The One

The climb

Transfers. A compensatory measure set up by the same person who first divided the world into two. Although the split was made long ago, it did not change the fact that Hominum and Refica used to be the same realm. For that reason, even after so many years, there would sometimes be mistaken births—witches born in Hominum, or humans in Refica. In order to completely segregate the magical and non-magical, those born in the wrong realm were to be transferred back to where they belong. Transferals could only be conducted by witches appointed directly and specifically by Odessa for the job; the same witches were responsible for detecting outliers in each realm. The misplacement of souls upon birth was not very frequent; at the same time, it was not altogether rare.

Deliberate concealment of misplacements was considered felony, punishable by death. This law was executed more often in Refica than Hominum, for the simple fact that witches were intrinsically more capable of detecting an outlier than ordinary human beings. They were also more likely to conceal such misplacements, if only because witches generally did not wish to be sent to Hominum—the world considered lower in status than Refica.

With full knowledge, then, Waylon reluctantly handed the book to his mother. If what she said was true, the only choice they really had was to burn the book and forsake the knowledge that they had about the matter.

The secret stayed with the family for almost ten additional peaceful years. Aside from the fact that Feray Inglebird was mostly kept at home—and, when she was older, told the same message as her brother had been—it was also because the witches were not particularly eager in sending inhabitants of Hominum into Refica. Their reason for that was simple: they would not survive.

The real reason, of course, was that they did not want to bring more competitors into the realm of witches. Those who grew up in Hominum were used to scientific achievements; once brought into Refica and as a result into academies of magic, those misplaced witches often surpassed witches born and raised in Refica easily, becoming wizards. Rankings in Refica were quite particular: at the lowest and most basic level were witches of all kinds, the evil ones of whom were warlocks; right above them were wizards who had expertise of both witchcraft and science, merging the two into alchemy; at the top of the ladder were sorcerers, the most powerful of whom eventually attained immortality. Sorcerers were scarce, but extremely powerful and feared.

What eventually exposed the Inglebirds was not Feray, but Waylon.

Now in his early twenties, Waylon had grown into a stern young man. He was loving at heart yet didn't express himself often. His light blue eyes, once seemingly gentle as the morning breeze, now felt ice cold to those who looked into them. His reddish-brown hair remained long and worn in a ponytail—according to Waylon, caring for short hair would take much more of his time than he'd like, a logic neither of his parents seemed to understand.

That day, the young man was about to go in his sister's stead to the mountains. She'd asked him to bring a few plants home for her to study. Feray herself avoided going out in general, and it had become a common practice for her brother to run errands for her. Interestingly enough, she never tried to exploit him.

"Can I really not come along?" the girl asked for the umpteenth time. Every time she asked, she was rejected; but every time she was rejected, she would ask again, hoping for a distant someday when the answer would be "yes".

"Feray," their father, Mathias Inglebird, said, speaking to the two from the sofa in the living room. The man wore a pair of thin-rimmed, round glasses. Under the glasses were the pair of light blue eyes that Waylon had inherited—except, on Mathias, they were perfectly gentle and not the least bit cold. His hair, a silver-blond color, was parted from the center, his bangs almost reaching his eyes. The smiling man looked up from his book. "You shouldn't."