The duo searched the castle, visiting the throne room, the royal children's rooms, the servants' room, the kitchen, and storage. They found no new clues or signs of life except a few vermin.
"Still nothing," Gale said.
After an hour of searching, Gale and Ashes stopped for a break. Gale thought for a bit, then spoke to Ashes.
"I think we should check out the armory. I know you said it was heavily protected, but it's one of the only places other than the library that we haven't checked out."
"There aren't many places left. It's our best option," Ashes replied.
"Alright then, it's decided. Lead the way."
Ashes led Gale down a hall and then down the stairs toward the armory. They entered a small stone tunnel, reaching metal doors at the end. The doors appeared ordinary. As Gale moved to open them, Ashes quickly stopped him by grabbing his arm.
"There are traps here. Only authorized people can pass," Ashes warned.
To test the trap, Gale tossed a nearly empty can from his survival kit into the tunnel. A red magic circle triggered, scorching and nearly melting the can.
"Well, looks like the traps are still active. Besides the can I threw , there aren't any signs of anything being activated." Said Gale.
Gale asked Ashes, "Who's allowed in the armory?"
"Umm.... only the royal family, and the head guard, I think."
"Could anyone else come down here if given permission?"
"I think so, but it's only given by the king and queen, and the permission lasts for a little while. I think that there are extra measures inside as well to make sure no one stays in there very long."
"So nobody but them could stay inside long without triggering alarms," Gale said.
"It's not a bunker. Staying inside is hard," Ashes said.
Gale thought for a moment about whether someone could have stayed in the armory. When they checked the kitchen, there was rotting and burnt food, and the items that should not have been left out had spoiled. Food that wouldn't perish quickly remained untouched. It's been about a week since the people disappeared, so anyone hiding would have needed to eat, but the kitchen looked mostly undisturbed. The danger likely passed, and whatever caused this had already left, as nothing happened to Gale or Ashes except for the Wind Guzzler, which Ashes said probably got lucky in the tunnels leading to the town.
"We're back to square one," Gale said.
Gale was frustrated by the lack of clues and cursed his lack of knowledge. He asked Ashes what it would take to teleport a group of people, and Ashes told him it was nearly impossible. The magic would require vast mana and a complex circle that supposedly doesn't exist. Attempts with technology also resulted in casualties. There was a story of a woman who could teleport, but only by herself.
As Gale's mind continued to think of different scenarios, he took notice of Ashes, who started to shiver and fidget with her cloak, and whose breath quickened.
"Hey, are you alright?" Asked Gale
"I need a minute," Ashes said, running upstairs.
Gale followed her as she climbed all the way back up the stairs, and lost her for a moment. Unsure where she went, he thought for a moment and then tried to use his nose. He remembered Ashes' scent, and although he still wasn't completely used to the scents of the castle, he caught onto Ashes and followed it. He followed the scent to the servants' room, and when he entered, he could faintly hear the sounds of crying in the room. He followed the sounds to a door, and when they investigated this room, Ashes told him it was a closet. He pressed his ear to the door and could hear someone sniffling past the door and gently knocked.
"Ashes? Is that you in there?"
"Please don't come in. I promise I'll come out," Ashes said.
"I promise I won't come in. We can keep looking for clues when you're ready."
"What clues? We won't find anything! I'm alone... same as before," Ashes said.
"But you're not alone, I'm-"
"You tried to leave! You'd probably do it again if we found someone! You said it's hard to trust someone! Even if we found someone, they wouldn't care about me. No one does!"
Gale flinched as she said this, as he wasn't entirely sure what he planned to do if they found someone. Gale had already admitted to Ashes that he had fulfilled his promise, that he had his own personal problems to deal with, and that he had planned to leave, but he wasn't sure anymore. Ashes was clearly stressed, and his own actions didn't make it any better.
"Sniff.... I'm sorry for saying that, Gale."
"You're right. I might have left if we had found someone. I haven't been fair to you or considered what you've faced," Gale said.
Gale struggled with what to say. In one week, Ashes was enslaved, escaped a psychotic woman, chased by a water monster, crossed the desert in poor clothes and little food, found her people gone, and fled another monster. She was stuck with someone who avoided people, had trust issues, and almost left her. Yet she showed him kindness.
Gale focused on Ashes' words. Her claim that "no one really cares" struck him. He lingered near the door and decided what to do.
"I'm sorry, Ashes. For everything."
"....huh?"
Gale leaned against the closet door, sat beside it, and quietly spoke while seated on the floor.
"Time and time again, you treated me with kindness, and I didn't. I treated you as a means to an end and only helped you because of my own problems. You deserve to be treated with kindness and trust, which I've been struggling to show, and I'm going to try to change that. If you have anything you want to ask me, then go ahead."
Ashes stayed quiet for a moment before she finally asked, "Why is it hard for you to trust people? You said people hurt you; who were they?"
Gale stayed silent for a moment, increasing Ashes' anxiety, and then began to speak.
"... It's a little long, but when I was little, it was just my mom and me in a nice house, and we were happy. She was busy a lot of times as she was a detective."
"Detective?"
"People who catch criminals and bring them to justice," Gale explained.
"She sounds amazing..."
Gale smiled at that and continued, "She was one of the best, and even though she was busy, she found time to be with me and always taught me to do the right thing. We were really happy.... until that happened."
"That?"
My mom had enemies. She was careful, but one day they went after me. They kidnapped me to trap her. She snuck into the warehouse where they were keeping me, took down the kidnappers, found me, and called for backup. I thought it would be fine. One wounded kidnapper pointed a gun at me. My mom jumped in front of me, took the bullet, and shot and killed him. She was shot in the chest and died almost instantly. I tried to save her, pressing the wound, but it was no use. Officers dragged me away as I screamed and kept trying to save her.
Her death and funeral were some of the worst days of my life. After the funeral, reporters crowded around me. They filmed me and asked questions like, 'What did the kidnappers do and say?' or 'How do you feel about your mother's death?'
"That's awful! Why would they do that!"
"A famous detective died saving her son. The reporters wanted their story. They didn't care about the boy who lost his world."
"Did no one help you?"
"People my mom worked with helped keep reporters away and comforted me, but I barely responded. Then HE came along."
"He?"
"A man my mother knew back when he was a high-ranking officer who went into politics and heard about what happened. Back when he was an officer, he and my mom were friends, but they lost contact after he became a politician, which, in some cases, could be considered a noble. When he heard what happened, he came to check in on me, and then he suddenly let the officers and me know he planned to take me in."
"He adopted you? That was awfully nice of him."
"Yeah, it was. I barely knew him; my mom didn't really talk about him. He had a good reputation, and there were no objections, so the paperwork was completed, and I was officially part of his family. When he spoke with me, he was friendly. He said he was a good friend of my mom. When I heard that, I listened, felt comfortable around him, and felt safe enough to go with him."
"He sounds like a nice person to go through all that for you."
"…Yeah, he does sound like it, right? He carried me in his arms out of the station, and he handled all of the reporters that were waiting outside the station and told them all that I was officially his son and that this was the least he could do for his friend, who bravely lost her life for her son. As soon as he said that, all the reporters started taking photos and asking more questions, but he smiled and said he needed to take his son back home."
"… He accepted you as his son really fast."
Ashes could tell that something felt off about the man as Gale continued to tell the story.
" I was too young and scared at the time to realize something felt off, and I just latched onto the closest sense of comfort, which was him. He took me back to his home and introduced me to his wife and his son, who was then only two years younger than me. They were very friendly to me and gave me gifts and food, and I soon felt safe and comfortable around them. After a few weeks, they took me to an event where dozens of reporters started photographing me with my new family. I wanted to leave, but the man carried me in his arms and told me to smile for the cameras. I didn't smile once; instead, I tried to crawl out of his arms to leave. He tried to stop me, and the reporters kept taking more photos of me struggling against him. We eventually left, but I could feel a different energy from him as we left and went back home. That's when he showed his real face."
"What do you mean?"
"When we got back home, I tried to apologize about what happened, but before I could, he slapped me. I still remember that day vividly. The look of rage on his face, the look of indifference on his wife's face, and the stinging pain on my face. He yelled at me and said why did I have to humiliate him like that. He then grabbed an umbrella from nearby and started to hit me and continued to yell at me, and all I could do was curl up in a ball, confused and scared."
"That's… that's horrible. Why would he do that?"
"He never really cared about me. The reason he adopted me was all about publicity and looking good in front of the public. He knew he would look good and gain more support for anything he did, so he showered me with food and gifts to earn my trust and make me look happy when reporters took pictures of us. I messed up that plan a little when I panicked and tried to escape his grasp when the reporters approached us, which led to the same reporters making articles questioning whether or not I was being treated properly, and that damaged his reputation a little."
"What happened after that?"
"He changed after that. He took back all the gifts that he gave me as a form of punishment, and I wasn't allowed to eat with the family and was given just enough not to starve, as the public would ask more questions if I was seen as nothing more than skin and bones. His wife wasn't much better, as she verbally abused me and usually referred to me as a waste of space and a disgusting little thing, and would constantly compare me to her own child. I was only allowed to eat well and was given a single set of new clothes when they needed to take me out for public events to project the image of a "perfect family" and boost public approval ratings. If I didn't smile well enough for the cameras or didn't answer the reporters' questions well enough, then that would decide how they treated me for a while. Whenever those cameras appeared, and those people would swarm me with questions, I had to do my best not to break and put on my best smile to prevent my new "family" from hurting me."
"Didn't anyone help you or say something?"
"There were quite a few people who worked around the house for him, but they mostly ignored me, and whenever I got yelled at or hit, they would pretend not to notice. They were probably afraid of losing their jobs if they said or did anything. It became the norm for me to get yelled at or completely ignored, and on the worst days, I would get hit for not improving his reputation. Eventually, even their son would learn from them, and he would continuously harass and hit me, and if I retaliated, then I would suffer the consequences. It didn't get much better as I got older."
"They still treated you the same when you were older?"
" It was more or less the same, and later on, the reporters and the public soon lost interest in me, and most of my value had gone away, but they couldn't just get rid of me, as that would cause a huge scandal, so they were stuck with me. I was eventually sent to school, but it was a struggle for me to get used to it, and I wasn't doing well in my classes, and my adoptive father would hit me for doing so poorly and said that I was tarnishing the reputation of his family. In response to that, I put all my effort into studying. It didn't matter how late it was or how long I studied; I just kept going for hours until I got nosebleeds. Regardless of whether I got good grades, they would always compare me to their son, who was a prodigy and never struggled in any of his classes, and was better than me in every way. I continued to study because I became scared of any punishment he would have waiting for me and it soon became a matter of survival for me."
"…. Did it ever stop?"
"…Yeah, it did."
Ashes listened, curious about how the abuse eventually came to an end.
"When I was twelve years old, the family decided to take a vacation to a resort, and I was left behind, which was no different than normal. I had decided to take the opportunity to study for a few hours, and about three hours into my session, one of the maids started pounding on my door. When I opened the door, the maid looked completely distraught, and when I asked her what had happened, she told me that my family had been killed in an accident."
"Oh, my Gods! How did it happen?"
"They were traveling on the road to the resort when, out of nowhere, a drunk driver driving on the opposite side of the road lost control of his vehicle and crashed into them, and the impact was so strong that it killed them instantly. When she told me that, I wasn't sure what to feel, and I was just stunned into silence. Eventually, the news of my family's death spread and the entire public grew into an uproar, and I was left feeling conflicted. During their funeral, all of my adoptive father's supporters started talking about who would get his fortune, and soon their talks turned into a full-blown argument as they wanted to get their greedy hands on all of the wealth and power he had accumulated."
"But you were technically his son, wouldn't everything go to you?"
"In his will, the majority of his wealth would go to his wife and his actual son, and I got nothing. The man was worth millions, and I was given 2000. After his shareholders gave me the money, they went back to arguing amongst themselves, and all the reporter's attention went to covering my family's death, and they all forgot about me."
"So what did you do?"
"… I was lost, and I felt numb. I did the only thing I felt I could do. I took the money they gave me and the little stuff I had, and I ran away."
"…You ran away?"
"Yeah. I didn't feel comfortable staying there anymore and…"
"And?"
" I realized what I meant to my adoptive father, and I didn't want to become that to anyone else. So I left and made my way through the world the best way I could. Using the money I had, I bought the supplies I needed and tried to earn money by taking on any odd job anyone offered, and slept wherever I could."
"That's how you lived your life?"
"I eventually managed to find a place to live, and the building owner didn't charge me much. I even had a job and was able to make friends. For a while it was all good until…."
"Until?"
"Something happened, I trusted someone carelessly, and they betrayed me by blaming me for something I didn't do, and through their betrayal, everything I had built up was ruined, and I never recovered from it."
Gale's voice began to tremble as he continued to talk.
"All of my friends hated me, I was fired from my job, and my landlord threw me out of my place. Things kept going downhill from there, and I never really recovered. I was barely able to find a place to live, but after that, I couldn't trust anyone, and I was too scared to go out. I became a recluse. I stayed in that place barely eating or taking care of myself, and eventually, one day, I closed my eyes, and I didn't wake up."
As he finished speaking, Gale could hear Ashes' sniffles coming from the other side of the door and heard Ashes speak.
"How old were you when you died?"
"I was eighteen"
Ashes stayed quiet after that with the occasional sniffle, and Gale broke the silence.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to throw that all on you."
Gale then turned to face the door and placed a hand on it.
"You were nothing but nice to me, and you deserved to hear the truth, and I am grateful to you. You are probably the first person since I came to this world that I've actually had enough trust in to tell about my life, and even back in my old world. If you want to stay in there for a little longer, or even if you don't want to talk to me again, I understand. Thank you for listening to me; it means more to me than you could possibly imagine."
Ashes stayed silent for a while, and Gale didn't hear any sounds coming from the other side and got up to give Ashes her space until she spoke.
"Gale?"
"Yes?"
"Can I tell you something?"
"Of course, anything."
"The truth is… you're the first person to ever trust me with anything, and you're also the first person who's cared about me this much."
Gale was a little stunned to hear this, then continued listening as Ashes' voice began to tremble and her sniffles grew louder.
"I'm scared. I'm scared to tell you everything because I don't want you to think less of me. You're the first person I ever wanted to trust so much, and I'm afraid you'll leave once you hear it."
Gale placed both hands on the door and spoke.
"You shouldn't feel scared to tell me anything, and you shouldn't feel forced to say anything that you don't want to say, but…"
Gale pressed his forehead against the door.
"I won't leave. Whatever you have to say, you can tell me whenever you want. Whether it's tomorrow, next week, or even a year from now, I can wait. I promise."
"…Gale? Can I open the door?"
Gale quickly stepped away from the door. "Of course."
Ashes unlocks the closet door on her side and slowly opens it. As Gale looks at the small girl with puffy red eyes, he notices the small room behind her. It wasn't a closet at all. In the corner, there was a small mattress with an old pillow and a pathetic excuse for a blanket, with what looked like a small pile of old servants' clothes in the corner that could fit a child.
"The truth is… this is my room."