, then she would come across the last year of Aura’s life. She wished for the events of eighteen years ago to show up in the book, but nothing appeared. “What the-- are you sure this book isn’t broken, Lia?” Lia took the book out of Mana’s hands.

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  “No, no, no! That shouldn’t be possible. It should be the librarian’s job to ensure that the history of each and every god is kept safe. The book can’t be broken, mother would have never allowed it to be broken!” Lia attempted to make something, anything appear in the book but nothing appeared. She fell to her knees with the book in her arms. “Mana…” she looked up at Mana with teary eyes. Mana leaned over and patted her on the head.

  “There, there,” she said as she patted Lia on the head… but if that book told her nothing, that meant that there was no evidence left that could help her here. “Well,” Mana hopped towards the stairs, “I’ve gotta get going. I’ve got a world to fix after all.” Mana ran up the stairs and out of the room before Lia could say anything.

  “Ah. She’s gone.” Lia said to herself as she looked back down at the book and wondered how it could possibly be empty.

  Mana exited the library and moved to her next stop, Heron’s realm. If there was one person in the entire continent of Anvance that knew Aura, that one person could only be Heron. Heron has been the one and only God of War since The One created gods so he was a god at the same time as Aura. Not to mention, he’s the only remaining first generation god in Anvance so he’s the only person who’s been around Aura since the beginning. If anyone knew what happened in Aura’s world, it had to be Heron.

  Heron’s realm is located to the south of the city of Heron on an island just like Mana’s realm. To get there, Mana needed to go to a specific point on the beach (of which she knew she was at by using her willpower), face south, and use willpower to teleport herself to Heron’s realm. Usually Heron kept a barrier up that prevented any outsiders from entering his realm while he was working, but he gave Mana special permission to enter his realm at any time since she was like a daughter to him.

  Mana teleported herself to Heron’s realm. The island was just like she remembered it. It was an island that was much bigger than hers. Heron had erected giant monuments in memory of each of his world’s former heroes. Some of them were simple statues (most statues were large, about twenty feet tall minimum), while others were large white buildings supported by large white pillars, and even structures such as obelisks. These kinds of monuments dotted Heron’s realm as if it were a museum displaying all of favorite memories.

  Heron himself (a very large, wellbuilt man with short black hair who is always wearing a black jacket with no undershirt and hakama) was sitting in front of his fire watching the events of his world play out like usual.

  “That’s right Hana! Fight to the death! Win! Become the savior of your hometown! You can do it!” Mana could see that Heron was enjoying himself as usual. She didn’t think Heron would ever pass his divinity onto a child of his own because he was enjoying his life as a god way too much for that to ever happen. “Mana! Come here! Watch this!” He had called out to Mana without even turning around to verify that she did indeed exist. Mana leaned over his shoulder and peered into the fire to see two humans fighting each other on a thin ledge.

  “This person on the left is Hana.” Heron explained as he pointed at the fire. “She’s rising above the state’s oppression to save her hometown from the coming destruction. On the right is Merice. He’s the head of the aforementioned state and is the reason for the suffering of thousands.” Mana watched as Hana swiftly defeated Merice in one swift slice of her sword. “Ha! I knew that Merice was all show!” Heron began laughing as his expectations were blown out of the water. “It never ceases to amuse me. Watching a human become a hero, what could be more thrilling?” He finally turned his head to look at Mana. “So little miss, what’s the matter?”

  “Little miss? Isn’t it about time you quit calling me that?” Mana sat down next to Heron. Heron threw his arm around her and pulled her closer.

  “Eh? What’s the harm? You are my daughter after all.” Mana smiled a broken smile as she thought to herself that the humiliation of being called a “little miss” was the harm. She pushed herself away from Heron and sat up straight.

  “No more fooling around, Heron. I’m here for a serious reason.”

  “Oho, a serious reason, eh? What reason would that be?”

  “Tell me about Aura.” Mana said this without looking at Heron, she was looking off into the distance instead. Heron turned his head away to look into the distance as well. His tone became completely serious.

  “Oh? And why’s that?”

  “Something’s happened to my world that couldn’t have possibly happened under my watch. Something had to have happened while Aura was alive to make things the way they are now.”

  “Learning about Aura won’t help with that. Stop trying to dig up information about her.”

  “But, Heron!” Mana turned to face Heron in protest.

  “Stop. Messing around with Aura’s history is a bad idea.” Heron did not face her.

  “But why? I need to know what happened while she was alive.” Heron sighed as he was forced to think back to the events of eighteen years ago.

  “You know how new gods and goddesses are created, right?”

  “Yeah. Two gods will have two children, each will take over the role passed down to them by one of their parents.”

  “Yeah, so why were you raised by me and not Aura herself?”

  “Well… she was already dead at the time.”

  “Yes. The parents of the two gods will die once their children reach the age of twenty-five, but you already know this wasn’t the case for Aura. But her sudden death wasn’t the only thing that was strange… the other strange thing… was you.”

  “Me? What do you mean?”

  “She never took a husband, and if she was never married, how were you born as the Goddess of Willpower?” Mana could say nothing in response. She was completely clueless. “Like I said, stop digging. You might find yourself coming to the same end Aura found.”

  “But! Heron! I can’t just stop! My world’s not under my control!”

  “What?” Heron, surprised by her words, darted his eyes over to her.

  “There’s some force that’s preventing me from altering my own world. The cause has to be something that happened while Aura was alive, so I need to know what happened in her world. If you know anything, you need to tell me!” Heron stared for a few seconds as he contemplated whether or not he should tell Mana or not. Given the circumstances she just told him, he had no choice.

  “All right. Stay seated and stay quiet. I’ll tell you the story of the last few times I ever saw Aura. I don’t know if this will help you at all, but this is all I can do to try and help you.” He looked to Mana for some kind of response. Mana nodded her head and prepared herself for the long story he was about to tell. Heron’s eyes looked back into the distance as he began his tale.

  “One day,” he began,” Aura told me a crazy idea she had. She said she was going to go into her own world…”

  Ren shot forward and grasped his forehead with his left hand. The dream had left him in a cold sweat. That dream? Just what was it? The sound of his doorbell ringing nearly gave him a heart attack. He had been so focused on the dream he just had and had been paying no attention to the reality around him. He looked over at his phone and noticed that the time was still six in the morning. Who would be at his door this early in the morning? The doorbell rang again. They weren’t going to give Ren any chance to ignore them and just go back to sleep. That was what Ren realized upon hearing the doorbell ring again and again. He reluctantly threw himself out of bed and went to his front door. Who could it be at this hour? He had no friends at Valenthia High. Hell! He had no friends at all! He had no one! At not a single point in his life had he ever had a friend. That’s why opening the door shocked Ren so much.

  Ren opened the door and was hit by some force and knocked over. He had been tackled by someone. Just who had tackled him and why? He looked down at his assailant to see a head of blond hair and her hair was long, too. He didn’t recognize who it was even as she lifted her head up to smile at him. He hadn’t seen her in over a year, and it wasn’t someone Ren expected to smile at him either. The person who had tackled him… was none other than his sister -- Kasumi Akatsuki.

  PART 1 END