An awkward silence settled heavily between the two members of Phantom Lord. Both carried a quiet, suffocating aura around them. Combined with their unreadable expressions, the result was a stillness so total that neither spoke a word.
They remained like that for several minutes, their gaze turned in Juvia's general direction—though in truth, neither was actually looking at her. They were simply staring off into space.
Eventually, Albion broke the silence.
"I am sorry," he said, his voice flat and quiet. "About earlier. When I struck your hand."
A heavy pause followed before Sheila responded. She didn't look over, her tone remaining unnervingly level.
"It is not a problem," she said, her voice smooth and entirely composed. "I made you uncomfortable. The apology should be mine."
Albion remained silent for a beat before speaking up again.
"I was not angry at you," he murmured, his sentence trailing off into nothingness. His small fingers gripped the fabric of his long sleeves. The sudden, vivid memory of his mother's face flashed in his mind, causing a faint, almost imperceptible tremor to run through his frame.
Sheila's dull, lusterless eyes made her thoughts impossible to read. She sat motionless, appearing to ponder the boy's reaction.
After a quiet moment, she finally spoke.
"We are strangers," Sheila said, her tone precise and deliberate. "People often believe intimacy is required to speak openly. I disagree. It is precisely because we are strangers that you can speak without burden. We hold no expectations of one another."
She paused, letting the silence breathe before finishing.
"If you require someone to listen... I am available."
Albion froze. Slowly, his hands released their grip on his hoodie, falling back to his sides. The deep-purple fabric draped loosely over his small frame, the oversized sleeves extending past his wrists to hide his hands completely. Beneath the shadow of his drawn hood, he looked distinctly closed off.
He opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated and closed it. He repeated the motion once, twice—a silent struggle against some invisible chain weighing down his tongue.
After a long silence, he gave his answer.
"Thank you," Albion said, his words measured and sincere. "However... I do not wish to speak about it. Not yet."
Albion's gaze shifted to Juvia. She was floating above the water, her hand extended, palm facing down toward the submerged floor.
'She is floating... an application of magic. A form I have not observed yet.'
The entire hallway was flooded, but the water directly beneath Juvia's palm was turning into steam, emitting a low, continuous hissing sound.
Albion looked up at Sheila, who stood motionless beside him.
"What is she doing?"
Sheila glanced briefly at Juvia before her eyes settled back on Albion.
"A common misunderstanding regarding Juvia's magic is the assumption that it grants control over water's physical states," Sheila explained, her voice smooth and instructive.
"It does not. The foundation of her magic is atmospheric moisture. She gathers water vapor from the surrounding environment and condenses it into a usable liquid form."
Albion gave a single, quiet nod, maintaining steady eye contact to show he was following her reasoning.
"Because of this," Sheila continued, "some individuals incorrectly conclude that she should also be capable of freely transforming water into steam, mist, or ice. Such abilities belong to entirely different magic disciplines. Skywater Magic is not the manipulation of states of matter. It is merely the gathering and condensation of ambient moisture."
'Skywater... so that is the name of her magic,' Albion thought.
"The distinction is straightforward," Sheila said. "While under her influence, condensed moisture remains stable as water. Once that influence is withdrawn, the spell ceases to sustain the state."
Her dull gaze returned to the rising steam.
"Juvia is not transforming water into vapor. She is simply ending the process that forced the atmospheric moisture into a liquid state. Consequently, water created through Skywater Magic gradually disperses back into the atmosphere once dismissed."
She paused, letting the ambient hissing of the steam fill the gap before delivering her conclusion.
"In practical terms, if Juvia floods a corridor using moisture she personally gathered, she may dismiss it and allow it to return to the air. The cycle is absolute. Sky. Water. Sky. Anything beyond that would be a different magic entirely."
"You know a great deal about her," Albion observed, his tone analytical.
Sheila inclined her head slightly.
"I do. We have known each other for some time. I am the one who brought her to the guild."
"Are you close?"
"We are."
Albion shifted his eyes back toward Juvia, watching the water thin as the vapor rose to the ceiling.
'I envy her... 'He thought, a heavy silence settling over him.
The pause between them lingered, though it lacked the suffocating weight of the previous quiet. Sheila broke it first.
"What about you?" she asked.
"What about me?" Albion replied, looking up. "Do you wish to know something?"
"If you are inclined to share," Sheila said softly. "Anything you are comfortable with."
Albion stared up into her dull, expressionless eyes.
'Is she attempting to be kind? Why? Is she not like the others in Phantom Lord?'
Albion leaned back slightly, his eyes dark, solemn, and unreadable.
'It doesn't matter who they are,' he thought, his gaze tracking the water across the
Ground. 'In my eyes, everyone here is a bad person.'
To Albion, the concept of a "bad person" had never been a matter of morality, villains, or body counts. Good and evil were abstract labels—words adults threw around when they wanted to feel justified. His definition was far simpler, forged by the weight of how power was applied.
To him, a bad person was merely anyone who possessed authority over another and chose to exercise it for themselves. It was the quiet, dangerous belief that my desires matter more than your existence.
That was what made his perception of Gajeel Lionheart so complicated.
Gajeel was not a monster. He was honest, direct, and unpretentious—a rare quality in a place like Phantom Lord. Yet when Gajeel spat out words like "Blame your own pathetic pride for keeping you weak" and "Live for yourself," he believed he was imparting a lesson. A harsh truth to help a child survive.
To Albion, however, those words echoed with a terrifying familiarity.
He didn't hear a lesson; he heard an ultimatum: The strong survive. The weak do not matter. Whether Gajeel intended it that way was irrelevant. The underlying architecture was the same.
Albion did not hate strength. He did not hate authority, nor did he hate power itself. What he despised was the arrogance of those who believed power granted them the right to dictate what another human being should become. Where others judged a situation by its eventual outcome, Albion was obsessed with the journey—because his entire life was nothing more than the wreckage left behind by other people's choices.
The scientists who analyzed him. His mother. Master José.
Every single one of them had a grand vision. Every single one had a reason they believed was noble, necessary, or absolute. Yet none of them had ever asked for his consent.
Everyone else made the decisions, and Albion was merely the vessel forced to carry the consequences.
If he were forced to reduce his worldview into a single, stark realization, it was that human cruelty rarely began with malice. It began the moment someone decided their reasons outweighed another person's freedom—the moment they decided to use a human being as a stepping stone toward what they wanted.
And in Albion's eyes, that was the ultimate sin.
Sheila stood beside him, her arms folded neatly over her chest, exhaling a thin, lingering trail of breath. She didn't press him. She simply watched him through heavy, unreadable eyes.
"Well," Albion said softly, his tone flat and deliberate. "As I mentioned, I joined the guild today. Although I spent most of my time in the library, I do not know much about the culture of this place."
He paused, adjusting his position slightly as he looked up at her.
"However, I know enough. While I was in the library, I awakened my innate magic. I intend to use it to expand my understanding of this world."
Sheila raised a single, neat eyebrow. Her face didn't betray a sliver of surprise, but the faint shift in her posture marked her interest.
"An innate magic," she noted, her voice smooth and devoid of enthusiasm. "So you experienced an Ethernal Awakening."
An innate magic—a unique, hyper-specific power engraved into the physical vessel at the moment of birth. While the vast majority of living humans possessed only a single, core elemental identity, an Ethernal Awakening served as the brutal gateway that granted immediate access to it. Fluid, volatile, and deeply tied to a mage's psyche, the expression of that power shifted alongside the user's mind, trauma, and desires.
"Yes," Albion replied simply. "I did."
Sheila gave him a slight, subtle nod of approval—a gesture as restrained as the rest of her demeanor.
"Acceptable," she said, her tone level. "An Awakening is rare among mages. You and Juvia are exceptional cases in that regard."
Albion caught the detail instantly. "You mean she also experienced an awakening?"
"She did."
A heavy silence settled between them. Sheila pulled another calm drag from her cigarette, while Albion remained entirely still, buried in his own thoughts. He had no intention of handing Sheila his entire history. He only needed to share just enough to gain what he required.
After a long pause, he broke the silence.
"Sheila. On a scale of one to ten... how knowledgeable are you?"
Sheila paused, taking a moment to consider the question before answering.
"...I would not presume to call myself a genius," she replied, her words measured and even. "However, I have spent my entire life as a wizard. I possess an adequate understanding of magic."
"Good," Albion said softly. "Then explain... what actually causes an Ethernal Awakening?"
It was a question that had nagged at him ever since his magic sparked inside the library. He had an opportunity sitting right in front of him, and he wasn't going to waste it.
Sheila let out a slow, deliberate breath, blowing a thin stream of air toward the stone ceiling before speaking.
"An Ethernal Awakening is the moment a child's latent magical potential first manifests. It typically occurs during a brief developmental period in early childhood. During this stage, a sufficiently powerful catalyst—most commonly extreme emotional distress, though environmental factors may contribute—forces the process to occur."
"What do you mean by emotional distress?" Albion asked. His voice didn't rise; it was merely searching, dissecting her words as she spoke them.
Sheila's eyes remained fixed on him, cold and observant.
"Intense emotion or severe psychological strain. Trauma, extreme fear, or a desperate desire to survive or protect someone. Any of these can trigger it. But when this happens, the child's magic does not emerge as refined knowledge or technical expertise. Rather, the awakening engraves an instinctual understanding of the magic directly into the mind."
Albion gave a slight, solemn nod. Extreme emotional distress. It hadn't just been his defeat against Gajeel. It was the crushing realization of his own powerlessness that had triggered the events of his inner world.
A cause and effect. A domino falling in the dark.
"The child gains a rudimentary awareness of their magic's nature, alongside the most fundamental method of activating it," Sheila continued, entirely unaware of the boy's internal calculations. "One could think of it as receiving a raw blueprint rather than a completed structure."
Her lusterless eyes narrowed slightly as she studied his face.
"This is why newly awakened children are often capable of producing dangerous magical phenomena despite possessing no formal education. They are not casting through understanding. They are acting through pure instinct."
She adjusted the tight leather cuff of her glove with methodical precision.
"However, an Awakening should never be mistaken for true mastery. It grants potential, not proficiency. Control, efficiency, versatility, and combat application must still be carved out through training and experience."
"In simple terms... an Ethernal Awakening merely teaches a child how to force the door open. Everything beyond that must be earned through their own effort."
Albion nodded, processing her words with quiet deliberation.
"So if I want to grow in strength, I must first develop as a mage," he said softly, his gaze lingering on the glowing threads connecting him to Sheila. "Which means taking risks. Effort alone is not enough."
He bowed his head toward her—a small, solemn gesture that caught Sheila entirely off guard. In a place like Phantom Lord, assistance was never given freely. Albion had expected silence, indifference, or perhaps a sharp insult. He certainly hadn't expected a detailed explanation.
She was... different compared to the rest of the guild.
Sheila watched him for a beat, her face impassive.
"Why?" she asked calmly. "Why are you so intent on seeking strength?"
Albion lifted his head, his expression returning to its usual measured stillness.
"If I am going to survive in Phantom Lord... I have to become something else," he said. "Remaining static is a decision to stay weak. If I never challenge myself against those who are stronger... I will never change."
He paused, his voice dropping slightly.
"I want to become someone who can stand independently. Someone who will not bend. Someone who will not break. That is why I must seek strength."
His hands tightened into small fists at his sides.
"I was not granted the privilege of choosing my beginnings. But I possess the capacity to decide who I become. So I will continue forward." His fuchsia eyes met hers with a cold, unyielding clarity. "Regardless of how many times I fail. Regardless of the cost."
Sheila remained silent, staring down at the five-year-old before her. The silence stretched between them, long and heavy.
"...That path," she spoke at last, her tone smooth, detached, yet distinctly measured. "If you truly intend to walk it, understand what waits at the end. Power is not a destination. It is a road. And more often than not... it leads to ruin."
She took a slow, deliberate breath, blowing air toward the rafters.
"You are a child. There is no shame in living like one. Why not choose a simpler life? One where you can grow at a normal pace. Where your days are not measured in hardship, sacrifice, and survival?"
Sheila looked away briefly, her lusterless eyes tracing the dreary architecture of the guildhall.
"There are experiences you will never regain once they are lost. Playing with peers. Wasting hours on meaningless games. Eating food simply because you enjoy the taste. Finding reasons to smile that have nothing to do with power." She turned her gaze back to him. "Most adults spend their lives wishing they had cherished those moments when they had the chance."
She paused.
"...Yet you seem eager to discard them."
"Tell me. Why choose a path that is harder, lonelier, and far more painful than necessary? What could possibly be waiting at the end of that road that makes abandoning everything else worth it?"
Albion shifted his weight, turning his body away from her. His voice grew quiet—distant, and laced with a subtle, underlying tremor.
"I do not have a choice," Albion said softly. "If I want to remain myself... I cannot allow myself to become weak. Otherwise... he will..."
He trailed off.
Amon's voice echoed sharply in the quiet recesses of his mind:
<"The moment I sense even the slightest weakness in your spirit, I won't hesitate to drag you back into this world again.">
He didn't fully comprehend the nature of that threat, but the instinctual horror tied to it was absolute. He could not afford to go back.
Albion took a slow step forward, beginning to walk toward Juvia without turning his head back.
"Sheila." He said her name clearly, letting it hang in the air. "I will remember you. Thank you for the information. You... are not a bad person."
He kept moving, his small footsteps making rhythmic splashes against the water around them.
Sheila watched the boy walk away. As he put distance between them, her lips barely moved, releasing a whisper so faint it barely disturbed the air:
"I do not know who this 'he' is," Sheila murmured, her voice carrying a rare, subtle edge. "...But he is undeniably cruel."