The World Tree Heart throbbed violently in Cecilia’s arms.
Silver patterns crawled up the back of her hand, crossing her wrist and elbow until they covered her entire arm.
She looked down at the markings.
The lines contracted and expanded on her skin, their rhythm perfectly synchronized with her heartbeat.
This wasn't right.
The heart was merely a harvested organ; it shouldn't be reacting to this degree. Cecilia tilted her head and poked the sphere lightly with her index finger.
“At least you're obedient.”
The silver patterns stopped at her collarbone, temporarily halting their advance.
She tucked the heart deep into her sleeve and turned to walk further into the forest, her figure disappearing into the grayish-white silence of the withered woods.
The windows of the flower shop were closed.
Moonlight seeped through the cracks, cutting a narrow beam of light across the old wooden floor.
Ed set down his wine glass.
The glass base collided with the weathered wooden windowsill, producing a dull, heavy thud.
Margaret looked down at the remnants of the dark red liquid at the bottom of her glass, offering no rush.
“If you want to hear it,” Ed said without turning around, “then listen.”
The timeline suddenly snapped back.
A hundred years ago, at the adventurer's guild of the Council States.
The bulletin board was covered in a dense thicket of recruitment notices.
Only one corner by the wall remained deserted, with not a soul gathered near the chair there.
Ed sat there. The corners of the credentials on the table were wrinkled from being folded and unfolded countless times. The guild manager’s pace quickened noticeably when passing him, but he eventually stopped and kindly lowered his voice: “Vampires can’t take daytime quests, you know that. The guild clears out at six in the evening; you’d best leave early.”
Ed didn't look up.
He folded his credentials neatly and pushed back his chair to stand.
A team application form was slapped directly onto his table.
The chair opposite him was dragged over with a piercing screech.
A young girl with two loose braids sat down across from him, resting her chin on her hand as she looked at him levelly.
“Our team is short a fighter for night quests.”
She pushed the application over and casually snatched up his credentials to scan them.
“Seventy percent of the daily pay. Sound fair?”
Ed had sat in the guild for most of the day, and not once had anyone dragged a chair over to sit opposite him.
“Do you know what I am?”
“A vampire.” She set the credentials back down. “Daytime is a no-go, but there are no restrictions at night. The night shift is exactly what we need.”
That was the first time someone had asked Ed if a deal was “fair” instead of telling him to “get lost.”
Later, he met the other three members of the team.
Alan, the elf archer, carried four bows on his person. His first words to Ed were: “The scent of blood on you is too heavy; you’ll scare off the prey on night quests.” Having said that, he fished a cloth pouch from his waist bag and tossed it over—it was an elven sachet used to mask odors.
Ed caught it and didn't say thanks; Alan didn't wait for him to speak either.
Deval, the dwarf craftsman, had seven hammers hanging from his belt. Upon meeting, he grabbed Ed’s wrist and rattled off seven suggestions for modifying his bracers in a single breath, without pausing once.
Harold, the human swordsman, greeted Ed with a punch to the shoulder.
It wasn't light; Ed had to step aside to keep from taking the full force of it.
Harold threw an arm around his neck and ruffled his hair.
“First time I’ve seen a vampire with such a sour look. Stick with us and learn how to talk like a person.”
A decade of time compressed into fragments.
While crossing the northernmost snow mountains, Deval’s compass froze solid in the fifty-below-zero temperatures, and the talkative dwarf stayed silent for three whole days. Ed unzipped his overcoat, stuffed the dwarf inside, and kept him warm for an entire night.
During a mission deep in the marshes to track a mutated magical beast, the task dragged on until dawn.
Sunlight slanted down through the gaps in the trees.
The skin on Ed’s back began to give off a faint smell of charring.
He didn't make a sound, holding out until sunset before going for help. When Margaret helped him change his bandages, more than half the flesh on his back had been burned away, and the gauze immediately soaked through with yellow fluid.
Then there was the time Harold got drunk, slumped over the camp’s wooden table, and spent half the night crying to Ed.
“Ed, you’re the best person in this world besides my mother.”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than he vomited all over Ed’s coat.
The incident with the poison arrow happened in their thirteenth year.
During a certain mission, Alan was possessed by a control-type spell from a shadow monster.
The bowstring pulled taut. The arrow was aimed at Margaret.
The moment the arrow left the string, Ed lunged from the side, catching the shaft with his back.
It was a poison arrow capable of piercing three layers of protective magic.
The toxin took hold, and Ed suffered through a high fever for three days and nights.
Margaret stayed by his side through the nights. Using an elven herbal solution, she wiped his burning forehead over and over again.
On the second night, in his delirium, Ed reached out and grasped her hand.
He said something.
It was too faint and blurred; Margaret couldn't hear what it was.
She didn't let go.
She rested his hand on her lap and continued wiping his brow with her other hand until daybreak.
The silence inside the flower shop lasted a long time.
“You gathered your courage for a hundred years.”
Margaret’s tone was exceptionally steady.
“Just to tell me this?”
The question was asked casually.
But the way her knuckles protruded from the force of her grip betrayed her true state.
Ed stood up from his chair.
He walked to the window, his back to Margaret.
“You remember the camp that night.”
It wasn't a question.
“There is something inside me,” Ed paused, “that has been there since I was born.”
“My parents,” his back muscles tensed, “were both killed by me.”
The moonlight outside the window remained unchanged.
“After I drifted into the human world, I hadn't lost control for several years.”
He clasped his hands behind his back.
“For some reason, it suddenly happened that night.”
“I pushed you away because that was the only thing I could do with my last shred of sanity.”
Margaret didn't speak immediately.
A hundred years.
She had thought it was boredom, or betrayal, or that those years meant nothing to him, which was why he could leave so cleanly and decisively.
It turns out that wasn't it.
“That night, I went back to the camp,” she began, enunciating every word with extreme clarity. “The light of the campfire illuminated that clearing. I called your name.”
Ed’s back stiffened.
“When you turned around, your eyes were red.”
“In your hand, you were clutching...”
She didn't finish.
That image had been stored in her mind for a hundred years, so clear she didn't even need to close her eyes for it to surface. That silhouette she had been familiar with for over a decade had slowly turned around in the firelight.
Ed slowly turned around.
The moonlight fell upon his face, carving out sharp contours.
His eyes were a normal black.
He was silent for a long time.
“The sound of you coming back and calling my name,” his lips moved slightly, “was the last thing I heard.”
In the dark alley outside the flower shop.
Leon leaned against the mossy wall.
Ice mana condensed unconsciously at his fingertips before dispersing.
A faint ripple came from behind that old wooden door.
Wood mana, completely different from before.
Something that had been suppressed for a long time had suddenly loosened at this moment.
Leon moved his hand away from his sword hilt.
He stood before that door for a long time, eventually leaning his back against the wall once more.
He whispered something that no one heard.
Then, he turned his gaze back to the distant street corner, leaving the door to the two people inside.
Rate on N.U.
