The gale drove sheets of freezing rain against the window, every impact drumming across the glass in relentless succession, as if a band of lunatics had gathered outside, gleefully pounding on the panes to drag you out of bed.
Except it was well past midnight.
And Lloyd's room was on the second floor.
He stirred awake at last. Perhaps it was because he had returned to a place that felt familiar—after a brief rest, much of the exhaustion weighing on his body had quietly faded. He had left the curtains open, allowing the pale glow of the streetlamp outside to spill weakly into the room. Sitting up slowly, he lingered in a daze, until, for no reason at all, an almost unbearable loneliness seized him.
People often said you should never nap alone at home.
If you slept too long and awoke at dusk, opening your eyes to a dim, silent room with no one waiting for you, a strange sorrow would settle over your heart before you even realized it.
Doctors claimed there was a reason for it. Waking was not merely the body's return to consciousness—it was the mind's as well. And in those first fleeting moments, the human spirit remained numb, fragile, stripped of its usual defenses. Emptiness flooded every corner of flesh and bone, so overwhelming that it almost made one want to throw open the window and step into the void below.
Which was exactly why, they said, you shouldn't take naps.
Lloyd climbed lazily out of bed.
This was only a brief lull stolen amidst the chaos. Somewhere beyond the darkness, those ill-intentioned figures were still watching him, waiting. He had no luxury to examine his own emotions. The only thing he could do was sharpen his fangs before they struck again.
He didn't bother turning on the lamp. Between the dim streetlight filtering through the window and the keen eyesight of a witch hunter, every corner of the room lay perfectly clear before him. He silently took a seat, retrieved the unfinished weapons from beside the chair, and resumed his modifications.
Lloyd had never attended a single lecture on engineering.
But within the Order of Witch Hunters, he had learned more than enough craftsmanship.
The craft of killing.
Long campaigns and endless battles meant that even the famed nail swords wore out far faster than they could be replaced. Eventually, forging one's own weapons became a skill nearly every witch hunter had to master. It resembled an arts-and-crafts lesson—except the things taking shape beneath one's hands were never childish toys, but instruments designed solely for death.
Thanks to those years, Lloyd had learned countless ways to alter shotgun ammunition.
Though all of those techniques had been devised to slay monsters.
Not fellow witch hunters.
His hand disappeared into the darkness before returning with a single, icy slug.
Calling it ammunition almost felt inadequate.
It was closer to a work of art.
The projectile shimmered with a pale silver radiance reminiscent of moonlight. Intricate passages of sacred scripture had been painstakingly engraved across its surface, though the inscriptions were far from flawless. Every line had been carved entirely by hand, and the craftsman had clearly been a novice. Many of the characters leaned awkwardly or wandered from their intended paths.
That novice had been Lloyd.
Although he had long since abandoned the Gospel Church, some tiny fragment of hope still lingered within him...
No.
Hope wasn't quite the right word.
It was merely the desperate impulse of someone standing before the abyss, thinking, When everything is lost... I might as well believe in something.
That had been his state of mind when he forged this slug.
He had been preparing to face Archbishop Lawrence.
Preparing to face despair itself.
The gulf between them had seemed so impossibly vast that even Lloyd had doubted whether he could kill the man. So, almost mockingly, he had carved holy scripture onto the silver, hoping the God who had watched in silence all this time might finally choose to act.
The slug was cast entirely from consecrated silver.
Against monsters, it was certain death.
Against witch hunters...
The result would be much the same.
Lloyd had melted down every last piece of holy silver he had taken from the Order, producing only two pure silver slugs. In his original plan, those twin bullets of death would strike Lawrence's head and heart in succession, ending the archbishop once and for all.
But the plan had failed.
He had found the opportunity to fire only once.
Even that shot had failed to kill Lawrence.
Fortunately, the industrial artillery that followed brought their long and brutal duel to its conclusion.
And so this final silver slug remained.
Lloyd had believed he would never have another chance to use it.
Then the New Order arrived.
Carefully, he returned the bullet to its hiding place.
Like the Stibnite, it was one of the few cards he still held in reserve—a weapon meant to end everything with a single shot.
Then—
A faint sound drifted in from beyond the door.
Lloyd made no sudden movement. Quietly, he reached for his shotgun and short sword.
It was already deep into the night.
Madam Vanrud should have been asleep long ago, and judging by Sig's habits, he ought to have been lying obediently in bed as well. Lloyd owned no pets, nor did he imagine anyone else in the house did.
Silently, he approached the door, his eyes fixed on the handle.
Madam Vanrud and Sig never entered his room without permission. If they needed him, they always knocked first.
If that handle so much as twitched...
Lloyd would throw the dagger without hesitation.
As for the shotgun—well, it was rather late. The blast would wake the whole house, and a considerate tenant ought to keep the noise down.
Every muscle in his body tightened.
Cold light flowed along the blade.
The sound came again.
Footsteps.
They paused briefly outside Lloyd's door...
Then continued toward the staircase.
Frowning, Lloyd eased the door open just enough to peer through the gap.
A familiar silhouette stood in the dim hallway.
"Sig?"
His voice was barely above a whisper, yet in the stillness of the night it carried with startling clarity.
Sig turned, surprise flickering across his face.
"You're... still awake?"
He clearly hadn't expected Lloyd to be up at this hour.
Then his eyes drifted downward.
Through the narrow opening, the gleam of the drawn short sword caught the light.
Realizing what he'd done, Lloyd quickly lowered the weapon. His roommate already carried enough burdens without having another one thrust upon him.
Only then did he let out a quiet breath.
He had simply been too cautious.
There were no assassins creeping through the darkness.
No hidden enemies slipping into the house.
Just Sig.
Just another sleepless soul wandering through an ordinary night.
Not one swallowed by demons.
Casually tossing the weapons back onto the bed, Lloyd stepped into the hallway.
"What are you doing?"
As he drew nearer, Sig's features became clearer beneath the dim light.
Something was different.
His eyes were slightly red.
As though he had cried not long ago.
...That's not good.
Lloyd had never been particularly skilled at dealing with emotions—not even his own, much less someone else's.
Yet strangely enough, seeing Sig like this also filled him with a quiet sense of relief.
Sig had always seemed distant, cold, and painfully withdrawn. He disliked people, preferred shutting himself away indoors, and sometimes Lloyd had wondered whether he'd lost the ability to feel altogether.
But this...
This proved otherwise.
He could still grieve.
He could still ache.
Which meant he was still human.
"It's nothing."
Sig lifted a chair and carried it to the doorway.
He pushed the front door open, and a gust of icy wind rushed inside.
Sitting down at the threshold, he watched the mist hanging over the empty street and the rain bursting into countless ripples across the pavement.
Raindrops struck the earth without end.
Each silver splash rose and vanished like schools of fish leaping through dark water.
"Are you sad?"
Lloyd asked quietly, leaning against the doorway as he watched the blurred curtain of rain alongside him.
Perhaps while he'd been asleep, Madam Vanrud had already spoken with Sig about the nursing home.
That would make sense.
Sig had spent nearly his entire life here.
Every year of his growth had unfolded beneath this roof.
Even the coldest soul would find it difficult to say goodbye.
"No."
Sig's answer came softly.
"I just... miss home."
"Hm?"
Lloyd blinked.
"But... aren't we already home?"
The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them.
Sig had lived here for so long that Lloyd often forgot he wasn't born in Old Dunling.
He vaguely remembered Sig mentioning a small town somewhere along the coast.
"...Sorry."
Sig merely shook his head.
"It's alright."
"Truthfully... I barely remember it myself."
"My memories of that place are hazy. Because it was by the sea, storms were common. Whenever they came, the whole world looked much like Old Dunling does now. Endless water poured from the heavens, washing over everything until the world disappeared behind a curtain of rain."
"Really?"
Lloyd glanced toward him.
"You rarely talk about it. Is it because the memories are painful?"
"No."
Sig smiled faintly.
"I simply can't remember."
"It was a very isolated town. Only a single railway connected us to the outside world, but trains rarely stopped there, and the fare was far beyond what ordinary people could afford."
"In the beginning, nobody cared. The blacksmith's son became a blacksmith. The fisherman's son became a fisherman. Everyone accepted that their lives had already been decided."
"Until one day..."
"A restless fool climbed aboard a passing train."
"He left."
"And the town was never the same again."
"At first, no one paid much attention. But before long, more and more young people either clung to passing trains or somehow scraped together enough money for a ticket. They all disappeared into the outside world."
"None of them ever came back."
"It was as though they had died."
"Then rumors began to spread."
"They had all gone to Old Dunling."
"The capital of Ingelvig."
"A city of wealth, beauty, and endless opportunity."
"Compared to it..."
"My hometown might as well have been hell."
"The adults became frightened."
"Every child who left was another child lost forever."
"The town grew older with each passing year."
"So they erected iron fences."
"And they shut out every whisper from the world beyond."
Sig turned toward Lloyd.
It was rare to hear the withdrawn young man speak so much at once.
"I was born there."
"But you still came to Old Dunling."
Lloyd smiled.
"So you were one of the restless ones too."
A faint smile finally appeared on Sig's face.
"Something like that."
"No matter how tightly the adults tried to control us, children always found each other."
"We turned the outside world into a legend."
"And eventually we invented our own coming-of-age ceremony."
"If you wanted to prove you were an adult, you had to slip past the fences and the watchful eyes of the grown-ups when a train passed by."
"You grabbed hold of it."
"And if you managed to leave..."
"You were an adult."
"I used to watch those children escape with endless envy."
"The adults would chase after them in vain..."
"While they stood atop the train, laughing into the wind."
Lloyd chuckled.
"I suppose every childhood is more alike than we'd like to admit."
"When I lived in Florence, it was much the same."
"We'd sit along the banks of the Tiber, dreaming about Old Dunling."
"The nobles always spoke of it as though it were paradise."
"They would have traded every coin they possessed just to live here."
"So we children imagined..."
"If only we could go there."
"Surely even the trash bins in Old Dunling must be filled with roast chicken..."
"...instead of the stale bread we found back home."
The memory drew laughter from him.
Children's dreams were always so wonderfully naive.
Limited only by the small worlds they knew.
"And in the end..."
Sig gazed through the endless rain.
"We both made it to Old Dunling."
"We did."
"But Old Dunling isn't beautiful, Lloyd."
"I nearly died here."
"It is a city where prosperity and chaos exist side by side."
"If Madam Vanrud hadn't taken me in..."
"I probably would have died in the streets."
"I love this city."
"But I don't belong in it."
"It took me many years to understand that."
"Those children didn't stay away because they no longer wished to return."
"They stayed away because they couldn't."
"You're the same, aren't you, Lloyd?"
"You can't go back to the Florence you once knew either."
Lloyd froze.
Only then did he realize how wrong he'd been.
Sig wasn't heartless.
He simply buried every feeling so deeply that no one ever saw them.
"When I first arrived in Old Dunling, I was overwhelmed with joy."
"Life was difficult..."
"But happiness always outweighed the pain."
"Madam Vanrud gave me a home."
"She let me attend school."
"She opened doors to a world I'd never imagined."
"I lived like that for years."
"Until one day..."
"I suddenly remembered the little town by the sea."
Fear crept into Sig's voice.
"So I tried to remember it."
"And discovered..."
"I couldn't."
"I couldn't remember what it looked like."
"I couldn't even remember its name."
"I'd never been so terrified."
"I rushed to the train station."
"I searched through old railway records, trying to find the train that had brought me to Old Dunling."
"There was nothing."
"The town had vanished from my life."
"My parents were there."
"I can barely remember their faces now..."
"But it was still where I was born."
"Only then did I understand what a terrible thing I'd done."
"And by then..."
"It was already too late."
Sig stared blankly into the rain.
He no longer remembered the town itself.
Only that when storms rolled in...
Its rain had looked something like this.
"I can't go back anymore, Lloyd."
Lloyd fell silent for a long while.
"...I suppose I've simply been too busy."
"Every day there's another battle."
"Another problem."
"I never really thought about any of this."
"We may live in Old Dunling..."
Sig murmured.
"But we're still strangers here."
"This isn't our home."
"And the homes that truly belonged to us..."
"...are already beyond our reach."
"We drift like wandering ghosts."
"Do you really want to go back?"
Lloyd asked.
Sig remained silent for a very long time before answering.
"I don't know."
"I've lived in Old Dunling for so many years that whenever I think back to that little town..."
"It feels like someone else's life."
"A complete stranger's."
"If the boy I was back then could see me now..."
"I don't think he'd believe this was his future."
Lloyd laughed quietly.
"People change."
"The person you were a moment ago dies..."
"And someone new wakes up the next."
Still talking to himself as much as to Sig, he carried over another chair and sat beside him.
For one brief, fragile moment...
Life felt astonishingly ordinary.
No bloodshed.
No cursed monsters.
Just two roommates sitting awake beneath the midnight rain, wondering where life had carried them.
The rain continued to pour.
Water rushed through the gutters in silver torrents.
They remained there without speaking for a long time.
At last, Lloyd reached over and lightly tapped Sig on the shoulder.
"Want to grab a late-night snack?" he asked.