"I see... Though it wasn’t how I pictured it, this is where it really ends for me," Schlain simply said.

Schlain didn’t react the way one would be expected to react to the announcement of his upcoming funeste fate.

"I’m sorry, Mr. Schlain." The boy next to me repeated, "I really..."

"It’s nothing, boy. There is nothing to feel sorry for. I should’ve seen it coming," he said, with an expression sometimes serene and sometimes bitter.

It was some time after I had parted ways with Maa that I received a letter from her that gave a rendezvous place where we could talk privately.

We rendez-vous-ed and she explained to me the nature of the problem she had been recently facing within the aristocracy.

As meager as my leadership skills were, I understood that leading an organization the size of the aristocracy while simultaneously waging a war against the church was not an easy task. When interests don’t align, conflicts are bound to occur. It was such a thing that happened within the aristocracy that Maa was leading, and it was then, to avoid things getting more complicated and mingled than they already were, that such an uncompromising decision had to be, and was, taken.

With Durant Sunnivah's fortunate yet unfortunate interest in the person of Schlain, an Archbishop whom I would eventually end up hounding after and one who has been throwing up roadblocks at the aristocracy for some time already, I rather naturally got entangled in this fight, and it was ultimately decided that it was my responsibility to end this three-decade-long vindictive war between Schlain and Archbishop Durant Sunnivah.

Though she was the one to mention this affair to me, I knew that Maa didn’t want me to take over this task, but with the proximity she held toward these brothers and the involvement of the Archbishop, there was no better fit person than myself for that task. I knew that even though she was inflicting this punishment on them, she cared deeply about these two brothers, regardless of how hazy some details of their overall relationship were to me.

With all she had accomplished during my absence, it was clear that she must have met with many hardships. If accomplishing this task could help, even if it was a very small amount, I would gladly do it.

Having thought that I had given the boy and Schlain plenty of time for their farewell, I stepped forward toward Schlain, walked past Aryan, but before I could take any supplementary steps, I was reached on the shoulder by the boy, Aryan.

Glancing back at him, I saw him, his eyes bloodshot, mumbling, "... I... I can't..."

Then he did it.

He tried it, but he failed.

Looking at me with a surprised and incredulous expression, he asked, "How?!", shocked to see that his teleportation didn’t work.

I hadn’t even been given the opportunity to say anything that Shlain took speech.

"That’s enough, boy… You’re making me feel more miserable than I already am." Schlain laughed self-deprecatingly.

"But I..."

"I know... I know, but still, I think it’s time for you to take your leave and for us to say goodbye. "

After a moment, Aryan, who had been silent for a moment, biting his lips to the blood, muttered, "Goodbye Mr. Schlain."

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"Goodbye, Aryan,... Take good care of the little Missie for me, right?"

"I will, Mister Schlain."

With these words, the two of them exchanged heavy nods in front of Aryan, successfully teleporting away this time.

With him gone, my focus went back to the man in front of me, who I immediately approached.

"Can I, at least, have the honor to know who it will be?" Schlain asked.

"It’s Ronandt, or An, or The Faceless One."

"That’s many names for a single person…"

" I go by many names, it’s all up to you which one it will be."

"I think I’ll settle with the Faceless One. It sounds like one of the stupid names given by the Church."

"Which it is."

"They sound weird at first, but in the end, we get used to them."

"I admit, yeah." I said as I went to take a seat next to him.

I reached out my hand to him and performed the closest thing I had to healing magic on him. It wouldn’t heal him, but it would at least make the pain bearable.

He looked at me with a surprised expression, and then simply brushed it off, "I think I’ve heard of your name," pointing his chin at the Archbishop's corpse, asking, "You, just like me, had something ongoing with that bastard, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did. But not with him alone. The Fourteen of them."

Harboring a face of realization, he asked, "I... I see... How old were you when it happened? "

"I was nine when it happened," I confessed.

It was silent at first, before, amidst that silence, laughter exploded.

It took him a while to calm down, and it was only then that I asked, "What is so funny?"

"You wouldn’t understand."

"Yes, but at least if you tell me, I can try."

He looked from the corner of the eye with an indecipherable expression before confessing, "Well, Faceless One, you see that bastard over there? He spent thirty years of his life chasing after me and my brothers because we had, supposedly, killed his wife and his son, who I believed used to be as old as you were when he and his comrade came after you. "

"Isn’t that the truth?"

"It is... But what is the truth but a common and accepted fact? I remorselessly killed his wife and his son. That was the truth for him. But the thing is that before I became the bastard that I currently am, I had a minimum left of conscience to not do the latter. I didn't kill his son; she did."

"She killed her… own son?"

Once again, he burst into laughter.

"Was it love? Was it mercy or was it something else? Who knows? But I, as far as it is and as hard as it is to remember, wouldn’t have ever killed a child or made one go through what I went through. " He said, closing his eyes contemplatively as if to remember how he really was.

"Revenge was for me to simply kill her, but she chose death for her son over the thought that I would make her son go through the same thing that I did. It made me realize that she, more than anyone else I’ve extracted retribution from before, finally acknowledged the wrong her family did to me.

He looked at his only remaining hand and then revealed, "That day, as weird as it was, I honestly thought I finally found peace and justice in this long quest for revenge. I was wrong. There is simply no peace in revenge; it’s a circle that goes on and on forever. A food that does not satiate, water that does not quench thirst. "

"Kill them all, Faceless One. Take your revenge. You will make the world a better place, but expect nothing else for yourself but more and more revenge. Mathilda and David understood that better than I did. ‘I must–"

"be better than this’ was it?" I said, continuing what I heard from Maa herself.

He nodded, "Indeed."

Feeling that our little talk was nearing its end, I stood up.

"Well, I believe it should be time for us to bid each other farewell, isn’t it?" He himself proposed.

I silently nodded.

"Then you know what you have to do. But can I forward a request? "

"What is it?"

"When it is done, when I'm gone, can you take me to them, to my brothers? I wouldn’t like to end up in the same place as that bastard over there, if you know what I mean. "

"Understood."

"Well, I suppose this is a farewell then, Ronandt."

"Farewell, Shlain. May you three brothers reunite again somewhere as it is meant to be."

Schlain simply mustered with his face the closest thing he could have to a smile.