Aaron was sitting inside the waiting room when he received the results of the Marshal's Tournament, the descriptions about their battles echoing in his mind.
As he wasn't obligated to fight any of them, he felt relieved in a way, the words of their strikes and spellcraft exceeding his expectations.
Yet not a single bit of information lessened the looming dread that lurked in the distance, a single sentence from Penelope changing how he would spend his days.
He was dying, and while he could fight to his fullest against the most dangerous creatures that swam the high seas now, it would be futile in the end.
The doctor had inspected his condition, the results of various tests still processing, but even the way the man had looked at Aaron's state and the way he had spoken told him everything he needed to know.
Even if there was a cure, enough life had already been taken from the boy for any real solution to aid him in the long run, and it would only continue to worsen.
From the moment he consumed the Naelith in September to when he first asked about its effects, he had lost twenty years.
Only a couple of hours after he had spoken with Penelope about it, he had been struck with another attack.
The most recent of them that happened in Cam's bedroom had left him pale, shaky, and unable to move, his entire body seemingly drained of energy.
Through further conversation with the woman inside his head, he had come to find out that his loss of life expectancy was nearly six months every single day, the amount only growing as time ticked onward.
This changes nothing.
He leaned forward in the chair, placing his hands together in a prayer towards the Old Man deep in the Abyss.
I'll get Penelope to you somehow… I'll find a way after saving Eleanor—
Aaron paused, hearing the clicking of the doctor's door opening.
"Your test results have come back."
The older man's voice was grim, a sadness built from years of telling individuals the worst news they could ever hope to receive flowing into his tone.
"The mass eating away at your heart was confirmed to be that of a higher grade sea terror… The Monster Scaling Metric machine reported a magnitude of 9.0 before short-circuiting, meaning we can't tell you how high a level it is…"
The man's gray eyes turned towards the floor as he faced the boy, the words he wished to never tell anybody coming out slowly.
"Unless you can seek aid from a Sea King, then it is certain that you will die… However, we believe that as a challenger you could request—"
He was cut off by Aaron, who gathered his belongings and stood up tall.
"That won't be necessary. Thank you, Doctor Lanerein, for your help today, but unless you find a way to transfer new life essence into my heart, then I'll have to come to terms with the facts."
Aaron's reply was flat and cold, not a single emotion thickly layered behind his intricate words that he wished to convey to the man.
This was not a time when he could laugh or make a joke, nor was it the point where he could simply curl up and cry.
He had a duty to complete, and he wouldn't give up until it was finished, a silent list appearing in his mind.
One, bring Eleanor back from wherever her soul roamed while simultaneously repairing her mana circuits.
Two, return Penelope to the Old Man at the bottom of the Abyss to complete his Soul Pact and allow his lingering regrets to vanish.
Finally, his third and last wish that he strove to complete before the inevitable was something that had stuck with him since he had learned of his existence.
Azaroth Pane, the man responsible for everything hellish the boy had encountered in Sea Fallen.
He was the one who commanded the armies that charged into the three greatest cities in the world six years ago, starting a war that had claimed the lives of a Sea King.
He was the one who destroyed the Great Sea Wall and crushed thousands beneath its rocky descent.
And he was the one who sent his soldiers to absorb the Core of Dreams, which resulted in the deaths of Eleanor, along with tens of thousands of other civilians.
I'll kill him. If it's the last thing I do with my knuckles bare and bleeding, I will rip out his heart and throw it into the sea as a gift… That's all I can do to make what I couldn't stop right…
The blame for that day rested solely on Azaroth Pane; however, the fifteen-year-old boy saw it differently.
His own failure with even a weapon forged to slay gods, he could not save more than one single child.
Dammit…
He clenched his fist hard as he walked down the castle hallway, marks on his hands that dripped with blood appearing from the force.
…
The next day went by like a blur, the chaos surrounding his battle with Raphael and the damage to the arena becoming the talk of the town.
The radios all around the city played the audio of the barrier shattering into pieces, followed by theories speculating how he had done it.
Aaron, of course, could only guess at the reasoning based on what he had heard from Penelope; the idea that a God-Slaying blade being able to slice through a god-gifted barrier made enough sense.
Not wishing to waste his time asking further questions, he continued onward through the day with various interruptions clouding his rest.
Akari visited him in the morning, talking to him for nearly two hours about the fight between Astelion and Lunestra while cleverly leaving out the fact that she had watched half of Aaron's face burst into golden flames.
Soon after that, Ezra came to talk about what they were going to claim from the Vault of Nautilus after the final match; however, the blond boy could barely turn his attention away from what he was working on at his desk.
The black-haired boy was soon followed by Cam, who knew nothing of what Aaron was suffering from, the doctor under strict orders to never reveal his condition to anyone.
When he and the brown-haired woman spoke, there was a shallow gap between them now, the unknown of where they truly stood making their interactions awkward, clunky, and even tiring.
Were they teacher and student?
Friends?
Or were they strangers who met by the same luck that had brought Aaron towards the Ghostship and the fate he now walked?
Only when the clock struck midnight, and Mr. Crab appeared behind him on the bed, did he turn his focus from what he had been working on at the table.
Turning his eyes over towards the crustacean, he opened his mouth slowly, speaking without hesitation.
"The reason you've been vanishing randomly isn't that you have some secret life to live. Is it Mr. Crab?"
Moving his hands to lift the thick piece of paper off the table, he carried it through his vast bedchamber and down beside where the turquoise animal stared.
His black, beady eyes looked it up and down before gazing over at the boy, confused, a weary apprehension about what he had been making, forcing the crab into a curious state.
"It's blueprints for a sword I want to have made. I don't know who I'll give it to yet, but when I'm gone I want there to be something I can actually leave behind…"
The blond-haired boy turned his gaze towards the floor, the sound of paper being crunched drawing his attention back upward.
Mr. Crab's peg leg pointed at a specific piece of the weapon, a symbol engraved on the base of the blade.
"Heh… So you noticed…"
The boy took a step forward and patted the crab on the head, nearly receiving a snap to his finger.
"Don't worry. I'm not going to grind you into an emblem and imbue you into the blade. You know, you've always been there when I needed you, and I owe you a lot for it; therefore, like a blacksmith would engrave his own name onto a weapon, I'll engrave one of you."
He stared into Mr. Crab's eyes, noticing a hint of sadness behind the expressionless animal that had never spoken.
It was a shared emotion between the two, the idea of the few months they had spent together vanishing before the dawn of a new year, leaving a hole in both their hearts.
"When I'm gone…"
Aaron lay flat on his back, his eyes staring up at the ceiling with a strange glimmer that was unlike anything he had before.
"Take care of Eleanor, okay? You see, she was quite fond of you during the weeks she was there on the Ghostship, and while she and I got along, there was only so much we could talk in that time… I don't know what will happen to the Ghostship when I'm gone, but please…"
His voice broke, the first betrayal of emotion in the boy's stoic demeanor.
"…Keep her alive."
There was a long silence as the two stared into each other's eyes, the hum of crickets from outside the bedroom window echoing in the chamber.
However, before Aaron stood up and walked away, he heard one sound that resounded clearly despite not being too loud.
Click.