I did not get to meet the person Brady mentioned, at first.

I briefly saw Vitaly, though. He was shocked at what I'd done. I was afraid he was angry I struck at Set, but he was convinced the god would reform, confirming Brady's doubts.

No, I realised later, with a shock. He was worried about me. He insisted I was cured immediately and spent at least a week in bed, recovering, and without distractions.

I wanted to argue. With my ADHD, I can't even take afternoon naps. But the moment my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep immediately.

And later, I've been told I switched off from sleeping and being barely conscious for days. Sometimes I recognised my friends when they stopped by the hospital bed. They all came there, but Edgar most of all...

And then one day I woke up, and I was told by Mr Winter the winter holidays were almost over and the Academy would start soon.

"We have a new student," he announced, and I realised it was the person Brady Doyle had been talking about.

The door opened, and a girl wearing a pink parka waltzed in, excited. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was Risa.

"Your friend, Vitaly Malinov, saved me," she said. "I don't remember much of my time as a captive in Set's lair, so I'm sorry, I can't give you directions on how to find it."

I smiled at her. "You're... you're alive," I said. "That's all I care about."

"And I'm studying with you now," she added. But what she didn't say was that I had other friends now, and that I'd been through something she couldn't imagine. We were so different from where we left each other in September.

But I still wanted her close. And to be her friend, if she let me.

"Have you met the other students yet? How are they doing?"

"Jeff told me Lucretia was probably upset because of Jake, but to tell the truth she isn't," Risa reasoned. "Maybe it is because we haven't heard the result of his trial yet... She keeps asking your friends details about the quest. Bill is sort of a big fan of you now."

"Why?" I winced.

Risa looked at me with seriousness in her mischievious brown eyes. "Ryan, you decapitated a god at fifteen years old. You're some kind of legend now."

"I want to see the others," I said, trying to stand up. "I think my legs can hold me now."

"Wait a minute," Risa put a hand on my chest. "I owe you the truth. The reason why I didn't want to study here... I've been trying to tell you a few things about the gods, and the war that always rages between them and between the Enchanters, but I couldn't be truthful. And from what I heard, so many people already lied to you before. They will not the last Enchanters to lie to you, by the way. Gods have many oaths of secrecy... There's no easy way to say this, is there? My father is a god."

"Your father?" I exclaimed. "The way Vitaly is one, and Samuel Winter is one? Is any god even not a normal person?"

"The power they host is what's important. I think there used to be gods, maybe years ago...  Eingana or Asclepius could still be. But the person who was Tyr died at some point in time, and you realise gods cannot die, in the eyes of people. My father took the place of Tyr."

"I don't think I can literally take any more of this," I ruffled my hair.

"I haven't told you everything! He's been training me, my father. In the week-ends. I am not simply home schooled in spells like I told you. He wants me to take his place in the council of gods... if something happens to him. Or if he goes mad with power first."

"Thank you for telling me," I finally stood up. I was wearing the school pajamas, a light blue embroidered set. It didn't look as ratty as the ones I wore at home, but I was embarrassed at the idea of wearing them if I had to go talk to people. "But I want to talk to someone else now. The biggest liar of all of you. My grandfather."

"Oh, right," she said, as if, after everything she'd told me, this was what was difficult to wrap her head around.

I walked down the aisle and finally saw Mr Winter. He was drinking tea out of a mug and was on his way to the kitchen.

"Stop right there Professor," I said. "You knew who my parents were, but still chose not to tell me anything."

He frowned. "Sorry, Ryan. I think I owe you an explanation."

"Well, you better hurry up," I bit back.

I couldn't feel pity towards him: he had always known that I was his grandson, that my mother was a relative of Vitaly, and maybe he had also known something about Samuel. And he had never told me anything.

"Jeff was born the year before you," my grandfather started explaining. "When he was born, our biggest problem was that Samuel was too young and busy to take care of him properly. And Vitaly didn't take it too well."

He smiled bitterly, like he had liked Vitaly a long time ago and he still had fond memories of him.

"When Samuel went crazy or, as we could say now, he gave in to power and started hosting the god, he killed his wife. It was right after your father died on the quest. When he killed Miyuki, we arrived too late. I decided to adopt Jeff. And then, Jeff's father simply disappeared. I wanted him to have a life, so I raised him not to know."

I understood what he was about to say. I felt the blood in my veins freezing.

"You must have known my mother," I said, becoming really pale. "You must have known she would escape to the Human Realm."

He shook his head.

"You don't understand — it was better this way," he said. "Jeff could have got his father's singular drive, focus, and eventualy madness. The best way I had to protect him from himself was lying to him about his dad and making sure I had his powers under control. You, instead..."

He took a deep breath.

"I was afraid you could turn out like your uncle, I really was. But I couldn't take care of both of you, especially if you were both extremely gifted. I decided to control the powers of just one of you, and I decided it would have to be Jeff. Since you had human blood, I told Brooke you could have spent your whole life amongst humans with just a small chance of your powers getting you in trouble. You could have been powerless like her. And even if you weren't, everybody knows that those who have human blood can blend in amongst humans better than everybody else."

"What are you not telling me?" I asked through grit teeth. I could, by now, recognize my grandfather's face when he was hiding something.

"Your mother could be a citizen of both world as she was enchanted as to cross our barrier but had no powers of her own. She knew Samuel was after her, however, because of the things she knew about him. So, I believe that the first time Set escaped the council, roughly fifteen years ago, was to try and track you down and kill you. Take it with a grain of salt, but the car accident in which your mother died seems no coincidence either, considering it happened the year Set left the council for the second time."

I was speechless. The first time Set left the council... the disasterous event in which he wrecked havok in the Human Realm too, and the minds of humans had to be changed... It was because of me?

"The first time it happened the human Parliament was enraged," my grandfather continued. "They wanted to kill us all. And they weren't wrong, you know. A Typhon loose in Brighton... I can only imagine the fear of those who'd seen him. But the Magic Senate and I bargained with them. I said I could do the memory spell and that we could live even more segregated than before."

"You are a horrible person," I told him, "For never reaching out to me. I was only a child when my mother died, and the man, sorry, monster I was living with became very hard on me afterwards. I went through a lot of traumatic things. I could have grown up to be troubled just like Samuel, you know. Enough had happened to turn me towards the wrong path. And what if my powers never manifested? Would I have to stay amongst the humans for my entire life?"

"But you've got to think of it this way, really," Mister Winter replied, his eyes shining. "He was looking for your mother and you. If anything, we saved you with our effort. Your mother agreed with the plan! He wanted you to be safe!"

I felt a sudden rage that I had never felt before. I wanted him to acknowledge how wrong he was, how much damage he had done.

"Even though I'm sure he was keeping my powers locked for the very same reason, helping me live in the human world, I wasn't safe living with the Sphinx," I said, "I was unsafe, and I was lonely and I might have never gone on this quest, destroy the Empty Mirror and decapitate Set if Jordan Bates hadn't reached out to me!"

When I walked away, I was still furious.

When I left, I met Edgar. He offered me a cup of hot chocolate, which was very strange coming from him. I'd never seen him being bothered about this little gestures of affection before. Then, I realised it was because I'd been slipping in and out of consciousness for almost a week.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

I sighed. "Except for the part where I decapitated my uncle after I was almost drowned in sand and Mr Winter just tried to gaslight me into thinking I had a safe life amongst the humans and should have stayed there? Yes. My cousin is back, and we're all alive, Vitaly too. I can't complain."

He nodded.

"Listen... I recently learned of my parents' history," I added, reluctantly. "It was illegal for my father to marry my mother. Is it because she was a hybrid?"

"I think it was because she was a powerless one at that, but yes, it's rather tricky for a hybrid to marry a pure-blooded Enchanter. I think they have to go through some tests first," Edgar said.

"So..." I couldn't help but fidget. "Does this mean that if, in the future, I wanted to get married, maybe I couldn't?"

Edgar looked a little amused despite himself. "Already thinking about getting hitched?"

"I mean... no! I know what you're thinking," I couldn't help but slip back into our old patterns. "Who would marry me, right?"

"Anyone would be lucky to marry you, if they had to use it as a last resort or something," Edgar said. "I could think of worse things."

"I wouldn't be too sure about that," I joked. 

Edgar coughed, a little embarrassed. "So... is your name still Ryan?"

I nodded. I felt more like Ryan Barnes than Patrick Winter, that much was true. I just had never thought about it before.

"You're not going to use it anyway," I nudged him playfully. "You're just going to call me Griswold."

In that moment, Jeff entered the kitchen and we shut up. I'd never seen him looking like that, but, after all, I wasn't there for the moment he'd been told the truth about his father. His black hair was messy, his amber eyes droopy and circled in black. I hoped the others had been there for him when I wasn't, but it was probably very hard to recover from a shock like that.

Then, he stopped in front of us, and he said, "I saw my mother this morning."

I felt my blood freezing in my veins. Was Jeff losing his mind like his father before him, or was this going to be another thing no one told me about?

"Your mother is dead," Raegan reminded him gently.

"I know," Jeff added, somewhat cheerfully. "And my father is reforming as we speak. I think you would want to know. Not a single part of his soul passed over."

"Jeff," I stood up. "What are you saying?"

Jeff sighed as if I was being incredibly dull. He picked up a dead flower from a vase and the peony bloomed again in his fingers.

"I am saying my magic is back," he sounded proud despite the creepiness of it all. "But it's different. It's a new kind of magic. No one's seen it before. I think the gods or whomever else is in charge, maybe the capital g God the Awakened were talking about... they gave it to me in exchange for the old one. It's the power over death, and the dead."

"Of course!" Edgar smacked his forehead. "When you were born, your father was already at the first stages of hosting the power of the god. It's some part of power that's been in you all along... your father is the god of violence, storms and chaos, and you have a spooky power no one's ever seen."

"If he's always had this power, he's a Variation," I said. "Like me. Someone once told me the second power of the Enchanter is not an elemental or mind one, but something rare or often unseen."

Jeff looked positively thrilled now. "I guess that I am."

Being a Variation, in my experience, was not a great thing to be. It was one of the reasons my powers were the way they were. Of course, it was also because someone had blocked one of the two I was supposed to be having. The way everyone else was looking at Jeff... It made me wonder whether I wanted to find out what it was I could do. I could risk being even more singled out than before.

But if I had to admit the truth to myself, I thought my friend's new power was very cool.

"It suits you," I pat Jeff on the back. "It's a unique power, that comes in handy, and you're not a Air Hierophant like your father anymore. You're just... you. Like your surname... Maybe you grew up sad that you couldn't go by Winter, but you're carving your own path."

"My own path could bring me to battle my father again, soon," Jeff said, but he sounded resigned. "After I've spoken to my mother... I began feeling more hopeful. I don't have to do this alone. I've got good friends, and a new cousin."

"Speaking of," I said. "We need some time alone, us heroes of the quest. What do you think about going to that new place near the school where they sell magical sweets?"

"I'm pretty sure they aren't magical just because it's in the Aether Realm," Edgar rolled his eyes, as if it was obvious. "But we can get waffles this afternoon."

I hoped the other students wouldn't feel too left out, but I felt more at ease with the friends I'd been to hell and back with than the others. It seemed that they had been feeling the same way, because their faces relaxed when we sat at the colorful booth in Otherwordly Sweets. 

I finally understood Jeff and Edgar. Why they were so happy when Sean helped us on the quest, why they were so heart-broken about Jake. Just the year before, the heroes had been the four of them. And next year, if we were an issued another quest, things could change yet again.

But for now, I was happy to belong to this group of four.

Raegan laughed, "Can you believe it? That we got this far? That we really made it?"

"We had no choice but to make it," I reminded her.

I liked saying that. It made me really understand how little our personal values or choices had to do with it. I might have done it either way, but the first and most important reason why I did it was that the cards had chosen us.

But Raegan was right. There were times where I thought we could never make it. And knowing I was alive after everything that had happened made me feel euphoric to say the least. My life, so far, had constantly been a roller-coaster of ups and downs. There were a lot of times where I felt bad followed by times where I felt good. But this was different.

I smiled back at her.

Jeff, Edgar and Raegan were my family now. And it was probably the best thing I could have hoped to gain from this adventure. For the first time in my life, everything was alright.

But it was hard to accept who I really was. I still couldn't make sense of how some things had turned out in the end. Jake in prison. Sam being Set. Vitaly who had been, after all, more of a good person than an evil one. But he'd still lied to us, and he had still been a member of the Reapers.

And while I could never say it out loud, the fact that Samuel had done all of those terrible things while being conscious of them still haunted me. He might have been driven mad by the power, but he also hadn't been a very good person. And the fact that he was my uncle couldn't help but make me wonder things about me, about my family.

"Erm... guys," Jeff interrupted our conversation. He was looking at an envelope in his hands. He had just gotten a speed letter. "I got this letter from the leader of the Circle. Apparently, she's a woman called Luna Torres. She said she was asked by superior powers she cannot mention to keep an eye on us, because we impressed her with our bravery and skills."

"That's great, isn't it?" I asked.

"Not really," Jeff replied. "The Circle never sends out invitations, we still don't know what it was they wanted from us, in the first place, we don't know who the superiors are, and the name of their leader has always been top secret — I've never heard of this person before."

"But she complimented our quest," he added. "So maybe you're right."

The quest didn't feel over.

Set was reforming as we spoke. There were still things I needed to find out --- the most important of all, what my second power was.

It was possible that the quest wasn't over. Maybe it had just started. Maybe it would end with one of us getting rid of the chaos god.

My heart sank into my chest. "Does the letter say anything else?"

"Yes. It says that, next term, she will teach alongside Mr Winter at the Academy of Space and Time."