Everyone who has ever been born must have a mother. They might not have a mother figure, but they will always have a biological-one-hundred-percent-real kind of mother. Now, some families definitely fare off better than another. Mine for example are what people usually called as a broken home. Not by choice, but force.

My father was a part of a rebellion few years back, in which a large portion of this country opposes the general views of our government. Imagine having a philosophical stance so great that hundred of thousands of people opposes it. He is working as a coordinator for the protests, doing logistics for food and other critical resources needed.

It happened years ago, but I can still remember those days clear as crystal. I was in our only bedroom when it all happened. Am not a babe anymore, my legs already worked, yet the brain can't keep up with it. My sister Kara was sleeping like a log beside me. She was too young to notice anything wrong with what goes on that night.

Covered in darkness, mother was crying her heart out in our living room. She tried her best to stay calm and probably reminded herself constantly that her daughters are asleep. Faintly, a small gadget held in her hand is talking with a somber tone.

It came from a radio station that's broadcasted by the neighboring country, The Republic. She was there sobbing alone, hiding her presence from our authoritarian government. As we all know, owning a functioning radio and listening to blacklisted airwaves were and still highly illegal. I've heard some of my neighbors were punished with life imprisonment, sold to slavery, or killed on the spot.

She made that small and improvised gadget by herself. Every single material needed was taken from her workplace as a researcher. No one would suspect some common materials missing, as long as it's only done in small amount.

Lady in The Radio

Stop the music Jeff.

Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for stopping your usual broadcasting routine for a moment. May I have your attention, this is a very important announcement from our government. This announcement are coded as urgent and utmost important.

Ehem.

"To the honorable people, ladies and gentlemen of Ha. We are writing this Letter of Utmost Important Announcement as an expression of grief and sorrow, regarding a tragedy that have befallen our neighboring brothers and sisters.

It is by no mean a secret that we have a large number of relatives living in Milium. We were born from the same soil as theirs, after all. Despite that, it gives us a great pain knowing our humanitarian help for the civilian of Milium would never be great enough in the face of its government's many convoluted policies.

In the recent civilian uprising, we have observed a particular message being repeated over and over again. Among them was, freedom of speech and proper elderly care. Sparks are spawned from the depths of their suffering, giving us an expression of doubt and unwavering solidarity towards their weakling. We, the government of The Republic stand besides those who are weak and unprotected.

Today, with a grave heart and sorrow, we must announce the death and massacre of many innocent souls that attend a protests against their own government. After careful analysis and discussion with our best experts in the field, we've counted at least ten thousands souls lost during the first hour of this tragedy.

More information and media proof will be published by the end of next week.

May those who fall be a stone that strengthen us."

The estimate was off by a long shot, obviously intentional. Thinking about it again now, I guess they did the right thing to do that. They want the public to not panic, yet empathize with our message. War will not start because of this accident, but it will certainly shape the perception of a generation. A mindset where by default, people are innocent and their government is the bad one.

But the sympathy of a whole country will not reverse my father's death. That information took a toll on our psychic, especially Mom's. She should've considered him dead the moment he stepped into that large protest. I have an inkling that his demise was set in stone, but I didn't predict a whole lot more of his friend and colleagues getting a free ticket towards his destination.

From then on, it's just me, my sister, and mother.

To cut the story short, I grew up as an fatherless child. A sense of duty naturally invested in me to protect both my mother and sister. From a very young age, I have decided to do my best as a scientist and magic researcher. In the name of continuing my mother's profession as one.

She worked as an Explosive Researcher for our government based near my house. Ten minute walk is all she need to get into her daily job. The job of a scientist is a hard one. Her often tired and grumpy face proved it.

Being a hard worker that supports your own family alone is not an easy task. Not able to afford any time for bath after work, exhausted both in body and spirit. I usually take a morning shower after her just to make sure she's as fresh as she can be.

In the shower, I noticed this pungent smell of sulfur and other indescribable chemical that never fails to wake me up after a good night sleep. I pity her, to a point where I will never forget that drowsy expression she gave after every breakfast.

Years later, an opportunity came by and sat on my lap. There's a topic of research that I have always been interested in. I reckoned it might help her in some ways. A magic script like no other, imperfect but have potential to work. The name of that research paper was, "Failure of Nano Particle Filtering Through A Bubble Like Structure Using Mana and Magic". A mouthful title that one. I thought it's just a failed experiment of someone making an over-engineered equipment that could potentially replace conventional masks.

I took interest in it because nano particle filtering should also include things that could stick on your body. Namely, particulates that was produced when she's doing experiment in her lab. Mom should be very grateful of this magic device, if I can make it in the first place.

She's already quite old at the time and I started to work under her as a junior lab assistant. I'm privileged to touch and use a lot of what she had used before, which are very expensive and not available to the general public. With this kinds of facility, creating a simple magic device shouldn't be a problem for me. I just need to solve some of the problem that was left within that mouthful titled of a research paper.

Then surprisingly, I did just that. I solved all of the remaining problem in that failed research paper. A little bit of adjustment of some error prone part in the magic script is enough to fix it. Those fixes only took two days to search, analyze, solve, and implement. Not bad for a junior that tries to learn from a very convoluted and unoptimized piece of magic script done by an unnamed Milium researcher.

Oh yeah, that paper is unnamed. Just like any other research in Milium, your name will not be presented in your own works no matter how good or bad it was. Everything that was and will be ever written, sung, and programmed is part of the government's property, not ours.

The device is enough to be run by a single drop of mana and stay activated for a long period of time. Weeks and maybe months. The person that wears this device will be affected by its filtering capabilities even in other uncovered part of their body. No matter how much dust was sprayed to it, nothing will come into contact. The power doesn't get reduced much whether I sprayed it with sand or not. It's as if the filtering capabilities is done passively, as a consequence of this device turning on with mana, not because it's actively doing so.

I wore it for some time after that. The wearer can still drink, eat, and take a breath of fresh air even with the filtering on. So I guess it does have preference to what it wants to filter. Like a natural inclination which are not included in the magic script.

Then an insight hit me like a speeding truck. It's not at all about object preference, but rather soul preference. Found this out the hard way, by an accident I had on a certain morning.

I remember what time it was, still in the morn right after me and my mother open up the lab for preparation. No one was at work beside us that day.

I tend to wear the magical devices in my sleep and while working, might as well for researching the properties of this thing. It filters mostly dust particles and a bit of chemical spill. Stuff that are unimportant and unnoticeable. So no one really suspects me using a magical device, not even my mother.

But the accident starts with my mother. She instructed me to a bring a bunch of chemical and prep it on her usual table. It's located quite far from the cabinets. The cabinets are also placed side by side, tightly. Only giving enough space for a person to walk in between.

In no time at all, carelessness got the better of me. I was handling a dangerous and ultra-corrosive chemical called Peroxymonosulfuric Acid. As I stumble on a protruding part of a cabinet, a great slip of the century happened. Glassware going up in the air, liquids starts to fly everywhere, my body falls forward. The gravity pulls everything downwards, it's a race between my head and those dangerous liquid. Very comical looking after I reflected on it, candidly.

I should've died that day or at least terribly deformed, but that was not the case. Those nasty liquid just washed away from my face, trickling down my chin and ears, like water and a hydrophobic surface.

My mother gasped audibly. She walked forward with a limp into my unharmed state. She can touch me just fine, even if her fingers are covered by thick lab-grade gloves. This is the moment where an insight came crashing to my mind.

Every single collective knowledge that I have from reading that research paper just fell in place, producing a single conclusion. Without a break, acids all over my body, I grabbed a pen and paper to summarize my findings. A several postulate about this magic device. Should be useful to describe in short what my latest invention is about. A fixed experiment from a broken past. I will call it, "Soul Shield".

First rule, only things that has a soul can touch you. For example, a human being.

Second rule, anything that a soul is touching can also touch you as long as it's still in contact with each other. For example, my mother can touch me even when she's wearing a glove. I'm sure with further research, I can come up with a mathematical equation to determine the maximum range/thickness of the medium between one soul to another.

Third rule, you can still touch the ground even if it doesn't have a soul. Logically speaking, my choices were either to add the ground as an exception to the first rule, or stating that our soil have a soul. Which are completely ridiculous in my opinion, there's no reason at all for this ground to have any magical capabilities like a soul.

I didn't realize it back then, but the limit of this magical device will unfortunately be tested. Involuntarily and done in desperation for survival. A journey of a family, separated into two.