"There! All set and done! Aetherium luminata!"

The chanting voice of Phyldiane filled the dark, cobblestone-lined room with trembling echoes, as her cooking pot over the brightly-blue sparkling flames glows with its embers. It was a success! And the slightly charred pot was filled with a cyan liquid, whose turbulent, oil-like essence swirl amidst the heat.

"I did it! Ha! A lightning buff potion!"

She danced quite a bit upon her success. She was so proud of her work. And what's more, none of her fellow classmates at the Incantorium Academica ever knew that she only spent a meager 5 white pearls on her ingredients.

"Take that, Mistulia! Once I show this to them tomorrow, that shoddy witch can shut the hell up on me!", she uttered in a gruntled tone as she slowly brews the cooked potion onto her glass bottle. In her mind, she insistently remembers what happened earlier at the Incantorium with the confrontation she has with her after class.

"You crazy! That's impossible, flea den.", Mistulia insisted, looking straight at Phlydiane's face. "Either you have to pay for a diamond crystal for it or you take months of cooking for that lightning buff potion to get."

"Nah, I can do it in hours, even tomorrow!", Phlydiane confidently told her. "Don't make it sound impossible just because I am better than you.", she said as her eyes rolled out.

"Oh, look who's talking. That one girl who thinks she is so good and can defy magic rules just because she got an A+ score in Mrs. Gemphrian's test!", Mistulia said in a mocking tone. "You will never do that, flea face, that is what the Book of Incantarions say is the minimum."

"Your rules don't apply to me, oh please. Unlike you who sticks with your books, I can make my own ways and explore. You are just smart, but not creative."

Mistulia casually puts her hand in her bag as if she is getting something.

"Alright, let's make a deal young lady. If you don't have a lightning buff potion by tomorrow, you drink this!", Mistulia said as she shows a bottle of brown liquid.

"What the hell is that?", Phlydiane asks in quite disgust.

"Oh, just my little ventrem confractio bottle. Drink it, and see how you puke your guts all over the place to my heart's desire!", Mistulia said with a grin.

"Deal! However if I brought, YOU drink that crap.", Phlydiane told her.

"Oh sure, either way. I will not drink this, trust me. You better off prepare your leather bags as you barf all over the place. Face me tomorrow, 2 AM at the moonsilver fountain at the plaza."

Phlydiane agreed to her demands, and walks away while being stared at with her classmates around her.

"Why are you staring at! Get off your lives, suckers! I got a job to do!", she said angrily as she hurried home.

Phlydiane, just finished with he potion work, raises her lightning buff bottle. At that moment her father, the great mage-alchemist Pernigcian, enters her room.

"Oh, what's that young lady? An experiment underway? You like to follow my work, don't you?", her father said as he folds his magic robes away. Chaffed with a beard and wearing his spectacles, he turns towards his daughter as she spoke.

"Yeah, I did this potion. Because my classmate couldn't believe me that I can make this in just a short time. So I made a bet on her."

"Really? You making bets now? That doesn't sound too nice for you to do."

"They just don't know your methods, father. They don't know your ideas and kept insisting that age-old Incantations book! Your ideas of alchemy can change magic!"

Her father laughed quite a bit, and patted her on her shoulder.

"Phlydiane, be responsible, okay? I don't want to reveal this to anyone. I trust you to keep it a secret."

"Why do you want it to be secret? This is marvelous!"

"Phlydiane, I don't know what will happen. If people found out about this, they might saw us as sorcerers, using black magic. And all I just want is your safety. I don't want you to get into trouble. So please, keep our methods secret, okay?"

Phlydiane reluctantly agrees as her father embraced her.

"Care to take a look at what you have done?", he asks her. Phlydiane reaches out her glass bottle.

"The lightning buff aetherium luminata. Let me guess, you used coal for this, right?" Phlydiane smiled a bit. "Coal and diamond are just the same form of one thing, just arranged differently. And that is what makes this possible. You will really make expense of doing it the old way. But hey, this is the last time you will do this. Keep it hidden as much as possible, okay?"

"Very well, father. I'll keep my promise.", Phlydiane agrees.

"Dad, if only I had the power to help you."

Yuna stares at the old, brownish photograph. Though the years had manifested itself in the bleaks and smudges of the glass, she can still vividly pronounce the figure - the happy smile she has as a child as her father carries her by her arms, and her mother close by her side.

The little girl in the photograph can no longer be discerned with the lady holding the wooden frame. Yuna, now 56, has the only reminder of her past being the scar she has on her right arm. A scar of which origins she can still remember despite the decades of hallowing memories burying it within.

It was a fateful day, of that six year old girl, watching as the angels come down in glorifying, mystical sight. Their robes pure in form, bathed in light, and their faces only barely discernable against the white glow. They come down in sense of fright and wonder upon the crowd looking at them. The whole community around her, and people from far and wide, garnering around them in a line.

She looks at her scar once more, now barely visible from her arm, only slightly pale and tender to the touch. Her mind can hear the voices and cries of people at that day. One by one, they face the terrifying angels in the lines. Some laughed, others cried, and they are all taken away towards the endless skies.

She saw her mother right at the front lines looking back from afar, with tears on her eyes. Her face seems to be in the form of despair, which Yuna then didn't understand. Yuna was carried by her father in his arms, and she can also hear her father's faint cry. Is mother going away too? By then she can't tell, as the angels took her mother away with them.

Her father took her down, and with eyes filled with sadness, knelt down in front of her and touched her face gently.

"Yuna, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."

He held her right arm, and with a knife he held on his other hand, cut her arm lightly with it. She remembers that it hurts a bit, but her father's sudden take to embrace her did not allow her to cry or express any pain.

"Someday, Yuna, you will understand me."

After that, her father walked away from her, and into the line of angels. She was still holding her bleeding wound as she saw her father also taken away. The glow of the angel figures slowly molded into her faded memory.

It was only after all those years she finally understands. The scar, her father's expression, and why it is done. It is a sin, but perhaps a noble one. For she now knew that they both have to be taken away. That her mother was thrown into a lower Earth, and her father also has to go there. The scar is all but a reminder of her father's love, even amidst in front of God's divine judgment.

Yet even knowing so, Yuna felt powerless. If only she had done something, to not lose them, or to at least make them stay here too. The questions over the years flew by. Why was her mother brought into the lower Earth? What has she done? Why did her father did that act? Is he selfish, that he would dare to hurt his own child?

"I have to find them. Maybe they are out there, somewhere still."

She didn't know what Earth they were. She is now in Earth 4, but judging from her dad's act, they are absolutely in a lower Earth. The judgment that is once every 50 years will soon begin by the following month. She must make herself be judged, sinful and be damned. For in the name of love and family, she will be willing to face herself in God's harsh hand.