Lewis ran towards the same alley the dungeon had appeared. The atmosphere was exerting intense pressure against his lungs as he held his breathe and ran, due to his element, he was able to hold his breathe for a long time, and faced no trouble. As expected, the barrier was still standing there. Reaching near it, the wind suddenly rose to a very high speed, as if a cyclone had just come along.
His hand reached towards the barrier, and his index finger made contact with the glass-like material. As if it was capacitated, the dungeon gate burst outwards and the wind speed increased for a few seconds, which died immediately afterwards as life returned to the surrounding matters. The action reversed?!
His mind was filled with thoughts as he suddenly glanced at the fully bloomed red flowers that stood on the concrete ground, and exploded as soon as he walked towards it. Her footsteps leave the same pattern, so do I follow it? With the same thought in mind, he ran along with the exploding flowers, which led him to a nearby graveyard, not far from the alley.
What is she doing at the graveyard? Was the dungeon completed a long time ago? Wasn't it supposed to be fatal? He thought while pushing open the metallic gates and a guard approached him from the distance. "There is no entry at around this time! If you-" he scanned the person up to down while bowing at the end. "I am sorry, I didn't know who you were."
"Then remember the next time." He spoke while gazing sharply and with a maddened face at the guard and took off behind the flowers following that. His mind was only filled with worries until he finally found her steps fading in front of a grave.
Aefia rested her head against the tombstone with her arms leveling it up from the stone surface interacting with her head. Her hand was bleeding, and the blood spilled against the surface. Her hair was covering her face, so there was no telling what her expression was. Especially since her face was the opposite direction he was facing .
Silently, he approached her from the front while crouching in front of her. "Is this the grave of someone you know?" He asked while bringing out the handkerchief she had handed earlier. But as soon as she lifted her head, with her eyes widened, something sent goosebumps up his arms. "Your eyes have fully gone red..."
"My eyes?" Her voice was heard, very softly and a little sorrowful. "I don't know...why though...I just heard about it." She replied while using her bloody hand to wipe her eyes. Was she crying? Lewis thought while noticing how they were swollen slightly as her gaze fixated at the grave. "If you want, you can explain it later, it must be hard trying to talk about someone you miss." He stood up.
Following that, Aefia stood up too. "No, it's not that hard. I can speak about it, because I had suffered this same situation a long time ago." Her hair fell across her face and back, with silvering at the ends. "It's just that its hard to think about, because I seem to regret it every second." Her sleeves reached to her face as she wiped her face, staining the fabric very dark.
"She died in front of my own eyes, and I was a small second away from saving her. But to think, she had told me not to regret it any inch. She was affiliated with the hooded man and the Guardian of Silence. And the reason was...they were chasing behind me for answers!" Her hands covered her face as she seemed to be back into the feeling to distress and grieve.
Her knuckles were bleeding, and her clothing was filled with splattered blood here and there. "But if she wants you to not feel regret over her death...then you are making her more upset. So why?" Lewis spoke while trying to hand the handkerchief back to her, but instead, she smacked back the hand as her eyes were in a fierce stare, but it was also wet. "Because she isn't in my place to understand!"
It was true that only the person suffering, would know how hard it is, and no one else would. He stared at her trying to fight herself from breaking her own promise to a dead person. "Do I know who that person was?" He spoke while dropping the fabric at her fingers. "Yes, you had probably seen her the day I first laid my steps at the palace." She replied while looking down at the grave again.
"Then I understand your grief." He turned around a ninety degrees to face the same grave. "I had lost my father in the hands of someone I can't kill. She is our own biological mom, and I guess we are stuck like this for a lifetime."
"You still have a protection, you have your elder brother. I lost her to someone who immediately dissapeared after doing so." Her eyes lifted to face the sky. "I can still feel her stare falling on me, and only on me." This time, her eyes glowed, from the normal purplish red that covered her iris, replacing the souless black.
"Is that your revenge you want to play out next? Otherwise your eyes won't have completely changed colours like that. Neither your hair the way it turned silver." He asked while gazing her way, while simultaneously changing his field of view to the floating golden hue who was faceless.
"I am surprised you found out, and that isn't my only tasks left. I have a huge array of work left to be done. She is just one thing out of them all." A faint angerness erupted on her face as she pointed a small black bladed kitchen knife at the golden hue. "What do you think, Silence? Knowing that the next person to die...is you?" She spoke as if mad, while the knife stood over the tombstone of the dead person who was killed.
Immediately following that, she changed her gaze towards the exit of the graveyard and soon, her footsteps lifted towards it too. Seeing the sudden change in expression, a concern appeared inside his mind as he caught up behind her. Placing a hand on her shoulder, he was able to stop her a short distance later. "Are you mentally unstable? Do you need more time to stay at the grave?"
"Am I mentally unstable?" She spoke while turning her head around with an almost dead gaze. "Of course...I saw someone die in front of me, and I have got to take a revenge. I perform better when enraged." She spoke while saying so with widened eyes. "It's not something you aren't supposed to know. Now let's go to school, Henry wanted to show me around...didn't he?"
Jumpscared, he almost move back. After a long moment of silence, a few words left his mouth. "I think you need to go back home and rest first. Your mind needs healing too." A shock erupted on his face before grabbing her wrist and walking forward, keeping her close enough to observe over a short time frame.
"May I ask who that is?" The guard asked while bowing and holding one hand at his weapon. She was still not formally introduced as a royal family member, so no one knew her properly yet. "She is my sister, doesn't the silver hair explain it enough?" Lewis answered while giving a sharp gaze back as Aefia looked at the guard by bending backwards slightly.
Her eyes stayed locked at him for a very long time, as an expressionless face overlapped her words that spilt out later. "I will remember your face the next time I come around." And she pulled forward, out of the threshold of the graveyard. Lewis was extremely conscious that she was indeed...slowly turning into a psycho.
***
"..." Aefia stared at her room filled with people while she sat at her desk writing things onto the piece of paper. "What is with your strange faces? Did I do something wrong? Also, why are you guys just staying at my room, staring at me like I just committed a crime?" She asked finally while rolling the paper and placing it at the side.
Her handmaid, Cedric and Lewis were just sitting at her sofa area with wide eyes, not even blinking, with fear that she might do something strange in a few seconds. Suddenly, a knock came at the door and a guard barged in with a new crowd of papers with his helmet pulled down on his face. Curious, her brother stood up as if to protest him to speak a word or two.
With utter silence he walked towards Aefia's side while whispering something at her ears, as her eyes shadowed and her grip loosened against the glass pen at her fingers. As soon as he stepped back, her eyes were visibly widened up until the guard stepped back and away towards the door.
Following his steps, she stood up and moved incredibly fast towards the guard. "I am still curious, how did you come to know such an information...that you weren't present at?" The words hang in the air as the guards turned around and his helmet dropped to the ground that was heavily dented. "I told you, that I would remember your face...and I also remember your voice."
"What is going on?" Lewis spoke while shouting as he held her wrist that in return has her glass pen gripped tightly as she tried to place it down on the guard she had seen at the graveyard. "What did he say that is riping your nerves off?" He asked with intense struggling as she slowly lessened her grip on her arm, but her fingers were wrapped still on the body of the blue glass structure.
"That my relative was a person worth dying...and that I should be regretful I couldn't make her last any longer." Her eyes sharpened at the person who had staggered on the ground with glowing golden eyes which immediately died down to a darker colour. Lewis had seen it clearly, the same person he had witnessed his sister trying to confront by holding her knife in the air, she had possessed this human to follow her back to the palace.
The guard immediately collapsed into an unconscious state as the maid servant and Cedric ran to attend him. Following that, Aefia collapsed, for a split second which her brother had caught in time, but by then, the tip of the glass pen had already slit through her skin and left blood stains across her new prussian blue vest and coat. It was directly at the side of her neck, but she luckily didn't take it deep enough.
"Didn't her eyes just glow an eerie gold?!" Cedric noticed just in time and pointed at her. Hearing so, her brother glanced at her eyes carefully this time, watching as the glow faded away and left the red iris as its original before shutting themselves. The pen fell from her grasp and her head tilted downwards too.
He recalled the fact she had said at the graveyard, that someone had killed her relative in front of her eyes, and that the same person had appeared in front of her, and not to mention, the time she had said that she would remember the face of the guard in charge of the graveyard. No way, it's all making sense now.
"Get a nurse, you can clearly see she is bleeding." Lewis spoke to the maid servant. "And you should take the guard out of the palace. Don't let anyone notice, do you understand this part? It would be better to kill him...and then drown him." He stared at Cedric after the servant had left. Once they had exited the room, he used a piece of cloth to hold the area of the wound before she was attended by a medical assistant.
The silver areas of her hair turned red where the blood had spilt as he lifted her head upright into a sitting position. To think, if the Guardian had possessed someone she had access to in that area, and then used him to get into the palace boundaries, then almost trying to kill Aefia...so it hurt means she was seeking to get to her like that. Who is she going to possess next?
Footsteps were heard passing by, as an anxiety placed onto his mind with a slight irritation of why it was taking so long. I can't think of anything other than what appears to be Aefia's next words, but it should be enough to tell what the Guardian wants. If they had possessed her just to try and harm her, I guess it's easy to say there is a death intention coming from the Guardian. Let alone, there is a possible restrain that took place with the way the pen didn't stab directly into her throat.
As if hearing this, Aefia unconsciously coughed up blood and red lines appeared from the sides of her mouth. She wasn't responsive, but it could be possible that there was an aftereffect following someone being possessed. Her coughs were inconsistent and each felt like she was struggling, until she finally jolted awake and bent forward to cough out more blood.
The edges of her hair slivered a little bit more following the way it looked earlier, and her eyes glowed a bright red as she stared at Lewis with questions hovering over her face. "That Guardian really is a trickster." She raised a hand to wipe her eyes, which went teary due to the pain from both of her lungs. "For seconds she isolated me in void and stabbed me through...which I still don't understand how."
A few seconds following the sudden silence, she opened her mouth again with a deadly stare. "I know you might be thinking I am delusional for saying such things that don't make sense. Even I know for short that I am mentally unstable." The pupils were shrunk to a size where it was well identifiable she was speaking out of force.
"You know...it's better to lock me up in an asylum." Aefia spoke while steading herself up and holding her stomach with pressure. "I think it's alright to suggest something against yourself. But your freedom is also crucial." Lewis demanded while abruptly standing to support her waddling figure.
"It's not a suggestion...it's a command. I am a part of the family, right?"