-- Sara PoV --

‘Is she awake?’ I can hear a small whisper coming from a little girl from afar.

‘Not yet. I think it will be soon.’ Another girl, this one comes from my side, returned the question.

After hearing that conversation, I started gaining consciousness. I want to groan. However, I don’t have any energy to do that. I don’t know how long I have been asleep, but by how weak my body it is right now, I can estimate the last time I eat properly was almost three days ago.

Then, a memory of three days ago struck my brain like a lightning. I can remember all of the torture that I experienced for almost three days in a row. And then, a name suddenly came through my brain.

‘Aliyya!’ While I cannot remember clearly what is exactly happened three days ago, I can still remember that my sister was also kidnapped with me. Just the thought of what would the kidnappers do to my little sister in the hand of the kidnappers makes my body sweat heavily and my heart beat faster.

I tried to calm myself down, but my body hurts a lot. My chest is getting heavier within a minute. A not-well recovered body with a panic attack is the worst combination ever, I thought. Then, I forced myself to open my eyes.

“Ugh..” I groaned as the light in this room is blinding my eyes.

“Aaah! The lady is awake! Cosma, call Andra and Devin, fast!” The first girl shouts at the other girl whose name is Cosma, and then turned her attention to me again.

“Don’t move your body around, Lady. You have been unconscious for at least 14 hours with the addition of several ribs broken, a nail-less hand, and a big burn scar on your cheek, so you better keep calm and don’t hurt yourself.” I can only give her a weak nod and ask,

“Where am I?” I ask with a raspy voice. She noticed that and gives me a glass of water before answering my question.

“This is Sky Orphanage, a home for me, my sister, mama, and my two brothers. I don’t really know what is really happening here. But it seems you were in a trouble with the black robe man, so Andra and Devin decided to separate him from you. Those two are my brothers and the people who bought you here, by the way. So if you have any questions, you better wait for them.”

I can only nod and drink the water, giving her a grateful smile.

“Thank you.” She just smiles at me with her bright blue eyes. After we spend a few minutes in silence, the door is opened and I can see a girl who has a very similar appearance to the girl beside me and two other boys entering the room. Looking at the glasses boy, my eyes widened at my last memory before I fell unconscious.

“The mage..” I whispered. Those two boys surprisingly can hear what I said and looked at me curiously, before the muscular boy talked.

“Nina, Cosma, can you give us a room? We have something important to discuss here. I will make it up to you later, okay?” The two girls just nodded.

“Okay, see you later Lady.” Both girls waved their hands and leave the room. Once they left the room, he directed his gaze to me.

“Well, My Lady. My name is Devin, and this is my brother, Andra.” He grabbed the glasses boy who just looked at me. “Last night, we accidentally stumbled across the cave and eavesdropped your conversation with the black robe man. We decided to interfere before things went far.” I grimaced at the thought of the torturous went far. “So, do you to tell us about yourself?

I looked at those two and gulped. While Devin still has a kind smile, I can feel Andra’s eyes analyzing every little movement I do like a hawk to its prey. He just looked at me intently and let Devin do the talk. So, I look back at Devin and ask carefully,

“Why do you think I will tell you anything?” He just sighed at my answer.

“Because My Lady, in case if you didn’t notice, you are in a bad condition in our home, so at least we want to ask the basic questions like what happened and why. Can you do that?” I nodded and replied,

“If you answered my question, I will do the same.” He smiles widely at my suggestion.

“Oooh, That’s a good idea. Let’s make it a game. You ask a question and I answer it, and I will do the same. We will end the game when one of us is not willing to tell something. What do you think?” I nodded once again and ask the important question

“How do we tell that one of us is lying?”

“Well, we have no way to know whether we are lying or not. Honestly, I don’t really care about it, because we can still ask the black robe man about what happened last night. I will give you a suggestion, though. Don’t lie to us. You need us more than we need you. You are still not fully recovered from your injuries and will probably need us to help you rescue your little sister. So, lying to us will probably the worst decision you can make here.”

I widened at his answer and berated myself.

‘Stupid Sara! How can I forget about Aliyya!! I will have to cooperate with them to save her!’

“So, do we have an agreement?” He clapped as I nodded my head.

“Good. This will be easy. I will ask the question first. Who are you?”

“My name is Sara of Agniis, and I am the oldest daughter of Agniis family’s patriarch. What happened to the man who tortured me?” I gritted my teeth at the torture session I had endured.

“He is in the other room, unconscious. Next question, what happened to you?”

“I don’t know what is really happening to me, but I can tell that our family received a sudden attack from no one know three days ago. As the result, my little sister and I got kidnapped. What will you do to that bastard?” He seems to know who I mean and replied,

“We don’t really know yet. While we don’t like kidnapping and torturing, we know why it needs to be done, and now we need information. So, we will decide what to do with that guy after we got the necessary information.” I clenched my teeth at the cynical answer. Before I can reply, he had already asked his question,

“What did that guy want? And answer it carefully, because we will ask that guy the same question.” This time, I hesitate before giving him a half-truth answer.

“I don’t really know. The man who tortured us said that his boss wants our family treasure. Can I ask my question to your brother?” He looked at his brother who just shrugged,

“Sure.”

“Are you a mage?” They looked surprised at my question before Devin’s brother, Andra if I remember correctly, replied

“I don’t know what you mean. You talked about that before you went unconscious last night. Can you tell us what is a mage?” I frowned at his answer

“Do you mean you don’t know about mage?” They just shake their head, and by the look on their face, they genuinely don’t know what I am talking about.

“But that didn’t make any sense! I can remember clearly the magus fluctuations inside your body before I fell unconscious. Does that mean you did it instinctively? But you are already 14 or 15 years old! So how can it be that you didn’t know anything about mages but you can produce magus from your body?” I looked at them curiously, clearly expecting the answer. They just look at each other before replied awkwardly.

“Eeeeh.. Miss Sara.. In case you forgot, we don’t know about mage, so we don’t know anything you talked before..”

“……….”

I blushed at his answer. ‘Oh my god! Stupid Sara! How can I forget something they talked about a few minutes ago?!!’ I wanted to dig a hole and bury myself to hide from the shame now.

*Cough!* The cough snapped my thought, and before I can say anything, Andra had already changed the topic, thanks god.

“So, Miss Sara.. Can you tell us about mage?”

“Yes, yes, yes! I can tell you about it. So, the mage. Yeah. It will be long. Do you have time?” They nodded at me.

“Okay, I will tell you the basics. Every human in the world has internal energy in their body. Some people call it Chakra, some people call it Ki, and many other names. So-“

“Wait a minute! What do you mean by internal energy? Is that just a myth?” I glared at the boys for interrupting me.

“Of course they are real! And please don’t interrupt me again! You can ask me after my explanation.” I scowled. They both just rubbed the back of their head sheepishly.

“Sorry.”  I clicked my tongue and ignore the apologies.

“Well, because you told me the internal energy is a myth, I will clarify it for you. Every human in the world has internal energy. It flows from the heart and fills the body through the vein. That internal energy is like the fuel to keep the heart beating. The first person who discovered this fact was a man named Magus. That is why we called the internal energy itself a magus.

Not only discovered the internal energy, but he also developed many ways to manipulate the energy and use it for a lot of things like to heal, talk to animals, control nature, and many more. The people who can do that is called a mage. That is the basic knowledge about mage itself. So, any question?” By the look of their face, I know they have a lot of questions, so I let them ask.

“So, why is it that I am 15 years old and didn’t know anything about mage is a problem?” Andra decided to ask first.

“Well, a mage usually started to learn how to manipulate magus when they were at least 3-year-old. That is the age when the magus quality inside your body is very pure and uncontrollable. A mage has to learn a lot of breathing and meditating exercises to control their magus to keep pure, for at least until they were 10-year-old. That was the age when a mage reached their first maturity and magus inside their body can be separated from anything they breathed.

And learning all of the right breathing and meditating exercise to control magus inside your body is not something you can do it yourself, because one wrong move in the exercise can turn your magus into a parasite, and your body will be a very fragile in the future. So, basically, you need a master to guide you to become a mage. That is why, you, who is already 15 years old but has never met any mage, is an anomaly.”

“But we don’t know if I am really a mage or not, right? For all we know, you could be wrong because you said you felt magus just before you fell unconscious.”

“It can be true, but I doubt it. Because if you have ever felt magus from a mage, you will never forget about it.” I said confidently. However, before we can continue our discussion, we hear a scream from the other room,

“LONG LIVE AMASIA!!”

And before we know, the house is exploded.