"Hey… your last name is weird," Elian said as he followed Lucia, kicking a loose stone that rolled through the rubble.
"W-Weird…?" she asked, lowering her head slightly. "I thought yours was the weird one… if you translated it, it'd be something like 'graves,'" she added without looking at him, a shy cheer slipping into her voice.
Elian frowned as if he were solving a life-or-death problem.
"But yours is worse," he declared. "If you split it up, it's like… Raven… jol… Ravenhol? Ravendel…?"
Lucia stopped abruptly.
"R-Ravenhall," she corrected slowly, without annoyance, almost patiently. "It's pronounced Raven-hall."
"Rabenhal."
Lucia let out a small, genuine laugh, as if it had escaped without permission.
"No…" she shook her head. "With a 'v.' Ra-ven-hall."
"Ah…" Elian murmured. "If you say it in parts, it means 'hall of the raven.' Haha. Sounds like a place nobody wants to enter."
Lucia turned toward him, encouraged.
"Then you'd be 'Elian Graves' if we translated your last name."
"Hey," he replied, pretending to be offended. "Don't say it like that—my last name wears out," he joked, earning another smile.
Lucia's laughter faded slowly, like a candle running out of air.
"Well… 'grave boy'…" she said more softly. "What brought you here… to this ruined place?"
Elian tensed. Telling the truth meant opening up, and that was dangerous. He had known her for less than ten minutes. He was following her only because she had promised him a quiet place to sleep… and because, if it was a trap, he was ready to defend himself.
"Well… I…" he hesitated. "I came here by chance… I ran away from home," he lied. "The place I was in was horrible… there were lots of screams… lots of beatings… and above all… him… that man…"
The Fortress of S echoed in his mind, iron and blood.
"I-It's good that you got out," Lucia said nervously, interrupting him. "No one deserves to live in a place like that."
For Elian, it was the first time someone stopped him before he drowned in his memories.
"Oh come on, just when you were about to talk about the torture," the demon mocked.
"Trusting a stranger again? Are you an idiot?" the angel roared.
"Shut up…" Elian whispered.
"What?" Lucia asked, confused. "Are you okay?"
"Y-Yes… yes…" he composed himself. "And you… how did you end up here?"
Lucia turned her back to him and kept walking.
"Many… many things… I don't like talking about it," she replied, trembling.
Elian noticed, but didn't know what to say.
A few seconds later, they arrived.
"Come on, Elian, hurry," Lucia said in a brighter tone, running toward what remained of Caerum Central's city hall: a hollowed-out shell, all entrances blocked.
"What… is this place?" Elian asked.
"The city hall… this is where my…" she stopped. "Where my dolls and I live," Lucia finished.
"Dolls?" Elian asked.
"You'll see," Lucia replied.
She pointed to a narrow opening between the rubble.
"Through here. It's just the beginning… after that, it's a labyrinth with no exit."
They crawled through. On the other side stood a wall of debris with two passageways.
"And now?" Elian asked.
Lucia smiled, activating her Elyth. Her eyes and the tips of her hair glowed purple.
"Open."
The wall split in two.
"Wow… your Elyth never stops surprising me," Elian murmured.
"Close," Lucia ordered as they crossed, and the wall sealed again. "Lights on."
The lights slowly turned on as she deactivated her Elyth, her eyes and hair returning to their natural color. Bells jingled somewhere in the distance.
Elian's skin prickled. He felt surrounded. Something was moving toward them. From the darkness emerged a plastic doll that passed by him. Elian almost struck it on instinct, but the doll ignored him and clung to Lucia, hugging her.
"I'm back… bring the others," Lucia said affectionately, loosening the hug slightly.
The doll walked away down the same corridor. Elian stared, incredulous and uneasy.
"THIS PLACE IS CURSED!" Elian shouted, trembling dramatically.
Lucia laughed, covering her mouth.
"C-Calm down… they're not bad. T-That's one of the dolls I told you about. I gave them a single order… to keep me company," she said, watching Elian for a moment. "But…" she trailed off, thinking as she looked at him.
"But… what?" Elian asked.
"Nothing," she replied immediately, then turned her head away, embarrassed at having stared.
More dolls appeared: cloth dolls, wooden ones, nutcrackers, clumsy and broken figures.
"W-Well, Elian… these are my friends… I-I know it must seem strange that a girl has simple dolls as friends," she said shyly. But when she turned to look at Elian, he was poking a cloth doll with his finger. It fell, stood up again, and he poked it twice more. A wooden doll approached and smacked him hard on the head.
"Ow!" Elian exclaimed in pain, startled—his survival instincts hadn't activated. He hadn't sensed the doll at all.
"Hahaha… sorry, Elian. I think Miss Haley got angry," Lucia explained. "You were bothering Vanessa."
"Hah… n-no… it's fine," Elian said, still processing everything, wondering why he hadn't sensed the doll's presence.
"Well… as I said, these are my friends. You've met Vanessa, the cloth doll you kept pushing, and Miss Haley… the one who hit you," Lucia said nervously.
"Vanessa? Miss Haley?" Elian scoffed. "You're crazy."
Lucia trembled with fear and anger. She thought Elian was like the children she'd known before Caerum fell apart… but Elian added without thinking:
"The cloth one would look better as Margarita. And the wooden one should be called Grumpy."
Lucia burst into laughter, collapsing to the floor.
"Hahaha! I can't… that's so funny!" she said. Elian was so different from everyone else in Caerum—or anyone who had ever seen her. He didn't judge her for her "friends," suggested names for her dolls, and most of all, he didn't tremble when she used her Elyth.
Elian started laughing too. His laughter mixed with hers, sincere and clean.
"Haha… Lu-Lucia… w-what were you laughing at?" Elian asked between laughs.
"I don't know, haha… I-it's just… it's the first time someone's said something like that to me. I thought I'd be alone my whole life," Lucia confessed, calming down and wiping tears from laughing so hard.
"I thought the same," Elian admitted softly.
They looked at each other. They smiled.
"Elian… you're weird…" she said, looking away toward one of her dolls. "We're weird," Lucia said, lying down and staring at the ceiling full of phosphorescent stars. "Aren't you going to sleep?" she asked, already tired.
Elian watched her, unable to understand how Lucia could be so unconcerned about a stranger she'd met minutes ago being in her refuge. He didn't understand that lack of fear.
"Lucia… aren't you afraid that I might… do something to you?" he finally asked.
"No," Lucia replied sleepily. "If you wanted to hurt me, you wouldn't have saved me from those three stupid boys," she said before falling asleep.
Elian watched her. That girl reminded him of his mother: warm, cheerful, beautiful. So safe and fragile at the same time. A feeling of worry bloomed inside him. This girl he had just met was now important to him, and he feared losing her the way he had lost his mother.
"I won't let it happen again… now I really have strength," he whispered, lying down beside Lucia.
"Oh? Is the brat happy now?" the demon asked sadistically.
"How foolish. That blind trust in people will get us killed someday," the angel said sternly.
But for the first time, Elian didn't hear them. He fell asleep—not just physically, but mentally.
Thus began the writing of the future of two broken children, still unaware of the secrets, tragedies, and pain they would one day endure.