After an hour or so, Alex woke up clutching his head. He quickly looked around to find where he was when he suddenly noticed the sky. He was flying!

“Woah! W-Where am I…” Alex said to himself as realized he was on top off something. He jerked back in fear of falling but a thin blue aura covered his body which kept him fixated on the creature.

Alex then looked at the creature below him. He observed it for a while without saying anything. At this point he didn’t even have the energy to question what was carrying him right now.

“Thanks buddy I don’t know why? But I think you saved me back then. What’s your name? heh sorry you probably don’t talk human language do you.” Alex said.

“Neigh, neigh” was the only response the horse gave.

“Heh so its Coco, oh so you are a girl, nice… wait! Nei…neigh did you just neighed?”

“Neigh.”

“And I understood you? Then are you a horse? And how did I- Wait I can speak horse, are you an elephant or unicorn?!” Alex crazed out, almost having a breakdown.

“Ne…neigh, neigh”

As soon as Coco neighed, the stone in Alex’s pocket began to glow.

Alex, “Huh! So, I see now… you are his friend.”

‘That’s right there was a similar looking creature in that portrait I saw, I guess he just …gained some weight.’ Alex thought to himself remembering the horse like creature he saw in the portrait when he saw the memories of the man trapped in the stone.

“If that’s the case I hope you know where we have to go.”

Coco replied with a neigh.

‘That’s good…’ It was the last thought Alex had before he fell asleep. Suddenly Coco raised its head in an upward manner and the next moment the whole of Alex’s body began to glow from face down. As the light died down, he was suddenly in new clothes, a gray shirt with a white tunic, gray pants, dark brown boots. The clothes provided by Coco began to recede the black veins on his body but it was clear that they were only slowing down the inevitable.

…

After Alex had escaped Rose had contacted Merissa and relayed Alex’s message to her.

“From his words, I felt like he didn’t have much left now…” Rose said to the hologram of Merissa.

Merissa remained silent for a few moments before she said, “You have performed your duties well, you should go back to school, I’ll take it from here.”

Rose was about to say something when Merissa cancelled the connection. ‘Looks like it’s out of my league now.’ Rose thought as she made her way back to earth. Even Clare pulled back the task force and had given her the same order to return back to earth. Apparently, the news had already reached the King. This was going to turn into something which she couldn’t handle by herself.

When Rose got back to earth, she hoped not to bump into Nina. She couldn’t possibly say to her that Alex was now going to be pursued by many dangerous individuals against whom he didn’t had a single chance. But she knew meeting Nina was inevitable as they had similar classes for some subjects.

But when she attended her classes, Nina was nowhere to be seen. After all classes got over, she tried to look for her. This was because it was unlike her to bunk classes. Rose went to the infirmary to check if she got sick since that was the only possible excuse but failed to find her even there.

She inquired about her whereabouts from her classmates but they were all similarly curious as to where she was. Soon news of a student missing would spread and if she isn’t found panic would begin.

Rose, ‘This isn’t like Nina to be so reckless. The only possible explanation is… could something, have happened to her!?’

She immediately contacted the council members who were still present in the school as a precaution. She enquired about the tracking domain they had set up around the school. Anything entering the domain or exiting would be recorded. Every student and teacher’s aura signature were recorded in the domain so if any unfamiliar person entered, they would be immediately detected. But there wasn’t a single unidentified aura signature in the last few days leaving the domain.

Rose pulled up today’s recording of the aura signatures and she found something unusual, a student had left the school premises after which their signature had entered twice the school grounds. A small anomaly had also happened a few hours earlier but these things happened time to time due to less available mana on earth for the devices to function properly.

So, it was normal. But the thing about the energy signature entering twice was troublesome. The people at duty were only normal staff paying attention only for Alex’s aura signature or that of something very unusual, such a small detail would obviously slip by them.

After a little more analyzing she found that the aura signature belonged to Grey. ‘If I remember correctly, he is Alex and Nina’s friend.’ Rose internalized as she went to meet him. Grey was with Nova and Tom in the cafeteria when Rose suddenly entered and asked if she could talk privately with him.

“How did he managed to lure her?” Nova asked in a whisper to Tom.

“Maybe he got into trouble again?” Tom replied.

Nova, “Yeah… no other explanation as to why a girl would approach him first.” Tom and Nova chuckled.