The single, deafening chime was not a sound… rather a verdict. It was a physical law of exclusion, a wave of hostile magic that vibrated through the bones and shook dust from the mansion's weeping stone facade. From the shimmering air beside the shattered door, a creature of transparent blue energy materialized. It had no substance… only the form of a pouncing panther, all fangs and silent spectral fury. It was a warning made manifest, a memory of violence given purpose.
It was on Aamon in an instant.
Its jaws, cold as the grave and sharp as shattered hope… sank deep into his shoulder. It was not a bite of flesh, but an assault on his very essence. Aamon screamed… a raw, shocked sound that was utterly alien to him… as a paralyzing cold, far deeper than any ice Ciel could conjure. It was a cold that sought to extinguish the inferno of his demonic life force. The phantom's fangs anchored fast… its translucent form writhing with silent malice as it began to drain him, pulling at the shadows that gave him form.
"Aamon!"
Arya's roar was a blend of fury and panic. She lunged forward, her golden axes a blur of futility passing through the spirit without resistance as if slicing through a bad dream. She stumbled, off balance and enraged… her weapons are useless against this intangible foe.
Ciel was already moving, her glacial staff raised. "Lancea Frigoris!" she commanded. A javelin of ice shot through the phantom harmlessly, shattering against the far wall in a cascade of frost. For the first time, a hairline fracture appeared in her analytical calm.
"Ciel cannot touch it! The magic is… other. It rejects this world."
Aamon sank to one knee, the vibrant ruby light of his eyes leaching away into a dull grey garnet. His skin took on a deeper pale sheen, like a corpse under moonlight. His wings, once a shield of leathery power… drooped limply, scraping the stone. The spirit cat clung to him… a relentless parasite feeding on the shadow of the Abyss itself.
It was then, from the profound darkness of the mansion's ruptured entrance, that the sound came again.
Jingle.
This time, it was not a weapon. It was a sound of pure… gentle focus, a note of absolution in a symphony of violence.
A small, pristine figure stepped through the wreckage of the doors… her movements silent and efficient, a ghost in her own home. She was a vision of white and soft blue against the oppressive gloom. Her fluffy white cat ears were flattened against her short cut hair not in fear, in concentration. Her large, round blue eyes were wide fixed on the struggling demon with the terrifying clarity of a surgeon assessing a critical wound. In her hand, she held a small silver bell.
"Oh, my."
A soft high pitched voice murmured, barely a whisper.
"A Spirit-Ward. And it's… it's very cross with you."
This was Kitty. A doll-like figure in a modified maid's uniform… stark white and impeccably clean blending service with the grim practicality of a battlefield medic. Her expression was of profound professional concern, her innate timidity held in check by the immediate presence of a patient in distress.
"You! Help him!"
Arya snarled, gesturing wildly with her axe.
Kitty flinched at the loud noise, her tail puffing up and wrapping tightly around her leg. Yet… her eyes never wavered from Aamon.
"I… I will try. Please don't yell. It disrupts the… the frequencies."
Her voice was a fragile thing… but it held an edge of steel.
She took a hesitant step forward, then another, her focus narrowing until the world consisted only of the ward and its victim. The fear in her posture melted away replaced by an unnerving… absolute calm. The healer had taken over.
She raised the silver bell.
"This was a gift from a friend… For purification."
she explained softly, as if reciting a sacred text.
Jingle.
The note was different. Where the ward's chime had been an aggressive shockwave, this was a soothing ripple. a balm on raw magic. The translucent panther flinched… its form flickering like a guttering candle. It turned its head, its empty eyes locking onto the new sound, a low silent growl vibrating in the air… a sound felt in the soul, not heard by the ear.
Kitty's expression didn't change. She was in her element now… the battlefield of healing. She took another step, ringing the bell again… each chime a precise, surgical strike against the hostile enchantment.
Jingle.
The spirit cat's form began to waver, its grip on Aamon loosening. It was being untethered. Its rage unwoven note by gentle… inexorable note.
"It's a very old spell."
Kitty murmured, her voice a steady hum now, a lullaby for a furious ghost.
"Meant to guard against intruders. Against… well, against things like you, I suppose. But it's not supposed to… to consume them. That's just poor etiquette."
With a final… definitive jingle, she stood before the phantom. She didn't swat it away or blast it. She simply reached out with her free hand, her fingers moving in a complexzzz graceful pattern over its head, her touch ethereal, as if soothing a real… frightened animal.
"There now."
she whispered, her voice imbued with a power that belied her frame.
"The fight is over. You can rest."
The spirit cat let out a silent… shuddering sigh. Its form dissolved from the head down, not in a burst… like mist evaporating in a sudden warm breeze. In a moment it was gone, leaving behind only a lingering chill and the memory of its fangs.
The moment the ward vanished… Kitty's battle-trance shattered. The towering demon, the snarling wolf-girl, and the abyssal elf snapped back into her perception. She let out a small "eep!", stumbling back two steps, her bell clutched to her chest like an holy symbol. Her ears flattened completely… and her tail vanished behind her legs. The legendary healer was gone… replaced once more by a timid girl surrounded by monsters.
Aamon gasped, collapsing fully onto the cold stone floor… drawing in ragged… desperate breaths. The color slowly returned to his face, though he was weak, and shivering from the soul deep cold. The void left behind was a tangible emptiness.
"Is he… is he alright?"
Kitty asked, her voice once again a timid squeak… her wide blue eyes darting between the three of them like a trapped squirrel.
"That kind of magic drain is… is very serious. It can leave a permanent void. A hole in the spirit that never truly fills."
Ciel was at Aamon's side in an instant. Her cool hands checking his temperature.
"Friend is stable. But he is cold. Ciel cannot warm him. The cold is inside."
Arya stared at the small cat-girl… her axes still held ready, her expression was one of pure… unadulterated bewilderment.
"You… you just… what in the twelve hells was that?"
"I'm… I'm Kitty."
She stammered, offering a quick nervous bow that was almost a full body flinch.
"The… the Healing Hand of Mayhem. I serve the Master of this house."
The name landed in the sudden silence not as a simple introduction… but a declaration of myth.
Arya's aggressive stance faltered. Her axes, held ready to dismember… lowered a fraction. Her golden eyes, wide with a new kind of shock, swept over the small trembling cat-girl as if seeing her for the first time.
"No."
Arya breathed, the word a disbelieving exhale.
"That's… that's not possible. You're one of them. One of the Eleven… The one who mended the Lord of Mayhem's flesh after the Devil of War shattered his ribs. They said your magic could stitch a soul back into a body."
Ciel's gaze sharpened, her head tilting as she processed this new… monumental variable.
"Ciel saw the portrait in the guild hall. The Battle Maids of Atom, Lord of Mayhem. Their likeness is known."
Her voice was low, not with fear with profound… calculating respect.
"Ciel did not expect to find a living legend… watering flowers."
Kitty flinched at the title, as if it were an accusation.
"I… I just do my duty."
Her eyes drifted past them to the devastation in the garden… the churned earth, the shattered statuary, the ruined Nerium oleanders. A deep… profound sadness filled her gaze, the sorrow of an old caretaker witnessing the desecration of her charge.
"Oh, dear. The Master will be so cross about the oleanders. He was… fond of the oleanders."
She looked back at the shivering demon, her professional concern warring with her innate timidity. The healer in her won… yet again.
"We should get him inside,"
she said, her voice firming with a resolve that seemed to cost her dearly.
"Out of the… the open. I have supplies. I can… I can help."
The words were a promise, and a plea, offered not just by a maid… by a living piece of history who had just stepped out of a painting and into their shattered reality.
The grand foyer they entered was a cavernous space of black marble and vaulted ceilings, where their footsteps echoed like heartbeats in a tomb. Intricate tapestries depicting cosmic battles and dying stars adorned the walls. Their colors muted by age and dust. It was a place that spoke of immense… sleeping power.
Kitty led them into an opulent sitting room, a sanctuary of obscene wealth that felt like a dream after the garden's carnage. The air was thick with the cloying scent of beeswax… dried roses… and old parchment.
And it was full of people.
Over a dozen maids, clad in elegant… sophisticated uniforms of charcoal and lace… a world apart from Kitty's simple, medic like maid dress… stood frozen throughout the room. They were perfectly still, their hands clasped, and their faces carved into masks of well trained neutrality… But their eyes, wide and unblinking betrayed a terror as deep as any battlefield horror. They were statues in a gallery of impending doom.
On the largest of three plush velvet couches, the centerpiece of this grim tableau… lay Valtheris.
The Valkyrie was a broken monument. Her magnificent wings were crumpled and twisted beneath her like a fallen bird… their black feathers now stained with dirt and demonic ichor. The glorious armor was a ruin of caved in mythril and torn straps… each dent and scratch a testament to Aamon's devastating power. Her breathing was a shallow, ragged sound… the only sign of life in her otherwise still form.
The trio stopped dead at the sight. Arya's axes came up instantly… a twin promise of violence. Ciel's posture shifted from support to a ready stance, her mind mapping the room… the exits… the number of hostiles in a cold, calculating instant.
"Stop! Please don't hurt her!"
Kitty pleaded, her voice a fragile thread in the tense silence. She scurried forward… placing her small body between them and the couch her hands raised in a gesture of pure supplication. The other maids flinched as one.
"I'm sure you don't want to."
she added, the statement sounding like a desperate, hopeful prayer.
Arya's lip curled, a feral snarl tearing from her throat.
"She tried to turn my friend into a pincushion. I very much want to."
Ciel said nothing, her icy gaze locked on Valtheris, assessing the viability of the threat.
Aamon spoke, his voice weary… scraped raw from the fight and the spiritual violation. Still it was firm… carrying a finality that silenced Arya's growl. He met Kitty's wide, desperate eyes, seeing the healer beneath the fear. "We will not." he declared, the words a vow. His ruby eyes, still dimmed from his ordeal, shifted to the unconscious form of his enemy.
"But only if she does not attack us again."
The unspoken threat hung in the perfumed air, a fragile truce forged not in trust, but in exhausted necessity.
As Aamon settled onto a couch opposite the Valkyrie, the other maids moved with silent… trembling precision… their eyes wide with a terror that had now found a new focus: him. They placed black and red Dragon Scaled tea cups before them, the fine porcelain painted with intricate, violent scenes of skulls and acts of murder… a stark, macabre contrast to the gentle warmth of Betty's fine Umbricelain back at the Hearth's Respite.
"Why are they so scared?"
Aamon tilted his head, his innocent curiosity a stark contrast to the room's opulent horror. He seemed genuinely puzzled… almost pitying.
"Is it the Valkyrie? I mean… I am."
A maid nearest to him flinched so violently at the sound of his voice that she nearly dropped her silver tray… a small… terrified squeak escaping her lips before she stifled it.
"Don't mind them."
Arya barked, her glare fixed on Kitty like a predator sizing up the weakest in the herd.
"They're just cowards."
"Umm… th-they are just… they are scared of you."
Kitty explained, her gaze firmly locked on her own knees… refusing to meet anyone's eyes. Her voice was a fragile whisper.
"You are a demon… an oni, to be exact."
Seeing his lingering pallor, Kitty hesitantly extended a hand. Her fingers trembled slightly.
"M-may I? The spiritual drain… it can have lingering effects."
At Aamon's nod, she closed her eyes… her voice shifted once more into that resonant, solemn prayer… a conduit for a power that seemed to still the very air in the room.
"O Last Light, Sole Vessel…
You who bear the silent weight of heaven's emptiness.
We know Your well runs deep with grief,
Your strength is stretched across a thousand broken altars.
hear this plea:
Not for glory… not for wrath…
for the fragile spark You yet shelter.
Lend to my hands a fragment of Your wholeness.
A shard of Your divine pain.
Let this flesh remember what it is to be unbroken…
As You remember what it is to be among kin.
By the memory of the fallen, and the breath of the living…
Weave what is torn."
Warm, pure energy flooded through Aamon sealing the last of the void within.
"Shit! You can use holy?"
Arya said, her head snapping toward Kitty before she cast a wary… instinctive glance around the room, as if the walls themselves might object to such power being used on a demon.
"I thought that was… I don't know, extinct."
"Y-yes, I can."
Kitty whispered, flinching and pulling her shoulders up as if trying to disappear into her uniform.
"I..I specialize in holy and water magic. They… they complement each other. Purity and flow."
"Ciel has never seen holy magic… it is quite rare,"
Ciel observed, her gaze noting the way Kitty seemed to fold in on herself. Her grip on Aamon's hand tightened slightly.
"Wow, rare? That's interesting. Why is it rare?"
Aamon chimed, his tone bright with genuine… unburdened curiosity.
Kitty's ears flattened completely into her white hair. She looked as if she wished the velvet couch would swallow her whole.
"It's… it's a long story. A-and I don't… I don't think it's one I should tell. Not here. Not… now."
Her eyes flickered toward the other maids, then to the unconscious Valtheris… heavy with unspoken history.
"Ok."
Aamon said, easily accepting the boundary.
"Well, what happened to the girl outside? The one who knew my name?"
"W… we don't know. She ran off during the commotion,"
Kitty said, her hands trembling so violently she had to set her own teacup down with a soft clink.
"I-I have sent maids looking for her. B-but they haven't… they haven't found anything. It's as if she… vanished."
"Ciel does not understand how she knows friend."
Ciel stated, her grip on Aamon's hand tightening further… her pink eyes sharp with cold suspicion.
"I don't know either."
Aamon murmured, putting a finger to his lip in thought.
"I've never seen her. Maybe she was in Varnmoor? Everyone was staring at me there."
"We can never be sure! We should track her, cut her till she speaks,"
Arya declared, slamming a fist into her palm. The sound was like a gunshot in the hushed room.
The reaction was quick, Kitty let out a terrified "Eeep!" Her ears pinned flat, and her tail fluffed out into a bristling bottlebrush… she physically recoiled, pressing herself into the back of the couch as if trying to merge with the velvet. Aamon's wings gave a sympathetic flap.
"L-let's not do that, p-please,"
Kitty begged, her voice a high… thin whimper. She looked genuinely distressed, her professional ethos violated by the mere suggestion.
"Violence is… it's never the answer. It only begets more suffering. There is always another way."
"We wouldn't, right Arya?"
Aamon said, turning desperate… pleading eyes toward the wolf.
Arya held his gaze for a long moment, her jaw working. Finally, she let out a sharp, "Tch." and looked away.
"Sure, pup. Fine. But only if she speaks. No more of this vanishing shit."
Aamon finished his tea, carefully setting the macabre cup down.
"An oni? What are they? I've heard that before."
he questioned, his brow furrowed in innocent inquiry.
"Oh, you… you don't know?"
Kitty's head tilted in a flicker of genuine… bewildered curiosity, her fear seeming to recede just a fraction in the face of such profound ignorance. She peeked at him from behind the curtain of her hair.
"W-well, oni are a specific kind of demon. The strongest, some say. They are directly connected to Abyss. It's… it's said she forged them, long ago… from the first shadows and the screams of a world only she remembers. They were her personal guard. Her family, in a way."
The room was utterly silent, every maid holding her breath.
Aamon was quiet for a moment, processing this. The information seemed to settle deep within him… clicking into a empty space he had always felt but never understood. "Oh." he said, a slight somber smile touching his lips, devoid of his usual bright enthusiasm. It was a smile of tragic recognition.
"I am connected to the Abyss… She's my mother."
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.
Kitty's teacup slipped from her fingers. It hit the Persian rug with a dull… wet thud, dark liquid blooming across the intricate patterns like a bloodstain. Her tail erupted into a puff of white fur three times its normal size. A small, choked gasp, the sound of pure… unadulterated terror, escaped her throat. She stared at Aamon, then at the bone rings on his fingers… her mind clearly assembling a history of apocalyptic horror.
"R…really?"
She finally managed, her voice a reedy screech. Thin as a pane of glass cracking under immense pressure. Her whole body began to tremble, a fine constant vibration of dread.
"The… the Succubus of the Abyss… was your mother?"
"Tch… explain yourself, pup!"
Arya barked, whirling from the window she had been staring out of. Her golden eyes were wide… a volatile mix of fury and primal disbelief.
"How in the empty hells is that possible? She was a force of nature! A fucking epoch! You don't just… birth an epoch!"
"Well."
Aamon began, his tone still unsettlingly matter of fact, as if describing the weather.
"I was born in a cell on top of Hell. I don't know much about how we got there, but I was there for ninety years… I counted myself… mostly."
He ended his words with that same gentle wistful smile that was infinitely more terrifying than any snarl.
Ciel didn't reply with words. She simply gripped his hand tighter, her cool fingers a silent anchor in the chilling storm of his past.
"Oh, you poor, poor thing,"
Kitty whispered, the words frail and breathless. She stared at him now not just as a patient but as a living, breathing relic of a catastrophe. A monument to a tragedy she thought was sealed away in history books.
"To endure all that time, alone with… with her…"
She swallowed hard… her throat clicking.
"May I ask? Where's your mother now? If you are out, what of her?"
"Well, she is dead."
Aamon said the statement in simple stark absolute.
"But I have her with me at all times."
He raised his hand, the ten pale bone rings clicking together with a sound like dice rolling on a tombstone.
"Khh… You're an old shit."
Arya breathed out, her usual bravado replaced by a stunned… visceral revulsion. She stared at her own hands… the hands that had patted his shoulder, that had brushed against his horns… and wiped them roughly on her clothes as if she could scrub away the sacrilegious contact.
"But fuck… I touched the Abyss's bones? This is sick. This is like touching a plague."
"Oh."
Kitty murmured, her posture collapsing in on itself like a paper lantern in the rain. All the color had drained from her face.
"That's… not what I expected."
She looked genuinely ill, her pallor turning a faint… sickly green.
"For ninety years, people have wondered what happened to her after the Hollow Day of the Damned. There were theories… banishment, a deep slumber… I should have expected that the truth would be something far more… final."
The name itself… Hollow Day of the Damned… seemed to suck the warmth from the room, leaving only the chill of a shared generational nightmare.
"What happened during the Hollow Day?"
Ciel's voice cut through the heavy silence, clear and intent as a shard of ice. Her pink eyes were fixed on Kitty… missing nothing.
"Ciel has only heard whispers. Shadows of stories."
Kitty drew a shaky breath, her eyes darting nervously around the opulent room as if the very cherubs in the mouldings might be listening. She looked at Aamon, a living piece of that history and then at the terrified maids. The weight of the secret seemed to press down on her.
"That is also a long story. A terrible story. A lot happened that day. The day angels fell, and the world was soon… remade."
she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial… fearful hush, laden with the gravity of a world changing event. She wrapped her arms around herself, a small white clad figure holding back the tide of a dark past that had just walked into her parlor.
"And I fear your friend is at the very heart of it."
The tension in the room was thick enough to taste of iron and old fear. Arya's aggressive posture and Kitty's terrified deference created a charged field that made the dust dancing in the lamplight seem to freeze in place.
"Well, he's been… decent company."
Arya conceded, the words gruff and reluctant. She gestured vaguely in Aamon's direction with the hilt of one of her axes. It was the barest shred of endorsement… a bone thrown into the silence.
"Decent doesn't mean good."
Kitty retorted, her voice finding a sliver of steel before it met Arya's murderous golden gaze… and shattered. She instantly shrank back into her chair… her feline ears flattening against her head as if expecting a blow.
Ciel's voice, cut between them like a shard of ice.
"Friend does not mean harm. The intent is what matters. Even if the potential for it is in his blood."
A low, warning growl rumbled in Arya's chest. A sound from the deep wild.
"Blood's the only thing that does mean something. It's what he is. You can't pretty that up with a few 'please' and 'thank yous'. You can't wash that stink off with good manners."
"But he is pretty!"
Aamon interjected, entirely missing the lethal subtext of the conversation with devastating innocence. He looked down at his fine suit jacket… brushing off a speck of invisible dust with a claw tipped finger.
"My mother always said a knight should be presentable. It shows respect."
The non sequitur was so profound it momentarily sucked the air from the room. Arya stared at him… her fury derailed by sheer utter disbelief. Kitty looked from the demon to the wolf warrior, her mind visibly short circuiting.
"That's not what she… Tch, never mind."
Arya spat, she threw her hands up in exasperation. She turned her incendiary glare back to Kitty… a predator refocusing on easier prey.
"The point is, 'decent' is a flimsy shield when the Abyss itself is your mommy. You think a 'long story' is enough to explain that?"
She jabbed a claw tipped finger toward Aamon's hand, where the pale bone rings gleamed. A permanent… silent confession of his lineage.
"It is the only story we have."
Ciel replied, a fortress of calm in the storm of Arya's cynicism.
"And it is a better one than the one that ends with an axe in his chest. Again."
The pointed reminder of their first meeting hung in the air… a ghost that made Arya's jaw tighten. Kitty, finding a thread of courage in Ciel's unshakeable logic spoke softly and firmly.
"The Hollow Day… it wasn't just a battle. It was an ending. The world broke that day. And if the son of the one who broke it is sitting here, drinking tea and worrying about his manners…"
She took a shaky breath… her eyes wide with the enormity of the thought.
"…then perhaps the world needs a new story."
She finally lifted her gaze to Aamon, not with terror, but with a dawning, terrifying curiosity.
"So… 'decent' is a start."
Kitty let out one last… long sigh… a soft, shuddering sound as if physically expelling the last dregs of her courage. She straightened her posture… a ghost of her former legendary elegance returning to her shoulders. In the gathering gloom of the sitting room she looked less like a terrified maid and more like a weathered monument to a forgotten war.
"Well…"
she began, her voice finding steady ground.
"If you truly are not like the demons I have met in my… my long service… then please, tell me. What brings a son of the Abyss and his companions to this remote corner of the country, so far from Varnmoor's spires and prying eyes?"
Aamon brightened, his ruby eyes gleaming as he leaned forward… happy to share their grand purpose.
"Oh, we're on a quest!"
He announced, the words brimming with a knightly enthusiasm that was utterly disarming.
"We're heading to find the Succubus of Sloth, you know? Sayerra?"
The name dropped from his lips with a pleasant, conversational smile… as if he were commenting on the quality of the tea.
The fragile composure Kitty had so painstakingly mustered shattered into a million pieces. A sharp… strangled "Eek!" escaped her. She recoiled so violently her teacup rattled against its saucer with a chattering sound. The name 'Sayerra' hung in the air between them… a psychic poison that seemed to curdle the very light in the room. The fear that flooded back into her wide blue eyes was twice as potent as before. A raw knowing terror that spoke of intimate understanding.
It was in that exact, horrified moment that the sun bled its last behind the jagged peaks… the mansion itself seemed to react.
The opulent sitting room plunged into deep twilight, the vast mosaics of stained glass that dominated the exterior wall began their nightly ritual. They were not scenes of saints or pastoral idylls… but now tapestries of cosmic violence rendered in shards of jewel toned glass. The colossal, silhouette figures locked in battle seemed to stir… their weapons casting long distorted shadows that slithered across the interior walls like living things.
The mansion was no longer just a building. It was a reliquary awakening. A silent scream frozen in glass and stone… a monument to a power that understood annihilation on a cosmic scale. As the last sliver of sun vanished, the scenes blazed with one final inferno of color… a visual echo of the cataclysm Aamon had just invoked with a single name… before surrendering to the possessive dark. The house was now a blacker silhouette against a bruised purple sky…
Into this newly charged atmosphere… Kitty moved. Her moment of panic was subsumed by a deeper, more ancient dread. She stepped away from the broken Valkyrie… the last vestiges of her healing magic dissipating from her fingertips like fading starlight. Slowly she walked toward Aamon, her fluffy white tail tucked tightly and her ears flat. She stopped before him, her large eyes reflecting the last dying glow of the stained-glass.
"You are seeking… her?"
Kitty whispered… the words barely audible.
"Maria."
Kitty's voice regains a fragile thread of her old battlefield authority.
"Go fetch Shattered Verse."
The maid named Maria bowed with deep respect… but her brow furrowed with palpable concern.
"Yes, my lady. But… are you certain? Wouldn't our master be… upset… about his missing blade?"
"He wouldn't even notice it was gone."
Kitty's gaze never wavering from its dreadful knowing lock with the sharp eyed demon. An ancient weariness passed over her features.
"He just collects them. For fun."
"A BLADE?!"
Aamon shouted, shooting to his feet… the velvet couch groaned in protest.
"Like a sword? An actual sword? Like Sir Aldric?"
Aamon beamed with an intensity so pure and unburdened it was physically disarming… his ruby eyes shining like captured stars. His spiked tail began to wag with such violent uncontainable joy that it became a wrecking ball… sweeping a priceless porcelain vase from its stand. It shattered against the marble floor in a spectacular cascade of ceramic shards and spilled water.
The explosive CRASH! echoed through the room. Aamon's wings snapped open in a startled reflex… half blotting out the terrifying stained glass behind him.
In the horrified silence that followed… Ciel moved with glacial calm. She stepped forward, placing her boot firmly on the thrashing spiked end of Aamon's tail… pinning it gently to the floor. She gave a slight formal bow to their hostess.
"Friend is grateful."
Ciel stated, speaking on his behalf, with the patience of a scholar managing a chaotic priceless artifact.
"He will be careful. Ciel thanks you."
Arya, however… she was neither excited nor apologetic. She remained seated…crossing her arms over her chest, a deep skeptical scowl etched on her face.
"Tch… gonna arm the pup?"
She barked directly at Kitty, the golden gaze flicking meaningfully to Aamon's hands… to the claws that could shred steel and the bone rings that were the relics of a tyrant.
"Even after knowing his past? His claws are sharper than any steel you have in this tomb."
Kitty, who had flinched back into the couch cushions at the initial outburst, met Arya's challenge. She took a shaky, but deliberate breath. straightening her apron... The fear in her eyes was now mingled with a stubborn, resolute light.
"Well."
Kitty's voice firming into something that sounded remarkably like the Healing Hand of Mayhem.
"If you're going to go and fight one of the Succubus, you need all the help you can get. Even if it comes with a… a wagging tail."
Arya gave Aamon one last… inscrutable look… a complex tapestry of warning, something that in a less guarded creature might have been mistaken for concern. It was the look of a wolf who has reluctantly accepted a dragon into its pack. Without a word she turned on her heel and stormed off towards the grand staircase… her boots echoing on the marble. Her tail is stiff, she needed space from the overwhelming reality… bending presence of the demon and the ghosts of legends he dragged in his wake.
Aamon watched her go… his head tilted in a mixture of confusion and acceptance. He rubbed the spot on his tail where Ciel had stepped. The gesture is oddly childlike.
"The sun is down again, so I think we should be off, Kitty. Thank you for the tea, and… for not being too upset about the vase."
Aamon said, turning back to Kitty with an apologetic smile that seemed to glow in the dimming light. His gaze drifted to the sparkling fragments on the floor… a genuine flicker of remorse in his ruby eyes.
Ciel gave a single solemn nod in agreement. Her pale form a stark contrast to the deepening shadows.
"Yes, we should. Friend is better at the night."
The simple statement hung in the air, carrying a weight of unspoken truth that chilled the room more than any ice spell.
Kitty's initial terror softening into a profound, weary understanding. She had seen power in many forms… the world shattering of her Master, and the disciplined fury of her fellow Battle Maids…. But this… this was different. This was power wrapped in a child's heart.
"You cannot go yet."
she said, the healer's resolve settling over her like a cloak.
"You are right. The night is his domain, But the place you are going… Sayerra's realm… its darkness is different. It is an absence of will, a passive, suffocating nothingness that does not empower.. it erodes."
Kitty accepted the bundle from Maria, her small hands seeming to struggle with its unseen weight… a weight that was less physical and more a mass of condensed history.
"You seek a sword like Sir Aldric…"
Kitty's gaze returned to Aamon.
"This is not that. Sir Aldric's sword was a symbol of justice, a tool for a righteous cause in a world that understood such concepts."
She began to carefully unwrap the cloth, sighing as it fell away.
"The world you are walking into does not understand righteousness. It understands only consumption and decay."
The last fold of cloth fell away.
The sword lying across Kitty's hands was breathtaking… A masterpiece of lethal elegance. The blade was long and straight, forged from a metal that seemed like frozen twilight. It held a sheen of captured light in its impossible depths. Down its entire length, fiery phosphorescent runes were etched, burning with a venomous light that pulsed with a slow… malignant rhythm. These were not mere decorations; they were the visual manifestation of a binding spell, that locked in screams of a lost hero. The hilt was crafted from a single piece of blackened dragon bone, worn smooth by a grip that had once committed great sins. It was a blade fit for a king of ruins… a sword that had seen the end of ages.
"This is Shattered Verse."
Kitty announced, her voice echoing in the new silence the blade created.
"It does only cut flesh, It severs the threads of existence, the very narratives that bind a soul to reality. It was forged in the heart of a dying star for a purpose only my Master could conceive."
Her eyes grew distant… seeing a past ninety years gone.
"Before he settled on the twin greatswords he carries now, this was the blade Atom, Lord of Mayhem, used to silence the eternal screams of the Devil of Torment. It did not kill him. It unspoke him from the cosmos, finally granting him the quiet he had sought through eons of agony."
She looked intently at Aamon… the sword's eerie light reflecting in her wide serious eyes.
"It is not for killing just any monsters, Aamon. It is for erasing them from the ledger of life. My Master cast it aside, calling it 'too final' for his tastes. He prefers his chaos to be… louder."
She took a shaky breath.
"Use it only when there is no other choice. When the concept of mercy is a forgotten language."
Aamon's earlier boyish excitement was gone… replaced by a solemn awe. He stared at the legendary weapon. A strange and profound kinship seeming to pass between the son of Abyss and this tool of absolute endings forged and used by the ultimate god-slayer.
He reached out… not with a grab, but with a slow, almost reverent motion and took the hilt.
The moment his fingers, adorned with his mother's bone rings closed around the dragon bone… the sword's fiery runes flared brightly… as if in recognition of a kindred shadow, then settled into a softer, more steadier symbiotic glow. It felt… correct in his hand. Not light, not heavy. It felt like an extension of his own will to negate… a key to a door that should never be opened.
"Thank you, Kitty."
Aamon said, his voice low and devoid of its usual lilt. He understood the terrifying responsibility she had just placed upon him. He held not just a weapon, rather a piece of Atom's own legend… a relic of a war that had shaped the world.
But Kitty was not finished… She turned to a small ornate box on the mantelpiece, crafted from the same blackened wood as the mansion's beams. She opened it and withdrew three pendants hanging on simple leather cords. Each pendant was a teardrop of a strange, milky opalescent substance that seemed to hold a swirling internal storm of muted color.
"The miasma of Sloth is her true weapon."
Kitty explained, handing one first to Ciel before laying the others on the table.
"It does not attack the body, but the will. The memory. The very want to continue. You will step into her domain and forget why you ever entered. You will lie down in the soft moss and simply… cease. These are woven from the solidified breath of a Zephyr Sage I once healed, captured at the moment of its final… parting sigh. It is air that remembers freedom. It will create a bubble of pure, remembered purpose around you. A shield against her apathy. Do not remove them. Not for a second."
Ciel took the pendant. Her sharp eyes analyzed the swirling patterns within the stone.
"Ciel understands. It is a filter for the soul."
"Now."
Kitty said, clasping her own hands in front of her apron, her duty nearly complete.
"You have a blade that can end a Succubus, and a charm to withstand her presence. But you lack the most crucial thing: a destination."
She walked to the great stained glass window, now a wall of impenetrable black and placed a hand upon it.
"The Temple of Sloth does not exist on any map. It is a wound in the world, hidden by her ennui. You cannot walk to it. You must be… invited. Or, barring that, you must follow the trail of forgotten things."
She turned back to them, her silhouette small against the vast, dark tapestry.
"Head west from here, into the Salt Bleached Expanse. Do not follow roads or rivers. Follow where the birds do not sing and the wind itself seems to have grown tired, you will be close. That will point the way."
Kitty's gaze settled on Aamon… a final… profound sadness in her eyes.
"You carry your mother's bones, child of Abyss. Now you carry a blade that can unmake a soul. Remember the weight of both. Do not let the darkness you must wield become the darkness that defines you."