Over the next few years Nyx isolated herself from people.
One evening when she was twelve, she was training with her sword, a practice which to most other people would seem like an annoying task, but it was what she grew up with, the movement of the blade rather calming to her mind.
She did it whenever she wanted to think, and since there was no one she was close to, she thought a lot.
Nyx had received a soul artifact, a notebook that recorded her thoughts. Unlike the usual ones, it didn't exist in the physical realm, meaning that she could write down things in her mind whenever she wanted.
Recently she had been philosophizing a lot, and thinking about human relationships.
Since the swinging of her sword was basically automatic for her now, she spent most of her sword training thinking.
The beautiful girl had realized some truths, and when she looked at her mindbook, she had a good overview of them.
'What I lack is control. If I had control over others and myself, that wouldn't have happened.'
The incident with her friend had been covered up by her family with ease, and they paid the family of her money so they wouldn't say anything about it.
Nyx saw the mother smiling when she saw the offer and whisper "Seems like you have served your purpose my dear daughter."
This had only confirmed her world view and expanded on it.
'People are selfish, they only want what benefits them. As long as you give it to them, they will do anything you say.'
So the black haired girl had one goal.
'I must become strong enough to not be influenced by outside circumstances.'
She trained and trained, making her family proud of her, but she knew.
She knew that they were only proud of her because in the end it'd benefit them. If she grew stronger, their corpus would too.
But what did control mean?
'The world cannot be controlled by force. At best, it can be influenced. You cannot command circumstance, nor the will of others. Only yourself lies within your absolute control. If you learn to govern your own mind and grow strong enough that neither will nor force can move you, only then will you cease to be a slave to external influence '
Control meant control over oneself first of all.
If you had control over yourself, nothing would be a negative outcome for you.
And with her hellish training, she achieved impossible feats, reaching Rank 3 and second stage of manifestation alone before the age of sixteen.
At the entrance exams, she was practically sure that she'd be number one, and one day, she was sitting in the library reading, while a boy of barely any presence sat next to her, also reading.
'He certainly looks young…' Nyx might have mistaken him for someone's little brother, but that wouldn't be possible. 'Probably someone from a lower ranking family, considering he's from Caelum.' Her gaze drifted towards his bracelet.
She was currently passively training to use her manifestation ability, trying to keep it activated at all times.
At the second stage of manifestation, one would gain a 'concept', which was closely interwoven with one's aura color and experiences.
The concept was basically an expression of one's soul.
Nyx's concept was a pretty abstract one. Depending on the concept, one could put it into words, but even if she did, you'd lack in receiving insight.
When you got your concept, you would feel a connection to it, and depending on your soul control and imagination, you could manifest different abilities.
For example, for someone whose concept was "Sunset", it could manifest as abilities that tampered with natural cycles, or fire abilities.
The only person who truly knew what their own concept could do, and what potential it had, would be you yourself.
Nyx's concept was "Rule of the Cosmos" if put into human words.
The first ability she manifested was something very special.
She could choose to make herself unaffected by the phenomena she wanted in the surroundings.
Right now her rank was too low to do crazy things like making herself unaffected by things like matter, but she could do some things with them that truly made it a good ability.
For example, she always liked to make herself unaffected by air, meaning she could make air unable to influence her.
This allowed her to be completely silent, and whenever she moved, the surrounding air wouldn't affect her.
This allowed her to interact with air, such as breathing normally and ignoring external disturbances, but things like strong wind weren't registered by her body.
Funnily, this ability was a perfect counter to the blind boy's echolocation.
She couldn't see his face, but his skin was very clear and pale, the latter something usual for people from Caelum.
Then he stood up, and didn't notice her at all, which confused her deeply.
After all, it was quite obvious that she sat there, and yes, her ability made her presence a little less noticeable, but her looks made up for it, especially since she was basically a celebrity as the heir of Noctis.
After putting all of his books away, his face turned towards Nyx, but still there was no recognition of her in those eyes.
Even though he was lacking in physique and frame, his face certainly wasn't.
Nyx had seen countless "goodlooking" boys from the corpora, but he had a different kind of beauty.
They were mostly handsome, and masculine looking, while the black haired boy was rather feminine in his looks, not that he looked like a girl or anything, but more like pretty.
Something stirred in her heart at that moment, but she ignored it.
'What? I have seen countless guys who are way better looking than him, I shouldn't be affected just because he looks different.'
But that was a lie, since those two beauties, one handsome and one pretty weren't comparable, and she knew that.
When she looked into his eyes, she didn't know what she expected, but this certainly wasn't it.
They looked empty, just like someone who had received deep trauma, but worse.
It was like there was not one thought behind those beautiful onyx eyes.
When he grabbed the book Nyx was very clearly reading, she knew something was up.
"I would appreciate it if you gave me my book back," she said, her voice having the usual iciness that she gave every person, she added a little trick though, and used her ability to make her voice come from a different direction.
The boy noticeably got startled and put the book back from where he picked it up immediately, and then looked in that direction.
"I… I'm sorry, I thought it was one of my books." he said.
This confirmed her theory.
"As I thought, you can't see, can you?" the black haired girl made her voice come from behind him.
Flinching, he turned around immediately, and even though she didn't want to admit it to herself, it was quite amusing.
"It was pretty clear that I was reading it, and normally you should be able to see me, but you can't seem to track where I am," she said, her voice coming from all directions. "Well, let me try something out."
She deactivated her ability, and immediately the boy's eyes widened, and he turned around to her direction.
He stayed silent for a few seconds, and then spoke.
"Haha… anyways, I'm really sorry, I have to go now, Young Lady."
The blind boy ran towards the elevator, which made Nyx show a little smile.
'He certainly is unusual.'
She was so used to the pretentious people from the corpora, that what she had seen so far from him was very refreshing.
That's why she observed him instead..
Since he couldn't sense her presence either way, she had no troubles with it.
'I was right.'
He was different from the others from the corpora.
The more Nyx observed him, she felt something returning she had lost the day she lost her friend.
Caecus wouldn't use her, she was sure of that.
'He was wronged by this system as well,' she concluded.
And when all those facts joined in her mind, she felt an attraction towards his character she had never felt before in her life.
Nyx truly wanted to be the blind boy's friend.
But she didn't know how to approach him, as it would certainly be suspicious for someone like her to randomly approach a person like him.
'This is necessary, and after this I'll just win his affection by being affectionate to him.'
As childish as those ideas were in her mind, she wasn't experienced in this area at all.
The night after she asked Caecus to be her friend, she was in her bed, and a smile was constantly etched into her face.
The next morning she saw Titus with him, and frowned, but still approached them anyways.
He had brown hair, like most people from Titanus, and one common trait was that they were exaggeratedly tall. As a heir his face wasn't bad either obviously.
But,
Titus was an heir like her, even though he acted nicely around Caecus, she knew that he was still influenced by the corpora's system.
…
After the first break she wanted to pick up Caecus from class, since her exploration class only consisted of her and the culmen, and concluded quite quickly.
She knew Titus would be taking longer for his class since he started a little later.
'Today at training I will win him over. If I just show him how to train, and show that I don't have any ulterior motives, he'll come to trust me.'
Nyx picked him up as always, and she predicted that he'd question her again, acting overly affectionate all over.
She was able to guess what people would do and say pretty easily, and she also guessed that he would be questioning her once again, now that they were all alone.
The Noctis heiress prepared herself for his questioning, but she failed to predict how it'd truly be.
She let herself be affected more than she wanted, and her affection disappeared completely.
Then… Caecus had raised his voice at her, he had screamed.
'No… no… this isn't how it was supposed to go…'
The situation had slipped out of her control.
And the one thing she hated was having no control.
She was panicking, but the blind boy didn't notice any of it.
But the final blow came when the last sentence came.
"Do you not possess any sympathy, any emotion?"
'Ah… I let my guard down, and lost control over myself around him. I betrayed myself.'
Nyx's thoughts flashed back to the comments of the other children, and of the maids.
She told herself that she didn't care, but now when the one person said it that she truly wanted to be friends with, everything came crashing down.
And so, the heiress of one of the biggest corpora in Anima cried.