Layer after layer of withered leaves had piled up outside the Rose Pavilion. The scenery, once deep autumn, had gradually been tinged with the frost of winter without anyone noticing.
For Helos, the past month had felt both long and short.
Long, because the world deprived of light was unbearably dull. She was like a prisoner suddenly stripped of her senses, trapped in a cage called her own body.
The alternation of day and night lost all meaning; only the crackling of firewood in the hearth and the ceaseless ticking of the pendulum reminded her of time’s passage.
Short, because she was kept busy every single day.
Even though she couldn’t see, Sylvia’s special training never stopped. That ghostly mentor seemed determined to pour a century’s worth of teaching enthusiasm onto Helos, tormenting her in every possible way.
“Left! Three o’clock direction! A mana node is converging!”
“Too slow! Are you trying to catch a mosquito? That level of mana fluctuation even a blind man could sense—oh, sorry, I forgot you are blind now.”
“Again! I’m increasing the difficulty this time!”
Every night, Helos started her new day of training under Sylvia’s sharp voice. In that pitch-black world where she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, she had to chase those elusive specks of mana light and distinguish those faint, nearly negligible energy ripples.
This caused her great trouble in daily life.
In the first few days, Helos could barely take care of herself. She’d bump into chair legs while walking, knock over cups when drinking, and even needed Gavi to stand guard at the bathroom door, worried that she’d step into some unspeakable place and fall.
She felt like a useless person.
That intense frustration and helplessness nearly made her give up several times.
Fortunately, she wasn’t fighting alone. Whenever she felt fear in the darkness, a warm, broad hand would always reach out to hold hers in time.
Julius was like a bright lighthouse shining on her. Though he nagged like an old mother hen, his actions were more reassuring than anyone else’s.
He would hold her hand, lead her through every corner of the Rose Pavilion, patiently telling her where the steps were and where the turns were.
He would act as a human cushion, letting Helos pound on him in frustration after failed practice. He even learned to interpret every subtle expression on Helos’s face.
The moment she frowned, a cup of water at the perfect temperature would appear at her lips.
And Gavi became her second pair of eyes. This all-around maid was on call almost 24/7. She also mapped out absolutely safe routes for Helos.
When eating, she would describe each dish’s location and texture in detail, then precisely feed the food into Helos’s mouth.
As for Eleanor, the Saintess couldn’t help much with life skills, but she took on the task of building Helos’s spirit.
Every night after training, she would come to Helos’s room and read the latest alchemy journals in her soft voice, or tell interesting anecdotes from the Imperial Capital.
She would also use holy light magic to relieve Helos’s mental fatigue, allowing her to sleep well in that dark world.
With such meticulous care, Helos gradually adapted to her dark life. And as time passed, her understanding of “perception” underwent a radical transformation.
Before, she always felt she was an anomaly without mana. She thought she couldn’t perceive mana because of her lack of talent, because that damned curse blocked everything.
But now she understood.
It was because she had lived her entire life within the “Curse of Silence,” that null magic field. Her body was like a vacuum at the center of a storm.
Even if the world around her was filled with mana and bustling elements, the moment they touched her, they were devoured and negated.
For ordinary people, sensing mana was like hearing the wind, feeling its touch. Someone who couldn’t hear the wind, couldn’t see its shape, couldn’t feel it, naturally couldn’t understand its existence.
But for Helos, she was like a person standing inside a soundproof room. The soundproof room blocked all noise. Over time, her hearing—her perception—naturally became dull or even atrophied.
She couldn’t hear the wind, not because she was deaf, but because that soundproof room existed. Because she didn’t need to perceive it.
However, Sylvia’s potion had forcibly broken that deadlock. It deprived Helos of her most relied-upon sense—sight—forcing her brain to seek new sources of information. It was like a key unlocking the long-sealed door of that “soundproof room.”
After losing the interference of sight, Helos finally heard the voice she had ignored for over a decade.
The voice of the wind.
The voice of mana.
The voice of the whole world breathing.
Once she crossed that threshold, once she learned to observe the world with “instinct” instead of “eyes,” her rate of progress was astonishingly fast.
In just half a month, she could walk freely in the dark. She could even determine the trajectory of an insect flying ten meters away by the faint disturbance mana left in the air.
After another week, she could accurately sense the blazing flow of mana inside Julius—like a furnace—even when he wasn’t deliberately releasing holy light, and even “see” the rise and fall of his holy light with each breath.
Such speed, even Sylvia would call it “lightning fast,” or even “monstrous.”
In the hall of the Rose Pavilion, Sylvia floated in midair, looking down at the blindfolded girl who could precisely catch alchemy balls Gavi threw from different directions.
On her face, usually full of criticism and arrogance, was an extremely complex expression—shock, relief, and a hint of jealousy she didn’t want to admit.
“What kind of freak is this girl…”
Sylvia muttered under her breath. She recalled how she had to drink who knows how many bottles of that perception potion to train her “Spell-Breaking Eye,” stumbling in the dark for a full six months just to barely reach Helos’s current level.
And this girl? In just over a month.
Sylvia sighed, then a smug smile curled at the corner of her mouth.
“It pisses me off, but she’s still my disciple. When I take her out later, let’s see those old undead mages dare to act cocky in front of me.”
As the last alchemy ball was steadily caught in Helos’s hand, this month-long training finally came to an end.
“Clap, clap, clap.”
Julius applauded from the side.
“Congratulations, Helos.”
He stepped forward, his tone full of admiration.
“Your reaction speed now—even I have to take it seriously.”
Helos grinned smugly. She pulled off the black cloth from her eyes.
“Hehe.”
Though the world before her was still pitch black, she could feel that the “fog” obscuring her vision was gradually thinning. Sylvia said the potion’s effect would last about a month and a half to two months. Counting the days, the effect should be fading around now.
“What do you feel?”
Eleanor asked with concern.
Helos blinked. Before she could answer, her eyes suddenly began to sting.
At first, just a faint glimmer of light.
“Hmm…”
Like the first ray of dawn piercing the long night.
Then the light rapidly spread and merged. The pitch-black world began to regain color. Blurry outlines gradually became clear.
The towering dome of the Rose Pavilion.
The exquisite reliefs on the walls.
And the three people standing before her, their faces full of concern.
Eleanor’s golden hair shimmered in the sunlight.
Gavi’s delicate face remained calm and unruffled.
And Julius.
He was watching her, his dark eyes reflecting her image, filled with tenderness.
“I… can see…”
Helos had to squint, her voice trembling slightly.
The feeling of regaining sight was so wonderful it made her want to cry.
But then she discovered something even more astonishing.
As the potion’s effect completely faded, her vision returned to normal. However, that “special vision” she had trained in the dark—that keen, extreme perception—did not degrade with the potion’s disappearance. Instead, it seemed to have perfectly merged with her normal sight.
When she looked at things normally, the world was colorful and material.
But when she focused her mind, the world before her instantly transformed. A faint, water-like filter overlay reality.
She saw it.
She saw countless tiny specks of light floating in the air—free elemental particles.
She saw a soft white light enveloping Eleanor—the holy aura of a Saintess.
She saw within Gavi, her life core beating in a rhythmic pulse.
She even saw Julius, even though he restrained his aura, still radiating a golden brilliance as dazzling as the sun.
All of this was so clear. So real.
The girl sat on the sofa, staring blankly at everything around her. She reached out and grabbed at the air.
In her perception, with her movement, the surrounding free mana particles were stirred, forming a small vortex. Then they were silently devoured by the “black hole” in her palm.
This sense of control and insight was something she had never experienced in her life.
Helos looked at her palm and couldn’t help but let out a soft laugh.
“Haha…”
She lifted her head. Her pale violet eyes shimmered with a light called pride.
“This feeling…”
She murmured to herself.
“Is pretty amazing.”