"Master…"
Ankh repeated the word under his breath, staring at Brandish with an expression of complete disbelief.
Aquarius really operated on an entirely different level. Compared with her, Ankh suddenly felt like an amateur.
Lucy was equally speechless, though curiosity quickly won out.
"Aquarius… you know Brandish that well?"
"Of course I do."
Aquarius immediately grabbed Brandish by the head and vigorously ruffled her short green hair.
"Back when Lady Layla entrusted my key to Grammi, I was the one who had to look after this little brat."
For reasons no one could quite explain, the notoriously short-tempered Aquarius always seemed to end up taking care of children.
Perhaps years of dealing with Lucy and Brandish were exactly what had turned her into the irritable woman she was today.
Brandish stood stiffly beneath Aquarius's hands and didn't dare resist in the slightest.
Aquarius continued fussing over her like an annoyed parent seeing a child again after years apart, pinching her cheeks before grumbling,
"I haven't seen you in all these years, and somehow you've grown into this ridiculously flashy woman."
Brandish remained silent.
Aquarius's eyes narrowed dangerously.
Brandish immediately straightened.
"Woof!"
Ankh and Lucy both stared at her.
Just what had Aquarius trained this woman into?
Judging from the direction things were going, both of them were beginning to worry that Aquarius might soon reveal something they genuinely didn't need to know.
Fortunately, Aquarius finally returned to the matter at hand.
Her playful irritation disappeared as her expression turned serious.
"I already know why you two are fighting. That's also why I came here—to tell you what really happened."
Hatred immediately resurfaced in Brandish's eyes.
"Layla murdered my mother. That—"
Aquarius glared at her.
Brandish instantly stopped talking.
In that respect, Brandish reminded Ankh somewhat of Ultear.
Once emotion took control, neither woman could be reasoned with normally, but words from someone they genuinely treasured could snap them back to reality surprisingly quickly.
Back when Ultear had still been an enemy, Ankh had once resorted to some rather humiliating methods of forcing her to obey.
After they became genuine allies, he naturally stopped doing anything like that.
Though strangely enough, Ultear had seemed almost disappointed about it.
Brandish was much the same.
After Grammi's death, Aquarius was essentially the only elder from her childhood who remained, so however angry she became, she still listened when Aquarius spoke.
Aquarius folded her arms.
"I know neither of you is going to accept this just because I tell you what happened."
"So I'll let you see it yourselves."
She spread her arms.
Starlight flowed from her body and gently surrounded Lucy and Brandish.
The magic expanded like a miniature night sky, enveloping all three of them within countless points of light.
From outside, Ankh immediately recognized the energy as divine stellar power originating from the Celestial Spirit World.
Still, this was Lucy's family history.
Out of respect for her privacy, he decided not to look inside.
Within the magic, Lucy and Brandish found themselves standing in an endless sea of stars.
Neither could see the dungeon anymore; above and beneath them stretched only shimmering constellations and drifting light.
Aquarius floated before them.
"This place is called the Memory of the Stars."
"It contains memories woven together by the Celestial Spirits. Everything you see here truly happened, so think of it as stepping into a dream made from the real past."
Aquarius raised one hand.
White light spread before them, and images began appearing one after another like scenes projected onto the night sky.
"What is this…?"
The first figure they saw was a woman who bore a striking resemblance to Lucy, though her features were sharper and more heroic.
Her long hair was tied into a high ponytail, and she wore the robes of a mage.
Aquarius looked toward her.
"This is from four hundred years ago."
"That woman is Anna Heartfilia, an ancestor of the Heartfilia family and one of the greatest Celestial Spirit Mages of her era."
"My ancestor?"
Lucy blinked, unable to understand why Aquarius had suddenly taken them four centuries into the past.
Then the next image appeared.
Lucy's pupils contracted.
"At that time, the Black Wizard, the Celestial Spirit Mages, and the dragons devised a plan that would continue across four hundred years."
A handsome young man with black hair and black robes stood speaking with Anna.
Brandish recognized him instantly.
Even four hundred years younger, there was no mistaking the emperor of the Alvarez Empire.
Zeref.
But he wasn't what left Lucy speechless.
Behind Zeref, seated casually on a huge boulder, was a tall figure dressed in black.
Zeref appeared to be consulting him about something, while Anna listened to the same young man with complete seriousness.
And that young man's face—
looked exactly like Ankh's.
"Ankh?!"
Lucy stared in disbelief.
Then something even stranger happened.
This was supposed to be nothing more than a preserved memory, yet the Ankh inside the image seemed to hear her voice.
His head slowly lifted.
Blood-red eyes turned in their direction.
For one horrifying instant, it felt as though the man from four hundred years ago had looked straight through time and seen Lucy and Brandish standing there.
Both women felt every hair on their bodies stand on end.
Aquarius hurriedly changed the scene.
The image dissolved into white light before the memory moved onward.
"To defeat the Black Dragon, who was virtually invincible at the time, and to prepare for another great calamity that might appear in the distant future, they developed a plan."
"The idea was to send warriors capable of confronting those disasters four hundred years into the future."
"Wait!"
Lucy was still visibly shaken.
"Why was Ankh there four hundred years ago? And he looked at me!"
"That happened four hundred years ago!"
Brandish slowly nodded beside her.
She had felt it too.
Compared with the Ankh they knew now, the man inside that memory felt more like the younger Ankh Erza and the others occasionally described.
No.
Even that comparison didn't quite fit.
There had been something far more distant about him, as though they were looking at a god who had only recently begun learning how to exist among humans.
Aquarius looked at Lucy with an unusually complicated expression.
"I can't tell you about that without permission from the Celestial Spirit King."
She hesitated before adding, "You could ask Ankh directly. I'm sure he would tell you, since you're his companion."
"But…"
Aquarius's expression softened.
"If I were you, I wouldn't ask."
Lucy fell silent.
She immediately understood the look on Aquarius's face.
It wasn't fear of Ankh.
It was concern that knowing too much might create trouble for someone else.
Lucy had always been sensitive to things like that.
So she didn't press further, quietly burying the question in her heart instead.
Aquarius continued.
"You already know the tool that was created to send them into the future—the Eclipse Gate."
"The Heartfilia family became one of the families responsible for protecting the Gate. Anna opened it in the past and sent those warriors forward through time, while generation after generation of her descendants waited for the day the other side would have to be opened."
The memories continued shifting.
"Your family's mission finally ended when your mother, Layla, opened the Eclipse Gate in the present era."
Aquarius's expression became sorrowful as the image changed again.
Layla Heartfilia was lying weakly in bed.
"To open the Eclipse Gate, all twelve Zodiac Keys were required."
"Lady Layla had already contacted almost every mage who possessed one of the Zodiac Keys and arranged for them to be gathered at the appointed time."
"There was only one person she couldn't find."
Aquarius looked toward Brandish.
"Grammi."
"My key was with her."
Brandish's face slowly lost its color.
Aquarius continued quietly.
"Something unexpected had forced Grammi to return to her homeland on the Western Continent, and Layla was unable to contact her before the appointed day."
"But the Eclipse Gate had to be opened at that exact time. There was no second chance."
"So Lady Layla used her own life force to compensate for the missing Aquarius Key and completed the ritual anyway."
The next image showed Layla afterward, pale and visibly weakened.
"That sacrifice severely damaged her body. She developed Magic Deficiency Disease…"
Aquarius's voice grew quieter.
"…and from that point onward, she didn't have much time left."
The memory shifted once more.
Grammi was kneeling beside Layla's bed, crying uncontrollably as she clutched the sick woman's hand.
Brandish stood utterly still.
Her hands and feet had gone cold.
Aquarius's key had been the only one missing.
Which meant that, looked at from another direction… it had been her mother's absence that forced Layla to sacrifice her own life.