When I wake up, it’s around 4:00. Grady and Edaline and Sophie are all still here, and apparently Elwin sent everyone else away. The light doesn’t hurt anymore, and physically, I’ll be ready to go back to my sessions tomorrow. Bur Alden had warned that it might be longer before I’m emotionally ready to go back. I know I’m not ready yet. Sophie tells me to take as long as I need. I just talk with my family for the next hour or so, avoiding any mention of what just happened to me, though I know that they’ll all have a million questions.
“I think I’m ready to talk about what happened.” I say quietly when the conversation dies down. Grady nods, and goes to see if he can find Magnate Leto. Everyone else had already been thoroughly questioned by him, so now he knows everyone’s story except mine. Grady comes back and says that Leto had to step out for a minute. That probably means that he had to fill in the Collective about what happened. He arrives a few minutes later, and I’m suddenly nervous.
“Just say it if you need to stop.” He begins. Grady and Edaline had stepped out, but Sophie was allowed to stay.
“Ok.”
“So, this all started happening pretty soon after you left my office, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it something I said that triggered it?”
“What? No. It was actually something I said.” He breathes a sigh of relief.
“Do you think you could tell me what it was?” 
“When I said that I won’t fail again. I don’t know, it just made me remember that my old universe is probably already destroyed. And the only difference between them is that I was there instead of Sophie. And that makes it 100%...” I trail off, not wanting to voice the tormenting words again.
“It was not your fault.” Sophie says.
“But it was.You’ve been better at keeping the Neverseen at bay, so they can’t do here what they did in my old universe.”
“What did they do?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“It can’t have been that bad.”
“It was. And I’m not going to talk about it.”
“Ok. Nobody’s forcing you. But it’s really important that you know that whatever happened in your old universe wasn’t because of you. I don’t know what else to say to get you to believe me, other than if you really want to join us, you can’t be breaking down like this.” Magnate Leto says. I sigh.
“Ok. I’ll try not to let this happen again. Was there anything else?”
“What did you experience while your mind was broken?” There it was. The question I was hoping he wouldn’t ask.
“It’s… hard to describe unless you’ve been through it. And I don’t know what it was like for other people. But everything went cold, and the only thing I could think was…”
“My fault?” Sophie guessed. “I could hear it while I was trying to save you.”
“Yeah. I… forgot who I was, and I couldn’t even remember what I did. Then you came.” I say, smiling at Sophie.
“Well, what matters is that now you’re back.” Magnate Leto says, getting up. “And I’ve arranged that your mentors will give you easier midterms, and you’ll meet with Lady Vida tomorrow morning instead of P.E. with the rest of the school. Assuming you’re ready to return to your sessions, that is.”
“I think I will be.”
“Alright. I’ll leave you with Elwin to discuss arrangements for the next few days.”
“What do you mean?” Sophie asks.
“You should know Elwin better than that by now. He’s not going to let Lori go without making her promise to check in with him.” With that, he leaps away.
“Well, now that he’s gone, we can follow his instructions.” Elwin says, coming out of his office. He opens the door, and Grady and Edaline come back in too. “Do you want her to come home tonight?” He asks them.
“Whatever helps her more.” Grady responds.
“She seems to be physically better, but that won’t excuse you from a checkup. Staying here would be safer, but you won’t have to come to as many if you go home. But that might be because I’m forcing you to stay here until you fully recover if you end up making it worse. I’m just rambling now. Basically going home is risky, but it will test to see if you’re fully recovered, and staying here is safer, but we won’t really know if you’re fully recovered until you test yourself a little.”
“Why don’t I actually try something for a while? Like walking around the halls, and not just across the room.”
“That would work. Sophie, you should go with her in case she has to stop.”
“Why do you think I’m going to have to stop?”
“I never said that. But you should’ve seen yourself when you came in here. And according to Dex, you couldn’t even stand on your own. I don’t know much about broken minds, thankfully, but I believe there will be a lot of recovery after. With Alden, he wasn’t allowed to go back to work for months. But his case was very different from yours. He was broken for days and you were only broken for less than five minutes. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be in the clear, it just means that I don’t think it will be as severe.”
“Ok, that makes sense.”
“Let’s go now.” Sophie says. We walk through the halls, and I think about how eerie it is to be in a normally crowded place when it’s deserted. “Last time I was walking through these halls when they’re empty was when Umber attacked me and Fitz with the shadowflux.” She says, reaching up to rub her shoulder.
“That was terrible.” I say, shuddering. I had gone for a few walks with Fitz while we were recovering too. “My foot still hurts sometimes.”
“What? Umber didn’t use it on my foot. I got it in my shoulder and hand.”
“Huh. Guess I found another difference. I had it in my foot and shoulder.”
“Interesting. What were you saying about it still hurting sometimes?”
“It’s mostly fine. Just whenever I do something to it, it hurts a lot more than it would if I had done it to my other foot. Like if I hit my right foot on a rock, it’s not too bad. But if it’s my left foot, it’s way worse, and I might have to stop for a minute, or even sit down for a while.”
“That must be awful. Is there anything you can do about it?”
“Not that anyone has thought of yet. Elwin tried every experimental serum he could think of, and not even Dex could invent a gadget to stop it.”
“That must be awful.” I shrug.
‘It doesn’t hurt most of the time. Just when I hit it on something, or trip on something, or something like that.”
“Still. We’re 15. Our lives should not be in constant danger.”
“I guess that’s just the world we live in.”
“It shouldn’t be. The Lost Cities were supposed to be a magical safe place.”
“And that’s why we have to take down the Neverseen.”
“Yeah. But it seems like they’re always 20 steps ahead. And whenever we try to beat them, they predict that and make a counterplan so we still end up losing.”
“I promise, we will get ahead one day. There have been plenty of wars where one side seemed to be losing really badly at the beginning, and ended up winning.”
“Most of those were human battles.”
“Who says elves can’t turn the tides too?”
“It just feels like we’ll never catch up.”
“Not with that attitude we won’t. Eventually we will get past them. I’m here to help you now. I’ll do whatever it takes to save this world.”
“Thanks.” We walk in silence for a while, and arrive back at the healing center.
“I see you avoided disaster?” Elwin says. “A bit surprising, considering your record.”
“I didn’t faint in the halls.” I say, rolling my eyes. “I think I’ll try going home.”
“Ok, just take it easy, and call me and Sophie the moment you feel anything that isn’t right. Also, you’re coming here first thing tomorrow morning for a checkup.”
“Got it.” He gives me a bunch of elixirs to drink in the morning, and me, Sophie, Grady, and Edaline leap home.