“Ma!"

  Man smiled as the little golden blonde bundle of joy in front of her finally materialized. A miracle in the making, no doubt.

  "Good, now you don’t o rely on magiake ry using your vocal cords and mouth movements instead," Man instructed.

  "O-o-o…" The little girl gave it a go. "Okay!"

  "Magnifit! How did you do that so quickly?!" Man gasped. Yes, she had seeure through Nemo's rec, but seeing this magistruct speak was like watg an AI gaining sciousness.

  "Mama! Speak mouth. Nemo saw! Nemo watched!"

  Man hummed in approval. So she already knew how to make sound with a mouth by watg? That was some -level learning for a struct. Someone skipped their tutorial.

  "Nemo good? Praise!"

  "Good girl," Man replied, unsure if she should be impressed or armed.

  Just as they ed up the body-fun experiment, Yvain wandered in.

  "Huh, Master? Nemo’s humanoid vessel is finished?" Yvain marveled. "So cool!"

  The three of them tried out a few more experiments, teag Nemo how to move and not look like a wobbly puppet. That’s when they realized someone was still missing.

  "e to think of it, Master, where’s Master Burn?" Yvain asked.

  Man blinked, almost as if she'd fotten about him. "Oh, Caliburn?"

  "He’s painting."

  ***

  The sorium was simple—nothiravagant, nothing grandiose. Just a quiet space where Burn sat, but instead of enjoying the sic view through the windows like any normal person would, he had positioned his easel fag the ter of the room, back to the windows, as if sunlight itself was beh his notice. Well, he just wahe light, after all.

  It had been a while since he'd taken aime for himself. Not even his st painting session ted as self-indulgence. Alright, yes, teically he told himself that everything he did was for himself—but self-awareness was a fickle thing, and he was starting to suspect he might have been lying.

  After all, how could the world possibly keep spinning if he wasn’t personally keeping it in motion?

  As he slowly traced a swirl onto the pitch-bck vas with his fi, most delicate brush, he paused, studying the stroke. A brief moment of ption. Perhaps a moment of doubt.

  Or maybe just the fleeting realization that even in something as personal as painting, the weight of the world still sat on his shoulders like an overly attached ghost.

  “Pa!”

  A chaotic blur of blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and an optimistic misuanding of physics came hurtling toward him—tripping, rolling, sliding, and ultimately using his leg as an impromptu crash pad.

  Burn didn’t flinch. He barely even blinked.

  “Nemo, mind your movements,” came a voice from the doorway, effortlessly carrying a rge bowl of grapes as if this was just auesday. “You bruise now. You’re not an iructible hss anymore.”

  Trailing behind her, a young boy half-ughed, half-sighed as he attempted tle the little bloornado currently boung around the room.

  “Evan Bro! Evan Bro!” Nemo chirped, enthusiasm unchecked.

  Burn parted his lips slightly—just enough to accept a grape, delicately pced between them by fingers as pale and por-thin as fine a.

  Throughout all this, his eyes never wavered from the pitch-bck abyss of his vas. Not even when warm lips pressed against his temple. Not even when a gentle hand moved along his back, grounding him in the moment.

  “Is this what you think your Vision is?”

  A pause.

  Burn nodded.

  Ich-bck vas sat a fist-sized white swirl. Well, not quite a swirl—more like a bend in the vas’s pne. An optical illusion?

  From a dista appeared as if the vas had a hole folding in on itself, simultaneously expanding and colpsing, exploding and imploding, like a fragment of missing space.

  The fabric of the vas stretched and ed, giving the eerie impression of a transparent gss sphere, but not quite, embedded within the darkness—both there and not, solid yet intangible, endlessly pulling everything into its quiet abyss.

  “It looks rather optimistic,” she mused.

  “Nothingness is optimistic?” Burn asked, raising a brow.

  “Mm.” She nodded. “How dare everything never exist? Such audacity. Such hope.”

  A chuckle rumbled low in his throat, his lips curling into a rare smile. “How dare indeed.”

  Despite the subtlest ripples and barely-there gradients interrupting the abyss of bck, the vas remained an indistinct blur. She traced a fioward one of the faint distortions before turning to him expetly.

  “Objects,” Burn answered simply.

  Man chuckled. “Whie is us?”

  He hummed, frowned in thought, then finally poioward ay patch of bck.

  “Oh, that far?” She narrowed her eyes. “Not even a blur?”

  “Shall I mix the darkest gray I possibly create and add the ti stroke?”

  “For me?”

  “For you.”

  “Aww…”

  “There. That’s my wife. And everything I knht there.”

  “Aww… I love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  The obligatory smooch sound followed, prompting Yvain to lean in and squint at the vas—before immediately recoiling. His face twisted in somethiween horror and disbelief. This… this was supposed to be Burn’s Vision?

  He narrowed his eyes, as if looking any harder would make it less terrifying. “Master Burn, please don’t use your Vision…” he muttered, visibly uled.

  Burn only ughed.

  Then—

  “Pa!”

  “Grape ining!”

  “Pa! Nom!”

  “Nom.”

  “Master, I want ooo! Aaaaah—mm nom…”

  Just when Burn thought the room couldn't get any more crowded, Finn strolled in, fnked by Vd and Isaiah—the veiled vampire draped in his usual bck robes and the t, majestic dragon beside him.

  Fiured grandly. “Ah! There they are.”

  Before anyone could react, a delighted squeal pierced the air, and a small, golden-haired blur uself toward them at full speed.

  “Pop-pops! Unc!”

  Burn turan, one eyebrow arg in silent judgment.

  She merely smiled, leaning fortably against him. “Didn’t we agree to py D&D together?”

  Burn exhaled. “And who, exactly, is going to guard the first Demon Lord’s corpse on the moon?”

  Isaiah, ever posed, replied smoothly, “We hath woven a discreet barrier, hiding all snug and sound,” Isaiah intoned, his voice as posed as ever. Then, after a meaningful pause, he added, “But thee, verily, art in need of aid hither.”

  Meanwhile, Vd was having airely different crisis. His eyes sparkled with unholy delight as he swooped in and scooped Nemo up with practiced ease.

  “Oho, ohohoho, ohoho,” he cackled, spinning her around. “Say Pop-pops again. Pops?”

  “Pops!”

  “Good girl. Yes, my name is Pops. Gran Gran Pops.”

  “Oh, fantastic. Gran Gran Vd has evolved.” Burn rubbed his temples. “That’s not your name. Your name is Vd.”

  Vd tilted his head dramatically. “Who’s Vd? Who’s son is that?”

  “This senile old vamp—”