Chapter 123: Prologue vol.3

Her hand gripped the white scarf softly, running it across the crimson blade on her lap. Lilias's expression remained placid, seated upon her bed as she cleaned her weapons. Her tail wrapped around her waist.

'Love and romance. . .'

While she cleaned the swords her brother once wielded, the blades he had broken, she was pondering. He had gotten himself into trouble for such a thing as love and romance, fighting for his change and failing in the end, crumbling down a broken genius. She had initially struggled to understand why, but now she found herself doing so, if only a bit.

'I feel happy for them.'

The birth of a relationship before her very own eyes was a rather interesting thing to her. She had watched the two, Elsa an open book, and Rose a homunculus still learning. As her brother's relationship had been, both were the same gender. Though Alos did not have the same stigma as Trea, it was still nevertheless interesting to her. It was no wonder many born of Trea left it, until the total population of their race within the city was only two thousand, quite a bit below the estimated two thousand and three hundred they were supposed to have.

'The freedom to do something like that. . .'

She gripped the hilt of the crimson sword with a gentle hand and raised it until it reflected a face devoid of expression.

'I should feel happy for them,' She thought, restating herself, 'But why am I not?'

Lilias Aunbren understood herself better than anyone else. At one point, she had had relationships as warm as theirs with her brother and her father, and now she did not. Now, she was walking forward towards the goal of fixing the Twin Crimson Swords. Towards the goal of fixing her family.

'. . .I see.'

At one point, she had been as pure white as the cloth in her hand. Perhaps not wholly innocent, but at least someone that saw a beautiful world and held those she loved close to her. Then she had made the mistake of coveting more alongside her brother.

'That's fine,' She thought as her blade reflected eyes that seemed to blend into its color. 'I don't need any distractions from my path.'

Now, she was the crimson sword sharpened only towards her goal.

'I shall watch them, and nothing more.'

Though she had grown to trust them, to enjoy their company, she still decided to keep them at a blade's length away. At any time, there was a possibility she would need to hurt them to reach her goal. And when that time came, she wanted the choice to be clear. She didn't mind one day extinguishing their relationship into lingering smoke that soon dissipated, a fog that left only blood in her path, as long as she attained her goal.

'Nothing more.'

Her tail wrapped around her waist, she sheathed her weapons and strapped them onto her bed's head, a reach away. Eventually, she found herself lured to sleep by memories now distant, foreign and faint to her like dying flames that had once been bright, flickering away in fading warmth until only coldness remained.