The Anomaly's Path

"Well... ah... oops? Sorry?" Roan offered, taking a slow step back.

Elisabeth didn’t say a word. She simply stared at him, her deep violet eyes so cold and devoid of life that an actual shiver ran down Roan’s spine. The air around her grew heavy with suffocating killing intent.

If they weren’t in the middle of a disaster zone, she would have killed him right here just to teach him a lesson.

Roan coughed awkwardly, raising his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay, my bad! Truly! It was a complete accident!"

The Student Council President had put the two of them together as a team because of their high rank. Alice, Riven, and Roan’s sister Lyssaria were sent to the eastern side. Elisabeth hated working with someone as lazy and careless as Roan, but she had no choice.

They had been moving together for the past twenty minutes, and every second felt like a test of her patience. While she was constantly checking the fog for hidden threats, Roan was practically taking a walk, humming random tunes and fighting beasts like he was picking fruit.

Elisabeth took out a clean white cloth, slowly wiping the dark blood from her face with precise movements. Her jaw stayed tight, catching every drop of foul liquid before she tossed the cloth to the ground.

She put her sword away with a sharp click and asked, "...Where are we heading next?"

"Toward the outer area of Sealed Valley," Roan replied, turning to walk down the path as he quickly put some distance between them. "That’s where the mana is strong. We’ll find more monsters there."

He paused, glancing back at her with his usual smirk returning. "Besides, we’ll probably run into Leo there. Maybe Arthur too."

Elisabeth frowned slightly. "How can you be so sure?"

"Because I know him," Roan said, folding his hands behind his head as he walked through the purple haze. "Leo looks calm, but that guy is reckless as hell when things get messy. He’ll go straight for the center."

Elisabeth watched his relaxed back as she walked a few paces behind. "...You seem strangely close to him and Alice. You’ve only been at this academy for two months, yet you act like lifelong companions."

Roan let out a soft laugh. "Well, mostly because neither of them could resist my undeniable charm, obviously."

"I don’t know you were also delusional," Elisabeth said, her voice flat.

"Tch, Princess. You really know how to ruin the mood," Roan sighed, his tone softening a bit.

"Honestly? I didn’t expect to become friends with them either. When I first met Leo, I thought he was just some grumpy, arrogant noble who carried around this heavy aura of indifference. Like he was telling the whole world to piss off."

He chuckled under his breath. "And Alice... well, Alice is just a storm of chaos wrapped in a girl’s body. She’s loud, she curses, and she picks fights with everyone. But..."

Roan smiled faintly, staring ahead into the fog. "They’re good people. Both of them."

Elisabeth scoffed softly. "So, it was enough reason to become friends? And you trust them?"

"Yeah," Roan said without hesitation. "I trust Leo. I trust Alice. In fact, I trust most of the people in our group."

Roan continued. "Besides, why wouldn’t I? Do I need a big contract, a damn promise, or years of politics just to trust someone? They showed me who they are. That’s more than enough for me."

Elisabeth’s eyes narrowed.

"Then aren’t you a fool? Trusting people in a world like this only leaves you open to getting hurt. Aren’t you afraid they’ll turn on you when things get hard? It doesn’t matter what race or title you carry, human, elf, or vampire, when the world falls apart, everyone looks out for themselves. Giving anyone that kind of power over you is stupid."

Roan stopped in his tracks and turned around, looking at her with an exaggerated pout. "Hey now! I am a handsome, talented, incredibly strong elf with zero sense of duty or responsibility, don’t go calling me a fool!"

He laughed, but then his storm-silver eyes sharpened, looking directly into her cold violet gaze.

"Besides... what would you know about trust, Princess? All you do is give everyone the cold shoulder."

Roan’s voice was light, but his words cut straight through her defenses. "If you keep pushing everyone away and trying to carry everything by yourself, you’re just going to end up completely alone."

Elisabeth went dead silent. "...Isn’t it safer to be alone? Leaving yourself open to others only brings unnecessary trouble."

Roan paused for a long moment, staring at her in silence. The lazy smile left his face, replaced by a quiet, unreadable look.

Elisabeth halted her steps, looking back at him in suspicion. "What?"

"Believe me, Princess... it won’t," Roan said softly. "Walking alone feels safe at first. You think you’ve built a strong wall, and for a while, it really does feel like peace. But it’s a trap. A point always comes where the silence of being alone turns into pain. You can’t run from that."

"How could you possibly be so sure?" Elisabeth asked, her eyebrows pulling together.

Roan just shrugged, his usual playful grin slipping back onto his face as if the serious moment had never happened. He turned back around without giving her an answer and pointed his spear toward the dark valley ahead.

Elisabeth stood still for a second, watching him walk away. He was humming a carefree tune, stepping over broken stones like he was out for a morning walk.

She frowned, a strange bitterness rising in her chest. What is wrong with him? How can he sound so sure about something so foolish?

She forced herself to move, falling into step a few steps behind him. The purple haze clung to the ruins around them, but Roan’s posture remained completely relaxed.

"You seem to hide a lot, don’t you, Elf Prince?" Elisabeth said, her tone sharp and probing.

Roan let out a loud, dramatic laugh without turning around. "Come on! What could a simple elf like me possibly be hiding? And even if I am, who isn’t?"

He slowed down so they were walking side by side, glancing at her sideways. "Everyone is hiding something from someone. Something they don’t want the world to see. It could be their biggest weakness, their true strength, or even the people... they love. It could be anything."

Roan leaned his spear casually against his shoulder.

"Won’t you say the same about yourself? Aren’t you hiding something too? Something you couldn’t tell anyone, not even your own family? It’s not like you don’t trust them. You’re probably just scared of how they would react, or what it would do to them if they knew."

Elisabeth’s breath caught in her throat.

Her mind spun into a quiet, messy spiral. Her fingers twitched near her sword. How does he...? No. He’s just guessing.

Yet, his casual words hit a nerve deep inside her.

Was she hiding things from her grandmother and her sister because she didn’t trust them? No. She loved her family. She loved her clan.

But the weight she carried, the nightmare of the future, her role as the Apostle of the Eternal Night, the terrifying end of the world, was a burden so heavy that sharing it felt like poisoning the people she cared about.

"And what is your alternative?" Elisabeth asked, forcing a cold edge into her voice to hide her shaking thoughts. "Joining big groups? Telling everyone my problems so they can use them against me? That’s naive. Having people close just gives your enemies something to use against you."

"Who said anything about big groups or shouting your secrets from the rooftops?" Roan chuckled, shaking his head.

"That’s not how connection works, and it’s certainly not what I’m talking about. You don’t need a whole army to rely on. You just need a few real ones. People who look at you, see the mess, and step into the mud with you anyway."

He looked at her and sighed.

"Look, life is simple to me. I just want to eat good food, drink, fight strong opponents, and actually live while I’m alive. What’s the point of surviving if you’re so miserable and guarded that you aren’t even enjoying the process? Sure, the end result matters, saving people, surviving gates, whatever, but if you stop living during the process, you’ve already lost."

Roan turned back toward the path, taking a slow step forward before adding with a playful grin, "As a remarkably wise and insanely handsome prince once said: ’The past is just a graveyard of regrets that chain your ankles, and the future is an endlessly chaotic mess that makes you paranoid for no reason. So why not just enjoy the present? At least that’s real.’"

Elisabeth’s face twisted into a look of pure disgust and annoyance. She knew without asking that he was quoting himself.

"You are an insane bastard," she muttered, her eyes narrowing at his smug face.

"What? It was a great quote!" Roan laughed, completely unfazed by her glares.

_

As they kept moving through the drifting purple haze, Elisabeth fell back into her quiet, watchful rhythm. But beneath her calm face, her thoughts were spinning.

A graveyard of regrets...

His careless words hit closer to home than he could ever know. In her past life, she hadn’t had friends like this. She had no friends to fight beside, no casual talk in streets. She had fought alone as the Apostle of the Eternal Night, until the Abyss crushed everything.

Back then, she had never seen herself as a great hero or a world savior. She had no desire to shine, to collect glory, or to go on bloody crusades just to feel powerful. She didn’t care about being in the spotlight. All she had ever wanted, even as a vampire princess, was a quiet, normal life.

But peace had never existed for her.

Now, living her second life, she was torn. Was she supposed to seek revenge? Was she meant to try to change the world’s fate? Or was she just overthinking everything, chaining herself to a dark future that hadn’t even happened yet?

Did we lose back then because everyone fought alone? Because no one stood together?

Am I scared of trusting people? Or am I just afraid of watching them die again if I fail? My grandmother... my sister... I kept them in the dark not because I didn’t trust them, but because I couldn’t bear the thought of crushing them with my burden?

She glanced at Roan’s back as he swung his spear lazily at a piece of rubble.

The last time she had felt this lost, this unsure of her own path, was when she stood alone before the silent altar of the Goddess in the Holy Kingdom, praying into the cold void and receiving nothing but silence.

She remembered how lost she felt until Old Bess had reminded her that a mother’s silence wasn’t abandonment... it was trust. Was the Goddess trusting her to stand on her own feet? Was she overcomplicating things?

Elisabeth stopped walking. Her voice cut through the soft noise of the fog, raw and strangely serious.

"What if one day... everyone you cared about died right in front of you?" Elisabeth asked, her deep violet eyes fixed on the back of his head. "Your family, your sister, your friends... everyone. What if they were killed, and by some cruel twist, you were the only one left alive? What would you do?"

She stepped closer, her tone growing sharper, almost desperate.

"Would you seek revenge? If by some impossible chance, you were given a chance to go back and fix it... would you carry that blood, hunt down every enemy, and do whatever it took? Or would you just sit there and ’enjoy the present’ while living in a graveyard?"

Roan stopped walking. The lazy swing of his spear stilled. For a few heavy seconds, the air between them turned completely quiet.

Slowly, Roan turned around. The teasing smirk was completely gone from his face. His eyes looked at her, not with pity, but with a deep, clear understanding. He let out a quiet, soft breath, tilting his head slightly.

"I don’t know why you asked such strange question. But If Lyssaria and everyone I loved died... I would probably tear the world apart to kill whoever did it. I’m not a saint, Princess."

He paused, his voice softening as he held her gaze.

"But if I got a second chance to go back... I wouldn’t spend that second life acting like a ghost living in the old graveyard. Seeking revenge or changing the future is fine. But if you turn yourself into a cold, hollow shell just to achieve it... then the enemy already killed you back on that day. You just haven’t realized you’re dead yet."

Roan suddenly let out a loud snort, breaking his own heavy mood instantly as he slung his spear back over his shoulder with his usual ridiculous grin. "Besides! I’m way too handsome and talented to die a tragic hero. And my sister would literally kick my ass from the afterlife if I spent my whole life brooding like a grumpy theater kid!"

Elisabeth stared at him in complete silence. His answer hung in the cold air between them. He was chaotic, shameless, and annoyingly relaxed, yet somehow he had cut right through the walls she spent years building around her heart.

She looked at his foolish, confident smirk, feeling a strange, small crack form in her cold shell. Maybe she was acting like a ghost. Maybe she had been so scared of losing everyone again that she forgot how to actually be present with the people right in front of her.

She exhaled slowly, her stiff posture relaxing just a little as she adjusted her grip on her sword.

"You know..." Elisabeth said, her voice dropping back into a quiet, dry tone as her face returned to its calm blankness. "When you talk like that, you sound like a preachy old uncle."

Roan gasped loudly, slapping a hand over his chest as if he had been stabbed. "Hey! Shut up! How could you say that to a handsome, gentle elf like me? I am at the peak of my youth!"

Elisabeth let out a tiny, almost invisible huff, the closest she would ever get to a laugh. "A gentle elf? You?"

"Yes! Exactly!" Roan grinned brightly, his eyes sparkling with amusement. "Oh my, don’t tell me the cold Vampire Princess is finally realizing how amazing I am?"

"You wish," Elisabeth replied instantly, her face returning to its deadpan, unreadable calm.

Roan just laughed, turning his eyes back toward the fog ahead. The brief, heavy mood lifted, replaced once again by the steady rhythm of their boots against the ground. They kept moving forward, side by side, as the purple mist grew thicker around them.