Ch.197Ignition (2)

I had a memory from some time ago.

A particularly vivid, ordinary scene.

“Miss Neria.”

Perhaps it was about a year after Astro was founded.

Neria was processing paperwork that had piled up tediously.

Suddenly, she received a question.

“Do you… still have nightmares sometimes?”

The speaker was a boy with narrowed eyes.

He was examining Neria with a worried expression.

Perhaps it was because of the shadows under the girl’s eyes.

Judas had even set aside the overtime work he was doing.

“……”

Neria couldn’t answer right away.

The outbursts and nightmares that had followed her throughout her life.

One was due to her innate power, and the other was due to trauma etched into her afterward.

In the case of the outbursts, they weren’t a problem since Judas had placed restrictions on her starlight.

But even the boy had no way to deal with the fear deeply buried in her heart.

That’s why he constantly worried about Neria’s condition.

Wondering if her wounds were scarring over.

“Master, that, well…”

The girl was flustered.

She hadn’t thought her fatigue was so obvious.

She didn’t want to worry her master, but she couldn’t lie either.

Neria simply hesitated to speak, delaying her answer.

However, from just that reaction, Judas understood what was in her heart.

Neria was stiff, but always easy to read.

“I thought as much.”

The boy smiled faintly.

Not his characteristic playful smile, but one that felt somewhat bitter.

He fiddles with the quill pen in his fingers a few times, as if contemplating.

And then, before long, he parts his lips.

“Wounds can’t heal easily.”

“……”

“Neria, how should I put it… you always seem lonely. You tend to be reluctant to accept others. It’s probably a defense mechanism from your past.”

A deeply burned scar.

From the unhealed cracks, fluid drips down.

That pain seems to writhe as if it will never subside.

It constantly whispers in your ear that you are alone.

That’s why Neria was always lonely.

-Your fate is truly unfortunate.

-Your light will become a destructive fire, burning those you love, and eventually the world itself.

-Child, please don’t hope for happiness from the outside world.

-No matter how much you struggle, you cannot change your innate fate.

And, she was always afraid.

What if even the things beside her now disappear when she closes her eyes and opens them again?

What if she ruins everything, just as the monarch had whispered in prophecy?

Then should she leave this world?

Her silver pupils quietly sank into darkness.

“Still, I believe you’ll come to know it someday.”

However, whenever that happened, the boy would take Neria’s hand.

Like the memory of that winter day when the blizzard was fierce.

A warmth that hadn’t changed at all.

And an affectionate smile.

“The fact that Neria is no longer alone.”

A voice that declared with certainty.

Warmth spread through the hand in his gloved one.

“Perhaps… Neria has more homes around her than she had despaired of.”

Home.

Neria didn’t understand the boy’s words.

To her, it felt like the life of a loner who could burn out at any moment.

The girl held the incomprehensible sentence in her mouth like candy.

As she ruminated on the moment in the silence that had settled.

Suddenly, the door burst open.

Bang!

“Hahaha! So this is where you were, Commander!”

“My… Lord Kail. Knocking is a basic courtesy of gentlemen.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll keep that in mind next time!”

“Anyway, welcome. I happen to have some paperwork left, would you mind lending a hand?”

“Gak…”

“I see you’re horrified.”

“Gururururu…”

“I was just throwing it out there, you don’t have to freeze up like that.”

“Phew! That’s a relief. You know I’m terrible with pens.”

“It might be good to learn sometime.”

“Krrrk…”

“I’m joking.”

The everyday hustle and bustle continues.

Next to the narrow-eyed boy stands a red-haired man.

And through the open office door, members who were looking for Judas along with Kail can be seen.

Though they all wore the same white robes, each had different eyes and expressions.

Among them was someone who had brought tea for the two busy with work.

“Um… Vice-Commander.”

Hesitantly.

The approaching member timidly places down a teacup.

The clinking sound was particularly drowsy.

“You’re always working so hard.”

Perhaps it was due to her characteristically sharp impression?

The member seemed quite tense.

Meanwhile, Neria quietly looks down at the teacup.

The surface contained lightly brewed black tea, her usual favorite.

It was a thoughtful gesture for Neria, who had been working for hours.

Behind the teacup, awkwardly smiling members were lingering.

-The fact that Neria is no longer alone.

-Perhaps… Neria has more homes around her than she had despaired of.

Why was it?

That the previous conversation brushed past her ears.

“Hmm!”

“Hehe.”

Kail and Judas had stopped their conversation.

The two were watching Neria and the members.

The smiles on their faces somehow seemed proud.

Neria awkwardly avoids their gaze.

‘Strange.’

A stirring inside.

She felt uncomfortable.

Neria didn’t understand this sense of dissonance.

She simply rolled the words she had heard from the boy around in her mouth.

The question carried a fresh scent.

‘Home…’

A girl who should not have lived originally.

A wanderer who was not granted life from the world.

That’s why Neria couldn’t accept the meaning.

It would have no connection to her.

Because she had given up on that thought.

“…Thank you, I’ll enjoy it.”

She simply picked up the teacup quietly.

Warmth settling on her fingertips.

The coziness that flickered on her lips was pleasantly bitter.

***

Eyelids gently opened.

Beyond the fine eyebrows, silver eyes were hiding.

Perhaps due to burst blood vessels, the color was somewhat red.

Neria exhales a breath that had chased her to the tip of her chin.

“Haa, haa…”

The girl’s appearance was in tatters.

Her arms and legs were marked with cuts, and there were deep wounds on the right side of her face and shoulder.

The nightmare that had seeped into her wounds was corroding the surrounding areas black.

The burning pain seemed to tear at what remained of her reason.

Neria struggled to gather her blurry consciousness.

“You’re finished.”

Before her eyes stood a crimson woman.

Unlike Neria, not even dust clung to the Dawn Keeper’s sleeves.

As she was under an invincibility status, it was impossible to inflict damage on her.

Unless burned with pure starlight, the only weakness.

The nightmare would be eternal.

‘Is this the end?’

Neria bit her lip hard.

Even so, she struggled to move her frozen legs.

The delayed movement couldn’t avoid the attack.

Darkness flashed.

Slash!

The nightmare cuts across her arm once more.

The darkness seeping in shakes her consciousness.

Neria couldn’t resist the hallucinations and auditory illusions that came over her.

It was because she was already pushed to her physical limits.

-Disloyalty.

The Dawn Keeper’s nightmare draws out the darkest aspects of a person.

Memories, trauma, fears, sorrows… things deeply seated in the heart.

It combines each fragment and replays them.

The next moment, Neria was sprawled on a barren field.

-Interesting… this one will be useful in various ways.

-We’ll take this child on our side.

The monarch with a greedy smile.

When she opened her eyes again, Neria was trapped behind cold bars.

Heavy chains were restraining the girl’s arms and legs.

The old man looking down at her had consistently cold eyes.

-You are destined to burn everything you love.

-There is no path to happiness for you in this world.

-Please don’t harbor any vain expectations.

-Otherwise, life will be unbearably cruel.

And next.

What appeared this time wasn’t an old memory.

It was an unfulfilled future, precisely the possibility the girl had been concerned about.

A monster with silver hair… the form she feared most about herself.

Hot tears flowed down her cheeks.

-I never wanted this power in the first place.

-Why did the star choose me?

-Why did it have to be me?

In the nightmare, the girl was burning the world.

After reducing a tenth of the continent to ashes, she emits light with every step.

White dust. Even in a world where nothing remained, the star was alone.

Despair mixed with her tears of blood.

It was a tragic scene.

“Haa, haa…!”

Neria breathes roughly.

Her mind was in chaos.

The terrible hallucination, the sensation of nightmares mixing over it.

However, the girl didn’t even have the luxury to subdue her inner turmoil.

Because the voice that followed drowned her.

-Miss Neria.

And next.

How many times had the nightmare changed?

This time, Neria was standing on the incinerated Astro headquarters.

Members’ corpses were scattered, and soot remained everywhere.

In the center of such devastation, the girl faces her master.

More precisely, she had stabbed a dagger into his heart.

His half-open narrow eyes blink.

-Why… cough.

-I believed in you, yet why did you… everyone…

-If I had known this would happen, I wouldn’t have taken you in.

A resonance that seemed to pierce through her lungs.

Neria, while crying, repeatedly stabbed the boy’s heart.

The snake whispers in her ear with his dying breath.

-I hate you.

A terrible nightmare.

It precisely penetrates the reverse scale she had been hiding.

Trauma that would have broken the mind of an ordinary person.

But Neria’s case was far from ordinary.

She exhales a hollow breath between her lips.

“…Ah.”

Suddenly, her consciousness floats.

After being consumed by the nightmare, she had regained her senses.

Before her flickering vision stood the Dawn Keeper.

The woman swings her sword with a leisurely smile.

Swish!

“Ugh…!”

Neria avoids the attack that rushed to her face.

And as if unraveling a combo, she plants her fist into the Dawn Keeper’s abdomen.

With an intense impact sound, the woman’s body is pushed back.

It was a cleanly executed counter.

Whoosh.

“?……”

The woman seemed perplexed.

Of course, thanks to her invincibility status, she didn’t take any significant damage.

However, she was surprised that an opponent she was certain had been completely dominated by the nightmare had shaken it off.

‘How?’

The Dawn Keeper stares at the girl with such eyes.

Neria tends to her throbbing arm.

Her voice is filled with determination.

“Resentment, and hatred…”

At the same time, there was trust.

Trust that had taken deep root, with time as its fertilizer.

“…Master is not someone who would say such things to me.”

It was true.

He was infinitely merciful to those he cared for.

Even if Neria were to stab his heart, he would simply hug her and tell her not to cry.

A person who would calmly wipe the moisture from her eyes.

And then smile painfully.

-I told you I’d be fine.

-So… won’t you return?

-To our home.

Like that terrible winter day.

To the girl, the boy was a being of such deep meaning.

Thanks to that, Neria was able to find her faded consciousness.

Those nightmarish words had, ironically, pulled her back to reality.

Paradoxically, even this was based on the trust the two had built.

A truly sincere heart, too genuine to be erased by a single night’s nightmare.

The girl realizes.

“It’s not… over yet.”

The silver eyes that had been extinguished all along.

For a moment, faint sparks flew from their surface.

Her once-shaky breathing had now calmed down.

Neria’s gaze was directed at Judas behind her.

A faint light flickers in her tightly clenched fist.

‘Perhaps that’s what it meant.’

A vague consciousness.

A girl looking up at a realm that seems just within reach yet not.

Neria was breaking the shell that had confined her.

In the darkness, a star twinkles.