Long ago, within the orphanage where Eleanor Lynn was raised, there was a particular ghost story propagated by one of the older orphans whose parents hailed from the Southern Continent.
It was one in which a group of heroes headed out from the Fortified City of Calgera in search of food to cure a famine that plagued the people.
The tale spoke in great detail of the heroes and their travels, depicting them as saviors who would one day bring a change to their homeland.
That, though, was merely a falsehood.
One after one, as their journey seemed to be reaching its conclusion, the heroes perished in uncharacteristically unfortunate ways.
Frozen alive in the snow.
Skewered by an ice wyrm.
Broken at the bottom of a cliff after a leap to their death.
These deaths followed each of those honorable heroes for as long as the tale flourished; only one of the saviors was left in the end.
When he returned to the city with a certain crop that was resistant to nearly all temperatures, he was celebrated, honored, and granted immense wealth and power.
Yet, there was no mention of his fallen comrades who had been pushed to the limits of despair for him to make it there.
The guilt only grew endlessly, until, on the dawn of the seventh day of his return, he impaled himself with his sword in the center of the crop fields, littering the first harvest with his blood.
Such was the madness that one could be driven to within the Sea of Polar Storms under the unrelenting gaze of the Vortex of Despair.
If you did not bend to its will, you would die.
That story, the one that Eleanor had been stricken with nightmares about when she was five, was all that resounded through her head as she sat in the tundra, completely alone.
Masaru had not forbidden heavy clothing, leaving her with comfort even in the sub-zero temperatures, which was at least some consolation to the suffering she had begun to endure.
Trying as best as she could to prevent any skin from meeting the frost, she wore a mask over her face and goggles over her eyes, making her appearance all but hidden from anything that observed her in the distance.
This storm is truly vile…
Even just sitting in it for less than ten minutes had begun to warp her sense of self-worth, driving her into negativity before she could attempt to suppress it.
Within her hands, she kept the Aether contained in a miniature ball that she would use as a last-resort weapon against any of those so-called observers who decided that observing was overrated.
There must be something out there, watching and waiting for me to keel over and die.
Well aware of the rules of the wild, she kept her guard raised and her eyes locked on the distance, patiently awaiting the end of her term in the frost.
With time passing slower than she wished, all that she could muster were the thoughts that she dwelt on for days, hoping they'd simply vanish without a trace.
At the top of that list were the words that she had heard in that premonition of the future aboard the Ghostship.
"P-please… Please wake up, Aaron… Don't leave me here… Not after—"
The final line had been cut short as if her breath had been halted mid-sentence, the most likely scenario for the girl being the most unfavorable.
I might've truly perished…
There was nothing to base her hypothesis on other than the strange break in speech that sounded harsher than a normal interruption; however, regardless of the plausibility, she had to understand the other words she had said.
To her storm-clouded mind, it confirmed her deepest fear and darkest nightmare.
She believed she would be incapable of saving Aaron from his fate, no matter how hard she tried, and that in the end, she would be fated to lose.
The mere thought of her efforts being all for nothing spiraled her emotions to the farthest reaches of despair, though she couldn't understand the reason for it.
While he was her closest friend in the modern day, and someone she wouldn't hesitate to risk her life to protect, he was someone whose own problems outweighed anything she could do to remedy them.
Any attempt she had made to persuade the boy to give up the egg and live out the remainder of his lifespan was ignored without hesitation.
When she dared ask why he had thrown out such a simple solution, he had only looked at her weakly and smiled.
In his eyes, there was a weight that she could not quite comprehend or distinguish as anything other than caring.
If he were to say at that very moment that he would destroy himself for the world, she wouldn't doubt it for a second.
But now, as that hypothetical seemed to be becoming only more and more plausible by the day, she found it hard to speak out against it.
He was his own person, burdened by the wills of beings who could erase worlds with a slip of their finger.
That God Slayer who controlled him like a puppet master.
The deity inside his head that kept him in the dark about his past.
And even the expectations of society itself, with dozens of newspapers circulating his adventures during the Hunters' Exam worldwide in a perpetual cycle.
The pressure that he carried on his shoulders was far beyond what any fifteen-year-old child should have ever even glanced at.
Once more, Eleanor despaired for him.
Outside her mind in frozen badlands, the storm overhead intensified as if stirred by her emotions.
Her body temperature dropped another couple of degrees while her glazed-over eyes continued to stare off into the endless distance.
Regaining a fraction of her self-control, she redirected her headspace into a more positive realm, one not so easily corrupted by the storm.
Osiris seemed quite pleased with what he saw of me when I summoned him… Although Lady Ariel and Lady Prudentia's responses are still unknown…
There was a flicker of unease that shot through her body after passing along the letter to the two Angels.
Inside the note, she had openly admitted to fleeing from the only possible lead to the location of Esmerelda, and by proxy, Ruby Grimstall.
From her experience, neither of them would be angered by her failure to obtain results, yet their disappointment might still be measurable.
For some odd reason, she could not quench the feeling that they wouldn't think of her as reliable, or as useful to the Angelic Order.
Not only that, but how would the Great God of Death react to such news?
He had been kind to her beyond a shadow of a doubt, but in the end, he was still a part of a race that cared little for humankind and its creations.
Could he revoke the Mark of Wishes upon her forehead and return the useless Mark of Dreams that had been used to its maximum in the Great Beyond?
Would he denounce her soul if she were to meet her true end, leaving her as a wandering ghost that would be forced into the fires of Hell?
Regardless of what logic dictated, she refused to respect its basis and instead dwelt on the darkest path.
That winding and dangerous road through her own thoughts and endless possibilities once more drove her to the gates of despair itself.
In her seated position, she squirmed slightly as the pangs of stress, anxiety, and guilt held her head under the water of sanity.
She could feel herself suffocating under the weight of the sorrows that oozed from existence itself, pushing her closer to madness.
Yes, she knew that the storm was the catalyst for the unveiling of these emotions, but could she deny that they were valid claims?
No.
At that time at least, Eleanor Lynn could not see past her own disparagement, and therefore, she could not see the truth of the world around her.
Chirp!
A sudden vibration startled her mind, awakening her from the almost dream-like state she had been lulled into.
For a moment, she was confused and unsure of what had changed; however, as she felt another chirp from her coat pocket, she instantly understood what had occurred.
Six hours.
It had already been six hours.
H-how…
There was no way that time had passed so quickly as to make six hours feel like sixteen minutes.
Such a thing was simply impossible.
But contrary to her belief, as she removed the timer from her pocket and looked at the time, she was horrified to see that the hour hand was aimed at the bottom-most point.
Opposing all logic and reason, her first session of training in the Vortex of Despair, which left her mentally fragile, had ended before she could even say it had begun.
There was no telling what Masaru Kurogane had anticipated, nor what he knew currently, though, regardless of that, he was certainly someone who had chosen the tasks that the teens would embark on carefully.
I need to pay closer attention to him… If there's something he's hiding, I'll find it out… And if there's not, then I'll know I wasn't accurate enough.
Closing her eyes, she gently rose from the snow and turned to the South where the cabin resided.
I wonder if Aaron's training went well…