The boy’s nights were never spent alone these days.

The people around him simply did not have the luxury to let him go free anymore.

The Princess had ordered it; that they needed to keep an eye on him.

Rapture closed his eyes as the hours passed, everyone had long retired to their tents since the moon eclipsed the sun.

He still could not forget that day, the day he killed those men.

The last words the final rogue had uttered in the end were still burned into his brain.

What had happened to that man to make him that way?

The boy sat up gently.

The women around him did not notice, it was entirely possible for him to sneak away.

He frowned as he faced them, then he left and not one of them woke as he crept away from the tent. 

The boy approached the edge of the camp, where a woman clad in plate sat for the night watch.

She held a half eaten fruit in hand as she looked towards the distant north, towards Venus, towards her ruined home.

The boy followed her gaze, he too looked that way, though what he beheld was different from her.

He was looking at his own home, a Sanctuary that had been located in the same territory.

The woman then glanced at him, she saw the black aura that shrouded his form and then bit into the fruit like an apple in her hand.

That pitch black fog around him was massive, the weakest Platinum Class normally had twice as much Ash as the weakest Gold Class, but Rapture wasn't an example of either.

The lad had twice as much Ash as any Platinum Class she'd ever met, which put him squarely at the limit of what a human could handle.

How sad it was then that it was painted such a putrid colour, it made her feel very sombre, yet more importantly it let her see his state of mind.

Rapture couldn't hide his heart so tainted by guilt, doubt, despair and a few hints of righteous fury.

“You’re free to walk about but don’t leave camp,” She said as she turned away from him.

The boy nodded, he stepped forward then and sat down by her side.

He looked towards the distant north and never said a word, never even once did he try to broker conversation with her.

The woman glanced his way from time to time, after a while she reached into her bag and then passed him a fruit.

That crimson pear-shaped thing landed on his lap.

The boy, startled, glanced towards it and then back at her soon after.

He took a few moments to pick it up, clean it off and then bite into it under her prying eye.

“What’s on your mind?” The woman asked as she plucked the seeds from her own now empty fruit and then tossed away the cord.

Out of habit, she planned to plant the seeds when she found a suitable place to do so.

Rapture himself followed her example, he too plucked the seedlings free.

What happened next stunned them both.

The boy's potent aura infested the seeds from the moment he held them in his hand, it turned them pitch black.

He stared at them in silence and then looked over to the woman.

“Are you still upset about Her Majesty slapping you?” She asked with a somewhat awkward smile.

The boy frowned, then turned away, he wasn’t feeling anymore talkative than normal today.

The woman was used to it, they all were by now, so rarely did he speak at all, nevermind to them.

“I do not think she was wrong,” He said bitterly, “I dragged you into that fight, risked us all...and we weren’t even in the right.”

The woman frowned, she wondered what he meant by saying that they weren’t in the right?

She didn’t need to wonder for long however before a certain thought did come to mind.

She too remembered the last words of that young man, the lad who’d killed himself that day.

“You think the Princess slapped you because of that?” She said, “Well, you’re half right, she did indeed slap you for putting yourself in danger, but I’d hardly say that’s all there is to it.”

The boy turned to face her, a look of bewilderment in his brow.

She pondered what that man said as they cornered him, but she had not the smallest hint of doubt or sympathy in her mind.

“You think you interfered without knowing the full story, right?”

The boy nodded, indeed this was something he’d been kicking himself over for the past several days.

The woman sighed, she closed her eyes and then when she opened them again she seemed almost enlightened to his mind.

“In every Bronze Class Settlement the general rule is to kill the men and children, then seize the women.

Women living in those conditions know that to survive they need to cling to the men, even if those same men killed their husbands or fathers...even their sons.

That man probably saw his settlement laid to ruin in such a way so I’m not about to say he didn’t suffer tragedy.”

Rapture nodded, that too was his own conjecture.

The things that man said as they put a stop to his rampage led him to believe it was revenge that motivated him, something that he could genuinely relate to all too well.

He had, after all, many reasons to want revenge on the men of Cain who slew his mentor and laid waste to his second home.

The woman saw this in his eyes, and in response she had a lecture for him.

“But I have no sympathy for that man," She confessed, and so Rapture looked towards her with a curious and somewhat startled gaze.

She looked at her open palm and clenched it shut around the seedlings.

The blood on her hands, long wiped clean, was all she could see even now.

“You saw it too, right? The men laying dead in the fires, the children too, nevermind the women who were being dragged off and rounded up if not defiled on the spot, did you not?

Tell me, does that man sound any better than those he so despised?”

Thinking back on it, Rapture had indeed forgotten this.

He hadn’t seen that man commit those sins himself, but he had aided the people who were doing so, whether that was for revenge or not he did not know and the woman before him did not care.

“He gave up the moral high ground the minute he did the same as them, it doesn’t matter who struck first.”

The boy pondered her words for a time.

She leaned her chin against her palms as he did so.

Only then did something catch her eye, an astonishing thing they’d both only somewhat overlooked until now.

The blackened seedlings in Rapture’s hand had started to germinate.

The boy followed her gaze, at last he noticed it too, the pitch black roots that wrapped around his arm and the towering stems sprouting in his palm.

The buds unravelled, brilliant blue flowers opened wide to embrace the dark sky of night.

“Well,” Said the maiden, “would you look at that...even that putrid black aura of your’s has a hint of beauty after all.”

The boy maintained his silent demeanour.

His aura was indeed a putrid black now but its natural colour was sky blue, sky blue just like these flowers were.

He faced the horizon, then rose to his feet a moment later.

The woman saw this, she bid to remind him,

“Don’t leave the camp,” She said.

The boy shot her a knowing glance, then he turned his head to the sound of footsteps resounding at his back.

The woman followed, their gazes converged upon a figure clad in gold.

The Princess of Jupiter, their charge, Lucretia.

“It’ll be fine, as long as I go with him,” Said the Princess.

The woman frowned, then she shook her head.

Lucretia was someone they were ordered to protect, it would not do for her to wander off on her own.

“It’ll be fine,” Said the Princess once again, and this time it was clearly a command.

She turned to Rapture, who stared back at her.

Her expression was stern as ever, but he sensed something else behind her glare.

There was a tiny hint of concern accompanying her familiar will of reprimand.

“I want to see where you go at night, Rapture,” She said.

The female guard turned away, she faced the heavens with a troubled eye as she wondered what to do.

Even Rapture had a baffled look in his eye, but not exactly for the same reason.

Only he had spotted the oddity, the drops of blackness dripping from Lucretia’s fingers, the smell of iron ever so faintly wafting in the air.

He did not choose to argue with her.

He left the camp in silence, he knew she’d follow after him.

She wanted a place where she could be, relatively speaking, as alone as a Princess like her could ever be allowed.