Boreas looked at Lloyd with a puzzled frown, unable to understand why he had suddenly brought up the past.
Lloyd turned his gaze toward the rain-streaked window. Beyond the hazy curtain of rainfall lay the city that had been his home for more than seven years.
Seven years ago, he had arrived in Old Dunling. The journey from the Holy Evangelical Papal State to Invervig had been anything but pleasant. He had only just survived the Night of Holy Descent, after burying with his own hands the people he had once known. There had been no joy in beginning a new life—only a pain so profound it had numbed everything else.
He remembered stumbling into Old Dunling, only to be turned away for lacking proper papers. Like countless strangers before him, he drifted into the Lower District. To the predators who ruled those streets, a newcomer like Lloyd was easy prey—and, more importantly, profitable prey.
They tried to rob him.
Unfortunately for them, Lloyd possessed nothing but the long case that carried his nailed sword.
The outcome had been simple.
He killed them all.
Quickly. Brutally.
As if every swing of his blade were venting the helpless fury festering inside him.
That massacre transformed him from just another outsider into a dangerous outsider, one who quickly caught the attention of Boreas, who had only recently taken his position. Everything that followed was history.
Boreas had given Lloyd a new identity and the chance to begin again.
In return, Lloyd worked for him, helping preserve the fragile balance of the Lower District.
Seven years had vanished in the blink of an eye.
Whether it was time that moved too quickly, or humanity that forgot too easily, Lloyd could no longer tell.
"...Why are you suddenly thinking about all this?" Boreas asked quietly.
A faint unease crept into him.
The meeting earlier had caught him off guard as well. He had assumed Lloyd had finally recovered from whatever had happened. Yet looking at him now, it was obvious the past still held him in its grip.
"I just wanted to verify something..." Lloyd said after a pause. "...To see my memories through someone else's eyes."
No two people remembered the same event in exactly the same way.
The Night of Holy Descent was proof enough.
Though Lloyd had lived through it himself, every survivor carried away an entirely different version of that night.
Boreas searched his own memories before speaking.
"When I first found you... you were in terrible shape. Covered in wounds. Not ordinary wounds—fatal ones."
Thinking back now, he realized how strange Lloyd had appeared.
Any one of those injuries should have been enough to kill a man.
Yet Lloyd bore several mortal wounds at once. Some had already begun healing, while others still bled freely. His body was soaked with blood and filth.
The supernatural resilience of a Demon Hunter had somehow carried him all the way to Old Dunling.
The absurd part was that Boreas hadn't noticed any of it at the time. He had simply assumed those injuries came from Lloyd's fight against the local gangs.
"Mentally, though..." Boreas continued, "...you were in an even worse state. At first, we could barely communicate with you."
Lloyd's attention sharpened instantly.
His eyes lowered, concealing whatever emotions stirred beneath them.
"How bad?"
He couldn't remember.
He remembered striking a bargain with Boreas—but how that conversation had actually unfolded had become a complete blank.
And that terrified him.
What if the agreement itself had never happened?
What if it was just another fabrication created by his fractured mind?
Another lie patched together instinctively to cover holes he couldn't explain.
"You kept muttering strange things," Boreas said. "Most of it was nothing but broken sobs. We couldn't understand much... but every now and then we caught fragments of prayers."
"Prayers from your Gospel. That's how I recognized them."
"I'd just met Robin around then. He followed your church, and he was always reciting those prayers. They got burned into my memory."
"Was that all?"
"That was all."
Boreas shrugged.
"What were you expecting? That you'd suddenly burst into those blinding white flames? Awaken your Secret Blood?"
"If that had happened, we'd have put you down as a demon on the spot."
"And even if you somehow survived..." he added with a snort, "...everything afterward would've gone differently. None of the mess we're dealing with today would've ever happened."
Lloyd fell silent once more.
If there had ever been a period when his memories became hopelessly tangled, it was the stretch between the Night of Holy Descent and his arrival in Old Dunling.
Everything after that felt strangely clear.
A new identity.
A new beginning.
As though he had been reborn.
From then on, his memories gradually stabilized, while the unbearable past was deliberately buried beneath layer after layer of ordinary life.
Until now.
The irony almost made him laugh.
He had spent years believing he was fighting to build a better life.
Perhaps all he had really done was drift through it in a daze.
It was not a comforting realization.
"So..." Lloyd finally asked, "where exactly are we going?"
Rainwater blurred the carriage windows until the streets outside dissolved into shifting mist, like the night fog forever hanging over Old Dunling. Only the blooming sea of umbrellas and the occasional flash of lightning remained visible.
He had always trusted the Cleansing Bureau before.
He had never questioned where they were taking him.
Now, he decided caution was probably wiser.
He eyed Boreas across the carriage with obvious suspicion.
After all, beneath the polished title of High Knight, the man was still an authentic crime boss.
Who knew?
Perhaps this was simply a delay. Perhaps the carriage would soon arrive at some carefully prepared open ground where countless artillery batteries were already waiting to reduce him to ash.
It wasn't as though the Bureau hadn't done something like that before.
Lawrence had died exactly that way.
Boreas, blissfully unaware of Lloyd's increasingly paranoid train of thought, answered simply,
"Home."
"...Home?"
The word sounded almost foreign to Lloyd.
Seeing his confusion, Boreas elaborated.
"121A Cork Street."
"I'm taking you home."
Rain hammered the streets as the black carriage rolled to a stop outside 121A Cork Street.
Warm light spilled through the windows.
Inside, familiar figures hurried about with their usual evening routines, as though nothing in the world had changed.
Like countless ordinary nights before.
Lloyd stepped down from the carriage, suspicion still written plainly across his face.
He couldn't understand what Boreas was trying to accomplish.
"If possible..." Boreas said from inside the carriage, "...stop disappearing without a word."
"At least tell someone where you're going before you vanish."
"So this is surveillance?" Lloyd asked.
"Of course."
Boreas answered without apology.
"We don't really have a choice."
"You're carrying something that might one day drag all of Old Dunling into the grave, and none of us knows what it is."
"Not even you."
"And you've already made it perfectly clear you have no intention of cooperating."
He continued matter-of-factly.
"Hand you over to the Evangelical Church? Not likely."
"Lock you in one of our prisons? You'd never behave."
"You're a walking hedgehog covered in spikes."
"So instead of making everyone's lives miserable, we'll leave things exactly as they've always been."
"There'll just be a few more pairs of eyes watching you."
"Couldn't you trust me a little more?" Lloyd asked despite himself.
Boreas laughed.
Not kindly.
Mockingly.
"Trust?"
"How exactly are we supposed to trust you, Lloyd?"
"We've been calling you insane for months."
"And now it turns out you actually are insane."
"You say you won't endanger everyone..."
"...but who can honestly say they know what you're really thinking?"
He remembered Lloyd charging willingly toward certain death just to kill Lawrence.
A man who could throw away his own life without hesitation to achieve his goal was a madman.
And the promises of madmen were worth very little.
"Lloyd," Boreas continued, "to Invervig, you're an outsider."
"To the Evangelical Church..."
He paused.
"...a dangerous traitor, I suppose."
"Whatever."
"It doesn't really matter what they call you."
"You exist between worlds."
"You'll never truly belong to either side."
"And yet..."
"...both sides are terrified of what you might become."
He let out a weary sigh.
"Do you know what we usually call people like you?"
"What?"
"Stateless terrorists."
With that, Boreas slammed the carriage door shut.
He had no interest in listening to another one of Lloyd's impossible promises.
The carriage lurched forward, wheels splashing through the flooded street before vanishing into the curtain of rain.
Lloyd watched its dark silhouette disappear before instinctively glancing around.
Boreas had at least been honest.
Somewhere nearby, hidden behind windows, rooftops, or shadowed alleys, countless unseen eyes were already watching him.
...He'd better remember to keep the curtains closed.
After standing in the rain for another moment, Lloyd finally pushed open the front door.
He forced himself to act as though nothing had happened.
Pretending everything was normal was, for now, the safest choice.
"Hi—... Lloyd?"
Mrs. Vanrud nearly bumped into him.
She had expected Sig to be coming home.
Instead, Lloyd stood before her.
"I thought you'd disappeared again for another week."
She looked him over from head to toe.
Once she confirmed he still possessed all four limbs, the worry left her face.
Before anyone realized it, this foreigner had lived here for years.
Long enough that his mysterious disappearances had simply become another part of daily life.
Watching the old woman bustle away again, Lloyd found himself struck by an odd feeling.
Strip away the demons...
Strip away the bloodshed...
And he actually possessed something resembling an ordinary life.
Perhaps only on the surface.
But even that fragile illusion offered comfort to someone forever lingering at the edge of normal society.
"Oh, Lloyd."
Mrs. Vanrud suddenly remembered something and called back to him.
"Someone came looking for you earlier."
"Did you recognize them?" Lloyd asked.
Though she knew nothing about the Cleansing Bureau, she had seen enough visitors over the years that a simple description was usually enough for Lloyd to identify them.
"No."
"I'd never seen that person before."
That was unusual.
She frowned, trying to picture the visitor's face.
But the harder she searched her memory...
...the less she could remember.
Then, without warning, a pair of blazing white eyes flashed through the darkness of her mind.
Within those burning pupils reflected her own face.
The vision vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Yet it left her frozen where she stood.
A dull ache spread through her head.
The old woman rubbed her temples vigorously.
"...Strange."
"I can't remember at all."
"I suppose I'm just getting old."
She dismissed it with a chuckle, blaming nothing more than the slow decline of an aging body.
Looking down at her wrinkled hands, blue veins rose beneath paper-thin skin.
Once, those hands had been smooth and graceful.
Now, time had claimed them.
"...I see," Lloyd murmured.
For once, the chill that usually clung to him softened.
Even someone as cold as he was couldn't live under the same roof for so many years without growing attached.
"You should think about retiring," he said. "Though... I suppose you're already half retired."
"Find someone to take care of you."
"Maybe Sig."
Mrs. Vanrud raised an eyebrow.
"So now you're saying I'm old and useless?"
"No—no, that's not what I meant."
Lloyd hurried to defend himself.
She was a proud woman.
Once, she had danced beneath grand chandeliers.
Once, handsome young men had pursued her relentlessly.
Like countless beautiful women.
Except...
She had also been an Air Cavalry trooper.
The sort who descended from the sky and ended lives with a single rifle shot.
She could joke about her age herself.
She simply didn't appreciate hearing it from someone else.
This time, however, the irritation faded almost immediately.
She lowered herself onto the sofa with a tired sigh.
"As much as I hate admitting it..."
"...no one ever defeats time."
She looked up.
"I've actually been thinking about retirement."
That surprised Lloyd.
He instinctively glanced around.
Surely this was the sort of conversation she should have been having with Sig.
Apparently, Sig wasn't home.
So Lloyd obediently took a seat instead, listening as the old woman spoke.
"So what's your plan?"
"What else?"
"I'll sell the house."
"Take the money."
"Move to some quiet little town in the countryside."
"Property in Old Dunling is expensive."
"The money should last me the rest of my life."
"And if I'm careful with it..."
"...I might even be able to hire a few handsome young men to keep me company."
She laughed at her own ridiculous fantasy before smacking her aching knee.
"This city's determined to age people before their time."
"My old leg can't stand this cursed damp weather anymore."
The injury dated back to her years in the Air Cavalry.
Now, with age creeping over her body, the pain clung to her like restless ghosts.
Lloyd couldn't disagree.
Old Dunling was dark, wet, and forever choked with factory soot.
A city built for ambition.
Not for growing old.
"That actually sounds..."
He suddenly froze.
"...Wait."
"Sell the house?"
"Of course."
"Where else would I get the money?"
"B-but..."
Lloyd pointed weakly toward the staircase leading to his room.
"I..."
"...Where am I supposed to live?"
"What does that have to do with me?"
The old woman's reply struck like a hammer.
Before Lloyd could protest, she sighed again.
"Lloyd."
"Every feast comes to an end."
"You'll live for many years yet."
"I, on the other hand..."
"...don't have many left."
Time itself seemed engraved upon her.
Even her voice carried the dust of passing years.
"You'll grow older."
"You'll marry."
"You'll have children."
"Surely you don't intend to be renting a room forever?"
Lloyd froze.
The words robbed him of every answer.
All he could do was listen.
"I've wanted to throw you boys out for years," she admitted with a smile.
"Sell the place."
"Go live somewhere peaceful."
"But every time I thought about it..."
"...I wondered where you'd end up."
"I'm not really worried about you, though."
"You're like a stray dog, Lloyd."
"And stray dogs..."
"...always find a way to survive."
Whether it was praise or an insult was impossible to tell.
But the smile in the old woman's eyes left no room for doubt.