"…I know even less about him than I know about you, Senior."
"Ha. I suppose that's fair."
He shrugged and started toward the dormitory. Echi stood alone in the empty training ground for a while. The bored demonic sword stirred.
[Why are you just standing there?]
"His face felt familiar. Seeing that smile reminded me of something."
[What? Who?]
"Ian Pelletro."
[El, I don't know who that is. Was it during the time you were being controlled? Before I awakened?]
"Yes. Back then."
Echi's mouth twisted. When she destroyed Azenka, he had been there.
She had killed so many people she could no longer recall most of their faces. The ones she remembered were the people who had mattered - her family, Nicole - or those who had left marks she couldn't scrub away. People like Yurien.
Ian Pelletro was the latter. And not in a good way.
"When I saw him back then, he wasn't a cadet - he was a knight. Azenka was destroyed three years from now. Which means he reaches Master within three years."
[Was there something memorable about him?]
"He gave fleeing people directions on purpose."
[Which direction?]
"Toward me."
[Wait. He was deliberately sending people running straight to you?]
"Yes. While I was cutting down everyone who came near - including children, the elderly, anyone - he was using that to cover his escape."
[Hah. Practical man. I like him.]
The demonic sword, always delighted by human malice, chuckled. Echi said nothing more and started walking.
She remembered it clearly: Ian Pelletro, smiling that same pleasant smile, telling a small child clinging to his arm and begging to be saved - to run in that direction. The direction she was coming from. He had pointed the child right at her.
Even in the middle of that mindless slaughter, the moment had lodged in her. She had noticed something odd about the pattern of where civilians were running, and when she saw him, she understood.
When he registered that Echinacea was arriving much sooner than expected, the pleasant smile had gone grotesque. He had shoved the child toward her and fled.
When a person is faced with death, their true nature surfaces. Ian Pelletro's was this.
She had killed him. But not before she had also killed the child he had pushed at her.
That memory had not faded.
"Damn it."
Echi spat and pressed a hand to her face. If she went to sleep in this state, there would be nightmares. Instead of heading back to the dormitory, she turned toward the academy gates and walked out.
[Where are you going?]
"To confirm something."
[What?]
'That no one in Azenka died.' She didn't answer aloud.
Azenka after dusk was not quiet. Workers heading home, people out for an evening stroll, children running back before dark.
Under the dimming sky and the glow of street lamps, life moved everywhere.
Azenka belonged to no nation - it paid its taxes to the Celestial Knights rather than to any lord or king. And the current commander of those knights was a reasonable sovereign.
Tax rates were fair. There was no conscription, no oppression. With the continent's strongest knight order stationed here, monster attacks were rare and crime was minimal.
A good city to live in. The faces passing her were, most of them, at ease.
Echi walked slowly, watching people laugh and talk and rush and rest. All alive. No blood anywhere.
Azenka was intact. What she had done existed nowhere now except her memory.
Her chest gradually settled. She walked on - through alleys, across the market, over a canal bridge.
In the center of the main square stood a large fountain, a carved angel holding the divine sword KairosGiosa at its center.
In the erased timeline, she had stood before this fountain soaked in blood, surrounded by bodies, and met Yurien.
She pushed through the evening crowd and approached. The fountain was clean. Clear water flowed.
The sight of the present, unbroken, hurt in a way that was also beautiful. She stood and looked at it for a long while.
Then she felt a gaze on her. She should have caught it sooner - she had been too focused on the fountain. She turned.
A hooded figure stood some distance back. The shadow cast by the hood hid the face.
People flowed between them. He took a slow step forward. The street lamp briefly lit the inside of the hood.
Silver hair catching the light. Eyes the blue of a clear sky.
She recognized him instantly. That face was etched into memory that nothing could erase.
Yurien de Harden Kyrier was standing there.
Echi couldn't move. She forgot to breathe. Her thoughts went blank and her vision narrowed, and in all of it there was only Yurien, in his hood, in the lamplight.
In the autumn of 1632, right here, she had seen him last. She had killed him in front of this fountain. After that: two years of fighting her way out from under the cursed sword's control, nine more years collecting Giosa.
Nearly twelve years by her count.
A Master's aging slowed dramatically - he looked exactly as she remembered.
He stopped a few paces away. Near enough to reach out to, but at a distance that left the space between them oddly ambiguous, too wide to be intimate, too narrow to feel incidental.
He didn't remove his hood. His silver hair was distinctive enough that taking it off in a crowded square would draw recognition from half the people there.
He looked down at her in silence.
Echi barely came to his chin. Not because she was small - he was simply very tall. From her angle, she could see his face clearly under the hood. Still too delicate for a knight's face. Something like a poet's.
His eyes were not still. They churned like water - and then, in a few blinks, went completely calm, as if nothing had been there at all.
She saw it and couldn't understand it. There was no room in her for understanding. Only one thing was clear.
'He's alive.'
That was enough. Everything she had wanted to say to him, everything she had wished she could ask - all of it felt like luxury she hadn't earned.
She couldn't even manage to worry about whether he might recognize her. She simply looked at his eyes, vivid and present as the eyes of any living person.
The silence broke first.
"…Echinacea Roaz."
His low voice said her name - not calling out to her, but confirming. As if reminding himself who she was.
"Cadet."
He added the title a moment later. Echi blinked several times, not knowing how to respond. Yurien seemed to be selecting his words carefully. After a pause, he asked:
"Do you know me?"
Not an interrogation. Not probing. A dry, factual question.
Echi snapped back to herself. The first thing she did was look away and lift her hand to cover her mouth.
Looking directly at him was dangerous if he had any memories. She looked entirely different now - dressed, made up, veiled - but facing him directly still frightened her. She averted her eyes.
"I'm sorry - I don't quite place you. Do you know me?"
Whether he remembered or not, she could not show any sign of recognition. There was no reason a Celestial Knight commander should know a mere countess.
A moment of silence. Then Yurien smiled - faintly, lips curving just slightly at the corners, eyes briefly soft.
'He smiled?'
She had never seen him smile. Even that slight thing seemed to illuminate the space around him. Heat rose to Echi's face before she could stop it.
Then he said:
"You must already know who I am. You've seen me before."
"What?"
Her voice cracked. Her startled heart seemed to drop.
Does he remember? Does he know what happened here, that she betrayed him, that she killed him right in front of this fountain? If so - what should she do? What could she possibly say?
She was approaching the edge of something when he spoke again, calmly.
"Last summer. The Emperor's birthday banquet."
"…Ah."
The aftermath of everything had pushed it nearly out of memory - but yes, it was true. Echinacea had first seen Yurien at the Emperor's birthday banquet. Only from a distance - she had never danced with him, never come close. But she had seen him.
Since the timeline had reversed, of course that evening had happened as it always had. She had been dressed much as she was now. It wasn't surprising he had noticed her.
What she couldn't understand was why he remembered her at all. She was a daughter of a count. They had never exchanged a word or even a glance.
"At the banquet - you saw me?"
"I didn't know who you were, but I saw you. Did you not see me?"
There was no one at that banquet who hadn't noticed Yurien. Third prince, and commander of the Celestial Knights besides, he was the most remarked-upon person in any room he entered.
Echi made a show of slow recognition. "Ah - you're the Commander! I'm so sorry, I didn't realize sooner."
"Commander…" He let the word settle, then gave a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head.
"Use my name. It's Yurien."
He hadn't given his family name. Echi, who had been calling him that in her head for years, was caught off guard and moved to decline.
"I'm only a cadet, Commander. How could I dare?"
"A cadet, is it."
Something passed through his expression - difficult to read. He looked at her, not at her dress but at her face, which had gone carefully still.
"Why did you apply to the academy?"
"Because I want to become a knight."
"Why do you want to become a knight?"
"…Because I like swords."
A standard question. A standard answer. The kind of exchange that would happen in an entrance interview, not between a commander and a cadet in a public square at dusk.
She was beginning to relax into the ordinary strangeness of the conversation when Yurien stepped toward her.