章節 33: Chapter 32: The Girl in the Fog (1)
Noah could never know the weight behind that maddened stare, but the baby blue eyes that once stared at him in wonderment and joy were replaced with grief and suffering.
In this mirror land of Amaranth enshrouded by fog, Noah was starting to get a clearer picture of what was happening. The growing clarity was not something he could stomach easily, let alone accept.
His hands balled into fists, his expression twisting as he stared at the girl before him.
The Holy Book spoke of Revelation as a sign of grace, that God was watching over you- giving you chance after chance, warning after warning to prevent a spiral into sin or avoid harm.
The angel said to David, the lord said to Joseph and Mary, the voice whispered in a dream…Revelation was truly God's grace.
If the future changes with each action, then Revelation can reveal the outcome of wrong choices and lacking faith.
Noah let out a shuddering breath, his expression hardening.
This place surrounded in fog and those that dwell within it, were another Revelation of a future Noah would prevent, but more than anything right now, he could not bear the fragility in the demeanor of the girl before him.
Noah raised an arm to shield his face as violent torrents of pressurized water cut holes through solid stone buildings around him. The flecks of blood rising through the air hardened into spikes aimed at his heart, and yet they did not descend.
For all the violence and outbursts, the girl in the fog was whimpering, unable to land a direct hit.
Magic required concentration, and the same was true of a Gemstone's magic.
The woman's mind was in utter disarray.
The spontaneity of events around the girl were more a reflection of her emotions than anything else. Her magic was just reacting to it.
The tears trickling down her eyes, the quivering of her lips, the shortened breaths, all of it was captured in Noah's view.
He did not draw his sword.
He couldn't.
"...Leah?" Noah called the name out in disbelief, watching as the expression behind the girl's mask cracked and shattered into pieces.
Blood dripped down Noah's cheek as he stepped forward and an errant spout of water had grazed his skin.
His pupils dilated, the expression on the masked Leah's face changing as illusions could not bleed. As a sovereign of blood and water, the masked Leah would never be able to miss the difference between a fake and a genuine person.
This meant to say that she was not hallucinating in her addled and sordid mind.
Noah pressed forward, taking another step then two.
The masked Leah took a step back in tandem, swallowing audibly as the rage of her demeanor shifted into terrified confusion.
Upon closer inspection, Noah's complexion drastically coloured. His temples throbbed, and veins popped over his skin, but he did his best to maintain a soft expression.
The fierceness of the water and blood swirling chaotically in the air around the masked Leah gradually began to fall apart, falling back down to the ground and forming puddles at Noah's approach. The undirected lethality they had displayed earlier was lost all at once as Noah carefully stopped a few feet away from the masked Leah.
"Hey?" Noah tried to keep his voice from breaking, but there was a hardness in his tone.
The masked Leah's scarred wrists and ankles spoke of a story. The way she flinched when he subconsciously tried to reach out and comfort her was unbearable in contrast to the Leah he knew.
Noah retracted his hand, respecting the masked Leah's personal space.
"It's alright. It will be fine," Noah coaxed with gentle patience.
The masked Leah was openly staring at him, shoulders shaking. She was crying. Crying so hard that Noah didn't know if he could bear it.
But Noah pretended as if he didn't notice. Not for his sake, but for Leah's.
"Where is John?" Noah asked.
"..." The masked Leah pursed her lips, biting down on them so hard that she drew blood.
"...I see," Noah felt his stomach sink.
He didn't know how far into a potential future this revelation was showing, but from the masked Leah's stature, she'd already grown up into her teens. Age wise, they might only be a year or two apart.
"What happened to me?" Noah broached another question.
He would have never let this happen if he was alive.
Then that could only mean that he was dead.
For Noah's sake, he needed to know in order to prevent it, but the masked Leah appeared even more unwilling to speak. Instead, she kept staring at Noah longer and longer. She shivered as if re-living terrible memories.
Noah changed the direction of his questioning.
"What happened to you?"
Time had not been easy for the masked Leah, and Noah wanted to know why and who to fucking ki-
Noah took in a breath, shaking his head. That wasn't the focus right now.
"Leah?"
The masked Leah still wasn't answering, as if content to just stare and cry.
Shaking his head, Noah resorted to another approach, staring at the bakery where he, John, and Leah used to hide and eat expired bread in secret from the owner.
He moved away from Leah and walked towards the entrance of the bakery. There was a small crawl space obscured by poor building design that Noah could still barely fit into. He crawled in, reached the other side, and then stared back to see if the masked Leah was following him.
She was, but at a snail's pace and in utter silence.
It didn't matter. So long as she was following.
Finding the spot Noah often sat at, he took a seat and waited for the masked Leah to enter the room before he gestured for her to sit in her spot.
The masked Leah's pupils dilated, the confusion, suspicion, and reluctance in her gaze growing tumultuous as Noah accurately pinpointed the place Leah used to sit in her childhood. It wasn't information a body double, or someone under the guise of magic to alter the body could know.
Noah gestured for the masked Leah to sit again, but she grew skittish, not knowing what to believe anymore.
In the end, Noah patiently waited until the masked Leah inched closer and closer, and then sat next to him, legs pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around her knees.
Wordlessly, Noah rummaged through his belongings to see if he still had any bread from the Everbright estate on him. He'd brought it along as emergency rations, but he didn't know if they'd be here in this revelation. He figured that if his sword and armor were on his person in this vision, then the items he'd brought along would be too.
Finally finding a loaf of premium buttered bread, Noah broke the bread into two halves and silently offered a piece to the masked Leah. It was the bigger of the two pieces, but her expression shook before she took the smaller of the two halves.
For the glutton Leah, it was jarring.
Staring at the bread in her hands, rather than eat it, the masked Leah hugged it close and sobbed as if cherishing old memories.
This time, Noah managed to wrap an arm around her in the silence, the physical contact exposing the scars buried within her.
"N-Noah?" the voice came out croaked, desperate and dry.
Noah hugged her tighter, the masked Leah's hands clutching onto him as lost warmth held her close once more.
"N-Noah! Noah! N-Noah-hic-hic-N-Nooaahh!"
Noah's jaw clenched, eyes misting over from emotion.
He wanted answers.
He needed them, and yet all he did was let the masked Leah cry herself to exhaustion until she fell asleep.
It gave Noah time to think.
Time to stew.
The visions had come in correlation to Noah contacting Old Margaret's wooden mask. In which case, this future circumstance revolved around the Witch.
Noah did not know how, or why, but did it really matter?
With bloodshot eyes, Noah focused on the crux of the matter.
Before personal gain, before retribution, before even Amaranth and the risk of it being overrun by the black fog,
When he got back, he would never let Old Margaret live to see the light of another day.
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