Her mom rode passenger to Matthew, Jack and Sophie sitting in the back seat.

"Taj says it's undeniable. Leven's spirit isn't gone yet, and it wants him dead. He's decided to take Emily and stay at an apartment until we figure out what to do, but honestly, I'm not hopeful. Spirits take a lot of resources, and Taj is already on the chopping block to die for other reasons. Leven might fade with time, but if he really has inherited your father's magic, it's unlikely to happen in any sort of timely manner."

"Will I… get to say goodbye to my son?" her mother asked, voice cracking.

"I don't know ma'am, I'm sorry. It's not often something like this happens, and not much is known about it. Sometimes, the mind is still there… other times, it's simply an echo. If possible though, I wanted to give you all the chance to. Just in case. Perhaps Leven will fade tomorrow, perhaps he won't at all. Before reporting this to my higher ups though, I wanted you all in the house to see if there's any response.

* * *

They walked around the house for a long while, but nothing responded. They called to Leven, but whatever might've wanted Taj dead wasn't interested in talking to them.

Only their mom had any sort of response. Matthew gave them no information on Leven's death, but their mom wandered, looking around listlessly, tears falling from her eyes. Losing a child would always be hard.

She seemed so passive, right up until she took one step into the master bedroom. Looking down at her feet, she frowned.

Sophie and Jack came up behind her, stepping around and looking for whatever she stared at. Matthew slowly walked towards them as well.

"What's wrong?" she asked her mom, but the woman simply kept staring with a frown on her face.

"Miss Hardie?" Matthew asked.

"I'm fine," her mother spoke in a much more stable voice than she clearly felt. "Whatever's here though… isn't Leven."

"How can you be so sure?" Matthew asked hesitantly.

"My boy… he's sweeter. All that's left behind is hate, that's not him."

"You can feel it?"

"I've got some practice. Oscar lets out a feeling when he gets riled up, this feels like him. Leven had Oscar's presence too, and something more. Something unique to him. This doesn't have any Leven left."

Sophie's mom turned and left without hesitation, and the rest followed shortly thereafter, spooked by the mother's words.

* * *

Months passed, and everything played out exactly as Matthew and Loretta predicted. Taj was given some cheap patches to keep the spirit, echo, whatever it was from killing him. Her father was contained, and stayed that way. They were hopeful for his eventual release, but that would take time. Until then, Sophie and Jack decided to let some friends take care of their house as they moved in with Sophie's mom fully.

It was not easy, but they could only continue forward to hope things eventually got better.

* * *

POV: Dei Grrata, back in the present

"Not much has happened since then. There isn't any news on dad's condition getting any better, just the monthly visit from Matthew or Loretta to update us. We occasionally hear about Taj and Emily suffering from… you, I guess. Mom said it wasn't you but, honestly, nobody had any guess as to what else it could be. I feel bad for Jenny, their little girl, but most people have cut the two off completely."

"I think I know what it might be. There are some intangible enemies in the Void, where I went after dying. I think they are more the concept of a monster, than an actual monster. Perhaps there was some… backlash, based on how I'd also temporarily transformed into something similar to the Void Beasts, causing me to leave behind the concept of myself, if only part of it.

"As for dad, what did you want me to do? I haven't seen his condition, so I don't know how any of it works. How do you know that I'd be able to help?"

"I… I don't know. You just got back from another world, so you definitely know magic. Can't you do something? Do you have any way to calm him down?" she pleaded.

"You know… I just might" he told her, thinking about how he'd absorbed Lani's Wrath Curse. If Wrath overflow was the issue, it would be a simple fix.

* * *

Jack was the next to wake up, and far more standoffish and skeptical. After getting over his initial shock, he spent a while quizzing Dei on everything he knew of Leven, trying to see if there were some holes in his memory.

After an hour of perfect and instant answers, Jack still frowned. "At this point it's more suspicious that you can answer so quickly."

Dei guffawed, then responded "Well yea, I have an eidetic memory now. My mind is much stronger than the average humans."

"Are you a human anymore?" Jack questioned. "I'm just going to assume you're telling the truth at this point, because there is little I could do to stop you if you mean harm. So Day, why are you so large? Are you a giant now?"

"I think you pronounced my name with an 'A' rather than an 'E.' In English I think it'd be spelled 'D, E, I,' or 'D,E,Y.' Not Day, as in daylight."

"Quit dodging the question. Are you a human?"

"I'm not dodging, this is important…" he grumbled. "But to answer, not anymore. That has nothing to do with my size though. I was born as a Gem Dweller human, sort of like mole-people in my world that are absolutely massive. I turned myself into a half-spirit by gluing my soul to my body. This didn't really change my appearance at all, so this is how I would've looked anyway."

"Half spirit, huh?" Jack raised his eyebrows. "What changed then, if nothing physically?"

"Eh, I'm like Danny Phantom. I can turn into a ghost."

"Really?"

"Yea."

"Huh, how'd that happen?"

"Not super important right now. I think we should focus on breaking the news to my mom and maybe rescuing my dad?"

"Break the news to her? She's gonna be ecstatic. I'll admit though, this may take a while to explain to her" Jack conceded.

"Yea, when's she gonna get up anyway? The sun is almost up."

"It's probably going to be a couple more hours, most don't get up this early anyway." Sophie cut in, responding to his question. "Speaking of, I think we should start getting breakfast ready, but I don't know how we're going to feed you. I don't think we have enough food in the house."

Dei laughed. "That's a good point, honestly. I can shrink down though, probably best if I do that before mom gets up. Rather not scare her."

"You can shrink?!" Sophie exclaimed. "Why didn't you before! You scared the shit out of me! I would've appreciated a more average sized person."

"Well for one, it ain't exactly easy, and I haven't actually tried shrinking myself down before, just changing shape. For two, I didn't think of it until right now."

Jack shook his head. "I'll cook some bacon and eggs while you two get caught up more. If you're going to talk about magic stuff though, I'd appreciate it if you came to the kitchen as well. I want to hear." He pat Dei gruffly on the shoulder, saying "It's good to have you back man, really. Even if you aren't Leven, we'll welcome you like him," then walked off to go prepare breakfast.

"I should've said something like that" Sophie complained, then wrapped him in a hug, squeezing tight before letting go and turned to follow her husband. "Start shrinking yourself so you don't give mom a heart attack. When you're a more reasonable size, let's wake her up and get your story. I don't think she'll want to miss anything either."

* * *

Jack agreed that Miss Hardie wouldn't want to be left out of something like this, so they talked about more mundane Earth stuff while Dei slowly but surely used Fluid Shape to shrink himself. Contrary to what he expected, it was completely possible to do so. The extra mass went somewhere in his soul, and he suddenly had the thought that perhaps the Earth version of Souls weren't fully intangible if they existed in another dimension. Perhaps they simply hid their mass somewhere else? Whatever the case, he stopped shrinking himself when he was Jack's height, a reasonable six-foot-flat.

"You still look… scary. But maybe not as monstrous."

"Why?" Dei asked, confused. Aside from being an albino in this world he wasn't really sure what people would find odd about him.

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"At a glance? The thick leather armor and the massive scar on your cheek, perhaps? It looks like half your face was torn off and sewn back on."

"Well… it kind of was?"

Sophie grimaced. "Let's wake up mom and you can start from the beginning."

As Sophie walked off, heading up the stairs, Dei didn't know what to say or do. He just stood there awkwardly. He was tense, and had to remind himself that he was safe here.

Despite the short time he'd been gone, he lost a lot of familiarity with what it felt like to be nervous, yet not in danger. He was waiting for an unseen blow, but if Sophie's story on the local mages were to be believed, the people of Earth could do little to damage him without significant collateral, and they would most likely lean towards diplomacy first.

Again he was reminded of how his heightened Physical stat increased more than just his muscles, because he found that he was able to hear the conversation upstairs between Sophie and his mom. It wasn't often that he tried to use his mundane senses to such an extreme.

"Mom… Mom wake up."

"What? Sophie? What time is it?"

"Seven thirty."

"Okay… is something the matter?"

"No, but we got a little bit of good news downstairs."

"About your father?" his mom asked hopefully, and he could hear her jump out of bed to quickly start getting dressed.

"Sort of, but yes?"

"What is it?"

"It's a surprise."

"Sophie I do not like surprises of this variety."

"You will, I promise."

Twenty seconds later, he heard his mom speed ahead of Sophie down the stairs to see what was going on. Hearing Jack's cooking in the kitchen, it was the first place she checked.

The moment she opened the door, she locked eyes with Dei and froze, much similar to Sophie. Unlike Sophie, she didn't pale. Her face scrunched in confusion, and her eyes narrowed.

"Who are you?" when he opened his mouth to answer, she cut him off. "Wait. Don't answer that."

He shut his mouth and let her walk over to him. She looked him up and down, circled him slightly, then stood before him, staring intently at his face. For an uncomfortable amount of time.

"...Leven?"

Sophie gaped, while Jack and Dei laughed.

"Hey mom."

* * *

He didn't want to say he was discrediting the joy of his mother, but after the third reunion of the day, he wasn't quite as emotional.

Tearful, yes, but he was getting better!

Reexplaining everything that'd happened, up to his second birth and excluding his conversation with the System, Dei saw only joy in his mom's face. She wasn't as surprised or skeptical at the magical aspect as Jack, and not crying as Sophie had been.

When he finished his story, the first thing he did was ask about her reaction and why it was so different.

"Oh honey, I knew you'd gone somewhere else. I was sad I'd never get to see you again, but I never thought you were gone."

"How so?" Dei asked, baffled.

"You left behind an echo of course, all the hate you held in life that I knew you could never let go. I thought that was you finally casting it off before heading off to heaven, taking only your pure, kind little heart."

He had to look away. 'How does she do that? Make me feel ashamed and loved at the same time? She truly believed I'd left my Wrath behind to go to paradise, and was happy for me. Now though… I've only further neglected my Kindness. I'd forgotten why it came so easily to me on Earth, but with people like mom, lashing out just feels fundamentally wrong. She expects me to be better, and I have to be. For mom.'

She ruffled his hair and shot him a smirk, knowing exactly what she'd done.

"How'd you know it was me, anyway? Ah, but I should tell you, I'm not quite Leven anymore. When I was reborn, my whole identity changed too. It's a bit complicated, but long story short I'm only half-Leven, now named Dei."

"Okay, Dei, I knew it was you because you just feel like my son. You and your father always had something about you that told me it was you. Your aura feels a lot like your father, but with two opposing sides. You have something to limit your anger where your father didn't, which was why you could hold it back while he could only lose control past a certain point. With you, the feeling would appear in bursts, then disappear over time, replaced by a much milder aura."

"Ma, I'm not gonna lie here, you've got an incredibly acute mana sense. What you're picking up is something called Presence, and from what I know it comes from noteworthy people or large quantities of mana. I'm, frankly, surprised you could feel it considering you don't have any magic yourself and base mana doesn't even exist in this universe."

"Like I told Matthew every time he asked about it, it's just practice. I always want to find your father and calm him down when he gets the way he does, so I just pushed myself to feel it more. Eventually, I got real good. A bit too good, honestly, until I eventually had to start hiding how much I could see. I'm good enough to smell out phenomena when one is nearby, so I thought Oscar's bosses would start using me as a scout, like Matthew. They don't know I've gotten quite that far though, so let's keep this quiet."

Dei hummed thoughtfully. "I will but, say, how often do you run into supernatural stuff?"

"Frequently. I'd say for every eight trips I make outside the house, I run into at least one magical thing. Although it's always just barely magical, something floating by unnoticed. I leave them alone, and they've never bothered me."

Dei frowned. "How often are these things supported by actual mages? Controlled, that is."

His mom shook her head. "Never. Mages can't throw the magic outside their body, silly. I'm not feeling their abilities, just the bare magic. Remnants of mages long long dead, like what you left in your old house, but a lot weaker."

Dei had already been suspicious of the previous construct left behind, but now he was even more positive that there was something wonky going on with the mana in this universe. Mana should naturally break down over time and dissipate. He assumed it would be even faster on Earth, but his mom was saying now there was little to no decay at all.

"I think I know what's happening." Perumah spoke up for the first time in a while, causing him to glance at his hand. She was in her gray nub form, mostly hidden, with her roots buried deep into his bloodstream. She was almost invisible in her current state.

"Yea? What's that?" he asked through their connection, not aloud.

"Mana in this world seems to follow it's own rules. I've been going down my list of spells, and many of them have had the mechanism of their uses fundamentally altered. From what I find, affinity mana in this world is completely unable to leave the body. Skills will consume the concept of the affinity, leaving behind a useless husk energy that can't go anywhere and doesn't do anything. It's not possible to release it, and it only takes up space. The one exception to this is base MP, which is constantly trying to escape the body and fade to nothing."

"Wait, so you're saying-"

His conversation was interrupted when Sophie said "I feel like you've zoned out or are talking to your own hand."

"Talking to my hand," Dei responded. "Sorry, let me introduce you to my friend from the other side, Perumah. Perumah is an intelligent telepathic plant."

He held out his right hand where she hid, and she proudly extended to her full length, almost the size of his arm at this point in his shrunken state. She nearly punched a hole in the ceiling too, only an inch away from it.

Sophie yelped, but Jack leaned forward to get a closer look at Perumah.

"Is that real metal? How did it shrink so much?"

"Not metal, this is plant material I'm pretty sure. But magical plant material. And again, Perumah is a girl plant. I'd appreciate it if you used her name, she really likes it."

The purr Perumah released through their link seemed to agree with her joy at hearing her own name.

'Egotistical ass plant.'

"Now give me a moment to talk with her, I think this is important." Switching back to telepathic communication, he said "Okay, so you're saying that affinity mana can never leave the body? Like, the air just flat out rejects it?"

"See for yourself."

He went back to his Pandora's Box, sectioning off five pieces of Wrath and quickly trying to throw them from his body, getting exactly what she meant. There was a solid wall that trapped his mana inside him. 'That explains the unique way my Skills formed, with my Wrath only being drained of Concentration rather than being expelled from my body. In this universe, expelling it from the body is not possible. The only way for mana to leave the body is for its host to die, and at that point, according to mom, it becomes its own sort of construct. Not a spirit, but just wild mana, floating through the air. It's like the air is water, and affinity mana is oil- they just reject each other.

'That also explains why the echo I left behind is still there. It simply cannot fade, because the world itself is keeping the mana together. Eventually, it might run out of conceptual strength, but the mana will forever be there. Man, they really should condemn that house until that's fixed. Actually wait…'

"Hey, mom, odd question. Why haven't Taj and Emily moved out of my house? I feel like it'd be easier to sell it and go somewhere else than deal with my echo…"

"Not that easy, I'm afraid. When Taj doesn't show up back home for a day or two, the anger follows him, and it's always twice as mad as if he'd stayed."

"It follows him? It's not just a stagnant construct, linked to the house and my place of death?"

"Nope."

'Okay, damn, Taj really fucked himself over. Got his whole body broken and straight up cursed. Ha!

'That supports mom's words about the constructs wandering as well. I'll have to go see it at some point as well.'

Back to telepathically discussing with Perumah, he said "Would you like to test whether it is only the air rejecting mana, or if the mana isn't able to leave our bodies at all?"

"Yes, let me send some Heart mana towards you."

He was startled when she easily manipulated the Heart mana into him, moving it around, then took it back. 'Oh. Everything I connect with directly is linked back to me, isn't it? With my Identify it's an attack so it will resist influence, but I'm attached to Perumah with bare Connection, and there are always two sides to the spell. I can manipulate mana within her, but the same is true for her against me.'

The experiment confirmed what they thought though: you could offload mana into other beings, but not the air.

Meaning that the only way to relieve pressure from the influence of overflowing mana was to push it onto someone else.

His brow scrunched, 'But wait, I don't remember dad ever attacking people when he got angry. He'd work out to remove the influence of the Wrath, then go off somewhere and calm down. But where did the mana go then?'

His eyes fell on his mom.

'No way.'

"Mom, would you mind if I checked something quickly?"

"What? You just stood there silently for several minutes and now you look concerned."

"Umm, better if I check first. Don't want to be unnecessarily concerned over something wrong."

His mom sighed, "You and your sister hiding things. Okay, do you need me to do anything?"

"No, just come here for a moment."

Taking his mother's hand in his, he used a small piece of Connection to get a full, unfiltered view of her soul. Identify wouldn't do for what he needed.

He wasn't sure how to find the potential spell, so he pushed a single point of Wrath into the edge of his mother's soul, ready to revoke it if it caused any damage.

He needn't have worried though, as a spell he only half-expected to appear reacted to the mana, and was pulled deeper in. Following behind it for a few seconds, he quickly found a grand, shocking sight:

A duplicate of Pandora's Box.

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