3rd Person POV
The bedroom had settled into its nighttime configuration — the particular warmth of a room with people in it who had chosen to be in it, the mana lamps at their lowest frequency, the kind of dark that was not empty but full of the small sounds of breathing and the occasional shift of weight.
Rias was asleep. Or close to it — the quality of her stillness had the depth of someone who had crossed the threshold recently and was not yet far enough under to be unreachable. Akeno beside her had the particular composure of sleep that she brought to everything, even unconsciousness, even here.
Robin was awake in the way she was sometimes awake at this hour — not restlessly, not from worry, but from the particular quality of a mind that ran continuously and occasionally needed the dark and quiet to do its best processing without interruption. Her eyes were open. She was looking at the ceiling.
Nami was somewhere between — her breathing had the rhythm of sleep but her hand, which had been resting on the edge of the blanket, occasionally twitched with the micro-movement of someone whose mind was still running numbers somewhere underneath consciousness.
Arto was still. He was always still when he slept — not the stillness of someone who had let go but the stillness of someone whose body had learned that stillness was safer than movement, that the still thing was harder to find, that rest was something taken in the minimum footprint possible. Even here. Even in this bed with these people. The habit was older than any comfort he had found since.
Albedo was closest. She had claimed the position according to the policy with the particular satisfaction of someone who had earned something and intended to use it completely. She was on her side, facing him, close enough that the warmth between them was continuous.
Her hand, in the dark, found the back of his neck. She was not looking for it. She was simply — present, the way she was present when she was not performing anything and not managing anything and was simply herself in the dark next to the person she had chosen with the full and permanent commitment of her nature.
Her fingers found the dent. She stilled. Not from surprise — she had felt it before, in other moments, had registered it as a texture in the skin and had filed it without examining it. But tonight, after the lab, after the cube, after Akeno's voice describing a ten year old boy and the shape of the thing at the back of his neck—
She felt it. The specific geometry of it. The dimensions of a cube, pressed into the skin and the tissue beneath it, the permanent record of something that had been there for so long that the body had grown around it, had incorporated it, had made it part of the landscape of a neck that no longer had what it recorded.
Her hand stayed there. Arto didn't move for a moment. Then, quietly, without opening his eyes: "You found it." "Yes," she said. Just as quietly. A pause. "Akeno told you," he said. Not an accusation. A conclusion, drawn from the quality of how she had gone still. "She told us what she saw," Albedo said. "In your dream. The night she wandered in."
He was quiet. She kept her hand where it was — not pressing, not examining, just present against the back of his neck where the dent was. The way you keep a hand somewhere when the keeping is the message rather than anything the hand might do. "What happened?" she said.
Not what is this or when did this happen or any of the questions that were also present and available. Just: what happened. The question that asked for the story rather than the fact. Arto was quiet for long enough that she thought he might not answer tonight. That it might be one of the things he carried in the way he carried most things — present, known, not discussed.
Then he spoke. Quietly. The voice he used at this hour, in this room, that was different from all his other voices — not the scientist's precision, not the politician's register, not the field operative's flat efficiency. The voice of someone speaking in the dark to someone who was close enough that volume was irrelevant.
"I was six," he said. Albedo did not move. "I ran," he said. "That was all I knew to do. I had been inside that castle for six years and I understood, at six, with the limited understanding available to a six year old who had never been taught anything except how to survive being hurt — I understood that outside the castle was not inside the castle. That was the entire plan." A pause. "It was not a good plan."
"But it worked," she said. "It worked," he said. "For a while. I ran across the ice desert — the Lowest Ring of Hell in my world is cold, not hot, the heat is in the upper rings where the politics live. The lowest ring is ice and dark and the kind of cold that is not dramatic about itself, it just removes warmth steadily until there is none."
He paused. "I had no shoes. I remember that specifically. I had taken them off because they made noise on the stone floors of the castle and I didn't want to be heard leaving." A pause. "I ran barefoot across the ice desert for approximately three hours before the cold became the larger problem."
Albedo was very still. "The wolves found me," he said. "Before the cold finished what the cold was doing. The pack — they had an alliance with Abyssgard Legion, a long one, they patrolled the border of the Abyss alongside the Legion's forward scouts. They knew the Legion. They knew the castle."
He paused. "They knew me, in the way that wolves know things — by scent, by the specific quality of what I was carrying when I ran into their territory. Fear and cold and something that was not quite either of those things." A pause. "They stopped the guards. Turned them back at the tree line. Took me in."
He was quiet for a moment. "That is the first time I understood what it felt like," he said, "to be somewhere I was wanted." The bedroom held its quiet. Somewhere in the dark, Robin had stopped looking at the ceiling. Nami's hand had stilled entirely. Akeno had the quality of someone who was not as deeply asleep as she had appeared.
"Four years," Arto said. "I was one of them. I learned to run with them, to track with them, to read the wind and the cold and the specific silence that meant the Abyss was close versus the silence that meant everything was safe. I had my own pack eventually — younger wolves, ones who had accepted me as their runner."
A pause that had something in it that was not quite any of the pauses he usually used. Something older. "That is where I learned what leadership actually was. Not command. Not the management of force. The specific responsibility of being the thing your pack moves toward when they don't know which way to go."
"Senjutsu," Albedo said. "The eldest taught me," he said. "She was very old. Older than the alliance. She had a way of teaching that was nothing like what I had experienced in the castle — she did not punish failure. She simply waited. She was patient in the way that very old things are patient, because she understood that the learning would happen when the body was ready for it and not before, and that impatience was a form of misunderstanding the process." A pause. "She was the first teacher I had who was teaching me rather than conditioning me."
"What was her name," Albedo said. A pause. "Vorra," he said. "In the wolf tongue, it means something like — the one who knows where the ice ends. A name for a pathfinder." Another pause. "She taught me that the enhanced senses were not additions to what I was. They were clarifications. The nose and the ears and the speed — they were already present in potential, waiting for someone to show me how to listen for them."
He paused. "She said I was the noisiest thing she had ever tried to teach Senjutsu to. That I had spent so long being trained to project force outward that I had forgotten how to receive the world." Albedo thought about a man who tuned mana lamps to warmer frequencies because he noticed people preferred it.
Who noticed. "He knew," Arto said. The tone changed — not much, but enough. The shift from the voice of someone telling a story to the voice of someone arriving at the part of the story that still has weight regardless of how many years have passed. "My Creator. He knew where I was the entire time." A pause. "He left me there. Four years. Let the wolves have me. Let Vorra teach me what she taught me."
Another pause, and this one was longer. "He was waiting. For the Senjutsu to mature. For the weapon to acquire the enhancement before he retrieved it." He was quiet. "He did not break the alliance out of anger or carelessness. He did it deliberately, at the calculated moment when what I had learned was complete enough to be useful. He burned the forest to force me out."
Albedo's hand was still at the back of his neck. Over the dent. "I showed myself," he said. "To stop the burning. To stop them being killed for something that was not their fault." A pause. "Vorra looked at me when I walked out of the trees. She didn't try to stop me. She just — looked at me. And then she sat down, which is what wolves do when they have accepted something they cannot change."
He paused. "I think she had known this would happen eventually. I think she taught me everything she taught me knowing that the teaching had a clock on it." Another pause. "She was very old. She knew how things ended."
"The implant," Albedo said. Quietly. Not pushing. Just — present at the part of the story that the dent belonged to. "They put it in the same day they brought me back," he said. "A small surgery. Not careful — efficient. The cube, the size you felt, drilled into the housing at the base of the skull."
He paused. "The functions were simple. Location tracking. Restraint via electric shock when I disobeyed or when they wanted me unconscious. A longer activation for the second function." A pause. "I wore it for two thousand years after that. Until I died in the Second Abyssal War. It was there when I died."
"But not here," Albedo said. "Not here," he said. "New body. New life. The mark is what remained — the body's memory of something that was present for so long it left a shape." He was quiet. "The body remembers what the life contained. Even when the life is over."
Albedo thought about the cube in the lab. The same shape. The shape his body still carried. "You said you found a good use for it," she said. A pause. "The design," he said. "For the memory cube I gave you. The housing architecture — the dimensions, the specific geometry of the interface points. I knew how to build it because I had carried one for two thousand years and understood exactly how it functioned from the inside."
He paused. "My Creator built something to control me. I used the design to build something that controls the most dangerous version of me." Another pause. "He built it to take my choices away. I built it to protect the choices of the people around me." He was quiet for a moment. "I find that satisfactory."
Albedo was quiet. She kept her hand at the back of his neck, over the dent, over the permanent record of a surgery performed on a ten year old boy brought back from four years of being something other than a weapon.
She thought about Vorra, sitting down when she could not stop what was coming. She thought about a boy walking out of the trees to stop the burning. She thought about what it cost to walk toward the thing you ran away from, at ten years old, barefoot on the ice, because the alternative was that the people you had learned to love would burn for your absence.
"The wolves," she said. "Did they survive?" A pause. "The forest burned," he said. "But wolves are not the forest. "They rebuilt and 2000 years later, when I became the leader of Abyssgard Legion, I came back to meet them, to establish the alliance again, and she wasn't there, Vorra, she wasn't there to welcome me back, there were other elders, who looked at me with wary gazes, I couldn't blame them, what my Creator did scarred them hard. But when they realized the scent, of the child from the story Vorra told them, about the child who sacrificed himself to save the clan...I was accepted as one of them again, the deal is sealed again, by wolves from the same clan, me and them"
[Timeskip: Brought to you by chibi Arto leading a pack of baby wolves]
Akeno's POV
I wake up in the snow.
That is always how it begins. Not a gradual surfacing, not the slow assembly of awareness that normal sleep produces — I simply exist, suddenly and completely, in the bed of snow before the castle. The cold arrives at the same moment I do, pressing through the ghost of a body that cannot actually feel it but remembers what cold is, the way all remembered things are present even when they cannot be touched.
I have been here before.
Many times now. Enough times that the approach to the castle has become familiar in the way that a path becomes familiar — not comfortable, not welcome, but known. I know where the snow is deeper near the eastern wall. I know the quality of light here, which is the particular grey of the Lowest Ring of Hell, a grey that is not the grey of overcast skies but the grey of a world that has never had a sky that was anything else. I know the cold that is not dramatic about itself. The cold that simply removes warmth, steadily, without comment.
I walk toward the castle because there is nowhere else to go in this memory. The doors do not require opening. I pass through them the way I pass through everything here — without resistance, without the physical negotiation of a body interacting with a surface. Ghost. Witness. The thing that is present without being able to affect anything it is present for.
The hall receives me. I have never gotten entirely used to the portraits.
They line both walls from floor to ceiling, frame after frame after frame, the faces of Abyssgard soldiers rendered in the particular style of a tradition that valued record over artistry. Not flattering. Not expressive. Simply accurate — this person existed, this is what they looked like, this is their name in the script along the bottom of the frame that I cannot read because it is Arto's language and he has not taught it to me.
They watch me pass. I know they are not watching. They are paint and canvas and the accumulated presence of a tradition that has been building this record for longer than I have been alive. But the hall has a quality that makes the watching feel real — the density of faces, the particular way the light falls, the silence that is not the absence of sound but the presence of something that does not make sound.
Some of the portraits have a red layer over them. I understand what that means now. He told me, in the quiet of the early morning, in the way he occasionally tells me things when the telling is easier in the dark. The red means gone. The red means a soldier who will not come back to sit for another portrait, who is only present here now in the record of having been present.
I look as I walk.
Most of the portraits are unchanged from the last time I was here. The numbers are stable, he said — this is a period of relative stability in the Legion's history, before the Second Abyssal War, before the accounting that will eventually turn the red to the majority. For now most of the faces are unchanged and I can walk through the hall without watching the color change on someone I have come to recognize.
For now...I turn toward his room...I see the light under the door before I reach it...Not the ordinary light of a lamp or a mana source — the specific blue-white flicker of something electrical, something that comes in pulses rather than a steady glow, that stutters against the floor in the gap between door and stone with the rhythm of something that is not meant to be light, that is only incidentally illuminating anything because the primary purpose of it is not illumination.
I know what it is. My pace does not change because changing my pace does nothing — I cannot run, cannot burst through the door, cannot put my body between what is happening in that room and the person it is happening to. I have learned this. The learning has not made it easier.
I go through the door. He is on the floor. That is the first thing I see — the floor, and him on it, and the way the body of a person looks when it has been doing something that has cost it considerably more than it had available to spend. He is on his back, limbs at the particular angles of someone who has stopped choosing where their limbs go, his chest moving with the shallow uneven rhythm of someone whose breathing has been interrupted and has not yet fully recovered its pattern.
His neck. I look at the back of his neck and I see what he has done and the seeing of it takes a moment to fully arrive. The cube — the implant, the housing drilled into the base of his skull when he was ten years old after they brought him back from the wolves — he has been pulling at it. The skin around it is burned, the specific burn of electrical shock applied repeatedly to the same tissue, the red-black of something that has been hurt past the point where the body can respond quickly enough to the damage being done to it.
He tried to pull it out. He tried to pull it out and the device responded the way it was designed to respond to exactly this — activation, shock, the full restraint current that was calibrated to be sufficient rather than fatal — and he kept trying anyway.
I can see it in the burns. Not one activation. Not the shock that stops most attempts. He tried and was shocked and tried again and was shocked again and tried again. How many times I cannot tell from the burns alone but the floor around him has the marks of a body that has convulsed and recovered and convulsed again across a span of time that was not brief.
The blue fire in his eyes is still burning. That is what makes me stop breathing — or what would make me stop breathing if I had breath to stop. He is lying motionless, his body still shaking with the aftershocks of what has been done to it, but his eyes are open and the blue fire in them is not extinguished, not dimmed, not reduced by what his body has just been through. If anything it is burning more intensely for the resistance, the way fires burn higher when something tries to smother them.
He sits up. I watch him sit up. It takes everything his body has available. I can see the cost of it in the way he does it — not the controlled motion of someone moving, but the determined motion of someone who has decided that they are going to be upright regardless of what upright costs right now. He gets there. He is sitting.
His eyes find the man standing by the wall.
I had not fully registered the man until now. He is older, a butler's bearing, the particular posture of someone who has spent a long time in service and has the discipline of it built into how he holds himself even in a room where what he has just witnessed should have broken that discipline entirely. He is standing very still. He is looking at Arto on the floor with an expression that I cannot fully read because it contains too many things simultaneously.
Sivan. I know the name from the previous times I have been in this memory. I know his face. I know the role he occupies in the architecture of this castle and in the architecture of what was done here and to the person now sitting on the floor with burn marks at the back of his neck.
Arto's legs move under him. He is standing. He should not be standing. His body has been shocked repeatedly within the last however-long and his legs are shaking with a fine tremor that is visible from where I am and he is standing anyway because the blue fire in his eyes has decided that standing is what happens next and the body will cooperate or not but the decision has been made.
He stumbles forward. His fist connects with Sivan's face.
Not technique. Not the trained precision of a fighter who has been in a thousand simulated battles and knows exactly how to make a punch do what he wants it to do. Raw. The way a person hits something when the hitting is not about damage or victory but about the need to make the inside thing external, to put the weight of what is being felt into the physical world where it can exist outside the body that has been containing it.
The impact echoes. Sivan takes it. Does not fall. Absorbs it with the particular stillness of someone who has decided, before the punch arrived, that taking it is what the moment requires.
Arto's voice, when it comes, is — I have heard many versions of Arto's voice. The scientist's precision. The politician's register. The voice he uses in the dark, in the bedroom, when the room is quiet and the people in it are close. I have heard the voice he uses when he is afraid, though he does not frame it as fear. I have heard the voice he uses when he is talking about things that are old and heavy and have not finished being carried.
I have not heard this voice. This is the voice underneath all of the others. The voice that exists before the learning of composure, before the development of the various registers that allow a person to move through the world without exposing every room of the interior to everyone they encounter. This is the voice of the room he has never shown anyone.
"You told me you love me like your own son, Sivan. Then why. Why did you stop me. You monster. Why did you stop me from ending this fucking painful life?" I go very still. Ending this painful life.
The words arrive and I receive them and the receiving of them does something to me that I do not have adequate language for. Not surprise — I have been in this dream enough times to have understood, gradually and reluctantly, what some of these memories contain. But understanding it abstractly and hearing it said in this voice, from this body, with the burn marks still fresh at the back of his neck—"Don't you see what Aru did to me? Why didn't you stop him. 'Father'?"
The word Father is not a word when he says it. It is a weapon. It is the thing you say when you are using the shape of a word against the person who made you believe the shape meant something."You let him torture me day after day after day, and you did fucking nothing, nothing at all for the last five hundred years. You fake bastard. You let him turn me into a weapon, you let him build that monster inside me and you did absolutely fucking nothing, Sivan. And you call it love. Call it care. Call me your fucking son."
I watch Sivan stand and take this. I watch his face. I have stood in this castle many times as a ghost and have never fully understood Sivan's face in these moments — the complexity of it, the thing it is doing that is not quite any single expression but is several of them occurring simultaneously, compressed by the discipline of a man who has spent a lifetime maintaining composure in difficult circumstances and is now in a circumstance that is dissolving that discipline around its edges regardless of his will.
"Give me a break, you demon. You're just mourning your dead son by placing me in that spot to ease your guilt for being too weak to save them." I close my eyes. I open them. "Why is it me, Sivan? Why did you have to keep me alive while you see what this life has been doing to me? Why can't you just stop and let me go, you madman?"
The question. That specific question. I have been in this dream many times. I have watched many things happen in this castle that I could not stop and could not look away from. There are things I have seen in these halls that I will carry for the rest of my life, that I did not choose to witness and cannot unchose.
But that question — why can't you just stop and let me go — is the one that finds the place in me that all the other things have not found. The one that reaches past the observer's distance and arrives somewhere personal.
He asked this. This person who tunes the mana lamps warmer because he noticed people preferred it. Who learned everyone's tea. Who built a school in Atreides Domain before anyone asked him to. Who sat with Iroh's hunters in the medical wing and whose first thought when Nami was upset was to take the heel out of her hand rather than deflect from the conversation.
This person asked why someone wouldn't just let him go. "You're more evil than him, Sivan. More evil than Aru, my Creator. At least he never hid his own malice. While you—"
He stops. The tears are still falling. His body is still shaking. The burns at the back of his neck are still present in the particular way that burns are present — insistently, without regard for what else is happening, requiring acknowledgment simply by existing.
Sivan stands. He comes closer. "Arto—"
"Don't touch me, Sivan. Don't you dare touch me, you coward." Arto's voice breaks on the word coward and reforms. The break is not weakness — it is the sound of something that has been compressed past the point where compression is possible and is releasing through the only exit available.
"You cower your head before the one who tortured the one you call your son, following every order he gave you like a dog. You're pathetic, Sivan. You don't deserve the word 'father'." He moves to strike again. His legs go. He falls.
Not the fall of a body that has been struck — the fall of a body that has given everything it had available to give and has reached the end of what available means. He goes down between one step and the next, the collapse of a system that has been running on will alone for longer than it should have been asked to run on will alone, and will has finally reached its accounting.
He is motionless on the floor. Sivan stands over him. I watch Sivan's face in this moment — in this specific moment, with Arto's body between them on the stone floor and the burns at the back of his neck and the echo of every word still present in the room's air.
Sivan's face is — I have spent many sessions in this castle trying to read Sivan's face and I have not succeeded entirely, because his face is doing something that requires a context I don't fully have to interpret correctly. What I can read is the tears. Those I can read. They are present and continuous and they are not performed — there is no one in this room who needs to be performed for, Arto is unconscious, I am a ghost, the tears are simply what is happening on Sivan's face because it is what is happening inside Sivan.
He looks down at the body of the boy who called him a coward and a demon and a fake and said he was more evil than the Creator. He does not correct any of it. He does not defend himself against any of it.
He stands in the room where the boy tried to pull an implant out of his own neck through repeated electric shocks and failed and fell and said things that were not entirely unfair — and he stands with the tears on his face and he does not move.
The memory fades around the edges the way memories do in this place — not cut, not ended, but dissolving. The castle going first, then the stone floor, then Sivan's face above the unconscious body, the tears the last thing visible before they too are absorbed by the dark.
The dark holds for a moment after the memory fades. Then I call his name. I always call his name at this point — not loudly, not with urgency, the way you call someone back from a place that is far rather than a place that is dangerous. His name in the dark, as a point of reference. Here. This direction. Come back. "Arto."
A pause. Then he appears. Not gradually — he is simply there, the way things are simply there in the space between dreaming and waking, present without the process of arrival. He looks the way he always looks when he comes out of the deep memories rather than the Arena battles — not the adrenaline of combat, not the sharpened readiness of someone who has been fighting. Something quieter and heavier than that.
His eyes are wet. He does not wipe them. He stands in the dark with the tears present on his face and he does not manage them, which is — I have learned, across many sessions in this space — the version of him that exists before the composure is reassembled. The version that is simply what he is without the structure around it.
I look at him. "Who is he?" I say. "The man. Sivan?"
Arto closes his eyes. He exhales — long, slow, the exhale of someone setting down something heavy enough that the setting down requires a full breath to accomplish. Then he comes toward me, across the dark space that is the between-place of his dream, and stops close enough that the distance is the distance of people who are about to say something that requires proximity.
"He is the only person," Arto says, "who showed me what could be called love in the first two thousand years of my life." The dark holds that. "His name is Sivan Abyssgard," he says. "The caretaker of the castle. The butler of the Legion's seat, which means he was bound to the leader of Abyssgard — to my Creator, to Aru." He pauses. "By duty, by loyalty, by the structure of everything he was. He belonged to Aru's household first and to everything else after."
"But he treated you—"
"Like his son," Arto says. "Yes." A pause. "Like his son would have been treated, if his son had lived."
I am quiet. "He lost a child," Arto says. "I don't know the details — he never told me and I never asked, because some things in that castle were understood to be present without being discussed. But the loss was real and it was not old. It did not age the way losses are supposed to age, becoming something that can be carried without changing the shape of the person carrying it." He pauses. "It stayed fresh. It stayed as present as the day it happened. And Sivan—" He stops. "Sivan found me."
"The unlucky child," I say. "The unlucky child," he confirms. "I was there. I was young. I was — available, in the way that children in pain are available to someone looking for somewhere to put the love that has no longer has its original recipient." He pauses. "He treated me the way he would have treated his son. Exactly that way, I think — not approximately, not symbolically, but actually. He treated my wounds after each battle. He slipped extra food into my portions so I would have the strength for the next day. He—"
A pause. "He spoke to me. When no one else did. When I couldn't speak back for years, he spoke to me anyway, and I understood eventually that the speaking was not for my benefit alone. That he needed to speak to the child in front of him because the child he had lost could no longer receive it."
I watch his face."He was gentle," Arto says. "Genuinely. The gentleness was not performed. He was a gentle man who had found a child drowning in agony and had pulled him toward the surface every day in the small ways available to him — the extra food, the tended wounds, the words spoken into silence." He pauses. "And he was the cruelest thing in that castle."
"Because he kept you alive," I say. "Because he kept me alive," Arto says, "no matter what alive looked like." He is quiet for a moment. "That was the limit of his requirement. That I continued to exist. Not that I was well, not that I was not in pain, not that what was being done to me was bearable. Simply that I was breathing and present and had not passed the threshold he could not cross again."
Another pause. "He could not lose another child. He had decided this. The decision was absolute and it did not negotiate with the conditions of my life, did not revise itself in response to what those conditions were. Alive was enough. Whatever form alive took."
The dark is very still around us. "Aru wanted a weapon," Arto says. "He was clear about this. There was no performance in my Creator's cruelty — he wanted something built to a specific specification and the building process was what it was and he did not dress it in anything. He did not tell me he loved me. He did not tell me the pain was for my good. He told me nothing, because the weapon did not require explanation."
He pauses. "I hate him. Every part of me that is capable of hatred has applied itself to Aru since I was old enough to understand what hatred was." A pause. "But I understand him. I learned his ambition eventually. I learned the situation of the Legion, what he knew that no one else knew, what he was trying to build and why and what the cost of not building it would have been." He is quiet. "I still hate him. Understanding someone does not require forgiving them." Another pause. "But I understand him."
"And Sivan," I say. Arto is quiet for longer than he has been quiet for any of the pauses so far. The dark holds around us. "Sivan dressed it in love," he says finally. "That is the part I cannot—" He stops. "He dressed his obsession in the facade of care. He told me I was his son. He treated me with the tenderness of a father who means it. He made me believe, as a child who had no other reference for what care looked like, that what he was doing was what caring for someone looked like."
A pause. "And it was, in some way. That is the cruelty of it. The care was real. The tenderness was real. The extra food and the tended wounds and the words into silence — those were real, they came from a real place, they were not entirely performance." He pauses. "But underneath all of it was the requirement. The absolute requirement that I not die. And that requirement did not budge regardless of what I asked of it."
I think about the floor of the castle room. About the burns at the back of his neck. About the question he asked. Why can't you just stop and let me go. "He stopped you," I say. "When you tried—"
"Every time," Arto says. "Every time, across five hundred years of—" He stops. "Yes. Every time. He would find me or be called or simply be present, the way he was always present in the parts of the castle where I was, and he would stop it and tend the damage and speak to me in the gentle voice of a man who loved his child and the love would be real and the stopping would also be real and both things would be true simultaneously and I—"
He stops again. "I did not have the language for what that was, as a child. I had no framework for a person who genuinely loved you and also would not under any circumstances allow you to leave the thing that was destroying you, because your destruction was preferable to your absence."
I am quiet. "I hated him more than Aru," Arto says. "I said this to him. More than once. I meant it each time." A pause. "At least Aru never made me believe he was something other than what he was. Sivan made me love him. He made me trust him in the way a child trusts the one adult in their life who treats them as a person rather than an object. And then that trust was the mechanism by which he kept me in place, because I could not entirely stop caring about the man who had cared for me, even while I understood what the caring was costing me."
He pauses. "He was more evil than Aru in that specific way. Aru took from me directly. Sivan took by giving and then holding the giving over the taking." The dark around us has the particular quality of a space where something true has been said and is still present in the air.
"But," I say. Because there is a but. I can hear it in how he has been speaking. The shape of everything he has said has a but at the end of it, a place where the accounting does not resolve cleanly into one column.
"But," he echoed, almost gently. "Without him, I would have been mute, unlettered, and ignorant until I was two thousand years old, or longer"
He exhaled slowly, the memory pulling him deeper even as he spoke it aloud. "He was the one who taught me how to write. How to read. How to speak. How to calculate. One word a day at first. Until I was twenty, I could barely piece together one full sentence. By thirty, I could speak it without stumbling. He slipped me books — or rather, single pages of books — one page a day, smuggling them into my cell when no one was looking. He dragged me out of oblivion, piece by piece, when everyone else was content to let me remain a weapon that only knew how to kill."
Arto's gaze drifted somewhere far away, lost in the snow and stone of that long-ago castle. "He taught me in secret, always terrified that Aru would find out. But he never stopped. Even when the shocks from the cube became worse, even when Aru punished him for 'wasting resources' on a tool that didn't need a mind, Sivan kept coming back. One letter. One number. One sentence. He gave me language when the rest of the world only gave me pain."
He looked back at me, the blue flame in his eyes flickering with that familiar complicated storm. "That's the knot I can never untie, Akeno. I hate him for the cage he helped build around me. I hate him for dressing his obsession as love. But I also… I can never stop being grateful for the light he gave me in the darkness. Without Sivan, I would have remained exactly what Aru wanted — a mute, unthinking blade. He gave me the tools to become something more. And then he used those same tools to keep me trapped."
He let his hand drop. "I don't know if I'll ever forgive Sivan. But I also know I wouldn't be standing here, able to love any of you, if he hadn't taught a weapon how to speak." The darkness around us seemed to breathe with the weight of his words.
[Timeskip: Brought to you by cat Kuroka gnawing on wolf Arto's ear]
3rd Person POV
Robin woke first the next morning, the way she often did — quietly, with perfect awareness of her surroundings even before her eyes opened. The bed was warm with the familiar weight of bodies curled around her and Arto. Rias's soft breathing, Akeno's occasional sleepy murmur, Nami's arm flung possessively across someone's waist, Albedo still tucked close to Arto's chest as she had earned the right to be.
But when Robin's gaze settled on Arto's face, something in her chest tightened. He was awake.
His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling with that distant, shadowed look she had learned to recognize. The blue flame in them was dimmed, not with sleep, but with the kind of heavy thinking that only came when the past clawed its way back up. His jaw was tight. One scarred hand rested on Albedo's back, but his fingers weren't moving in the gentle circles he usually traced when he was content. They were still. Too still.
Robin shifted carefully, not wanting to wake the others. She reached over and stroked his hair — slow, soothing strokes from forehead to crown, the way she knew he liked when the weight got too heavy. "Morning," she whispered, voice soft enough not to disturb the pile of sleeping women. "You're thinking something bad again. I can see it on your face."
Arto's eyes flicked to her. For a moment he didn't speak, then he let out a slow breath and turned his head slightly toward her hand. "I'm fine," he murmured — the automatic answer he always gave first.
Robin's fingers didn't stop their gentle rhythm. "I don't expect you to tell me everything right now," she said quietly. "I just want you to know I'm here. We all are. Whatever it is… you don't have to carry it alone."
Arto was silent for a long moment. Then his free hand came up, covering hers against his hair, holding it there. Robin didn't push. She simply kept stroking, letting the quiet stretch between them. She had already pieced together far more than he realized.
From the fragments he had let slip — the late-night talks with Miyabi in prison about both of them being living weapons forged for other people's wars… the chronic shortage of mana crystals in the Lowest Ring caused by over-exploitation to feed the simulation chambers that kept the Legion alive… the way the barrier over the Pit had weakened because of it… the nickname the legionnaires carried: Slave Knights.
It all pointed to one cold, ruthless ambition. Arto's Creator — the man he only ever called Aru — hadn't just wanted a weapon. He had wanted a crusade. A war to seize resources, to keep his people alive, to hold back the Abyss… and in doing so, to redefine the hated name "Abyssgard" into something feared and respected. Arto had been the core of that machine. The living blade at the center of it all.
But there was one detail that still nagged at her. He had once called himself a "merchant of war." And he had taken over the Legion at its peak strength after his Creator's death. A legion at its strongest after a crusade of that scale? That didn't add up. Not unless the wars hadn't been straightforward battles of conquest between Abyssgard and other factions.
There was another possibility — one that reminded her of a country that had risen to global dominance after two devastating world wars, its economy and power exploding while others bled out. America after the World Wars.
Could it be that Arto's Creator hadn't just waged open war… but had played a deeper game? Stirring chaos between other factions, using Arto as a strategic weapon to keep the board unstable, to weaken rivals, to create opportunities for Abyssgard to profit and grow in the shadows?
It was still too vague. Too many missing pieces. Robin wouldn't ask him about it yet. Not today. Not while the shadows were still so close to the surface. But she would find out. She would learn the full truth — the scale of the conflicts, the merchant-of-war role, the real reason the Legion had been at its peak when Arto took command.
And when she did… she would accept it. All of it. Because she loved the man who had survived it, not the weapon they had tried to make him. She kept stroking his hair, slow and steady, until some of the tension eased from his shoulders.
"You don't have to tell me right now," she whispered again. "Just know that whatever it is… we're not going anywhere. Scars, past, darkness — all of it. We chose you. We still choose you." Arto's eyes closed for a moment. When they opened again, the blue flame was a little brighter. "Thank you," he murmured — so quietly only she could hear.
Robin leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his temple. "Always."
[Timeskip: Brought to you by chibi Robin going through data about chibi Arto]
After breakfast, when the others had scattered to their own tasks or training, Robin slipped away quietly. She moved through the Simulation Room's hidden layers until she reached her personal domain — Sector 4: Robin's Lab.
The door sealed behind her with a soft, final click. Wards flared to life, cutting the space off from the rest of the world more thoroughly than any physical lock could. Robin stood still for a moment in the center of the room.
Five tall liquid tanks lined the far wall, their contents glowing with a soft, eerie blue. Inside each tank floated a body — identical to her own, down to the last strand of dark hair and the faint freckles across the nose. They were unconscious, suspended in nutrient fluid, breathing slowly through the tubes connected to their necks and chests.
Her spare bodies. Clones created using the deepest, most forbidden techniques of the Nico Clan's lineage — the same bloodline that had once made them the most renowned medical and grafting experts in the old world.
Robin stared at them with solemn eyes, a quiet sadness flickering across her usually calm features. "I won't make the same mistake again," she whispered to the silent room. "I won't let any of you be used the way they used us."
She flicked her fingers once. The tanks shimmered, folded into compact storage orbs, and vanished into a hidden dimensional pocket. The wall behind them revealed itself — a full-scale intelligence hub. Multiple holographic screens bloomed to life, data streams flowing across them like rivers.
Maps, timelines, cross-referenced logs, fragments of Arto's sparse confessions, pieces of overheard conversations, and carefully reconstructed patterns from the few hints he had let slip. At the center of it all was one question, glowing in large, steady letters:
What was the living weapon Arto Abyssgard truly used for?
Robin sat down at the main console, extra hands manifesting to handle multiple streams at once. Her main pair rested under her chin as she began to work — calm, methodical, relentless. She needed to know. Not to judge him...Not to fear him...But to accept him fully — every scar, every shadow, every drop of blood on his hands.
Because if she could do that… maybe, just maybe, he would be able to accept her in return. For what she had done. For what her family — the Nico Clan — had been. For the devastation that had followed their disappearance after the collapse of the old order.
[Simulation Room - Sector 80: Inter-dimensional Portal]
Deep at the end of the main hall of the Simulation Room, behind several layers of reinforced security and personal wards, lay a sector that almost no one else had ever entered. Arto sat at a wide, minimalist table made of dark void-glass. The room was sparse — just the two of them, soft blue lighting, and a massive holographic interface hovering above the table. Nami sat across from him, legs crossed, already sensing that this meeting was different from their usual financial briefings.
Arto slid a thick, encrypted document across the table toward her. "I need someone with your instincts," he said without preamble. "Someone who can see patterns in chaos, who feels numbers the way most people feel emotions. That's you, Nami."
Nami picked up the folder, flipping it open. Her eyes widened almost immediately as she scanned the first few pages — complex equations, dimensional theory sketches, mana-flow matrices that looked more like star charts than financial models.
Arto leaned forward, elbows on the table, voice low and serious. "This is bigger than anything we've done before. A project that could secure our prosperity for centuries — maybe forever. A stable dimensional portal. Endless access to resources across the sea of worlds."
He let the words settle before continuing.
"My thousands of years wandering the Void taught me one absolute truth: there are countless worlds out there. Infinite realities. Each with its own laws, its own materials, its own untapped potential. We don't have to be limited by what this single Underworld or this single planet can give us. We can reach further. Much further."
Nami's fingers tightened on the edges of the document. She was already seeing the scale — the risk, the reward, the sheer audacity of it.
Arto tapped the folder. "I'm calling it the INA — Inter-dimensional Navigating Algorithm. I need you to help me build the core calculation engine that can map stable coordinates across the multiverse. Safe transit points. Resource identification. Risk assessment. Everything."
He paused, watching her reaction carefully. Nami was quiet for a long moment, eyes flicking rapidly across the equations. Then she looked up at him — not with pure greed or excitement, but with that sharp, perceptive look she reserved for when she saw straight through him.
When she finally looked up, her expression was not the greedy sparkle of new profit, but something deeper. Understanding. "…This isn't just about building an empire or gathering infinite resources, is it, boss?" Arto met her gaze steadily, then gave a small, tired nod. "No. Not really."
Nami leaned back in her chair, arms loosely crossed. "You want to go home. Back to your original world. That's the real goal. The resources, the prosperity — those are just the bonuses. You're looking for a way back to the place that made you."
Arto exhaled slowly, rubbing a scarred hand over his face. "…Yes." Nami's voice softened, but her eyes stayed sharp and perceptive. "That world only ever brought you pain. Why would you want to return to it?"
Arto stared at the glowing multiversal map for a long moment before answering, his voice low and heavy with old weight. "I need to know if our effort mattered. If the Legion's sacrifice — ten million lives on those ten walls — actually held back the Abyss. If the seal we died to reinforce is still standing… or if that world was swallowed anyway."
He paused, the blue flame in his eyes dimming slightly. "And there are three people I want to check on. I only remember three words connected to them: 'Friend.' 'Love.' 'Mother.'" Nami's breath caught.
Arto continued, almost gently. "I had a mother. I was stolen from her the moment I was born — taken by my Creator to be shaped into his weapon. I thought she was dead. But she's been alive for three thousand years. She never stopped looking for me."
His voice cracked just slightly on the last sentence. "But I died in the Second Abyssal War before I could ever meet her. Before I could tell her I was sorry for the life I was forced to live. Before I could ask if she could still love the son who was turned into a monster."
He looked at Nami directly — eyes steady, but carrying a depth of longing he rarely let show. "Now I'm here. I have this second chance at life. And I want to know… if she's still waiting. If she still hopes her son might come home one day. Even if I'm not the child she lost… I want to meet the woman who gave birth to me. Just once."
The lab fell into a heavy, understanding silence. Nami stared at him for a long moment. A flicker of something sad passed through her eyes — something personal, something she chose not to disclose right now — before she gave a slow, solemn nod. "…I get it," she said quietly. "At least you know there's a mother out there who loves you. That's more than some people can say."
She reached across the table and squeezed his scarred hand once — firm, loyal. "Alright, boss. I'll help you build the INA. Not for the resources. Not for the empire."
Her grin returned, sharp and determined, though her eyes stayed soft. "But we're going to do this right. I'll need a stable way to access the Sea of Worlds first — something safe, something we can use to start mapping coordinates without ripping holes in reality. You got any ideas ready?"
Arto's shoulders relaxed just a fraction. A small, grateful smile touched his lips. "I do. I've been thinking about this for a long time. I have several approaches to breach the Void in a controlled way. We can start with a stabilized anchor point and expand from there."
Nami cracked her knuckles, already rolling up her sleeves. "Then let's get to work. If we're going to find your mother… we'd better make sure the road home doesn't collapse on us." Arto chuckled softly — warm, relieved. "Thank you, Nami."
She winked. "Don't thank me yet. You're about to see just how scary I can get with numbers when the stakes are this personal." The holographic interface brightened between them, new windows opening as Nami began sketching the first framework for the Inter-dimensional Navigating Algorithm.
[Underworld - Gremory Stray Hunting Agency]
The main hall of the Agency was busier than usual. Crimson alerts pulsed along the walls, and hunters moved with sharp, purposeful strides. The recent surge of stray devils pouring into Gremory territory had put the entire organization on high alert. After the chaos Miyabi had caused years ago — leveling nine towns and nearly a thousand deaths — the weakened Sections 1 through 5 were still struggling to recover. Independent squads like Rias's peerage had become vital reinforcements.
Rias walked at the front, Akeno beside her, Kiba and Koneko a step behind. They had come for a mission — any mission — to help stem the tide. At the central receptionist counter stood a woman whose presence made the air feel sharper.
Hoshimi Miyabi.
Raven hair tied in a high ponytail with two long strands framing her face. A sleek Agency uniform hugged her athletic frame, and a long, sheathed sword rested at her hip, ready to be drawn in an instant. Her crimson eyes were calm, composed, and ice-cold. Her aura was dominating — a quiet storm that made even seasoned hunters give her a wide berth. The once SSS-rank criminal who had maddened by her cursed blade "Tailless," devastated Gremory lands, and crippled multiple Agency sections was now the captain of the most active remaining unit: Section 6.
Miyabi looked up as the group approached. Her gaze swept over them once — assessing, measuring — before she gave a small, professional nod. "Rias Gremory and her peerage," she said, voice smooth and precise. "You're here for the urgent mission?"
Rias stepped forward. "That's correct. We're ready to assist." Miyabi stood, hand resting lightly on the hilt of her sword. "Good. Adam Alket personally requested that I join your squad for this operation. He said the threat level is too high for a standard independent team."
She turned sharply, motioning for them to follow as she led them toward the deployment wing. "We're going after two SS+ ranked stray devils that crossed into Gremory territory less than an hour ago. They're moving fast and coordinated. If we don't intercept them soon, they'll reach populated areas. We move immediately."
Rias's eyes narrowed, but she kept pace. "Understood, Captain Miyabi." As they walked, Miyabi continued the briefing without slowing.
"Both targets are high-class devils who went stray recently. One is a former Baron known for brutal close-combat and fire manipulation. The other is a cunning spell-weaver specializing in illusions and soul-based curses. They appear to be working together, which is rare for strays of this rank. Adam warned me they're more dangerous than their files suggest."
She glanced back at the group, golden eyes sharp. "My Section 6 teammates are already committed to other hotspots, so it'll be just me supporting you. I'll give full tactical details once we're through the portal."
Koneko's ears twitched slightly under her glamour. Kiba's hand rested near his sword hilt. Akeno's smile was calm, but lightning faintly crackled at her fingertips. Rias nodded firmly. "We've faced worse. Let's end this quickly."
Miyabi's lips curved into the faintest, coldest smile. "Exactly what I like to hear." The deployment portal flared open ahead of them — a swirling gate of silver and crimson light.
As the group stepped through, Rias couldn't help but feel the weight of the moment. Arto (as Adam Alket) had personally arranged for Miyabi to join them. Even from afar, he was still watching over them.
The portal closed behind them. The hunt for the two SS+ strays had begun.
[Atreides Domain - Castle Caladan]
Grayfia Lucifuge stepped out of the private portal and onto the polished obsidian steps of Castle Caladan. The volcanic winds of the domain were gentle today, carrying the faint hum of active forges and the low thrum of Stabilizer cores working in perfect harmony.
Unlike the growing chaos of stray devils flooding Gremory territory, Atreides Domain was an island of calm and order. Banners of multiple Pillar Houses — including several King-ranked ones — flew alongside the black-and-crimson hawk crest of Atreides. Any fool who dared attack this land now would face not just local security, but the combined incinerating wrath of houses that had come to depend on the customized magic-tech flowing from these ateliers.
At the top of the stairs stood Baroness Atreides. Albedo was the picture of noble authority — black-and-crimson coat perfectly tailored, obsidian mask firmly in place, silver hair arranged in an elegant high style befitting her station. There was no trace of the affectionate succubus who had curled against Arto's chest the night before. Only the cool, composed Baroness of the House of the Mask.
"Lady Grayfia Lucifuge," Albedo greeted with a precise, formal bow. "Welcome to Castle Caladan and the domain of House Atreides. I am Baroness Albedo Atreides. It is an honor to receive you on behalf of my husband, Baron Arasto Atreides."
Grayfia returned the bow with equal elegance, though a faint spark of amusement flickered in her silver eyes at the formal distance. "The honor is mine, Baroness. Lord and Lady Lucifuge asked me to observe how the new ateliers are functioning under your leadership."
Albedo inclined her masked head. "Then allow me to show you personally." She turned gracefully and led Grayfia through the grand halls of Caladan before stepping into a series of short-range teleportation circles that took them across the domain.
The tour was thorough and impressive. They first visited the central Analysis Hub, where teams of Business Analysts worked in quiet, focused coordination. Holographic displays floated above wide tables, showing real-time client requests, material optimization, and projected delivery timelines.
Grayfia watched as a senior BA calmly explained to a representative from House Agares why their requested "mana-reactive armor plating" needed additional reinforcement runes to prevent resonance feedback — all while simultaneously adjusting production queues for three other noble orders.
Next, they moved to several active ateliers scattered across the volcanic landscape. In one, masked craftsmen worked with precise, almost artistic movements, layering complex sigils into custom mana cores using Stabilizer-enhanced tools. In another, quality-control specialists ran finished products through rigorous stress simulations.
Everywhere, the workflow moved with smooth, professional efficiency — orders flowing seamlessly from analysis to crafting to final inspection.
Albedo spoke with quiet pride beneath the mask. "Every atelier operates under strict protocols. No product leaves these grounds without passing multiple layers of safety and compatibility checks. We are currently fulfilling customized orders for twenty-one different houses, with another twenty-eight in the analysis and design phase. The protection granted by the Pillar Houses allows us to focus entirely on production and innovation rather than defense."
Grayfia observed everything with her usual sharp, professional gaze, clearly impressed. "You have built something remarkable in such a short time, Baroness. The coordination is excellent. Lord Zeoticus will be pleased with this report."
Albedo stopped at a scenic overlook above one of the largest ateliers, where masked workers moved in perfect synchronization below. After a moment, she turned to Grayfia. "As a friend of our Baron Arasto Atreides, please feel free to place an order with one of our Business Analysts. It would be on the house, of course. Consider it a token of appreciation from Atreides."
Grayfia's lips curved into the faintest, knowing smile. "I may take you up on that offer, Baroness. There are a few… personal projects that could benefit from Atreides craftsmanship." Albedo gave a small, formal nod, but the golden eyes behind the mask held a spark of warmth that only Grayfia could catch. "Then let us proceed to the Analysis Hub. I will personally introduce you to one of our best BAs."
As the two women continued their tour, the domain of Atreides continued its quiet, efficient work — the heart of a new power slowly beating beneath the protection of many banners.