The little square Corin led him to was the first glimpse of this world that struck Simon as genuinely beautiful, without reservation, without fear or confusion filtering the impact. Low houses arranged in an irregular circle, each with a different roof from the next, a small crooked tree at the center with leaves that intermittently shifted color almost imperceptibly, as if breathing. The afternoon light slanted between the rooftops, drawing golden stripes across the worn paving stones.
They sat at a small wooden table outside a tiny inn that didn't even have a sign — just a smell of warm bread drifting out through the half-open door, inviting enough to make Simon's stomach growl for the first time since he'd arrived.
The innkeeper who came to serve them was a figure Simon struggled to place at a glance — stocky, solid build like a dwarf's, but with an elongated snout and floppy ears that vaguely, absurdly, reminded him of a dog. He set down on the table two slices of dark, spiced bread, still warm, and two cups of an amber liquid that smelled of herbs and honey, then walked off without a word, with a slightly lopsided gait.
Simon followed him with his eyes until he disappeared back into the inn, then turned to Corin, who was already raising her own cup to her lips.
"Before," he said, before she could drink, "you talked about 'pure races.' And about us being on an island. You said you're half-elf, and I imagined — naively, I guess — that here the mixes were mostly between humans and the other races. But whatever just served us looked half dwarf and half... I don't know, a dachshund? So—"
Corin nearly choked on the sip she'd just taken, coughing into a laugh that sent a few drops of the drink down her chin. She wiped it off with the back of her hand, still chuckling.
"I have no idea what a dachshund is," she said, "but thank goodness he didn't hear you, because a half-dwarf, half-Beastman is famous across the whole continent for the most absolute stubbornness and sense of honor there is — he got exactly the two worst traits of both races, in perfect combination. If he'd heard you compare him to a short-legged dog, he probably would've chased you all the way to the harbor on principle, even knowing he was wrong."
Simon raised his hands in surrender, a half smile slipping out before he even noticed it — the first one, he realized vaguely, since he'd closed his eyes in front of that hospital door.
"Anyway, yes," Corin went on, more serious now, setting her cup down on the table. "This is the Isle of Hybrids. A place where we can live in peace, away from the rest of the continent — exiled, if you want to be precise, even if no one calls it that out loud. Every family here is a mix of two or more different races. Some still fight over figuring out who they are, others stopped worrying about it generations ago."
Simon nodded slowly, chewing a piece of spiced bread that warmed his mouth in an unexpectedly pleasant way. He stayed quiet for a moment, letting the information settle in alongside everything else, then looked back at her.
"Is there like an information office, here?" he asked. "A place to ask for a map, figure out how things work? And then—" he hesitated for a second, but only a second "—is there a way to work? Because you're nice, really, but I don't think you want to babysit me for the rest of my life."
Corin looked at him with an expression Simon couldn't immediately decipher — not annoyance, not quite surprise either, but something more subtle, as if the question had caught her somewhere she hadn't expected.
Simon, for his part, wasn't at all surprised by his own question. He already knew, in a corner of his mind he knew far too well by now, that sooner or later Corin would get tired of him, would leave him behind the way everyone always had — not out of cruelty, probably, but because that was just how the world worked, whatever world it was. Better to know in advance. Better to prepare, instead of fooling himself.
But what Corin said next hit him in a way he hadn't expected.
"Well," she said slowly, as if choosing her words more carefully than usual, "I actually wouldn't mind, honestly. You're strange, you don't know the first thing about how things work here, you keep asking absurd questions — but you're also the only human I've ever met who hasn't treated me like some anomaly to study or exploit." She paused, her eyes settling on her cup instead of on him. "And having you with me would let me move around the continent more freely. A human at my side changes a lot how people look at me, out there."
Then her tone slid toward something sadder, almost resigned.
"Although I understand that trusting a half-elf isn't easy for anyone. It would've been simpler if I'd been half-demon — there at least I could have sealed you a real bond, something that tied us both together with clear rules, instead of just having to hope you don't change your mind the moment you find something better."
Simon watched her for a long moment. He didn't know exactly what a "demonic bond" was — but he knew, far too well, the sound of someone who expects to be abandoned before it even happens, and who's already learned to protect herself by talking about it lightly, as if it didn't hurt.
"I don't know what a demonic bond is," he said, with a voice firmer than he actually felt. "But I can go with you. In exchange, though, I want two things: that you teach me a few magic tricks, and that you give me information about this continent. So I at least stop sounding like an idiot every time I open my mouth."
Corin stared at him for a moment, surprised, then burst into a clear, short, genuine laugh that made her head tip back slightly.
"A human who wants to learn magic," she said, still laughing. "Ha, what nonsense. You know you could just buy yourself a rune-etched relic, or any enchanted item, and get the same result without all the effort?" She shook her head, but the smile didn't leave her face. "But if you really insist..."
She stretched her hand across the table, palm up, in a gesture that looked like both an invitation and a challenge at once.
Simon looked at that hand with a doubt he couldn't entirely hide.
"It's a generic bit of magic," Corin explained, noticing his hesitation. "Called Group Bond. Put your hand on mine and close your eyes — that way I can share my perception with you, for a moment. If you've got even a little predisposition, maybe you'll even pick up something of your own. I'll let you feel Honest Whisper — the one for telling if someone's lying. But it only works if the liar isn't particularly strong or trained at hiding it, so don't expect miracles."
Simon hesitated a moment longer, then reached out and set his hand on hers, closing his eyes.
For a moment nothing happened. Then the warmth arrived.
It wasn't like the warmth of sun on skin, nor like a hot drink going down the throat. It was something that started at his palm and climbed up his arm with an almost liquid slowness, a heat that seemed to have a precise direction, an intention — as if something, on the other side of that contact, were actively searching for a space inside him to settle into. It didn't hurt. In fact, for one absurd instant, it reminded him of the feeling of falling asleep as a kid in the car with sun filtering through the window, that total, thoughtless peace he hadn't felt in years.
And then, suddenly, he knew something he hadn't known a moment before.
It wasn't words, not exactly — more an awareness that had installed itself all at once, as if it had always been there and he'd just been too distracted to notice. He knew, now, that if he focused his attention on a sentence spoken by someone else, he'd be able to perceive — not see, not hear with his ears, but perceive, in a way that had no name in his old life — a slight hesitation, a thin crack, if that sentence wasn't entirely true.
He opened his eyes again. Corin was already watching him, her hand still resting on his, a curious expression on her face.
"Let's try it out," she said, slowly pulling her hand back. "Ask me something."
Simon hesitated. In truth — he understood only in that moment, with a sudden clarity that almost scared him — this was exactly the point he'd wanted to reach since the beginning of that conversation. He wanted to ask her if she'd really abandon him, sooner or later, the way everyone always had. He wanted to know, for certain, using precisely that skill he'd just learned.
But he couldn't ask her directly. If she knew what he was trying to find out, she could use her own ability — stronger than his, better trained — to dodge the question, to answer with a carefully crafted partial truth, or worse, to lie in a way that a beginner's Honest Whisper like his could never catch.
He needed to think of something stupid. Something harmless, that would catch her off guard enough to not give her time to calculate her answer.
"Am I sleeping on the floor again tonight?" he asked, in a deliberately light, almost joking tone.
He saw, or rather felt, his own eyes warm slightly — a small glow he imagined as golden, even though he couldn't see it himself — as he watched Corin's face with a new, different attention, as if part of him had suddenly tuned into a frequency that hadn't existed before.
"No," she said, with a small smile.
And Simon felt it. A thin crack, barely perceptible, right beneath the surface of that single word — not a visible hesitation, not a tremor in her voice that any normal ear could ever have caught, but something deeper, like a sour note in an otherwise perfect chord. The sensation settled over him with the same discreet lightness with which the understanding of the magic itself had arrived, but this time it carried a precise, undeniable meaning.
She was lying.
Simon lowered his gaze for an instant, just long enough not to let too much show on his own face. There was no anger in what he felt — only the tired confirmation of something he'd, deep down, already expected. He'd be sleeping on the floor again that night. Maybe out of embarrassment, maybe because Corin hated admitting it out loud after that whole speech a moment earlier, but the truth stayed exactly that, etched beneath her kind answer like a crack under fresh paint.
He picked up his cup, lifted it to his lips, and before drinking said, almost to himself more than to her, with a half smile that didn't quite make it all the way:
"Yeah... works great..."