Making sure that he's touching nowhere near the carved symbol, Wilhelm repeats the incantation a few times so that it will stick in his head. As Lucifer goes on to explain more about the turtle's properties, he nods along to show that he's listening. Carefully, he slips the crystal figure into his pocket.

"I promise not to lose it this time." Referring to the knife Lucifer once pressed into his grip, before Wilhelm was abducted by the masked cultists anyway. Taking up his fork again to stab at the last few bites of food on his plate, he considers Lucifer across the table. "So a whole year, huh?"

They'd basically met right here. Maybe not these exact seats, but across the table from one another as they are now. Wilhelm has always felt that for every step forward he takes, he stumbles back two more. Change, though, isn't an inexorable forward march; it happens in fits and starts and missteps.

A year ago, he thought the man across from him was an odd loner with a chip on his shoulder the size of the whole world. Now, Lucifer has become a reliable protector and pillar of support. A year ago, he went to bed every night hoping he'd wake up back home. Now, he's found things here he could never have possessed there. An open path. Friends who, without the distraction of his title, might actually see him for him. Magic, the power of which he finally sees as his own to take.