「 With brown curls and dark eyes, he somehow looked like a complete reverse of Nocka. Especially when a slow, lazy smile overtook his lips, making him look content like a cat bathing in the sunlight. Or someone high as a kite on opioids which was in fact one of his favorite past times. 」

The man standing in front of me looked exactly as I saw him in my imagination. He was only a minor character appearing briefly in the first part of the story but somehow his description made an impression on me. Somehow it gave a good insight into his whole character.

In the original book, Gael and Reyc were best friends, they studied together but then their paths diverged and they reconnected only right before the main plot started. Gael was in fact one of the reasons why Reyc even come in contact with Jacques de Asper. He was probably also the reason why Reyc decided to betray the Seventh Lord - in a fit of anger Jacques brutally murdered Gael.

「 The light dimmed in man’s eyes, the last sparks of this lightness and joy he always carried within himself. It was a miracle on its own that he lived for so long, his stomach torn open, intestines coiling like living beings between Jacques’ sharp claws- 」

I shook my head as if that would help me to get rid of gory passages from the book. And closed the door.

“Wait… Reyc! You shit!..”

Gael continued banging on my front door and cursing me, but honestly, how could I let him inside? I knew why he came to me now and what he will try to convince me to do. How could I not know? Bareilly last night I finished reading the book.

He was just a character, I knew it, but suddenly it felt more real seeing him in front of me.

And that’s even before I had any time to consider that just awaken in a life that didn’t belong to me. It could be just a twisted dream, but didn’t feel like one…

Suddenly I remembered some trivia I heard in the past. One good way to see if the dream was real or not was to try to look into the mirror. Reflection on the mirror would feel wrong.

I stepped away from the door and started looking all around Reyc’s home looking for something to see my reflection in. There was one, a hand mirror with a brass handle lying on the writing desk. I grabbed it and hoping, I looked at my reflection.

「 Character Name: Hubert Reyc

Age: 26

Status: Gate [Human] 」

Once again there was that small notification window in the corner of my vision, but what I saw in the mirror was even more horrifying.

It was just me. My eyes, my lips, my nose. Every angle and curve of my face was the same as it was the day before when I was in my own home at Birka.

Behind me, Gael opened the front door and let himself in. He dropped his bags on the floor and unceremoniously started to look around. Touching some objects and reading spines of books, curious of the environment apparently neither of us was in before.

“That’s how you greet your old friends? Closing the door in their face?”

“If it were an old friend visiting me, they would know better than to slam on my door in the middle of the night.”

Gael laughed at that, openly as if heard the best joke. Something crossed his dark brown eyes, maybe fondness, maybe sadness. And then he crossed the room in two steps and pulled me in a hug.

Surprised by this intimacy I didn’t do anything to escape. I was still unsure of the situation but maybe it was better, for now at least to play the role of the character I currently inhabited. I was fairly sure that Reyc would reciprocate this hug, so that’s what I did, putting my arms under his, and laying my hands on Gael’s back.

“You’re an ass as always,” I felt the warm breath of a whisper on my neck. “But I missed you.”

“So did I,” I murmured in response. It felt right in the moment.

When Gael finally untangled himself from me he grumbled something about being hungry and wandering to one of the other rooms in the house. Looking through the door I spotted a big hearth and some vegetables on one of the tables, so that was likely the kitchen.

I left him to it, instead turning to the desk. There was a letter I had to find.

The narration in Seventh Lord of Mindsna never specified what exactly Reyc was up to before he and Jacques de Asper met for the first time. In passing through, it was mentioned that before traveling to Mindsna with Gael he received a letter. One that ultimately convinced him to move to the capital of Saov.

I started moving around paper littering the desk, looking inside and under books…

“Dearest Hubert…”

There it was!

It laid under another parchment, one on which someone started penning the answer. Simple “no”. But I didn’t care for that now, and it was too late to finish the response anyway, Gael was already here.

“I know how much you believe yourself to be self-sufficient, but in fact, you’re mostly stubborn. You always have been like that, I know, but even you have to realize when it’s time to stop and ask for help. For your own good.
The news of Fonyas being occupied already reached the capital. Please leave the city! If not for your own sake, for your own safety, then do it for me. Just so I can have peaceful nights, without worrying about your fate. Maybe you no longer care for me as you did when we were all together, but I still carry a piece of you in my heart. I care and I wish for you to remain alive.
Gael reached out to me in the past few weeks, he decided to stay in Mindsna for longer and I helped him find a place for himself. I could help you as well. You could have a new house, better than the one in Fonyas, and a new job. I won’t even ask you to find a mentor, I know that you don’t want that, even though I still think it would be good for you. Grounding. Especially now, when people with abilities similar to yours are being sought more and more fervently.
I will send Gael to come to you and bring you to Mindsna. Please don’t run from us. Please come. I will do everything to protect you.”

And then, underneath, in small, even letters, was the signature. One that I expected to find and yet felt something deep inside me stir when I looked at it.

“Yours, till the nights pull us apart,
Nocka.”

Nocka, like Gael, was one of Reyc original friends. She cared for the man to the extent that I half expected that her love confession will eventually become the plot point. It never happened, and again, she ended up just like Gael - brutally dismembered by the protagonist.

Their death was a bit ironic, considering that they’re the ones that initially arranged the meeting between Reyc and Jacques de Asper. They simply had no way of knowing that they were selling their friend to the devil himself.

As for Nocka’s concerns… I remembered that at the beginning of the story it was mentioned that parts of Saov were occupied by the overseas country of Priat-Gva. They were at war for almost a century, but for the first time, the other land felt emboldened enough to take over Saov’s last remaining port. The very same city I was in right now, Fonyas.

The novel didn’t make that much of a good job of describing the geography of Saov, but thankfully there was quite a detailed map of land hanging right above the desk. In my head, I sent quiet thanks to the original Reyc and took it down to have a proper look.

Saov was an island. Presumably, because the whole northern part was taken over by Northern Dominion, a country of isolationist elves who persistently guarded their borders. Any humans wandering too close to the border or making too much of a nuance of themselves in the demilitarized zone, would either turn dead, killed by elven weaponry, or be kidnapped and turned into their slaves.

To the east was the island of Priat-Gva inhabited by people who called themselves Exalted. They were only a tad bit more open than Northern Elves. Their religious doctrines forced them to fight for new lands, choosing Saov as their first target. Most of the cities on the eastern coast were under Priat-Gva for decades now, but life there wasn’t apparently so bad. Exalted didn’t force their religion or ways of life. Contrary their takeover greatly stabilized local economies. The only, and major for me now, caveat was that they absolutely despised mages of any kind.

West coast was once upon a time a colony of the Vrasmus Empire, their great attempt to make the entirety of rich in resources Saov their own. That however never came to be, now both the west of Saov, as well as the south, were covered by the fog of the Eternal Battlegrounds.

TL NOTES

Hello, dears! ヾ(≧▽≦*)o I’m LibraryCat, the translator =￣ω￣= and I’m very excited to start this journey with all of you ο(=•ω＜=)ρ⌒☆ I won’t make too much noise, I promise (o_ _)ﾉ but every once in a while I would like to add some fun facts about translated terms or names, and stuff like that（づ￣3￣）づ╭❤️～ I just love both the “Ascendant from Saov” and the original book so much and I will do my best translating it for you, dear readers! *★,°*:.☆(￣▽￣)/$:*.°★* 。

Reyc - I went back and forth on the spelling of this name, but in the end, I figured it’s actually pretty convenient that there are multiple ways to do it. No spoilers, but it will be a bit useful much later (うu╹)

sleeplessinbirka - This one could be actually ‘dreamless in birka’, however, I feel like ‘sleepless’ fits the character hiding under this username better, so I slightly changed it.

Stanislaus Gael - Again, another one I wasn’t initially sure about, particularly the ‘Stanislaus’ part. but really Gael’s first name appears only here in the beginning so it’s not that important anyway. I guess it’s interesting that the whole name could be understood as ‘becoming glorious wildman’. 

looking into the mirror in sleep - I heard it is a real thing. If you feel like you’re dreaming an extremely realistic dream then looking in the mirror will help you wake up as the mirror’s reflection will always be distorted. I never had an opportunity to try it myself, but Hubert seems to be sure it works, and as you will soon see it’s sort of his thing.

Nocka - I could not translate this one directly, but I just think it’s the cutest name ૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა ‘nocka’ has two meanings, one is a little night, so you can see how sweet it is, and the other meaning is night shift, which also makes a lot of sense later ૮꒰ ˶> ༝ <˶꒱ა haha