The young woman, whom Knight had just learned was named Lina, turned to look at the boy. She gave him a smile that was noticeably warmer than any expression she had shown until now. It transformed her face entirely, making her look younger and less weary at the same time a smile seemingly reserved for this child alone.
"This is the Knight I told you about last night, Aeta," Lina said, her voice softening so much she sounded like a different person. "He's not scary. You can come out and say hello."
Aeta didn't come out, but he didn't retreat further either. He simply tilted his head, peeking at Knight from behind Lina. His young eyes scanned Knight with a meticulous, serious intensity far beyond his years from the steel helmet resting nearby to the dented armor, and finally to the giant sword leaning against the grass. Those small eyes scanned everything as if making a crucial decision, before stopping at the golden patterns glowing faintly on the back of Knight's hand.
The seriousness in his eyes shattered into instant wonder.
"His hand is gold," Aeta whispered, his voice filled with a child's unfiltered surprise, having already forgotten his fear.
Knight looked down at his hand holding the soup bowl. Golden runes glowed softly along his fingers and the back of his hand. He hadn't noticed them for a while; they had brightened on their own as if responding to the morning sun.
"Yes, it is," he replied, trying to make his voice gentler than usual. "Is it strange?"
Aeta thought for a moment with the grave expression a child wears when faced with a vital question. He bit his lower lip slightly, looked again, and then bravely stepped out from behind Lina. He sat on the grass directly in front of Knight at a safe distance, yet close enough to see the patterns clearly.
"Not strange," he decided firmly, nodding once in confirmation. "It's pretty."
Lina let out a soft sigh, but a small smile remained at the corners of her mouth.
"Aeta, why did you come out? I told you to wait in the camp."
"I woke up and couldn't see you," Aeta answered matter-of-factly, as if that were the most perfect and indisputable reason in the world. "So I came to find you."
He then turned back to stare at Knight, his curiosity far from exhausted.
"What's your name, sir?"
Knight hadn't been asked his name in a long time, enough to feel a slight jolt of surprise. People he encountered in this trial usually called him "The Heretic," "The Child of Prophecy," or simply tried to kill him without a word. Rarely did anyone ask for his name directly.
"Knight."
"Knight..." Aeta tested the name, drawing out the sound as if tasting it, then nodded as if stamping it with his approval. "Where do you come from, Brother Knight?"
"From very far away."
"How far?"
"Further than Aeta could ever walk."
The boy wrinkled his nose slightly at the vague answer but didn't press further. He changed the subject with the lightning speed unique to children, as if the old topic no longer mattered the moment a new thought entered his head.
"Brother Knight... Can you really take us out of here?"
He asked with such directness that Knight was nearly caught off guard. There was no beating around the bush, no tremor of hidden fear like the adults who were afraid but didn't dare speak plainly. There was only the sincere curiosity of a child asking the most important question of his life.
Knight hadn't even promised them that he would lead them through those silver mists.
"Aeta…" Lina began, moving to interject. Her voice carried the weight of someone who feared the answer would hurt the child.
"I can."
Knight answered before she could finish.
Both turned to look at him at once. Lina's face was unreadable, a mix of hope and anxiety. Aeta's eyes lit up instantly, as if someone had struck a light inside them.
"Really?" The boy leaned forward.
"Really," Knight said, looking straight into the child's large, round eyes. No hesitation. No evasion. "I will take everyone out. Including you, Aeta."
Aeta was silent for a moment, staring at Knight intently as if weighing the credibility of the man sitting before him. Then, he gave a solemn nod, as if completing a private contract in his heart. After that, he casually picked up a blade of grass to fiddle with, acting as though the most important matter in his life had just been settled.
Knight watched the boy for a moment before turning back to Lina.
"Aeta's mother...?"
Lina shook her head slightly. She glanced at the boy who was now focused on the grass in his hands. The space between her gaze and the child's head radiated a kind of pain that needed no words.
"Aeta's mother is one of those six," she said, low enough so the boy wouldn't hear. "He's been living with me since then. At first, he cried every night." She paused. "But now he doesn't cry anymore. I don't know which is worse."
Knight didn't answer.
He just looked at Aeta again, the little boy sitting peacefully, showing no sign that he had heard a thing. His eyes were fixed on the grass between his fingers, his tongue poking slightly out of the corner of his mouth in the way children do when concentrating hard.
A child who had lost his mother in a way more painful than normal death. Because his mother still walked in that camp, still breathed, still ate but she no longer knew her own son's face. This child might run past his own mother every day, not knowing whether he should stop or keep walking.
'...They are truly alive.'
The thought raced through Knight's head again, but this time it was much fainter, like a voice that knew it had already lost the argument.
He had always told himself that the people in this world weren't real, that they were just fragments of memory woven together, a mere backdrop for his trial. But now he sat there, holding a bowl of soup someone had woken up to boil with their own hands, while a mother wandered the camp not knowing her son, and a small boy who had stopped crying because he had cried for too long sat playing with grass in front of him, unaware that his life had already shattered.
It didn't feel like a backdrop.
It didn't feel like anything but the truth.
"Brother Knight."
Aeta looked up again without warning, placing the grass on his knee and looking at Knight with those serious eyes once more.
"I want you to know... I'm not afraid of that mist."
Knight looked at the boy. "Is that so?"
"I'm really not," Aeta insisted, pursing his lips as if to say I'm telling the truth and don't you dare argue. "I just... I just don't want Lina to have to come looking for me alone again if I walk into it."
Lina turned her head away sharply, her shoulders tensing for a moment before she took a long, silent breath.
Knight said nothing.
He simply placed his hand on the boy's head. It wasn't the gesture of someone trying to offer empty comfort, nor a patronizing pat to say everything would be okay. It was a hand laid with the weight of acknowledgment saying I hear you, I see you, and I will not overlook this.
Aeta didn't smile, and he didn't cry. He just nodded softly and went back to playing with the grass, as if everything had been taken care of.
'The old man in the black robe said... this world was woven from fragments of the universe's memories.'
If that were true, then Lina was someone's memory. Her mother was someone's memory. Aeta and the fear he refused to admit was also someone's memory. The smile Lina reserved only for this boy, the dark circles under her eyes that wouldn't fade, the sound of tiny footsteps running toward a loved one upon waking.
All of it was pain that had once truly existed in some world. It wasn't just data created to test him.
And if it was once real, then it was real now.
Knight set the empty soup bowl on the grass and stood up.
"Thank you."
He spoke the words, and this time his voice was distinctly different from when he first received the bowl. It wasn't just politeness; it meant something more. It was for Lina, who woke early to cook; for Aeta, who ran to his loved one first thing in the morning; and for the truth they had both inadvertently shown him.
Lina looked up at him, her eyes asking the question she didn't voice.
"The Knight will...?"
"Go and wake everyone up," Knight said, picking up his helmet and turning toward the camp. His voice was steady, but it carried a new weight. "Tell them to get ready. We moved out this morning."
"Oh!" Aeta jumped up instantly as if he had springs in his legs. His eyes brightened, his childish seriousness returning alongside a sudden burst of energy. "Can Aeta help? I can run very fast!"
Knight looked down at the boy for a moment. He looked at the child who had stopped crying but hadn't stopped fighting the little person who said he wasn't afraid but was, yet feared the right things instead.
"Then go tell everyone in the camp to wake up," he said. "Tell them it's time to leave."
Aeta gave a determined nod, as if receiving a royal command, and sprinted back toward the camp. His small footsteps thudded loudly, making no effort to be quiet.
Lina watched the boy until he disappeared into the camp. She stood still for a moment before turning back to Knight. In her eyes was something harder to read than before. It wasn't just hope or gratitude; it was the look of someone who had carried a burden alone for so long and finally felt someone standing beside them.
"Thank you," she whispered. She didn't specify what for, but Knight understood.
He looked back at the camp with a resolute gaze. The thoughts that had been looping in his head all night began to fade away.
'This isn't my reality.'
It was still a fact, but now it sounded like a hollow excuse.
Because in his hand, he could still feel the warmth of the soup Lina had made. In his ears, he could still hear the tiny footsteps of the boy running to wake everyone with such fervor. And in his chest, there was something heavier than last night yet far more certain.
All of that was real enough.