After dealing with Fig, you decide to tend to Min Min. They don't seem to be in any life-threatening danger, just unconscious for the moment. Still, it never hurts to be cautious. You drag them over to one of the empty buildings and place them in the recovery position. They could have bleeding somewhere, perhaps internally, which could have made them go into shock. Perhaps the journey to the new Sanctuary was too tough on them and they got sunstroke? You are currently in a desert after all. Maybe-

Just as you think to continue your musings, you hear a stir behind you. Min Min seems to gradually wake from consciousness. Quickly you go to them, check their breathing, pulse, pupil dilation. Everything seems normal. They are fine.

“Hey, Min Min. Can you hear me? Can you speak? What happened to you back there, what do you remember?” - you try to clarify the situation with Min Min. It might shed some light on what caused them to faint.

“Uuuuugh… Yes and yes. I just felt pain across my entire body and my vision went white as I fainted… I'm fine, you can leave me alone now.”

“Are you sure? I can bring you some water and maybe-”

“No. Just leave me alone. I don't want to spend any more time than I have to with you. I've already made my opinion of you clear. I may have cooperated then… and I can see that you're not as bad as I had made you out to be, but that doesn't change what you did.” - their rejection of you… hurts. You know now what the consequences of your actions were, how much they hurt them. Why did you ever leave? Was it the sorrow, the guilt, of having let Ilyrana die in that fire? You may have done much good, yet it cannot make up for what you once did. You get up to leave Min Min alone. Perhaps in time you may be family again, but now is not the time.

It is then, that you hear the crinkling of paper. You realise that you've been standing around in thought at the exit of the house for a good few minutes. As you turn to look back inside, you find Min Min reading your letter.

“Is this… what you were gonna leave me with… if you died?” - a long silence stretches between the two of you. There just isn't much you can say. There is much you only realised over the past few days, and you truly do feel remorse for all that has happened. If you could go back and undo your actions, you would. As you look up at Min Min's face, you see genuine surprise and… sorrow. You're sure that what you wrote stirred up… unpleasant memories, but you hope at the very least your remorse got through to them. You leave the room not knowing whether it did.

The past three years went by in a flash. Life has been relatively calm. Your profession as a doctor was helpful to the city, yet it was nowhere near the intensity that you had been used to. When you wandered around, the times when your help was required, was usually after a monster attack. Sowing up grievous wounds and bringing patients back from the brink of death is something that had become commonplace for you. But there are no monsters around the new Sanctuary and there hasn't been much crime either. With the free time that you've gained, you tried to mend your relationship with Min Min. It has been… hard. You are finally acting like a father again, spending time with your child which you should have spent long ago. However, there still remains a wall between you. You disappeared for decades and missed so much of Min Min's life… and furthermore, it seems that some wounds cannot be completely healed by time. Still, they've finally accepted your apologies and understood that you never wanted for any of that to happen.

The day of the Midsummer's Apocalypse is no different from any other. It is during a check up on a patient that the memories come flooding back. The Sanctuary, magic, the evacuation, the Wish, your Rupture… oh god, your Rupture. You remember everything. As you rush through the streets you see everyone standing around with dazed looks. As you reach home you find Min Min, in that very same daze. They now remember. The eyes they look at you with are of shock and despair. The very thing that had ruined their life, ruined your life, had disappeared for 3 years… and now it is back. You embrace them and hold them in a hug. Your shirt grows damp with every sob.

It is only after the seven days are up that you learn of the chaos that has been caused by the return of magic. For seven days, people could cast magic without consequence. For seven days there was chaos as people manifested all the things they desired and destroyed the world around them. And when the seven days were up and magic came to have a cost again… the injuries you saw among all the refugees that came to the Sanctuary were far more horrible than anything you'd seen before. These were not made by fang or blade - these were a result of magic clawing at its wielder, taking a chunk of flesh as payment for its 'gifts'. The stories your heard reminded you too much of your own. Families sacrificed, children abandoned… How many more people have had to repeat the very same mistakes that you've made? Is this how it must be?

As you return home, exhausted from hours of cleaning wounds and checking patients, you find yourself walking towards Min Min's room. You find them to be absent. You suppose that they should still be helping take care of the patients. They dropped their job to help with the effort after their memories came back. Inside the room you find a whole mess of things: books, papers, clothes, tools. Yet only one of them catches your eye. A familiar owl mask.

You walk among the crowd, trying to get closer to the stage before the speech starts. Rennyn, your father, should be coming up soon, though few know who he actually is. There are too many who might aim for his head, or worse, for his family… though you're the only one left. Charlotte has given him a lot of advice on leading the Custodians of Reality and it's helped shape the organisation into what it is today, protecting the people from the evils of magic. You can hear his footsteps slowly grow louder as the crowd grows quieter. Finally, the speech begins.

“My dear comrades. Today I speak to you in person, for there is a grand duty that we have been burdened with. For so many years, magic has spread its insidious roots into every crevice of the world. So many families have been broken up, so many lives have been lost, so many miseries inflicted and they all have but a single cause - magic! Yet despite all this, there are still some who would seek to delve further into magic. Whether their intentions be benign or malignant, it does not matter. Magic will lure the wielder in with promises of power and punish them with sacrifices far greater than they can bear. We cannot allow that to happen. A week hence we will march on the city of Baghur, where mages live blind to the suffering of others, where they reach far higher than any should. We will ensure their hands do not reach anything.” - you listen with rapt attention to your father's speech. You've heard it before of course, you, he and Charlotte went over it beforehand. But still, it feels when actually performed. Perhaps it's the energy of the crowd, perhaps it's the talent for oration that he's grown over the years, but you can't help but be swept along by the mood.

Eventually the crowd does calm down and Rennyn walks off to leave to the planning room. You join him, as does Charlotte. As you walk, you think back to all that has led you to this day. When the Midsummer's Apocalypse happened you were devastated, broken. You buried yourself in work just so that you wouldn't have to think about the fact that the thing that caused you so much grief, which you had tried to hard to excise from the world, had now returned. The days blurred together and you functioned on auto-pilot. It was only when dad came to you and told you that he wanted to recreate the Custodians of Reality that you finally broke out of the despair that had gripped you. It was a long journey. From starting out as no more than protestors in the new Sanctuary, to forming a force to take action against those that misuse magic. Now you control magic, preventing mages from ever leaning too much on magic, gaining too much power. Dad told you about what happened at the old Sanctuary. The power of Wishes has caused so much damage to the world. None should be allowed to wield it.