Alaric entered the Western Sector.
The atmosphere was vivid, and instead of being welcomed by the smell of human waste from the Eastern Sector, he was welcomed by the smell of burning bricks.
Alaric glanced around.
"It's been long time since last time Western sector experienced snowfall."
Alaric bent down and touched the beautiful white snow.
He stayed like that for a minute or two.
Finally, he stood up and started marching toward the wagon stand.
Beautiful. How long has it been since I touched snow in the Western Sector? But... it's not time to remember about this and get nostalgic.
He was alone, walking in the cold. There were no shops or any industrial buildings nearby.
The main thing I should focus on is Volt and me, and this amnesia. As far as I can remember, this amnesia has never occurred when it was about how I am, but it almost always occurs when it is about who I am.
But sometimes it's okay to rest. After all, it's a phase of life, just let it happen.
It was then that a wagon passed by nearby.
Alaric ran toward it, but he slipped on the snow.
Alaric turned around, looking up toward the sky as he lay alone in the snow. And he just laughed.
The absurdity of everything finally caught up to him.
The ledger can never be balanced at the end.
Alaric stood up and once again marched toward the wagon stand.
After an unknown period of time, Alaric finally reached the wagon stand.
At first, the drivers looked at him like they had seen a ghost walking in the snow. Alaric stood there, waiting for a driver to come and ask. But for a while, no one came. All of them only stared at him.
Finally, one driver with a French beard approached him.
" Where do you want to go , Sir ?" he asked with a small smile.
To be correct, it was a greedy smile, and before Alaric could even answer, he added, " and what is your name sir ? Are you coming from eastern sector? "
Alaric made a disgusted look and answered only one thing, "Take me to the Xyle Mansion."
The wagon driver became angry almost immediately. "Why ? Mr.Xyle is missing for days why do u want to go ?"
Alaric clenched his fist. "Who are you to ask about that huh ? Just do your damn job."
" I am....Mr.Xyle personal Wagon driver or atleast former." The driver answered slowly while taking out a small butcher knife from his pocket.
Something clicked in Alaric's mind.
I remember him. He is the very same guy with whom I went to the cathedral, right? But he didn't have a French beard, and what was his goddamn name?
Before the man could attack with his knife, Alaric answered hurriedly, " I am Alaric Xyle...You remember I went cathedral with you urgently and you were thanking me than I tossed you some coins."
The driver's hand froze mid-air, the crude edge of the butcher knife catching the dull winter light.
His greedy, aggressive smirk didn't dissolve into a dramatic gasp, instead, his face hardened, his eyes narrowing into tiny, suspicious slits as he looked past the caked mud, the mountain ash, and the torn collar of Alaric's expensive coat.
He didn't drop the knife.
He kept it low, guarded against his thigh.
"You're lying," the driver said, his voice dropping into a tense, quiet register.
He stepped closer, scanning Alaric's face with a heavy frown.
"Mr. Xyle didn't look like he just crawled out of a mass grave. And more importantly, Mr. Xyle doesn't forget the face of the man who paid his wages for three years."
Alaric didn't flinch at the blade. The steady, subterranean thrum of his new heart kept his pulse perfectly flat. He simply stared back, his jaw tight.
"I had an... accident in the Vath Hills. My face paid the price, but my memory of the coin I tossed you remains intact. Now put the steel away before I ensure your former employment becomes permanent retirement."
The driver looked at the absolute, cold indifference in Alaric's eyes, a look that couldn't be faked by a common street thug.
Slowly, deliberately, he slid the butcher knife back into his deep coat pocket, though his fingers stayed wrapped around the hilt.
"If you're really him..." the driver muttered, leaning in, his gaze dropping to Alaric's jawline. "Then what happened to you? The whole Sector is saying you vanished into thin air after that night."
Alaric ignored the questions entirely, stepping past the man toward the wooden step of the wagon.
The business of what the sector whispered was an expected complication, but something else was gnawing at the edge of his fractured mind.
He stopped, looking over his shoulder at the man's face.
"Why did you grow that goddamn French beard?" Alaric rasped, his brow furrowing as he stared at the dark whiskers.
"How did you manage to grow a full jaw of hair in just three or four days? It makes you look like a back-alley fence."
The driver stared at Alaric as if he were the one speaking madness.
The suspicious tension in his shoulders returned instantly, his hand twitching inside his pocket.
"Three or four days?" the driver asked, his voice dripping with genuine disbelief. "Sir... you went missing on the fourth of December. It's the twenty-second today. It's been eighteen days since you vanished. And I've always had this beard. You gave me three silver circles to trim it before the mid winter audit."
Eighteen days.
The words hit Alaric like a physical blow, though his face remained a mask of stone.
His calculation had been completely wrong. Time didn't move the same way inside that weightless vacuum.
While he was stitching his flesh and bargaining for a soul-anchor, nearly three weeks of the physical world had marched on without him.
Volt had already had eighteen days to act, and the Western Sector had already had eighteen days to spin its rumors.
The driver watched the silent, dark shift in Alaric's expression.
He didn't understand what was happening, but he recognized the cold authority returning to his master's posture.
"Eighteen days," Alaric muttered under his breath, turning his back on the driver and climbing into the cold, leather-scented interior of the wagon.
He pulled his torn coat tightly around his chest, his fingers lightly brushing the spot where the weightless, purplish essence of Singularity had pierced back into his body.
"Drive. We're losing daylight, and I need to see what my absence has brewed."
The driver stood in the snow for a second longer, clearly suspicious of his master's missing memory and altered appearance, but the habit of obedience and the prospect of being paid by a man thought dead won over.
"Yes, Mr. Xyle," the driver muttered, closing the door.
With a sharp crack of the reins, the wagon lurched forward through the fresh white snow, leaving the stand behind as Alaric rode toward a home that had spent eighteen days wondering where he had gone.
After more than half an hour, the wagon finally stopped. Alaric didn't say anything. While traveling, the only thing he had been doing was thinking and creating a roadmap for himself.
Alaric stepped out of the wagon and inhaled sharply.
He tossed two silver coins toward the driver and, without looking at him, started marching toward his estate.