Yet Alia was right—the Grail was the only goal that mattered now. Elias forced himself to press down the restless tide of emotion inside him, burying it so deep that his face soon regained composure. He straightened his posture, eyes sharpening, tone steadying as he pulled their discussion back to what truly mattered: the underground networks, and that man—Jim.
Alia's voice dropped a shade lower, tinged with a bitter self-mockery. She began to recount her first encounter with Jim: how he had slipped into a house to steal, bold enough to break into Eryx's own residence. As she spoke, her lips curved into a cold smile, a smile carrying both helplessness and fury.
"Looking back now, it feels as though the script had already been written in the shadows. Perhaps even then, he had already set his eyes upon the Grail. And I—" she exhaled sharply, "I was nothing more than a carefully chosen piece, molded by his hands."
She went on to paint Jim's portrait with meticulous strokes: the way his left hand always strayed instinctively to the pocket at his waist; the way his gaze never met yours during conversation, yet not a single detail of his surroundings escaped his notice; the chilling patience of a venomous serpent, lying in wait for prey to stumble willingly into his trap.
Elias listened in silence, his expression shifting with each revelation—at times his brow furrowed, at times his eyes grew distant and contemplative. When Alia's words fell quiet, he added his own fragments of knowledge.
"Jim looks careless, even haphazard on the surface," Elias murmured, "but in truth, he always keeps a reserve plan, a hidden path of escape. He trusts no one—not even those closest to him. His companions are blind to the full picture, pawns in a game only he sees."
The flow of memory and information soon became effortless, words weaving into one another. Piece by piece, the invisible wall between them seemed to thin, peeled away by the rhythm of shared recollections. What replaced it was a silence full of understanding, a tacit resonance. Their gazes crossed more than once, and in those fleeting moments Elias felt a disquieting illusion—
—that they were not strangers forced together by circumstance, but rather two beings from the same world, both born of the undercurrents, carrying the same shadows, the same secrets.
The familiarity struck him like a blow, twisting his chest tight. That sense of kinship left him breathless, but also dragged him into deeper torment: was it truly Livia he longed for, or the reflection of his own darkness he saw mirrored in Alia?
Alia, too, seemed to sense the heaviness of the air between them. She let out a soft sigh, her voice low, almost like a confession whispered to herself.
"Sometimes, the right person comes to you at the wrong time. And sometimes… the person who fits you best may not be the one you truly love. If I had always been Alia—body and soul both mine—if I had met you as myself…" Her words trailed into a fragile silence. At last, she shook her head, sorrow clouding her eyes. "Perhaps then, I would have fallen for you. But now—now it is already too late."
For a heartbeat the silence thickened, a veil of unspoken ache lying heavy between them.
And then reality called them back, merciless and cold. Both of them forced their focus onto Jim once more, voices regaining a hard, deliberate edge. They began to dissect his possible weaknesses, searching for cracks in the seemingly impenetrable mask he wore. Only by clinging to reason could they silence, even briefly, the unsteady emotions threatening to overwhelm them.