It was a gloomy sort of night, where the dark and stormy clouds gathered in the sky… —is a kind of opening line I’d have thought of if you were to ask me to describe the scene in front of me in a story.

Even back then, I was never really good at doing that, you know?

It’s never clear exactly how much I’m supposed to put in to paint out the details. Too much is too much. Too little is too little. The line in between eludes me to this day.

Maybe it doesn’t matter either way.

—But I’ll try my best.

If one were to follow the winding roads of the Elysian Capital’s middle ring long enough, they would eventually come across two guard towers standing tall among the cozy stone houses decorating the cobbled streets.

The walls were set up with spikes; several guards wander around. They’re a little imposing if not downright out of place—that is, if you don’t look past them to the place that they’re acting as a barrier for, and keeping separated from the rest of the city.

Behind the abrupt transition between the rocky surface that looks as if the mountain has been split apart in some ancient history by some great beings…

—An utterly massive crevice, carving all the way to the underground; wide enough to be considered a small canyon.

However, whatever the reason for this great divide’s existence, there’s absolutely no sign that the people who are living inside it in the present would care even a little.

Yes, there are people living there, inside this crevice. For this place is a part of the Elysian Capital known as <The Slum>.

With a single glance, one could tell exactly what kind of place this is.

The wooden shacks stack on top of one another, and of another, and of another, on and on—giving the appearance of a massive, vertically stacked shantytown supported only by thin wooden frames that have been added and re-added more times than any normal human could be alive long enough to see.

Connecting them, the layers of wooden staircases and makeshift floors extend ever downward in a dizzying spiral.

If one were to try to make their way down through each layer of this disorderly shantytown.

Through the rows of clothes hung on strings and garbage-filled platforms. Through the fronts of shady trade houses and rows of kneeling beggars.

They would eventually find, at the bottom, a number of shoddily-made bridges criss-crossing over several small water ravines spilling out from the underground caves and down the rocky ground of the mountainous terrain.

And finally...

Hidden away in a small gap underneath one of those bridges, and below the sheer chaos of the structures above them...

—A small cottage, built from shabby planks of wood, just large enough to serve as shelter.

And from the darkness inside that cottage, a woman grunts and cries in a muffled voice, as if mustering all of her strength to do something.

“Do we really have to sit through his entire life story?”

Sitting on the familiar green couch that has been supernaturally imposed onto the rocky, moss-covered ground in front of the aforementioned cottage, I ask Master, who’s sitting beside me with his chin resting on the back of his hand, seeming unperturbed by anything like always.

“It’s just twelve years, Steve. Literal blink of an eye.”

“I would like to remind you that my consciousness doesn’t operate on the same time scale.”

“Maybe it does and you just haven’t realized it yet.”

“If that’s the case then consider me a little bit terrified.”

—Though considering all that happened it's probably too late for those kinds of reactions.

Back in front of me, the sound of grunting stops, and eventually after some time, a woman carrying a crying baby emerges from the cottage.

A woman with long, disheveled black hair, wearing a dirty cloak.

And on this very day, she has just given birth to a boy who would later become Kirell.

Suddenly, I come up with a thought.

“I have a question, Master.”

“Shhhh~ Didn’t you learn to not talk when you’re watching a movie, Steve?”

“...”

—What?

Again, I’m not really sure how to respond whenever Master just throws absurd sentences at me like this. It’s like there are too many wrong things to point out but I’m only allowed to retort one at a time, causing an overload.

Firstly, we’re not watching a movie. Secondly, it’s just the two of us here. Thirdly, why are you telling me that as if I would actually believe you?

…Am I supposed to play along?

—Ah, sorry, my bad. I’ll be more careful in the future.

—Good, good manners are always important.

No, that’s... extremely dumb. I’m just going to ignore him.

I blink, before continuing to speak: “If the Scry’s living conditions were so terrible, then shouldn’t it be difficult for a Scry to get married and have kids? So how was Kirell born?”

…I suppose I have one guess. But I’d rather not have that be the case.

“That’s a good point. Usually, when something like this happens it’s either due to [evil] or [stupidity].”

“...Which is it this time?”

“It’s [stupidity].”

—I see. I suppose the other option would have been too cruel.

As I listen to Master's talk while sitting on the couch, the woman carefully leans down to the ravine and dips a long strip of cloth into the water.

Then she starts using the piece of cloth to wipe both herself and her child clean of all the blood.

“Two Scry workers from Desmunheim fell in love. They didn’t want their child to grow up as a slave, so they used their Scry’s uniqueness to hide away in a freight ship and get carried downriver. And perhaps it would have worked out for them if the destination of that ship wasn’t Elysian.

“The capital of the entire world. And the home of the person who forced their fates onto them in the first place. ”

“So Kirell’s origin is actually from Desmunheim…”

—Necromancy, skeletons, weird giant lizard creatures… What's up with that place, really?

In front of us, the woman stands up and holds the baby up to the sky as if trying to use the light of the moon to fully see the appearance of the baby in her hands.

Unfortunately for her, tonight was a new moon.

—You can barely see anything.

“Her name is N5218 or as she is referred to by her lover—Clara.”

“What happened to the father?”

“Dead.” Master casually flicks his fingers. “Got captured by Elysian’s knights and thrown into the mine as the two tried to escape.”

“I see...”

—Perhaps, somewhere in that pit within the Farseer’s Catacomb… his body still remains.

After some time, the woman wraps the baby in several layers of cloth and walks back inside the cottage.

The night passes, the gloomy clouds subside, and the bright light from the sun causes the shantytown to cast deep shades onto the rocky grounds below.

Under these shades, Kirell's mother walks out of the cottage to face a big problem. Since she can’t farm, can’t hunt, can’t sell anything...

“How does she plan to survive on a daily basis?”

"Well, that certainty is a problem."

Master and I continue to observe the woman from a distance.

Even if you remove all the conveniences like a proper bed, change of clothes, or basic hygiene, the issue of finding something to eat every day is already very difficult.

—But surely, there has to be a way to survive in the slum somehow.

As Kirell’s mother ascends the flimsy wooden steps layer by layer, carrying Kirell on her back, the green couch that Master and I are on follows her. From the perspective of an outside observer, we probably seem to appear and disappear at different locations like ghostly apparitions.

Kirell’s mother continues to navigate the complex walkways of the slum, completely unaware that she’s being watched

“But aren’t there other options?”

“Other options?”

Prostitution…?

—No, I guess that wouldn’t be possible either.

“For the Scry, even their bodies are undesirables.”

As the green couch reappears again on the roof of one of the many shacks in this shantytown, Master completes my thought and turns to me.

“How many ways do you think there are for homeless people to get food, Steve?”

I touch my chin and list out all the things that pop into my head.

“Begging. Doing odd jobs and then begging. And scavenging…?”

“She just does all of that.”

Below us, Kirell’s mother eventually finds her way to a large wooden platform that appears to be a garbage disposal site and starts digging around.

She’s not the only one scrounging around the pile of garbage, but the people standing guard in the front seem to not be paying attention at all.

—Eventually, Kirell’s mother leaves after failing to find anything.

After spending the entire morning wandering the lower parts of the slum for leftover food. In the afternoon, Kirell’s mother makes her way to a small plaza densely packed with people.

The plaza is situated in front of the largest building in the middle layer of the slum. Suspended in the air by some wooden beams, it seems to be a trade house of some kind.

Kirell’s mother finds a place to sit and places down a small clay pot she found in the garbage site earlier in front of her.

“She would go around the most common trash disposal spots around the slum and search for food or something to sell.. Regardless of whether she finds any, she would then go around the most populated spots in the slum and beg for a job. If there’s not, then she would simply sit there and pray for the generosity of passersby.

“Coins—at least can eventually be traded for something when the opportunity presents itself.”

A woman walks by and throws a small bronze coin into her pot. But after taking another look at her, she grabs the coin she’s put in earlier back and hurriedly walks away.

“Scry...”

The woman mutters in apparent disgust. The face of Kirell’s mother shows no emotion.

After a full day of walking, Kirell’s mother would settle all the way at the lowest depth of the slum, in a small gap underneath one of the many bridges that connect the loose buildings of this shantytown together.

Because the ravine’s water is too dirty to drink, she would use buckets to gather the rain instead.

—Every morning, she would go out while carrying Kirell on her back.

“This is how she would live for the next six years.”

“Only six years?”

“Yes.”

In a blink of an eye. The years passed. Seasons changed. Snow gathered and melted on the roofs of the shantytown.

In front of the green couch, the same scene repeats itself hundreds of times, the mundane daily life of Kirell’s mother.

Find food, feed her child, feed herself—do everything again tomorrow. Even when Kirell’s grown enough to walk, talk, and follow her around to be taught everything she knows.

—Her routine remains the same.

“Unfortunately, her way of life coupled with her prioritizing the well-being of her child more than herself. If she only had food for her child, she simply wouldn’t eat—plus the lack of sleep from all the nighttime scavenging. Her body finally couldn’t keep up. And a myriad of sicknesses took over.

“So at the fairly early age of 32, she passed away.”

Inside the small cottage, Kirell’s mother lies in a makeshift bed made by stacking several layers of cloth, half leaning against the moldy wooden wall.

A small fire is lit up beside her, highlighting her pale complexion.

It has been a few weeks since she has been able to get up, forcing Kirell to go out scavenging for food and bringing it back to her. It wasn’t easy for him to navigate the hazardous constructions of the slum, and he frequently slips and falls. Thankfully, it didn’t take too long for him to grow comfortable catching himself when he did.

Kirell drops the food he’s found today onto the ground in front of his bedridden mother.

Half-eaten fruits and loose pieces of dried meat bundled in a somewhat dirty rag spilled out. Today’s harvest was particularly plentiful. And they both are able to share it by the fire.

But as the days pass, her conditions only deteriorate.

Eventually, she became unable to chew food.

At this point, they both know that without proper treatment, recovery is impossible.

—No matter what they do, she will die.

"I used to wonder… whether or not it was a mistake for us to run away in search of freedom."

Sitting on the green couch, we watch the pair of mother and son hold each other.

Kirell’s mother begins to speak; her voice hoarse, barely audible.

"But then I realized that in the first place… it was never about whether or not we live or die.

She puts her hand on Kirell's face, and smiles gently.

"Survive, Kirell… get stronger.

"One day... please go see the world in our place."

Kirell watches as the body of his mother slowly freezes before his eyes.

Finally, he buries his face into the chest that’s gradually losing its warmth, silently sobbing.

—At the age of seven, Kirell experiences the loss of his mother.

“This is getting… kind of depressing.”

“Quick, Steve, crack a joke.”

“Why are you pushing that responsibility onto me? Aren’t you usually the Boke?”

“I’d say it’s about time things like gendered roles are erased.”

“That reply doesn’t even make sense!”

“Ah, you did a Tsukkomi. Good job, Steve, just like we’ve rehearsed.”

“...”

AaaaAahh~ I need to somehow find a way to counter this little verbal technique of Master, otherwise, I’ll just lose every exchange!

“I’ll wait for a day when you get on my level.”

—Stop reading my mind!

I glare at Master before glancing back at Kirell and letting out a sigh.

"I understand why you can take this as easily as you do but please don't try to rob my sympathy away from me."

Knowing Master, he’ll find a way to trivialize it somehow. Do you know that statistically speaking most parents die before their children anyway… or something.

Instead of any of that, however, Master simply leans back on the sofa and says without any discernible emotions.

"The point is that you do keep it, is it not?"

In front of me, Kirell finally lifts his face from his mother’s chest and wipes the tears from his eyes.

He mutters something under his breath. A promise? Or maybe it was words of gratitude. But whatever his last words to his mother may be...

—Kirell hugs the body of his mother one last time. And walks out of the cottage.

"But I still don’t understand. Since Kirell's now forced to fend for himself. How does a child this young survive on his own for so long?"

"Obviously, he can’t really do that."

“So how?”

“He got picked up by a gang. At least for a while..”

Hearing Master, I raise my eyebrows and give him a look.

“There are gangs in the slum?”

“If you consider a group of desperate individuals trying to share resources to survive a gang, yes?”

“They’re not just a bunch of those Scry people?”

“Not really, no. There's only a handful of Scry in the slum. And if they somehow manage not to get captured by the guards and sent to the mines, a few of them usually make a living by providing free labor for these gangs.

“Kirell’s mother was just a rare exception.”

Ah, since being captured seems like a death sentence, it would be unlikely for a Scry to escape into the main city. There’s also the possibility that the people from the slum would try to capture them and send them to the guards in return for some form of compensation.

—Somehow, even among the untouchables, they are the most ostracized…

“These gangs you’re talking about. Do they do crimes? Like big organized crimes?”

“Ha! No way. The moment they even conceive the thought, the big man on that giant throne over there will erase them from existence.”

Master slaps his book, somehow finding what I've just said to be extremely hilarious. And a thought occurs to me.

"Actually, why does he not just get rid of them? The entire slum, I mean. Why is there still this massive crevice in the city where ten of thousands of people live in poor conditions when everywhere else in the city is practically paradise in comparison."

Ense, [The Strongest Godemperor] of the Empire of Elysian. As one of the absolute rulers of this world, clearly, he has enough power to do whatever he wants.

"There are a few reasons why Elysian hasn't gotten rid of the slum.”

Master breathes in deeply, before going on to explain.

“One is that Ense and his Adjudicator also frequently use this place to contain a few people they deemed undesirable.

“And the other is, well… Do you really care about the cockroaches in your wall if they don't spread to the living room? "

"..."

...Let’s just change the subject.

“So if not organized crimes... what do these gangs do then?”

—Charity? Stealing from the rich and giving it to the poor Robinhood style? Can't imagine it being anything that glamorous…

“More heads are better than one, basically,” Master says while swaying his head side to side absentmindedly. “While the top gangs actually run legitimate-ish artifacts trading businesses. The smaller gangs would travel around and offer cheap labour at the nearby harbours. At the end of the day, they would give a large chunk of their earnings to their leaders.”

“In return for?”

“Protection.”

The visible half of Master’s face reveals a subtle grin.

“Kirell isn’t the only person who has to take from others to survive.

“There’s a hierarchy, especially in the top part of the slum. If you’re not a member of the top gangs—Sinara, Yorax—you’re basically free game.”

“But you just said they can’t do crime…”

“—against the people of Elysian. Against each other, that’s a different story.”

Some two months after the death of his mother, Kirell finds himself sitting on the floor of a small gang hideout in front of a burly, brown-haired man.

Unbeknownst to both of them, Master and I are sitting on a green couch just to the side, watching.

The burly man seems to be a leader of a small gang that operates in the lower layer of the slum, though the name is not mentioned—perhaps in Kirell’s memories, he doesn’t remember it either.

He caught Kirell rummaging through his kitchen and, in a surprising act of kindness, sat him down and listened to his story.

The gang leader looks at the disheveled boy in front of him with a stern gaze.

—Eventually, he sighs.

“You clean. You watch. You do everything I say, and you get to live. Understand?”

Kirell nods.

And thus, his daily life as part of a gang begins.

On most days, he would follow the members of the gang to the harbours through the slum's alternate entrance in the cave system. There, he would often assist the members of the gang in doing manual labour, and just generally being at the gang leader's beck and call.

They don't treat him particularly well, but it's not like they treated him poorly either.

Even though he doesn't get paid for his labour, he does regularly receive food.

And with the regularity of food he gets, Kirell now looks the most healthy than he’s ever been in his entire life.

“You said he got picked up by a gang only for a little bit?”

“A month.”

Sitting on a couch that's manifested on the mast of a large ship beside, Master replies simply.

—So what happened?

It started off like any other day where Kirell was carrying out the order he received from the gang leader to regularly clean their base.

I say base but in reality, it’s just a slightly larger wooden shack in the lower part of the shantytown. Nothing grand, but far better than almost anywhere in the slum.

Kirell enters the living room with the intent to clean everything just like usual. This time, however, a group of teenage gang members, each of them can't be older than thirteen, are gathered inside.

At first, Kirell grabs a feather duster and goes about cleaning the room’s furniture without paying them any mind.

But then...

For some reason, they start to gossip.

“I’ve never seen a Scry this close before. Their presence is very discomforting,” one of them says in a hushed voice, although clearly not trying very hard to not let Kirell hear.

“How does a Scry this young find their way into the slum anyway?” the other one replies.

“Obviously he was abandoned.”

“Maybe s-some noble couldn’t resist putting their thing in a hole and he was thrown here to hide his mistake?”

“Ha! That’s disgusting! Isn’t that basically the same as fucking an animal?”

—On the other side of the room, the hand that was holding the feather duster suddenly stops.

They start to laugh among themselves.... only to stop when a few of them notice a figure approaching.

One of the boys turns around to find Kirell standing behind him with his head down and an unseeable expression.

The boy’s about to speak... but becomes unable to as he finds himself sent to the floor by Kirell's tackle.

Bang—!

The bodies of the two collide against a nearby table, knocking everything on it down all over the floor.

In the midst of the scuffle, Kirell quickly reaches for any nearby object and ends up grabbing onto a small picture frame.

And then.

—With every ounce of strength his thin and frail body could muster, Kirell slams the boy’s head with that picture frame.

Smack—!

“Do you know that insulting someone’s mother is a universal provocation method effective against all sentient lives under the age of fifteen?"

“Is it really?“

—Over and over and over again.

Smack—!  Smack—!  Smack—!

“No. Would be funny if it is, though.”

“Figured.”

As Master and I continue our exchange, Kirell never stops bashing the head of the boy with that picture frame, even as the blood from the boy's broken nose splatters all over him.

As for the reason for Kirell’s actions... Well, it’s not exactly hard to understand. All that grievance; channeled into one person. The faces of everyone who ever treated him and his mother wrong overlapped.

The other kids are so stunned by the outburst of violence that they’re unable to intervene.

But then...

"You son of a bitch!"

Just as Kirell's about to deliver another blow, an angry voice comes from the door to the living room, and the large figure of the gang leader rushes in.

Bang—!

The gang leader straight-up kicks him, sending his body flying to the other side of the room and slamming against the wall, causing a splinter.

He tends to the boy who's lying there bleeding, before turning to Kirell with a menacing glare.

“Get out!”

“But… I—”

“Leave.”

Kirell tries to collect his breath and explain himself, but the gang leader's gaze only grows fiercer.

“A Scry is always a Scry.”

The gang leader mutters those words under his breath, but there’s no doubt that they were meant for Kirell to hear.

Swallowing down his anger, Kirell clenches his fist and walks out the door.

—Master and I watch as his figure disappears from our sights.

“Kirell did learn a lot from that one month he stayed with that gang. At least enough for him to be able to navigate the slum and some parts of Elysian Capital with relative ease.

“After that incident, he goes to every gang hideout he knows and offers to work for them.

“But wherever he went, he was either threatened and thrown out.”

—Some weeks later, Kirell finds himself in another meeting with another gang leader.

This time, he’s sitting on the floor of a much more extravagant room. A portrait of a beautiful woman hangs inside a golden frame. The flowers and plants in the corners are well-nourished, shining their bright green colors.

The blonde-haired man sitting in an elegant chair at the other end of the room is neatly dressed. Not formal, but clean. Which, in the slum, is quite a rare sight.

“Not killing you right now is the only sliver of mercy I can offer.”

He says to Kirell, before lighting a cigar and putting it in his mouth. His words are soft, concise, and deliberate. But they cut deeply all the same.

—Yet another rejection.

“Why…?”

In contrast, Kirell's faint voice holds nothing but tired desperation as he tries to hide the despair on his face.

After so many failed attempts to be accepted by someone—just anyone—he too, begins to break down.

“Because you are a Scry.”

The blonde-haired man speaks simply, not even giving him a proper glance.

“Evil is in your blood.

“You’re not one of us and never will be.”

Those words of accusation, uttered so confidently and without a shadow of uncertainty as if it was one of the fundamental truths that everyone understands.

Kirell looks down, clenching his fist so hard his whole body begins to shake.

After a while, the blonde-haired man exhales a puff of smoke and looks at him with eyes that contain no emotion.

“Don’t ever come back here again.”

After being thrown out, Kirell aimlessly wandered the slum.

There’s no longer any light in his eyes. And no matter where he goes, no one pays him any attention. Just another hopeless boy in the filthy streets of the hopeless.

But then, as Kirell is about to walk down another layer.

Bam—!

—A group of boys jumps on him from the roof of a nearby shack and presses him to the floor.

They kick his stomach and block his mouth to prevent him from screaming. Then they continue to hold him down, preventing him from moving.

Kirell tries to struggle but to no avail.

One of the boys walks forward, a boy with bandages wrapped around his face, holding a picture frame.

“There’s a saying in Elysian. The most basic form of justice: is to do to others what he’s done to you.”

The boy kicks Kirell again in the stomach and sits on top of him.

Then, without mercy, the boy begins bashing his skull with that picture frame

Again and again.

One of the nearby people actually tries to step in. But because someone points out to them that Kirell is a Scry, even the crowd gathering to watch begins to leave.

After several brutal minutes, the boy finally stops and stands up from Kirell's barely conscious body.

“Consider your debt paid.”

He spits on the ground.

“But if you ever show your face around our territory, you’re dead.”

Then, the group of boys simply leaves Kirell to lie there in the cold.

The next morning, Kirell regains consciousness, and the first thing he does is chuckle.

After that incident, he never sought out any kind of help from anyone again.

There’s been a couple of times when he attempted to escape the slum and leave Elysian, but after a while, he decides to give up on the idea entirely.

Because getting caught would mean certain death, the risk is too high.

Kirell is trapped, within the Elysian Capital, within the dilapidated walls of the shantytown.

—All alone.

For the last three years, Kirell’s life was difficult. He has no interaction without anyone, only doing whatever is required of him to survive.

When it comes to finding food, Kirell has even fewer options than his mother. So on a day when he couldn’t scavenge anything to eat from the trash pile, he had to just resort to stealing from other people.

One good thing is that the fact that he’s still a child made it possible for him to find ways around the guards at the entrance of the slum and into the main city where there are a lot of targets.

The bad thing is obviously that he had to constantly run away and hide from the people who wanted to capture him—the guards, the gangs, everyone.

As I watch Kirell going through this mundane process day after day, I begin to notice something. No matter how he’s staying alive, what kind of food he eats. There’s never a moment where it felt like he was living.

Simply going through the motions; simply repeating a routine. Despite being only 11 years old, his eyes no longer show signs of innocence, only a dark shadow that reflects nothing.

Today too, Kirell drags his shell of a body from the depth of the slum to find food in the city.

After searching, he set his sight on a stall that sells fruit somewhere in the Yellowstone District.

He waits for the time when the street is the most crowded and takes advantage of his small stature to slip in front of the stall. Then, a simple sleight of hand snatches an apple right from under their noses.

The more he does this, the more proficient he becomes. The Scry’s characteristic must have also played a role.

But then, as he is about to leave with the apple in hand, he catches sight of something—or rather, someone.

A young girl from a noble family, perhaps. She’s walking out of one of the myriad shops around here.

In her hands, something is being held up, a beautiful silver necklace that contains a large blue gem. Alongside her, her parents and a woman who appears to be their servant are talking and exchanging smiles.

—An image of a beautiful family.

Kirell stands in the shadow of the alleyway, looking at the family of three—in silence.

Then, in the next moment, as if he was possessed, he begins walking toward them, slowly at first, but then faster and faster.

He rams into the figure of the young noble girl, takes advantage of a brief window of opportunity, and snatches the necklace from her!

Then, before anyone could really mentally register what has happened, he runs.

Sitting on the green couch and observing everything from the side of the street, I can’t help but wonder.

"Didn’t he already grab the fruit from the stall? Why does he go out of his way just to steal that extra piece of jewelry?"

"Isn't it obvious?” Master exhales sharply through his nose. “He's just jealous."

“A Scry!”

“Capture him!”

A nearby store merchant shouts, and the guards begin their pursuit.

Kirell ran and ran. Clutching the necklace near his heart. And after a long and tiring chase, he manages to outrun the guards and escape into one of the cave systems that serve as an alternate entrance to the slum.

Emerging on the other side, Kirell continues to run without looking back.

After reaching the top layer of the slum, he looks around hurriedly, realizes that he’s successfully gotten away from the guards, and breathes a sigh of relief.

However, perhaps due to the nervousness after having done something so bold and survived, his shaky steps cause him to stumble on the shoddy bridge of the shantytown... and causes him to involuntarily drop the necklace to the ground.

Clink~!

When he tries to reach out for it, it slips through one of the many holes of the bridge and falls below even further.

With a pale face, Kirell immediately runs off to find a way down. But almost as if it’s some trick of fate, every time Kirell manages to find the necklace stuck on a wooden beam or a string of clothes, his footsteps would always cause it to be shaken loose and fall down again.

Even so, Kirell continues to chase after the necklace. Until finally, he reaches the bottom of the slum.

Without taking a moment to even recover his stamina, Kirell jumps into the ravine. If it has fallen all the way down here, then surely it’ll be somewhere under the water.

The sun had already set some time ago, yet despite the fact that the water must have become quite cold, Kirell still kept searching and searching.

After what felt like an hour of diving to the bottom of the ravine, he eventually managed to find it.

Kirell holds up the piece of jewelry to the sky and yet again breathes out a sigh of relief. Soaking wet and tired, Kirell drags himself back to the shack underneath the bridges, a place that was his ‘home’.

He made his way to the side of the cottage. There, a small shrine made of a pile of stone.

Kirell collapses in front of it, truly exhausted.

“I brought a gift for you… mother.”

Lying on his back against the pebbled ground, Kirell faces up to the sky—or at least the part of it that’s visible from under the protruding mass of the shantytown.

Tonight too, there’s no moon. But maybe because of that, the stars are shining very brightly.

“You said that stealing anything aside from food… is wrong... but…

“They were smiling… too happily.”

A self-mocking smile appears on Kirell’s face.

But within a few seconds, that smile morphs into an expression of pain.

He puts his arms up, covering his eyes.

“Why… can’t we have that life?”

Choking on his own words, Kirell swallows a lump in his throat before continuing to talk.

"Why… do we have to suffer like this?"

His voice grows faint, suppressing the intense feeling of bitterness that’s filling his lungs.

But they can never be suppressed for long—no, it’s exactly because they've been suppressed for so long that at this moment, he can no longer do it anymore.

—And everything pours out.

"Is it really because… a long time ago… our ancestors did something terrible?

“What the hell... does that have to do with me?! With US!?

“Good, evil, right, wrong, justice, revenge, it’s all nonsense! Whether it'll be then or now….

"This is all… YOUR FAULT!"

Kirell slams his fist onto the pebbled grounds. Tear rolls down the side of his cheek.

High above the dilapidated shantytown, the tip of Elysian Castle cast a silhouette against the sliver of moonlight. Even at the lowest depths of the slum, its presence is always felt. As if serving as a constant reminder of the being who watches over all in this land.

Kirell continues to lie there, not moving for a long time.

Eventually, he gets up, places the necklace on the pile of rock, and begins ascending the layers of the slum once again. He climbs up higher and higher until the ravine at the bottom becomes unseeable.

The wind blows strongly, one missed step will send you tumbling back down into the slum’s dizzying depth. Kirell soon reaches the roof of one of the highest buildings in the topmost layer of the slum.

For almost an hour, he simply sits there, looking up into the distant stars.

Perhaps, right now, he wants nothing more than to let the light of night stars consume him.

But as the moment of silence continues to drag on, something unexpected happens.

“Haaaa~....”

For the first time since this whole thing started, Master stands up from the couch and does a stretch.

“Master?”

—What’s going on?

“Shhh~...”

Wearing an unreadable expression, Master turns to me with one finger on his lips, before walking over to Kirell.

“The stars are very bright, aren’t they?”

Then, he starts to talk to him, in a voice that I’m not sure he could hear.

“Kyrias, you see, is one of the 10,000 [Edineras] that was born at the beginning of the universe. And when the universe expands, they are scattered to the edge of material existence, putting unfathomable light-years between them and their kinds. 

"And as the universe continues to expand, more stars are created, then those stars form into galaxies, then those galaxies form clusters, gigantic structures in the depth of space. Quasars, black holes, nebulas, their sizes are almost incompressible to the human mind. But no matter how large and magnanimous those things are, they're still only a speck compared to the [space] that exists between them.

"And exactly because of this, the [Edineras], too, might not ever come into contact with another being like them until the end of the universe.

“Knowing that, it makes you feel small, doesn’t it?

“But [everything] is small. Even the stars and sky. Even the gods that represent them.

“So. Very. Small.”

Master walks around in front of Kirell while hugging his book in front of him.

—Under the moonless sky dotted only by stars, the Master of the Grand Archive stands beside a boy who has nothing.

“Let me tell you something, Kirell. Ense may be a god, but he isn’t your [god].

"Because the thing known as a [god] isn’t always so grand. Neither is it often so absolute

“It can be anything. It can be that rock. Or that tree. As long as it's something that can give you—just [you], no one else—a reason to live another day, then wouldn’t you say it’s worthy of worship?"

Master smiles softly and looks straight at Kirell. 

However, the boy continues to be completely unaware of his existence.

“Right now, you might not have something like that. But perhaps even the [belief] that something like that exists is enough.

“The only way to know is to keep on living, isn’t it?”

—Kirell’s life wasn’t any different after that day.

For the next two years, he goes on to scavenge just as usual, and steals from others whenever he needs to.

Sometimes he sleeps, sleeps through a whole day without getting up, or does and then immediately goes back to sleep.

Aside from hunger. There seems to be nothing in this world that exists as a reason for him to wake up.

No will, no desire, a kind of existence with no purpose, simply living day by day as if it will be their last, waiting for the ultimate release to come.

Perhaps that is his fate.

But because Master and I, in our attempt to change the course of Kyrias’s history in our desired direction, have already gone out of our way to meddle with the physical arrangement of this reality as we pleased.

As a result, his fate was changed.

And now...

—We’re here.

Master and I stand in front of the bed inside a small room.

The room is bare. There’s only a bed, a wardrobe, and nothing else.

A black-haired boy lies there. His torso wrapped in bandages.

“Now what?”

I look at Master before looking back at the unconscious Kirell. The white-haired man simply shrugs.

“We wait for him to wake up, obviously.”

Soon enough, Kirell opens his eyes.

And just as he does.

“Hiiii~!”

—He's greeted by Master’s bright, smiling face.

“You can call me Master, this is Steve.”

“...!?”

The boy lunges back in fright, falling off the side of the bed with a hard thud.

Despite that, Master continues to smile and deliver his introduction.

“We’re your very own—personal guardian angels.”

“...”

Staring at Kirell's utterly shocked face, a single thought appears in my mind.

—Do I even need to deliver the punchline here?