Aaron stood on a ledge overlooking Blackport Ridge, fireworks flying high in the distance, the bustling kingdom below working far into the night.
He could only stare emptily over the city as Akari snored next to him, the festival in the background fading into nothingness.
He had left Lord Kurogane alone on the bench after he had finished his story and extended his offer, the weight of the decision not quite settling in the blond boy's mind.
The place where the man's hand had rested tingled slightly in memory of the feeling, a phantom touch that echoed through his soul.
Another Marshal wants to train me…
Running his hands across his face and sighing, he leaned over the metal guard rail that separated him from a nearly two-hundred-foot drop into the bustling streets.
The turquoise-eyed boy had not expected in his wildest dreams to even encounter other Marshals, much less to get recruited by one.
What is Cam going to say about this…? She became my mentor first, so I can't do this without her permission.
He pursed his lips, his eyes closing as he fell back into thought.
But that man… It wasn't just his story… His very essence is like my own.
Groaning, he heard footsteps coming up behind him, his head turning around slowly to face the approacher.
Rubbing his eyes to clear their haziness, he took in the sight of the brown-haired woman before him, her chocolate colored eyes blinking as she tilted her head.
"Hi, Aaron."
The boy's brow immediately furrowed, the sound of his teacher addressing him without formality sending him into a spiral of confusion.
His teacher, the woman who had trained him, had never spoken this way before, and her words broke through his mental fog, snapping him back to reality.
"C-Cam…"
He tried to speak; however, he stopped himself, the words not wanting to come out of his throat as he looked closer at her expression.
There was a slight smile masking a frown, her eyes tipped downward in pride at her student.
"I already know."
Her voice echoed through the platform, causing the boy to freeze, his pupils dilating as he realized the meaning behind her statement.
"Y-you already know?"
She nodded in response to the repeated comment, and Aaron could only blink at her, at a loss for what to say.
Leaning backwards, he looked away from her and up at the stars.
Slowly, his lips parted, a smile making its way across his face as he laughed lightly, a burden taken from his shoulders.
Cam watched this from afar, her head still tilted to the side as she waited for him to finish and speak again.
After half a minute, he refocused, his words plain and simple.
"I'm going to do it."
There was no visible reaction from the woman, only a solemn nod and a step closer towards her student.
"Well then. It seems this is where your training with me ends."
She paused, gazing over to where Akari lounged for a moment before walking over and taking a seat next to her.
"Do you know why I didn't bring you before the Grand Council immediately after I found you with your Ghostship?"
Aaron's face paled at the mention of his deathly secret; however, as his eyes darted around, he realized that they had been enclosed with a strong barrier.
Whipping his head back to the woman, he noticed a small rock between her hands, its surface glowing dimly.
"Light and sound do not pass out of this barrier. Nothing you or I say will be heard, unlike your conversation earlier."
The boy began to nod before ceasing the action, realizing that it was likely that not only Cam, but other Marshals as well were listening to the conversation with the swordsman.
O-Oh…
His blood ran cold when he realized that their conversation—every raw confession that the Marshal of the South had made—had become fodder for the quiet entertainment of everyone within earshot.
She looked at him as she waited for him to answer her earlier question, something the boy only realized after the silence stretched for a while.
"You didn't bring me in because you wanted to see if I was a threat."
Camilla nodded her head in approval, and the boy himself secretly celebrated answering the leading question correctly this time.
However, as he gloated over his small victory, he heard her voice spring up.
"Indeed, I wished to determine if you were a threat, but that wasn't all."
She bit her lip, a pang of regret plaguing her face as she uttered a story she hadn't planned to tell ever again.
"When I was a girl, living in my small town, I read the newspaper every single day without delay. At nine in the morning, I was there at the door, waving my hand out to the deliveryman with glee in my heart."
A small smile dawned over her expression as she remembered a rare, happy memory from the days long washed away by the cruelties of life.
"I continued this tradition until I was sixteen years old. I knew that I should've stopped years before that, but I loved that daily mission of mine, to read about whatever was happening in the world, even in the farthest reaches of the Sea of Polar Storms…"
Her reminiscent look began to fade, a frown creeping across her features and dragging her grin down, into the depths of her soul, where it drowned under the weight of a thousand lives.
"In nine days, it will be three years since I last watched as my parents left the house for their jobs, my sister went out with her friends to go shopping, and the neighbor took my dog on a walk through the park."
There was a somber, almost endless loneliness behind every word, her eyes glazing over with the same deep radiance that the boy had seen over the Marshal of the South only earlier in the night.
This was their true emotions being unveiled to him, their feelings left bare, and their hearts exposed.
However, unlike Masaru Kurogane, Camilla Buckley wasn't simply trying to train him; she was revealing her vulnerability.
"I was going to walk to school after I grabbed the paper that morning, the usual routine that had never led me late to any class or activity. Yet, that day, even though I did everything as usual, somehow, I was one minute behind. There was no explainable reason for it, a strange error in how time functioned. Regardless of the reason, I bolted through the door to grab the paper in a hurry. But when I left the house, there was nothing there."
Her cheek twitched, her eyes glistening with what looked to be frozen tears, tiny droplets of water that would simply not fall.
"Nothing. There was nothing at all. There were no trees, no houses, no roads, no people. Only nothingness. I tried to run, I tried to hide, but I couldn't find refuge from the nothingness that had consumed my homeland. Not a single noise rang out, nor a beam of light. I was completely isolated in that pitch-black world."
She pursed her lips as she spoke again.
"Something had brought me there for a purpose, and it wished for my cooperation. It was then that I heard the voice that had saved my life. One who had picked me out of the hundreds of islanders to protect them from the outside world. He was my mentor, an elderly man whom I never met in person, only his voice guiding me through the darkness of my dreams as I trained."
Watching from the side, Aaron noticed her fists clenching tight, bottled rage filling the woman's body.
"In that moment of my youth, he had told me a single sentence that would change the course of my life forever. 'Fight or Die'. There were no other options that he offered, and none other that I could think of. However, as my mind returned to normal and I exited that void, back in the world outside my doorway, I found myself facing an unknown man. Gray eyes, white-silver hair, and a presence surpassing that of anything I had ever felt before."
She paused, a terrible memory resurfacing.
"He was the King of Wishes, Cedar Belvedere. His name and face were beyond fame in the newspapers I read, and his whereabouts were the number one concern of any man or woman alive. His hands were soaked in blood, the town behind him erased from the world in golden flashes of light."
"We just stood there for a moment, me staring at him and he at me. The voice of my mysterious mentor had vanished; only the words he had told me resounded through my mind at that point. I reached into my pocket, pulling out a pocketknife I had owned since I was five. I wound it back, then stabbed the man's neck. The flesh felt soft as I pushed my blade deeper; there was no resistance at all as I sliced his throat. He didn't move or flinch. Merely collapsed to the floor in a bloodied mess like a puppet whose strings had been cut."
Cam released a heavy breath as he continued, the account of the darkest day in her history still ongoing.
"I could only stare at his half-rotten corpse as he shook and seized, the blood bubbling and pooling around him in grotesque clumps. When I first laid my eyes on him, he had already been on the verge of death, but at that moment, he finally rested on the ground, pale and motionless. He lay right outside my home, while my village was devoured by the flames raging in the background. At that sight, I could feel the overwhelming emotions envelop my body; however, I could not stop what I did next."
The young woman trembled slightly, clenching her own hand tightly.
"I stabbed and stabbed away at his body. Again and again. I ripped and tore at his flesh with my nails. Kicked and beat his already punctured corpse. I cut off his arm, only for it to regrow like a monster soon after. Yet, I cannot blame him, for I, too, became a monster in my rage, one that had no mercy or feeling. Only once I watched the odd tattoo engraved onto his forehead vanish and his body stop healing did I cease, my body shaking with such malice that I couldn't control myself."
She gritted her teeth.
"When the other Sea Kings found me, I was frozen in place above the corpse of the King of Wishes, his cold, unyielding gray eyes, stained with blood, stared up at the faces of his former allies. I clearly remember the looks they exchanged with each other, their eyes laced with fear and disgust. They resented me. They feared me. They were horrified by me."
The woman did not stop, her pace only increasing as she reached the end of her tale.
"But I didn't care. My mind had stopped working hours prior. The only memory I have of that day afterward was the sight of the half-empty bags they used to carry off the remaining pieces of the citizens. You see, the King had used a large-scale Erasure spell on the town, killing everyone instantly; however, many people weren't fully within the range."
Camilla shook more intensely now, the trauma that she had carefully suppressed rushing back in one wave.
"S-severed hands, legs, feet, fingers, eyes, heads, and everything in between were loaded into large containers… B-b-b-but the worst of all…"
There was no calming the woman now—the imposing and revered Marshal, often dubbed 'The Strongest', faded away as she revealed the fragile child she still was at heart.
"A-animals aren't erased by that spell… T-they are mutilated instead… S-so as I was taken towards the port, I watched the cleaners peel the flesh and blood of my pet dog from the pavement using hoses, his eyes rolling across the street like marbles…"
She was practically having a seizure at that point, and Aaron was forced to reach out and physically stop her from injuring herself.
His own stomach was wrought with nausea, his skull swirling, and his thoughts a mess, the story sending pangs of emotional distress to his very core.
"Cam… You need to stop now…"
His calm words echoed through the bubble that enclosed their conversation, the sound of the snoring Akari drowning out the woman's tears.
Sitting next to her and placing his hand upon her shoulder, he didn't know what to do; the endless grief pouring from the woman was something he had never expected.
S-She wasn't going to tell this to anyone but I… I pushed her to…
Inside his head, he heard a quiet murmur, one of disbelief and confusion.
『No… That's impossible… He…』
Her voice blanked out, a deafening silence filling the boy's head as he comforted the crying woman.
They had once met as enemies, a boy with terrifying secrets and an investigator set to reveal the truth; however, now, they were more than that.
Perhaps even more than teacher and student, master and apprentice, for, at that moment, Aaron believed them to be equals, friends.
Cam's sobs continued for another few minutes before she collected herself, putting back her professional act as she wiped her face.
"I-I'm sorry you had to see me like that. I-I'll return to the festival now… Please forget everything I said. I must've drunk too much and—"
Aaron cut her off, his head shaking in disapproval.
"Cam. Don't lie."
There was a pause in the woman's expression as she heard her student's words, a spark within her reigniting.
Slowly, she leaned forward, placing her face into her hands and sobbing once more; however, this time, there was more to it.
"I-I'm so scared and lost, Aaron… Everything I'd known changed in a single day, and now it's happening again… I-I can't do it anymore, Aaron. Please…"
She stopped as the boy hugged her, a fear that he was overstepping her boundaries in his heart; however, the urge to comfort the person he could trust as a teacher was stronger than anything else he felt at that moment.
He had given her space to pull away from the hug if she wished, but when she didn't, he wrapped his arms around her completely.
A fifteen-year-old boy who, up to only half a year prior, had been missing from the world itself, was now keeping the strongest in the world together.
The words that Masaru Kurogane had spoken earlier that night resounded in his head, the lifeless orders and the weakened pride filling his mind once more.
No… He was wrong about that… That 'darkness' within me doesn't make me weak or in need of fixing.
He paused, feeling hot tears fall into his shirt as Cam's body shook with vicious sobs and tremors.
That darkness is what makes me human, and if I try to erase that side of me, then I'll become heartless. That is true weakness.
Feeling calm, as if he had finally found his answer, he held her, the student steadying the teacher, the boy sheltering the warrior.
They stayed like that for a while, locked in a silent, tear-soaked bubble, a fragile moment suspended outside the very flow of time.