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“My name is Ryan.”

Nocturne froze.

The four words spoken by the toddler before her, who she had come to know and love as her adorable baby brother, reverberated in the depths of her consciousness. An influx of memories that she had buried in the unseen corners of her heart bubbled up back to the surface, a name that she thought she would never hear again in Alecdoria serving as the trigger for their retrieval.

Although she wasn’t exactly in a state of shock, the symptoms she exhibited were eerily similar.

Her mind repeated that one sentence spoken in the familiar voice of her baby brother, until she was forced to confront her own denial. She rebuked the conclusion her psyche was drifting towards, even as Nocturne forced to admit that Altair’s words were devoid of the euphonious fluidity that the Eldrheman language so effortlessly carried; the quick and direct tempo of his speech reminiscent of an accent that she was all too familiar with.

‘What were the odds?’ The question echoed in her mind.

No. No, no, no… she couldn’t allow her thoughts to drift in that direction.

She knew what would happen if she dared to hold onto that train of thought.

Maybe she was hallucinating. Perhaps this was a dream, a figment of her imagination. Did she have a fever? What if Altair wasn’t actually there, to begin with? Her situation had already exceeded the realm of the paranormal and stepped into the impossible. Reincarnation? Magic? An entire other world?

All those considerations were entirely plausible.

But that wasn’t the reason behind why Nocturne was stalling.

It was because she knew what lay in that direction.

The most dangerous thing that existed in the entire world.

Hope.

Her previous life had taught her what it meant to hope. The possibility of a cure. The possibility of a treatment working. To Nocturne, that possibility had been the very personification of hope itself. She had seen the energized, cheerful smiles of the doctors that had treated her years before Doctor Ryan had. She had been very young then, but she remembered each and every one of their faces. It was the little change in scenery she was offered, a brief reprieve in the endless hospital white. She felt their determination, their resolve, their good intentions even though she wasn’t old enough to identify and discern between such complex emotions.

And then she had experienced what it felt like— to have that hope taken away.

Once determined gazes and cheerful smiles shifting to eyes that conveyed pity and sympathy. Well-meaning resolve, a desire to change the world for a little better clashing against the bitter reality of the world and… shattering. Haggard faces and listless eyes, a visage that had gazed upon the true nature of mortality and come to accept it for what it was.

The very hope that drove her to struggle against her fate twisting into the serrated dagger pointed at her own heart.

Then she met Doctor Ryan.

The Doctor, that for once, did not ask her to place her faith in hope.

A Doctor who accepted reality for what it was.

Yet if that were all, Nocturne would not cherish the doctor so.

Doctor Ryan… among all the Doctors that had treated Sophie… he was the only one who didn’t stop smiling. Not when he was faced with his own inability to save the ones he was entrusted to. Not when his treatments, instead of improving her condition, ended up worsening them. Not even on the days he was forced to stay overnight, to monitor her condition in case it worsened. Perhaps the Doctor thought her to be sleeping, but she had been aware.

Doctor Ryan was the one who taught her that there existed a hope beyond hope.

The courage to smile at her fate.

It was not her own strength that let her accomplish a feat that many great men and women of yore would falter before.

It was the strength she borrowed from Doctor Ryan’s smile.

From that day onward, every moment she spent with the doctor had been fun.

A tear streaked down her left cheek.

A second followed from the right.

She knew she couldn’t hope but… she wanted to.

“Sophie,” Altair uttered the magic word.

That one word was enough.

The endless nightmare was over.

She began to wail at the top of her lungs.

Her knees lost all strength as she buckled to the ground.

 

---

 

Doctor Ryan Kimura was no psychologist, but he was well-versed with the concept of an emotional contagion.

After all, he was experiencing one right now.

He had not expected a single word, a single name to trigger such an emotional response from his former patient.

He was a fool.

He was also incomplete.

The Void’s memories would yet take many years to fully come back to him.

In essence, he could no longer truly call himself Ryan Kimura.

For he was also Altair Isadora-Braveheart.

His sister was crying before him.

A cry that carried an anguish far beyond her years.

It triggered an emotional contagion that surpassed in intensity any and every emotion that Ryan Kimura had experienced.

Emotions so powerful that his body was lost as to how to express them.

A muted sob was all that came out.

His sister… had gone through so much. Gone through an experience that no child should have to. Carried with her the sorrow of an entire lifetime.

And he had been living for the last two years, driven by vague notions of revenge fuelled by his own selfish desire to rage against the unfairness of the world. While having the audacity to claim that he did it for his own family.

How petty. How vain. How self-absorbed.

Both Ryan and Altair felt the furious rage they carried ebb away. Although the unfairness of the world had not been rectified, a single, lone unfairness had. He no longer resented Alecdoria for gatekeeping such convenient magics. He no longer held the desire to prove himself to the world, to heal even the most challenging, complex of illnesses.

It was all washed away by a sea of golden light.

A single overwhelming desire.

Altair and Ryan Kimura shot forward in lockstep, striding forward at a speed that no two year old should have been capable of.

As soon as Nocturne’s knees hit the floor, she was whisked away by two chubby arms that entwined with her own.

Altair knew how to break a fall.

He winced a little as he landed on his backside, but he didn’t suffer any real harm.

For that matter, Nocturne was entirely unharmed.

Now seated on the floor, Nocturne blinked as she realized what happened and then… began to cry even harder.

Altair tried to contain the muted sobs that kept forcing their way out, before deciding to relent entirely.

As he vented the excess emotions in his heart, as he saw Nocturne uncontrollably shed tear after tear, he firmed the decision he had made earlier.

The Hippocratic Oath was the code Ryan Kimura had lived by in his previous life.

While Altair wasn’t crass enough to discard it, there now exceeded something that far surpassed the Oath in importance.

Ryan Kimura had lived his life for others.

Altair would live his life for his sister.

He would guard her life with his own.

He swore to master the greatest of the healing arts, for he refused, with all his being, to allow tragedy to strike twice.

Perhaps he could not change the world.

Mayhaps he could not save everyone.

But he would save the one person he had sworn to. The one person who had suffered far enough, long enough.

Altair’s eyes burned with a scorching intensity as he somewhat absentmindedly patted Nocturne’s hair and gazed into the distance—past the walls of his house, past the unknown pastures of this land and past even the continent, if the landmass they were on could be called one. He didn’t know what lay out there. He didn’t know what dangers lurked in the cimmerian corners of this world.

But there was one thing he did know.

If the darkness of this world dared to step into his light…

It would burn until nothing remained.