Rudrean and Aelira sat on a floating carpet as they flew along the ocean.
Rudrean was still dazed, but this time, he was dazed while looking at a giant mirror that Aelira took out of nowhere and put in front of him on the carpet.
He wondered where she had taken the big mirror from, and he was embarrassed to be only in his underwear, which was also loose, forcing him to hold it up with a hand, as his previous clothes no longer fit him, but when he saw himself in the mirror, he was dumbfounded.
He looked completely and utterly different!
The thick, lard-heavy arms he had known his entire life were gone. In their place were lean, defined forearms with veins tracing elegant lines beneath skin that had turned a healthy, warm ivory. He turned his palms over, then back. Fingers that had once been sausage-thick were now long, tapered, and graceful — the kind of hands sculptors carved for marble heroes.
He touched his own face. 'Is this me?'
His jaw was sharp now, clean-cut as though a master craftsman had taken a chisel to rough stone and revealed something magnificent hiding underneath all along. His cheekbones sat high and proud. His nose had refined itself into a straight, noble bridge. And his lips — the fat, mocked lips that people had sneered at — were now full in a way that was quietly devastating, symmetrical, and soft.
His skin was flawless. Not a mark, not a blemish. Just clear, luminous warmth stretched over a face that could stop a person mid-stride.
And his hair.
His dark, tousled hair had bled out its color entirely during the transformation, replaced by a brilliant, cascading white — not the white of age or illness, but something otherworldly, like fresh snow catching silver moonlight. It fell in loose, effortless waves just past his ears, and the sea wind lifted it gently, as though the air itself wanted to show it off.
He stood up straighter without even meaning to.
His spine had lengthened. His shoulders had broadened — not into the hulking, heavy mass of a brute, but into the wide, elegant frame of someone built like a young warrior from an old legend. His torso tapered, his stomach flat and faintly etched with muscle beneath his now-comically oversized, half-buttoned shirt that hung off his new frame like a beggar's cloth draped over a statue.
He was 6'1 now!
Lastly, his eyes.
They had always been honey-colored — that hadn't changed. But now, set beneath those dark, perfectly arched brows and framed by long lashes, they hit entirely differently. Warm and deep and a little lost, like amber glass held up to firelight. There was still pain in them. That raw, unguarded bewilderment of a person who had never once been looked at kindly.
But there was also something else growing in them.
Hope.
Aelira's cheeks flushed as she stared at him through the mirror. "You are so hot now, darling~."
She pounced on him and began kissing his lips.
Rudrean, like a little lamb, received the intense kiss for several seconds before Aelira stepped back.
"I never knew kissing would feel so good." She giggled. "First kiss was just unsealing your nodes, so I didn't get to savour it."
Rudrean blinked as she touched his lips. 'W-what the…?'
"You…didn't like it?" Aelira shrank her neck, eyes concerned.
"No, no, I-I mean, I liked it." Rudrean awkwardly smiled before he hesitantly asked. "But why did you help me?"
Aelira pouted. "Because it is fate! I believe in a fateful meeting!"
"Fate?" Rudrean tilted his head.
Aelira sighed. "My family wanted to marry me off to a degenerate bastard belonging to a powerful family, so I ran away. Humph, why should I sacrifice myself when it was other people's fault that the family is declining?"
She trembled with disgust and anger. "Just thinking about that bastard makes me furious."
"So I was flying here among the clouds and around when I saw you."
"And I was shocked!" Aelira's eyes shone. "Can you imagine meeting someone with crazy energy, but nodes yet to be unsealed? You should have been born on the other side, but you were somehow in the normal human world."
"And because of that, I met you!" Aelira grinned. "It was as if fate was telling me that you were the one I should marry."
Rudrean's cheeks flushed at the end of her sentence.
"Really? You will marry me just like that?"
Aelira pouted. "You don't like me?"
Rudrean's face turned solemn. "I like you. You saved me, and even transformed me."
"You're the first person…who gave me affection." Rudrean put his hand over his heart. "It feels so good here. I never knew it would feel like that."
Smiling, he said. "If I don't like the one person who did all that, then I should really die."
Aelira put her hand on his mouth. "Never say that again. Since we are going to marry, your life is not yours alone, but also mine, and mine is yours."
"That's what marriage is, right?" Aelira smiled. "So, how old are you?"
"I turned eighteen almost a year ago."
"Oh, haha. Then I am half a year older than you, I guess." Aelira grinned. "Darling, we are about to enter a new world, okay? It's the side of Earth normal people don't know about."
Rudrean was nervous and excited, both.
Magic was real!
"My family will likely try to kill you, so we have to get under a protective umbrella. If I were strong, I would have killed some of those assholes myself, humph."
What?
Rudrean blinked and looked at her. "Kill me?"
Aelira nodded, her eyes shining as she looked at Rudrean. "Don't worry, darling~ I know a perfect place for us to live without worry, and that place is the Asterisk Arcane Academy!"
She continued enthusiastically. "It's the best place for young people below the age of 25 to rise through the ranks by working hard. That's where the powerhouses who can travel through stars are born."
"Sounds like a wonderful place." Rudrean blinked.
"But the requirement to enter there is harsh. You either need a good talent of any kind, or some kind of contribution, or a lot of donations." Aelira's eyes filled with anticipation and thrill as she looked at Rudrean. "Now that your energy nodes are unlocked and you have transformed into your true appearance, your talent must be awakened. Let's see what it is."
"My talent?"