Staying awake during the lectures felt almost impossible. Unlike before his weakened state hadn't been caused by disease but rather by heritage. The sunlight coming in from the windows and bathing the lecture hall in its golden light was unbearable.

  He was wearing the sunscreen just like Harry had told him to, but while it protected his skin it did little for what he could only assume was some kind of sun sickness that no amount of chemical solutions could protect him from. While his skin was spared the wrath of the sun's rays just being exposed to the light seemingly had an adverse effect on his health and cognitive function.

  It was an unfortunate fact that his nature made him unfit for daytime activity. Even if he no longer feared for his life and had finally gained some independence there were still some things that were beyond him. Being around ordinary people had become even more difficult than before, but not because of his awkwardness. It was because of the gnawing hunger inside that kept reminding him that humans were prey and it caused him constant anxiety.

  All it would take was one slip up and his hands would be stained in blood once more. The last thing he wanted was to take another life, but the urges had only gotten stronger during the last few days. His hunger was growing steadily and soon he would become unable to ignore it. The only choice left to him was to feed, but he didn't know if he could even bring himself to do so.

  "Are you okay, Ken?" Brian asked him as he stepped out into the yard.

  "I'm just a bit tired..."

  He took a seat next to Brian on the bench and sank deep into his thoughts. It had been more than three days since he had agreed to help Harry hunt down the ancient, but he hadn't seen a sign of the man throughout that time. Harry was probably just looking into leads so they could start the investigation proper. While it wouldn't surprise him if Harry had just lost track of time he still didn't like just waiting around when overseer could realize they were working against them at any point.

  "Ken, what's really going on?"

  Brian's words brought him back to reality in an instant. What could he even tell him? They belonged to different worlds now and telling Brian the truth could only hurt him. While he was still his best and oldest friend there was no way for him to tell Brian the whole truth without endangering him. While lying to him was far kinder than telling the truth it still stung a little to deceive his friend.

  "My condition has stabilized and I'm no longer in any real danger, but I'm still drowsy all the time," he muttered.

  "Holy shit, Ken, that's amazing!"

  Was it amazing? The price he had to pay for his health was an unbearable cannibalistic urge and being fated to feed on humans for the rest of his life. It didn't seem all that amazing to him even if it meant he was far stronger, faster, and more durable than any normal human. If anything he felt cursed.

  "You should be happy, but I can tell you're not," Brian said cautiously, "Did something happen?"

  "I think I'm going home," he said with a deep sigh, "I'm just too tired to think right now."

  Without another word he got up and walked off. He still cared deeply about Brian, but he didn't know if he was ready to live out the rest of his life while keeping all his friends in the dark when it came to his true nature. Deception wasn't his strong suit and he would slip up at some point. Maybe one day he would get used to lying to them without a second thought, but that day still felt so far away.

  It took him almost an hour to walk home, but his heart grew lighter the instant he found himself in the suburb that he had grown up in. All the houses on the street reminded him of the time before he knew what he truly was. A group of teens chatting excitedly amongst themselves as they walked past him brought a smile to his face. They had so many happy days ahead of them and he would do his all to make sure the future didn't take it from them. There was just no way he would ever let the looming disaster on the horizon bring their happy days to an end.

  He stumbled as the straggler of the group walked right into him on accident, "Oh shit, I'm sorry!"

  "It's fine," they said as he helped them to their feet, "I was just lost in thought..."

  "Tell me about it," he chuckled.

  The young man in front of him seemed to be of high school age. Somewhere at the cusp of adulthood and yet not fully there yet. Their long black hair, steel gray eyes, and calm demeanor made them seem far more mature than others their age, but there was an odd almost electric sensation about them that marked them as other. While his acute senses told him they were human, there was something strange about their presence that reminded him of Harry.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?" they asked him warily.

  "Sorry, you just reminded me of someone..."

  Their eyes studied him for a few moments only for their face to go pale. They took a quick step back and looked at him with a mix of fear and confusion. Had they sensed something in him just like he had sensed something in them?

  "You're not ordinaire, you're not even human," they said as if they were caught in a fugue state.

  How had they sensed his nature? Could everyone like Harry sense what he was even at a cursory glance? Some part of him wanted to angry at their comments, but it didn't seem like there had been any ill will in their words. It appeared they had just gotten a bit spooked upon realizing what he was.

  He gave the teen the most gentle smile he could muster, "You should probably hurry and catch up to your friends."

  "Right, I was with my friends..."

  He studied the boy as they ran off to catch up to their friends. There was something odd about them, but he couldn't quite figure out what it was. Their surface emotions had been all over the place and it was as if they weren't fully there. Their scent had a strange metallic quality and it certainly wasn't the smell of blood. Perhaps the smell came from a medication with some sort of metallic component. A lithium based mood stabilizer was the first thing that came to mind.

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  All of his senses had kept getting more and more keen with every passing day. His strength and speed had gotten better as well. He was still adjusting to having to treat objects around him with care so as to not break them on accident. Last night's dinner had gotten very awkward when he had zoned out and ended up crushing his glass without noticing. The deep cuts on his hand had healed in minutes, but it had taught him that he needed to be careful at all times.

  "I'm home!" he called out as he stepped through the front door.

  "Welcome home, sweetie, but you might need to use more sunscreen because your nose is getting a bit pink," his mother said as she walked up and gave him a big hug.

  "Is it that bad?"

  "No it's just a small sunburn and I'm sure it'll heal in minutes now that you're indoors."

  After a short conversation with his mother he made his way up the stairs and opened the door to his room. His eyes went wide as he saw the man with an untamed brown mop of hair and an unforgettable but stilted smile. The window was open and he could only assume Harry had somehow managed to get inside by scaling the wall seeing as his mother hadn't been aware of his presence within their home.

  "Terrible news, Ken, I might have lost track of time!"

  "No shit?" he blurted out, "What the hell have you even been up to?"

  "Looking into some leads, questioning all sorts of people, and running from overseer for most of today, you?"

  "Lectures and such, but it's pretty awkward when I'm so drowsy all day."

  "Well it was good catching up, but we've got work to do tonight!" Harry said before letting out an awkward laugh.

  Harry looked a bit worse for wear than usual. The dark bags underneath his eyes made it clear that he hadn't slept in a while. While he doubted that would significantly impair someone like Harry it still made him wonder how the man could maintain long term function. Sleep was a biological necessity for a reason and if you didn't sleep for too long the brain would slowly start dying.

  "Are we heading out right now or?"

  Harry leaned back in the chair he was sitting in, "Let me take a quick nap and we'll head right out..."

  It didn't take long for Harry to drift off in the chair. It was better to let him sleep so he just sat down on his bed and waited for Harry to wake up. It gave him to think about what he was going to do when overseer realized he was working with Harry. Would they hunt him like they had supposedly hunted Harry all day or would they send others like himself to take him down?

  "Ken," Mary's voiced echoed out in his head.

  "Yes, Mary?"

  "Is in danger?" she asked him nervously.

  She had gotten a lot more talkative over the last two days. There were some signs of her mind returning and at times she even seemed completely lucid, but she was still far from being herself. Last night she had even left his body to explore the house in the dead of night. Luckily his parents had been asleep so it hadn't caused any issues and it was a good sign that she was trying to interact with the world around her albeit in her own strange way.

  "I'm not in any danger at the moment," he whispered to her.

  "You afraid?"

  "A little bit, but who isn't from time to time?"

  Hunting the ancient scared him. Succumbing to the hunger scared him. And being caught by overseer scared him. But none of it scared him as much as the possibility of thousands dying because of things they couldn't even comprehend. He had to stop the ancient from bringing ruin to the city, but Harry was the one with the plan. All he could really do was wait for Harry to give him his part to play in all of it.

  "Please not scared," she said in an almost pleading tone.

  Could she sense his feelings just like he could sense what others were feeling? Maybe hiding the truth from her was pointless, but he still didn't want to cause her any unnecessary anxiety. She deserved so much better than being trapped in her current state, yet there was little he could do about it. All he hoped for was that maybe one day she would be able to recover her mind fully. There was no way of knowing if that would ever happen, but he held onto the hope that she would regain more of herself in due time.

  "Are you talking to yourself?" Harry yawned as he got up and started stretching his stiff limbs.

  "No I was just..."

  "It's not weird to talk to yourself, Ken, I do it all the time."

  "See I wasn't, but..."

  "Hell most mages talk to themselves without even realizing they are just talking to themselves, but I didn't think a chimera would seeing as you don't experience any mind-soul separation."

  He slammed his fist into the wall out of sheer frustration, "Damn it, Harry, I'm not talking to myself!"

  Harry yawned once more and took a step closer, "Who are you talking to then?"

  "I'm talking to Mary," he muttered, "She was my first victim and she stuck around somehow..."

  "Like a ghost or just as a tortured figment of your imagination created by your guilt?" Harry asked him quizzically.

  "No, Bernard called her a blood amalgamation and I bound her to me or something."

  Harry just shrugged at that and started walking towards the window, "That's sweet seeing as bound spirits are quite rare these days."

  Was that what she was now? A spirit bound to him? Bernard had said amalgamations were like elementals except for things like organic matter and human parts. It made him wonder if mages could bind elementals like he had bound her to himself or if it was something wholly unique to him.

  "How rare is it to see a bound spirit?"

  "Quite rare I'd say seeing as the Autumn clan controlled the secret of how to bind spirits for a very long time," Harry said slowly, "But overseer did absorb them because of the Empty Heart so it might become more common in the future."

  "What is Empty Heart?"

  "Who is Empty Heart," Harry clarified, "He's a warlock that waged a personal war against them a year or so ago, but he recently started hunting them again last month."

  "Are you saying that one guy was waging war against an entire organization on his own?"

  "From what I've heard he was sort of an anomaly among us mages," Harry said as he started climbing out the window, "Like the exception that makes the rule when it comes to how fast a mage can grow into their power."

  He followed Harry and jumped out of the window after him. Gracefully he landed in the yard next to Harry and wiped the dust off his pants. It always surprised him just how easily some almost unimaginable acts of physicality came to him nowadays. Yet another benefit granted to him by virtue of his half human nature.

  "What's the plan for tonight?" he asked Harry as they started walking.

  "We're going to see if we can find out where the ancient will strike next and investigate the scene just in case they end up leaving something behind that you can use to track them."

  "Like a scent or something?"

  "Something like that."

  For some reason the idea excited him. As much as he refused to admit it he had been getting kind of bored doing nothing but school work the past few days. The stress brought on by Harry's misadventures made him feel a bit more human and he really needed something to make him feel like himself these days. Being around normal people made him feel like an impostor and it made him feel awful, but tonight he would have a chance to feel like himself again even if it meant throwing himself headfirst into danger.

  The isolation had been the only part of his changed nature that was worse than the gnawing hunger and the crushing guilt. Feeling so removed from the world he had once belonged was unbearably painful. Even being around his parents who dwelled in the same world as him wasn't enough. It just reminded him of what he had his true nature had taken from him.

  Around Harry he could be himself at least even if he didn't really know who he was anymore. Slowly but surely he was figuring himself out, but it also made him question if he would ever find his way back to his past self. The feeling of distance was increasing with every passing day and it scared him that. Would he ever be able to recover the person he once was?