Visions flooded him. This time, he recognized or as if he felt a familiar sensation, these were his memories:
[Sequence 1]
(What are monsters, beasts, or animals? By what authority did we dare to make distinctions among them—and conveniently exclude ourselves? God is neither merciful, kind, nor all-knowing. The horrors that unfold in His domain are hidden even from Him as Man ascends to play God in His stead.
The villages beyond the shelter of the Churches were nothing but hunting grounds for the vile and the monstrous.
"Five of the men are gone..."
"How are we to gather clothes or wood for the winter...?"
"Winter is the lesser worry. Those things are closing in... their boundaries shrinking, tightening."
Elphonse Flint Ritch: El Ritch, sat in silence, the faint hum of voices from above filtering into the basement where he waited. The light spilled down from the wooden slats of the trapdoor, its pale glow fractured as shadows of hurried footsteps moved across the bustling street above. The cold stone floor beneath him gleamed faintly.
Today was the day of his hanging.
He and his father had been infamous as a duo of carriage robbers, stealing food from nobles' stores to survive. But their luck ran thin; they were caught in the act. His father had been executed the same day they were seized. For El, only fourteen, the courts had debated his fate for months. Some argued for mercy, claiming he was a child, a victim of his father's influence. Others, bitter or eager to watch a spectacle, lied under oath to condemn him. )
He was a thief.
The realization didn't come gently; it struck like a shard of ice piercing his mind. Or perhaps it wasn't a realization at all but a memory clawing its way back to him.
Visions surged through the darkness, overwhelming him. They weren't just fragments; they were pieces of him, jagged and raw. Foreign, yet familiar.
[Sequence 2]
("-You're a good son, right?"
The voice was soft, coaxing. His father's voice. He remembered it clearly now.
"-What are you doing, Father?"
His own voice, younger, trembling with desperation.
"-You can do this for me, right? Be a good child and go to them. Tell them what I wanted you to say."
His father cupped his cheek, his touch warm but unsteady. That smile—so reassuring, yet so final—etched itself into El Ritch's memory like a brand.
"-But why are you doing this to me?" he had shouted, his voice cracking with the weight of betrayal. "I've been a good son!")
Why had he idolized the man? Why had he clung to the image of his father as a hero, despite everything?
The questions tore at him, unanswered. Were they thieves out of desperation, starving in the cold grip of poverty? Or was it something else entirely? Was it greed? Pride? Some unfathomable need that had driven his father—and, by extension, him—into the shadows?
And where had his mother been?
Where... Why... How?
The questions spiraled endlessly, suffocating him. There was no nostalgia in the memories, no yearning for the life he had left behind. Only hollow, gnawing uncertainty.
The answers eluded him, slipping through his grasp like smoke. All he could do was watch, helpless, as the visions unraveled.
_____________
The memories stilled, the torrent of visions fading into silence. Darkness consumed him again, deep and endless. In that void, he thought.
His father was a thief—a crude man who had passed his trade to his son, not as a legacy, but as a means of survival.
El Ritch turned the thought over in his mind. He should have felt anger, or grief, or perhaps even shame towards his father. But there was nothing. The man who had shaped his beginnings was a stranger now, unfamiliar and distant. Why waste energy on rage or sorrow for a shadow that no longer mattered? Why waste emotions that were still foreign to him on someone who is similarly foreign now.
The darkness was not a prison, though. He could breathe here, feel his limbs again, and his feet could move. And so, he walked.
There was no path, no destination, only the endless horizon of black. Yet he pressed forward.
I need to help Jol and Bada.
The thought steadied him, gave direction to his steps.
I need to get stronger, to walk with Doctor Adeline and Uncle Aldric.
His purpose pushed him onward.
Faint echoes reached him, voices stirring the silence.
"-This is not something that should've-"
"-They did it, not him-"
"-He was forced to kill a harmless man-"
"-What harmless-"
Bada and Jol's voices. He could hear them but couldn't distinguish between the voices. His chest tightened as his senses slowly returned.
The weight on his limbs persisted, but something new stirred within him—a flicker of strength, faint but insistent. He could feel his eyes moving beneath his lids, his body propped against something firm.
Slowly, painfully, he raised his left hand to his face. It felt like lead, but he willed it to move, brushing against his eyes as he tried to clear his vision. He shook his head weakly, blinking as the world began to come into focus.
The voices grew louder, sharper, as the haze receded.
The world returned to him in pieces: the warmth of the fire licking the cold air, the faint smell of damp earth and blood, and the voices, sharp as steel.
Their words rang in his ears, but their shapes were blurred figures in the flickering firelight. El Ritch blinked again, trying to clear the fog from his mind and his vision. His limbs were stiff, but he forced his left hand to move once more, rubbing at his eyes.
He could feel the heaviness beginning to lift, the weight of exhaustion loosening its grip. Slowly, the shapes of Bada and Jol sharpened, their tense stances and hard expressions etched against the light of the flames.
El Ritch swallowed, his throat dry, but the words formed anyway, shaky and faint.
"...What happened?"
The voices stopped. Both heads snapped toward him, their eyes wide with a mixture of relief and something else—something unreadable. Jol moved first, kneeling beside him.
"You're awake," he said, his voice softer now, though the strain lingered.
"You scared the hell out of us, kid," Bada added, crossing her arms. Her tone was sharp, but there was relief in her eyes, though she quickly masked it.
El Ritch tried to sit up, but his body protested. Jol reached out to steady him, his grip firm but careful.
"What... happened?" El Ritch repeated, his voice stronger this time, though his chest still felt tight.
Jol exchanged a look with Bada before answering. "You killed a man," he said simply, his voice devoid of judgment. "...To save us." The words came a little too late.
The words hung in the air like a blade poised to fall. El Ritch stared at them, trying to piece together the fragments of his memory. The man. The chipped blade in his hand. The fear. The fear of them dying pushing him.
"I... didn't mean to," he whispered, his gaze dropping to his hands.
Jol got up, his tone neither cruel or kind. "It doesn't matter if you meant to. What matters is you did."
El Ritch's hands trembled, his fingers brushing against the dried blood that stained them. He wasn't sure if it was his own or someone else's. Maybe both.
Bada sighed, her stance softening as she crouched beside him. "This is the Rose of Venus, El Ritch. You don't get to choose clean victories here. You survive, or you don't. That's all there is."
El Ritch's head turned slowly, his eyes falling on the other body sprawled in the snow. A woman lay lifeless beside the man he had killed. Her limbs were askew, her face pale and slack in death. The sight of her sent a chill crawling up his spine, one that had nothing to do with the cold.
"Who..." he began, his voice thin and weak, but the words faltered on his tongue.
Did he even want to know?
Did it matter who she was?
The answer already lingered, unspoken. It didn't take much to piece it together. Whoever she had been, she was dead because of him.
"She tried to kill you." Bada's voice cut through the silence, sharp but steady, as if she could sense his unasked question. "Jol had to put her down."
El Ritch's gaze shifted to Jol. The older boy stood with his back to him, shoulders stiff and unmoving, a shadow against the dim light. There was no grin, no teasing glint in his eye anymore.
This is my fault...
The thought echoed in his mind, a whisper that grew louder with every passing second. He had acted to save them, but this—this was the cost of his decision. The weight of it pressed down on him, cold and suffocating.
"They were arguing with you," El Ritch murmured, his voice trembling as he tried to find the words, to grasp at some thread of justification. "I... I heard her scream. She said... she'd kill you both... so I..."
He trailed off, the words falling away like snowflakes melting on bare skin. It sounded hollow, even to him. His words were slow and spaced, he tried to make an excuse, for them, but mostly for himself, for his conscience.
"You still killed a harmless man."
Jol's voice was flat, devoid of the warmth or humor that usually colored it. He didn't turn to look at El Ritch, didn't give him the comfort of seeing his face. His words hung in the air, heavy and final.
"This is the consequence of your actions, El Ritch."
The use of his full name stung more than the words themselves, more than any wound he'd suffered in the forest. It was as if Jol was drawing a line, marking a distance between them.
El Ritch opened his mouth to speak, to plead, to argue—anything to make the crushing weight in his chest lessen—but no sound came. His throat tightened, his breath hitching as the reality of it all sank in.
The woman. The man.
All my fault.
He lowered his head, his hands trembling as he gripped them tightly together. For the first time since he'd stepped into the forest, the weight of survival felt unbearable.