Chapter Text
The stone path under her small feet was uneven. Beatrice advanced with a silent tranquility that didn't seem disturbed even by the strange situation that was turning her world upside down. Beside her, casting an elongated shadow in the fading light, walked a taller figure. A young man, with strange eyes and black hair with white roots. His name she did not know, or at least did not remember, as this was a void in Beatrice's mind, a page torn from a book she didn't remember losing. In the private sanctuary of her thoughts, he was simply "the stranger with the peculiar eyes." His irises, a deep, earthy brown, possessed pupils that contracted with an almost predatory sharpness, like a vestige of latent intensity in a face otherwise ravaged by exhaustion and a suffering that seemed etched into his very bone structure. They were heading, step by step, towards the carriage that awaited them, a functional courtesy from the Sword Saint, destined to return them to the relative safety (or perhaps, the growing uncertainty) of Roswaal Mansion.
A detail, sharp and discordant, ripped through the heavy silence that had woven between them since they left the cold opulence of the Astrea mansion. It was the stranger's way of walking. A marked limp, almost a physical wince of pain with every step he took with his right leg. Beatrice frowned, a minimal gesture that caused her twin pigtails to bounce slightly. The almost absurd movement irritated her.
—Hey, you —she snapped, her voice, sharp and cutting, directed at the stranger— Why do you insist on walking in such a pitiful manner, in fact? Betty meticulously made sure to heal all your wounds before leaving. There should be no reason for you to drag your leg like an invalid, I suppose.
The stranger stopped dead in his tracks, the abrupt movement seemed to cost him visible effort. He turned his head towards her, and an attempt at a smile pulled at the corners of his cracked lips. It was a failure. The curve did not reach his eyes; it remained like an empty mask, with the ghost of a warmth that perhaps once inhabited him. Beatrice sharpened her gaze, noticing the deep and desolate sadness that hid beneath that battered facade that blatantly tried to deceive her.
—Ah... that —he murmured in his raspy voice, as if his vocal cords were coated in dust or damaged from shouting so much. He scratched the back of his neck, a nervous tic that seemed strangely youthful on his gaunt figure. —It's... habit, I suppose. —He paused, his one visible eye falling to the uneven ground, as if searching for the right words among the stones. —Where... where I was before —he continued, with a hesitation laden with doubt, seeming as if he questioned telling her something— there wasn't much space. But at least I tried to walk a little... you know. In the cell. To not go completely crazy. —His gaze got lost for an instant, traveling to a place Beatrice had no access to, but whose icy shadow she felt brush against her. —The chains... —His voice faded for a moment, before continuing with a nuance of bitter resignation. —...well, they didn't help much. —He vaguely gestured to his neck and wrists. Beatrice then remembered, with an uncomfortable clarity, having noticed the scars. Faint, almost imperceptible against the sickly paleness of his skin, but unmistakably present: pale lines that spoke of shackles, of cold metal biting into flesh, like a permanent reminder of a restraint that no longer physically existed, but whose memory still bound him. —And my legs... they were pretty bad. Really bad. I could only crawl, or limp like this. I suppose the body... just got used to it. —He concluded with an almost imperceptible shrug, the empty smile still plastered on his face like a poorly applied sticker.
Beatrice offered no response. The explanation, delivered with chilling naturalness, painted such a grim image in her mind, so laden with misery, that she felt a sharp, unfamiliar pang in her chest. It wasn't pity, or at least not the condescending pity she sometimes felt for clumsy humans. It was something deeper, a visceral confusion, the nauseating feeling that the very fabric of the world was fundamentally damaged, and this stranger was an open wound, a walking symptom of that cosmic illness.
Without further words, they both boarded the carriage. The interior was elegant and functional. They sat facing each other with an obvious distance. With a soft rattle, the vehicle set off, and with it the silence returned, enveloping them; the unknown man huddled in his seat and looked sadly out the carriage window, while Beatrice simply stared at her lap as her mind began to scheme. She was immersed in the whirlwind of confusion that had besieged her for weeks, perhaps months. A persistent sense of anguish that gnawed at her, like a missing piece that haunted her like a shadow. Something fundamental didn't fit into the narrative of her current existence. She remembered, or believed she firmly remembered, her four hundred years as a solitary guardian, waiting for "That Person." She remembered the ravenous flames devouring the old Roswaal mansion, the purifying inferno that had finally compelled her to make a decision for herself, to choose life over eternal waiting. She remembered emerging from the smoking ruins of the library and forming a contract with Emilia, the young woman with silver hair and amethyst eyes for whom she felt genuine, but... peculiar affection.
Those were the facts, as her mind presented them. But those same memories felt strange, almost unreal, as if something had changed the narrative of her life or didn't quite align with it. It was like reading a book from which a vital chapter had been torn. When she tried to concentrate on the details of her contract, on the magical connection that bound her to her supposed contractor, Emilia, everything became blurred, confused. It was an indistinct smudge where there should have been clarity, a void where she should feel the resonance of the bond.
Worse still, her memories sometimes subtly clashed with Emilia's or those of others in the mansion. Small discrepancies, details that didn't fit, conversations that seemed to float without a contextual anchor. At first, Beatrice had tried to ignore it, attributing it to the stress she had experienced in Priestella with the Archbishops' attack. "Betty was just tired," she told herself. But the feeling didn't disappear; on the contrary, it grew, becoming an uncomfortable thorn stuck in her consciousness.
The turning point came on an ordinary day. She was in one of the kitchen chairs in the mansion, trying to read a book that had been given to her (Who could it have been? She couldn't remember), when a wave of sharp pain and despair struck her through her contractual connection. It was so intense, so visceral, that it left her breathless, her heart pounding wildly. It was pain from someone else, but she felt it as her own, an anguish so profound that it threatened to drown her. Her first instinct was to run to Emilia. If her contractor was suffering so much, she had to help her.
But when Betty arrived, disheveled and very frightened, she found the half-elf in the study, calm, reviewing documents related to the royal selection, with a steaming cup of tea beside her. There was no trace of pain on her face, no sign of the agony Beatrice had felt moments before. Beatrice's confusion turned into an icy anguish. What was happening? Was she going crazy?
That night, and the following days, she tried harder than ever to unravel the mystery of her contract. She concentrated with all her will, trying to follow the thread of mana, to feel the fundamental connection. And then, the terrifying truth became apparent: the blur wasn't simple confusion. The contract she felt vibrating with that alien anguish, the contract that defined her current existence, did not connect her to Emilia. There was another bond, a real and pulsating one, obscured, hidden behind a kind of magical interference she couldn't break through. Every attempt to follow that invisible thread left her frustrated, exhausted, and more frightened than ever. Who, then, was her true contractor? And where were they?
The answer, or at least the beginning of one, came unexpectedly some time later. A formal invitation from the Sword Saint, Reinhard van Astrea, arrived at Emilia's faction. He requested their presence in the capital to discuss an urgent matter. Emilia, always diligent and aware of her duties and alliances, immediately accepted. She decided to bring Ram, Otto, and Garfiel with her. Beatrice had no intention of going. The recent confusion of her contract, accompanied by the constant waves of pain she felt, left her no room to waste time with meetings. However, Emilia insisted. "It will be good for you to get out a bit, Beako," she had said with her usual gentleness. "Besides, I would feel safer with you nearby." Reluctantly, and more out of annoyance than anything else, Beatrice agreed.
Upon arriving at the imposing Astrea mansion in the capital, the atmosphere was tense. Reinhard himself greeted them at the door, and although his kind smile was present, his blue eyes lacked their usual sparkle. There was a shadow of genuine concern on his perfect features, something that visibly disturbed the kingdom's strongest knight. He led them into the main hall, a spacious and luxurious area.
And that's when they saw him.
In a corner of the room, away from the light of the windows, a figure was huddled on the floor. It was wrapped in a ragged and dirty blanket, stained with what looked like ominous splatters of dried blood. It was such an incongruous sight in the neat environment of the Astrea mansion that it immediately drew everyone's attention.
Beatrice felt Reinhard begin to speak, his voice low and serious, explaining the situation. He spoke of how they had found this unknown person in the capital's cells, accused of being a Witch Cultist due to the overwhelming Witch's miasma that emanated from him. He mentioned that the stranger, despite his state, claimed to know Emilia, even to have been her knight. That he claimed innocence, saying he had been unjustly accused.
The group's reactions to this revelation were predictable. Emilia gasped, her violet eyes filling with concern and confusion. Garfiel growled, not believing the talk despite it being the very Sword Saint who believed this witch-smelling stranger. Otto merely frowned, analyzing the situation, while Ram maintained her stoic expression, though her pink eyes narrowed slightly as she assessed the unknown man.
But Beatrice barely registered their reactions. She turned a deaf ear to Reinhard's words, to Emilia's choked exclamations, to Garfiel's growls, and to Otto and Ram's inquisitive murmurs. All her attention was fixed on the motionless figure in the corner. Something about it, an invisible and powerful force, drew her towards that bundle of misery. She saw the figure begin to move slowly, a slight tremor running through the blanket.
Ignoring the stares of the others, Beatrice began to walk towards the corner. Her small steps echoed slightly in the tense silence of the room. The group fell silent, observing the scene with some curiosity.
When Beatrice was close enough, the figure wrapped in the blanket raised its head. The face that emerged from the shadows was revealed as a mask of suffering. One eye was completely closed, swollen and surrounded by a horrendous bruise that mixed purple, yellow, and red tones. The socket of the other eye, the only visible one, was irritated and reddish, probably from days of crying or lack of sleep, something made evident by the deep dark circles that shadowed it. His cheekbones were sunken, giving him a cadaverous appearance. He was missing several teeth, leaving dark gaps where a smile should have been. His black, unruly hair was matted and dirty, and Beatrice noticed with horror that the roots were beginning to turn a premature white, as if it were a testament to the extreme stress he had endured. A thin thread of dried blood stained his upper lip, coming from his nose, which seemed to have bled recently; Beatrice felt a shiver run through her, not wanting to imagine the state of the rest of his body under the blanket.
But it was the eyes. Or rather, the visible eye that finally bewildered her. When that single open eye, bloodshot and filled with abysmal fatigue, rested on her, something changed. The hopelessness that clouded it seemed to waver, replaced by a trembling incredulity, and then, by a heartbreaking recognition. Slowly, that eye began to fill with tears. Thick, salty drops that slid uncontrollably down his pale, dirty cheeks.
And in that precise instant, Beatrice felt the connection. The same wave of raw emotion that had hit her some time ago, but this time amplified, resonating with the vision of the broken man in front of her. It was the stranger's anguish, his pain, his despair, flowing directly to her through the blur in her contract, now vibrating with unmistakable clarity.
The shock hit her with the force of a physical blow. The blur. The interference. The feeling that something was missing. Everything fell into place with a devastating certainty.
That unknown person. That stranger covered by the Witch's miasma. That young man with so many physical and surely emotional wounds he couldn't even begin to count.
That unknown person was her true contractor.
The young man's crying intensified, turning into choked sobs that shook his fragile body. And Beatrice, overcoming the initial shock, could only do one thing. Slowly, she raised her small hand and gently placed it on the stranger's head, on his dirty and prematurely graying hair. He flinched at the contact, but did not pull away. He just continued crying, a desolate sound that filled the silence of the opulent room, while the small hand of the spirit who had forgotten remained on him, like an unexpected anchor in his storm of suffering.
As the carriage moved, the vivid memory of the Astrea mansion and the crying face of the unknown man slowly dissipated, bringing Beatrice back to the present. The constant rattling on the road had ceased, and that was a sign they had arrived. Outside, beyond the small window, stood the familiar silhouette of the new Roswaal Mansion. Her home. Or at least, the place she had come to consider as such at some point in her existence. But now, returning felt different, weighted with the revelation and the presence of the young man sitting across from her.
The carriage door opened from the outside, revealing the youthful face of one of the mansion's servants, Petra, the girl just as she had arrived, she said goodbye to continue with her duties, not without first giving a confused look at the new face. The fresh evening air entered, carrying with it the familiar scent of the gardens and old wood. The stranger with the peculiar eyes moved first, descending with that limp Beatrice now understood a little better, though it still irritated her. She followed him, nimbly hopping down the steps to the ground.
They found themselves standing on the gravel path leading to the main entrance. The sun was beginning to set, painting the sky in orange and purple hues. For a moment, the stranger remained motionless, simply gazing at the mansion with an inscrutable expression on his gaunt face. Had he been here before? Beatrice couldn't remember, and the very idea of not being able to trust her own memories was a constant source of frustration.
Then, he turned towards her. There was a hesitation in his movement, a kind of timid hope in his one visible eye. Slowly, as if fearing rejection (and he probably did, given his recent experience), he extended his hand towards her. He said nothing, but the intention was clear: a simple gesture of connection, perhaps seeking the same closeness they had briefly shared at Reinhard's mansion, when she had placed her hand on his head.
Beatrice reacted instinctively. She pulled her hand away with a sharp movement, almost as if his burned.
—Hmph! What do you think you're doing, I suppose? —she snapped, crossing her arms and looking at him with a frown. Her pigtails swayed with feigned indignation. —Betty doesn't remember giving you permission for such familiarity, in fact. Don't get ahead of yourself just because I healed a few of your wounds.
The already fragile hope on the stranger's face visibly withered. His hand fell to his side, limp. A shadow of deep sadness crossed his gaze, and he lowered his head, avoiding eye contact. —I-I'm sorry... —he murmured, his voice barely a whisper. —I didn't mean to... I'm sorry.
The instant she saw that beaten-dog expression and heard that apology filled with a painful resignation, Beatrice felt a sharp pang through her contract. It was his anguish, clear and piercing, resonating directly in her core. It annoyed her. It annoyed her how easily he seemed to accept rejection, how quickly his spirits plummeted. It annoyed her to feel his pain so vividly. And, though she wouldn't admit it aloud, it annoyed her that she had been the cause of it.
With an exasperated huff, breaking her defensive posture, Beatrice stepped forward and, before the stranger could react, grabbed his hand. His was cold and slightly rough, with calluses adorned with scars.
—Don't make that scolded-dog face, it's annoying, I suppose! —she said, her tone still harsh, but her action contradicted her words. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, noticing how he abruptly raised his head, surprised. —And don't get used to this, understand? Betty is only doing this because... because it irritates me to see you like that, in fact.
The stranger's eyes widened a little more. And again, as had happened at the Astrea mansion, a moist sheen appeared in them. Tears threatened to spill again, although this time they seemed to stem more from surprise and a hint of relief than from pure despair. He said nothing, simply looked at her, his one visible pupil trembling slightly.
Beatrice felt a slight blush rise to her cheeks at that direct and vulnerable gaze. She averted her eyes towards the imposing mansion door; Emilia and the others would probably arrive soon in the other carriage, it shouldn't matter to them then that this unknown person and she waited inside the mansion in the meantime. Without saying anything else, she gave the hand she held a brief but firm squeeze, a minimal gesture of... acceptance? Recognition? She wasn't even sure herself.
—Let's go —she ordered, beginning to walk towards the entrance, gently pulling him to follow her.
He followed without resistance, his limp still present but perhaps a little less pronounced now that he wasn't alone in his misery. They walked the last few meters in silence, the small hand of the spirit clinging to that of the battered stranger.
They would have much to talk about when the others arrived, but for now, Beatrice could feel a strange calm at having finally found the piece she was missing.