“The Anbieter also asked to me to tell you that you’re being given a mandatory dismissal from duty effective immediately until tomorrow noon.” Meinrad said, his voice fading as he ran further away back to the town centre. “Don’t go running off where you’re not supposed to again and make more work for me!”

“Why are you here alone?” Stefan asked Anwen, who sat a yard from him. “Where’s Gareth? Is he okay? And where’s the sniper who was with you guys?” he asked, looking into the eyes of his friend who he had not seen in ages.

“I ran off from them after I saw what happened to the town. They’re probably talking to Jay and the Anbieter now. A lot of shit went down when we were gone, didn’t it?” Anwen asked.

Stefan’s gaze tore from Anwen, and his head hung forward, conveying his sorrow in a way words could not. With such a dejected gesture, it was easy to conclude that he had seen too much to be expressed through the mouth.

“I’m-- I shouldn’t have said that,” Anwen said, smacking her forehead with her palm in embarrassment. “Silly me, never knowing the right time to speak. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be,” Stefan said. “You saw what the town looks like, but you haven’t really seen what’s happened. It’s only natural to ask something like that.”

Anwen reached her arm out to Stefan and touched his shoulder. After seeing him flinch, she quickly withdrew it.

He saw things he shouldn’t have to.

“I can leave you alone if you want,” Anwen offered. “I’ll look for Gareth in the meantime.”

“You can stay,” Stefan interjected. “It’s fine. I just needed to sit down for a bit, that’s all.”

Stefan rested his elbows on his shoulders, laying his forehead on his forearms. Anwen tried her best not to observe his subtly shrouded delicate state and instead redirected her focus on the sights and sounds around her. The white façade of the Bernard family house and clinic was separated from her by the 30-foot-long garden. She felt around on the ground and the coarse bark of a stick, which had come from a tree that whose branches hung high over the wall that separated the Bernard garden from the shore of Lake Marius, found itself in between her fingers. The oak twig and the tree it had come from was especially common around Marius, but hardly found anywhere else in the vast, sprawling north of Yeupis. This was a legacy of the time where northerners and southerners were not divided by the artificial mountain range that cut off the southern third of the continent from the rest. She used the stick to draw lines in the ground in an attempt to calm her anxious mind, her concern over the state of the only town she had any real link to far from being satisfied.

Even the mightiest giants start falling apart at some point.

“Hey, Anwen,” Stefan said abruptly, causing Anwen to drop her stick. “You know what sucks?”

“Huh?” she asked, scrambling to pick up the stick.

“Even after all this… I still don’t know a damn thing about what happened to my family. I’m not even close.”

Anwen turned to look at her companion, whose gaze remained planted on the ground in front of his feet.

“I can’t imagine what that’s like,” Anwen said, and she wasn’t lying either. “But you don’t deserve to not know. No one deserves that.”

“You think Gareth knows? I mean, he had to have seen something by the time he came across me in Derban.”

“There’s no way he doesn’t know,” Anwen said. “He knows things that I don’t know, things I should know.”

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“Like?”

An image of Hugo briefly appeared in her mind. The man might have manipulated his way into the hearts of innocent young women and used them, but as Gareth had said, that was only a half-truth. Had it all been lies made up, he wouldn’t have mentioned her father’s full name, or the fact that she had been bleeding out like he told her she had. Using the power of Concentrated Initiation, he’d dived deep into her mind, reeling out only what he wanted her to know, the rest he’d reveal gradually in an effort to tie her to him. She couldn’t fathom that it took a decade and the words of her would-be rapist to receive even the smallest bit of information regarding her past. She almost succumbed to wondering what would’ve happened if she had agreed to join Hugo just to get closure, but Stefan awaited her response.

“My own family,” Anwen said. “Where I came from… I appreciate Gareth and everything he’s done for me, but I have the right to know, don’t I? To know where I came from?”

“You know,” Stefan said. “Leon told me something about Gareth after you guys left.”

“Hmm?”

“He said that… he thinks that Gareth was running away from the Angels from the south when he crossed the mountains on that day.”

“R-Really?” Anwen said. She put her stick down and sprung up to her feet. Stefan already knew what she was about to happen.

Without a word, he lunged forward, wrapping his hand around her wrist tightly.

“Stefan…? Stefan, what are you doing? Let go of me, damn it! What do you think you’re doing?” she cried, trying to wrench her way out of his grasp, but Stefan didn’t have to try to keep her from walking any further.

“You can’t go inside that house. Now’s not the time!” Stefan cried.

I shouldn’t have said his name so soon.

“Why not? Can’t I just go to see how Leon’s doing? I haven’t seen him in so long, I’m sure he’s been worrying about Gareth and me!”

“We need to leave him alone for now!” Stefan struggled to convey.

“I just want him to know that I’m back. It’ll only take a few moments.” she said, trying to pull away from Stefan but he yanked her right back, almost causing a collision between her face and his chin.

“Anwen, can’t you see? Look at everything you saw on your way here, all the ruined houses, all the outside help coming into town… that’s what the Bernard’s have had to deal with. They need more time, try to understand!”

Anwen gazed into his eyes, which she noticed were not nearly as dark as when she had first met him, instead appearing more hazel. Stefan’s grip on her wrist loosened, but he still held it.

“Oh, I see,” Anwen said. “A lot of people must’ve been hurt really bad, so they’ve got to be working really hard on helping them!”

“It’s—” Stefan swallowed. “It’s not just that... all of that, it’s not even the biggest thing they’ve had to deal with…”

How do I tell her?

“You can say it, Stefan.” Anwen said.

She won’t be able to bear it if I just told her.

“Can… can we go for a walk?” Stefan asked.

Anwen pulled her arm back lightly and agreed. After climbing back over the garden wall, they made their way out to the main street.

Stefan slipped on his Black Shield mask, shrugging after Anwen asked why he put it on even though he was not on duty.

The smell of charred wood still filled the air, and piles of timber and stone tiles lined the streets. Many spots on the road were painted with splashes of blood, while walls of adjacent buildings were smeared with it like they were morbid murals. Holes created by laser guns riddled the buildings. Outside the church, dozens of wooden coffins lay stacked on top of each other. The closer the two got to their destination, the more Anwen noticed more and more civilians donning all-black outfits. Many held white and red roses, the sight of which was just enough to keep her from looking at their tear-streaked faces too much.

“Stefan… isn’t this the cemetery?” Anwen asked as she followed Stefan past a set of black metal gates. “Why are we here?”

“Keep walking.” he said softly. He turned toward a row of graves, families standing in front of very recently made ones, while lone grievers sat in front of others.

“Those poor people… they died that day, didn’t they?” Anwen asked.

“They did.” Stefan was heard saying just barely audibly, suppressing his misery as much as he could under his mask.

At the far end of the row, a single figure stood, their neck craned forward as their eyes were fixed on a gravestone. Stefan’s eyes were also set on that grave, and that was where he intended to take Anwen.

He’s here, Stefan thought as his pace slowed down. The timing’s horrible.

“Isn’t that Leon over there?” Anwen asked, squinting her eyes to accommodate for the decreasing light being emitted from the setting sun. “Yeah, that is him. Did you know he was going to be here?”

“N-No…” Stefan muttered.

It’ll be hard for him to notice me with my mask if I don’t say a word, but her? She’ll try to start a conversation with him as soon as she’s next to him. This is not the right time.

Anwen and Stefan were no less than 10 yards from the grave when Leon turned his head, noticing the two figures approaching him.