There is blood on his hair, on his face, and underneath his boots. A corpse of a man is lying dead at his feet, and Noël mourns. He mourns not for the man who had caused him so much trouble. Nor does he cry for the man who murdered so many children and snuffed out countless lives all for the sake of his twisted ‘love.’

He does not cry for the man who claimed to have once known his Aunt.

He…cannot cry.

But, Noël cannot help but think of the what-ifs and maybes. If Emerett had lived for but a few mere seconds, could he have found the answers he seeked?

How did his Aunt die? What had become of her? Where was she buried?

Countless questions ran through his head, but he could not ask a single one. Whatever words were on his tongue were washed away in the torrents of lost time. Their answers would forever rot in the dirt…buried underneath earthworms and entombed in a crypt of granite.

Afterall, the man died underneath gunfire. And the perpetrator was none other than a peculiar stranger of a mere seventeen or eighteen years who had pointed his gun and fired at the shop keeper.

“Are you alright?” the stranger asked him in a concerned tone. His voice was similar to that of parchment—it was crisp and pleasant, but underlying it was a meek expression plastered onto his face.

Noël does not see him.

He only sees crimson blood slowly dripping down his shaking hands, a deceased girl not much older than himself—

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Aunt Delia, who he knew he’d never see again.

“Maybe I should bring you to a doctor,” the stranger mumbles. He smells of gun smoke and death.

Only at this does Noël acknowledge him.

“Oh good, you can hear me. I thought your ears were damaged in all that commotion.” He awkwardly laughs, but his expression is pained. “You know, considering…gun. I should probably put this away. Sorry I had to uh, shoot him when you were right there, but, you’re safe now.”

His rambles stuttered to a halt. Noël raised an eyebrow at him.

The stranger, Noël cannot help but note, is…rather odd. He’s quite handsome and the type certain girls would fawn over, but there is something suspicious about the man. His voice is light and airy, and there is nothing outright unpleasant about his demeanor, but…no sane person could shoot another and laugh it off, albeit quite awkwardly.

And that’s not getting into the fact of how he could almost see ‘death’ following the stranger, and not a single bony step out of place.

“Er, can you talk?” the stranger asked while he waved a gloved hand over Noël’s face. He looked at him in concern with one eye since a thick bandage was covering his right. His eye is a bright golden hue…while it is incredibly uncommon [Noël is not entirely sure if he ever met anyone with eyes as blindingly gold as this hunter’s], he feels a sense of déjà vu. He never met this man before, but there was something…recognizable about him.

He was as familiar as Annabelle, but, it was a lonely and awful thought to have.

Dark brown hair fell over his bandaged eye, and nestled atop his head was a pair of leather goggles. The glass embedded in the man’s headwear was as yellow as his one eye, but heavily chipped and fractured in other places. His neck was also covered in bandages, but Noël suspected there was more to it than he could tell at first glance. A maroon scarf was wrapped around his shoulders, while a gloved hand was anxiously fiddling with his tie.

Overall, his attire gave him the appearance of a well-versed traveler or bard.

Had Noël not seen him kill a man or detected the peculiar aura of death trailing behind the stranger, he would have thought of him as nothing more than a random teenager.

But, he hadn’t detected anything outright malicious about him, unlike the shop keeper.

He seemed almost princely, but it was clear the stranger was not royalty.

If anything, this peculiar man was something even more special.

“A hero.”

“What’d you say?” the stranger politely asked Noël. He was careful to not step onto the steadily growing pool of blood.

“A hero.” Noël pointed at the stranger, expression emotionless and face deadpan. “You’re a hero, aren’t you?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call myself a hero—” the man awkwardly laughed as he pulled at his scarf. “Anyone else would have done the same thing in my shoes.”

“Nuh-uh,” Noël says in an impetulant manner. He stomped his feet childishly, thus proving his point in a roundabout way. “You’re just like those knights I’ve read about in my books! You’re a hero!”