Chapter Text
Two figures blurred in her sight.
One was her junior in the Express, whom she had grown to trust and love. She was the one who dragged him out there about her idea to recall her past. Being the nice guy he was, he agreed to come and even held her hand from the start of the process.
The other one would be the petite master diviner whom she thought to have struggled to show her feelings. She had seen the diviner’s capabilities previously, giving her the idea in the first place. The diviner finally agreed to her request after some persuasion, though a look on the diviner’s serious look caused her to be a little nervous.
Her body felt lighter as she was being lifted to the sky. The warmth of his hand slowly slipped away as she was out of his grasp. Her eyes closed and she gradually lost touch with her surroundings.
As her mind went blank, she could vaguely hear his voice in the distance.
“March… okay…”
She felt her weightless body around a bright place.
She felt like her body was slowly falling deep into the depths of the cold ocean. Soon, everything felt cold, like she had been encased in a block of ice.
It was a similar scenario in which she found herself when she woke up.
She felt hollow, not knowing who she was or where she was from. All she could see when she woke up was a black coat over her and a few pairs of eyes looking at her as if she were some kind of alien.
She got to know the Astral Express and joined them in search of her memories. She traced her memories of her adventures trailblazing various planets, until she came across another amnesiac like her.
Caelus.
They barely knew each other, but he had already saved her from time to time. She had watched him being impaled and lived, even gaining a new power in the end. He mentioned, either jokingly or seriously, that he had saved her again.
It felt familiar, but she couldn’t recall just yet.
Her eyes fluttered open as she stood in an empty space. There was absolutely nothing around her, only a bluish-green area around her.
Traces of light formed into a human form right in front of her. The light slowly shaped into the form’s details, from the hair and the silhouette of the person’s clothing.
When the light disappeared, she was surprised to see someone almost identical to her standing in front of her.
“W-Who are you? Are you… me?”
The other ‘her’ said nothing. The person had a white dress with some black frills, similar to the jackets of the Express passengers. She was wearing heeled boots and her hair was a lighter pink color and was slightly longer.
The person looked hurt and sad.
She raised her hand and tried reaching out for the other ‘her’ as the person did the same. Their fingers touched and she could feel the person’s hand was as cold as ice.
A chilling sensation slowly went up to her body as various emotions poured into her heart.
Loneliness. Sadness. Desperation. Lost.
Yet, among the negative emotions, a warm feeling washed over her.
The feeling of love, and being loved.
She opened her pink and blue eyes with a sigh before she looked up.
She was leaning against the window, her only source of light in her room, looking at the hundreds of stars sparkling in the night sky. The view of the bright stars was the complete opposite of her pitch-dark room behind her as she could hardly see her bed and dresser in her room.
Her gaze slowly went downward as she spotted a pair of armored guards leaving the tower that had been her home for years. The height of the tower prevented her from hearing a word they said before they disappeared in the distance.
Knock, knock.
She quickly straightened her slightly wrinkled white dress before turning toward the door under the blanket of darkness.
“Yes, who is it?”
She wasn’t expecting any guests or guards to knock on her door this late in the night. There was no reason for any of her attendants to knock on her door as she already had dinner an hour ago.
The door creaked open, much to her surprise, letting the dim light outside get inside for a moment before the door was closed again. A young man, presumably around her age, stood by the door. He only wore a white shirt, a pair of arm guards, and a pair of metal boots, severely undergeared compared to the guards she had seen. His unusual ashen hair was the next thing that caught her attention after his attire.
“Uh… Eileen?” the man hesitantly rubbed the back of his head. “I’ve been assigned to be your guard starting tomorrow.”
She blinked. The man had brazenly entered her room without her letting him in and called her by only by her name and without her proper title. She wasn’t offended by his actions, but to suddenly encounter someone who acted differently from other guards and attendants was something she never expected.
“A… guard…?” she turned to the window for the other guards that had just left, only to realize that she had watched them leave just now. “O-Oh, are you going to be posted in front of my door?”
The guard looked at her with a raised brow, “No…? I was informed that I would be replacing the tower’s guard. The previous two guards had been relieved of their duties.”
She gasped, “Oh! S-So what I saw just now…”
Her attention went back to her window, recalling the inaudible conversation between the previous two guards she saw. She had initially thought that they were only palace guards passing by the tower; she never expected that they had been guarding the tower where she had been residing all this time.
And she knew well enough whenever a person was to be relieved from their posts.
“Uh… hello?” the guard stepped closer, only to stop before he could get too close to her. “Ah, right. Keep my hands away from the princess. Silly orders from the higher-ups.”
Of course, nobody was allowed to get near her, not even the caretakers who would bring her meals every day. If she needed something to be carried to her room, the guards would leave the things at her door without entering. Her people deemed her to be special and also out of reach, mainly because she had a role to fulfill in her kingdom’s special ceremony, the Cleansing.
“No, that won’t do!” Eileen told him with a huff. “Let me give you the order not to keep your distance and to drop the formalities around me!”
The guard looked even puzzled, “Uh… okay…?”
“Good!” she nodded and raised her finger. “If there’s someone else telling you not to do what I just told you to do, they’ll have to answer to me! After all, I’m supposed to be the princess!”
The guard stared at her silently before he broke into laughter, “Alright! Feels good to be less strict and formal with people. The rules here are so weird and demanding, no offense!”
She let out a laugh, “I’ve been trying to tell the kingdom advisors to abolish the traditional rules, but I guess they aren’t listening, huh… uh…” Eileen’s sharp tone soon changed, looking at the guard with a nervous chuckle, “Right… I don’t think I’ve asked for your name before…”
The ashen-haired guard went silent, seemingly unable to give his own name. Perhaps not because he wasn’t willing to, but more like he was unable to.
“I… I don’t have a name,” he shook his head. “I’ve been fighting and traveling for as long as I remember. The moment My Lord disappeared, I lost my name. I’ve been trailblazing all this time in their absence, helping people because it is the purpose of the Nameless.”
She looked at him and blinked, “You… lost your name? And you’re part of the Nameless…?”
“Yes,” he nodded and walked until he was close enough to the window while having a respectable distance away from Eileen. “Lord Akivili the Trailblaze disappeared and left the Nameless to carry their legacy. I came to this planet because the Express caught a distress signal from here.”
“Um…” She turned somewhere else, looking at something under the blanket of darkness before laughing nervously. “I don’t think I know much of what you’re saying. My books don’t tell me much other than our Lord Fuli.”
“It’s fine, I’m only here to–”
“Caelus,” she smiled at him and slightly tilted her head. “Can I… call you that?”
He blinked with a puzzled expression clearly on his face, “Are you giving me a name?”
“Of course,” Eileen nodded in response. “If you’re going to accompany me, then you need a name for me to call you with.”
She watched him to see his response, but seeing that he wasn’t smiling or didn’t look happy caused her to be concerned. Was it wrong to give someone she had just met a name out of the blue? Or was he unhappy with the name she picked out for him?
“Do you not like it?” she frowned, feeling guilty that she had given him a name without him asking for it. “I-If you don’t like it, I can look over a few books and you can pick one you like! I thought of the name Caelus because of the story I read recently, so it just came out like that…”
Eileen quickly turned to the bookshelf under the cover of the darkness, but a sudden firm grip on her wrist stopped her.
“No, wait, you don’t have to!” he quickly said, almost a little too loudly. “Sorry, I just… I don’t feel any attachment to that name yet, but I still want to know the meaning of that name you just gave me.”
Her smile came back to her face as she slowly turned to look out the window.
“The sky.”
“The… sky…?”
She only nodded in response and remained quiet. He soon joined her side to look through the window. All that was visible through the window was the night sky, but a very peaceful sky.
“You’re the first guard to ever come and see me, treating me like I’m one of your own,” she spoke softly. “The story I mentioned before was about a hero who travels through the skies and comes down whenever someone calls for his help. That hero was actually named Caelus and even though he was made a hero, he didn’t come from the happiest background.”
“A hero who travels through the skies…” he looked up at the bright, small stars in the sky above. “Sounds like what Lord Akivili and the Nameless would do.”
She nodded, “I couldn’t read more about the story though. I found it when I snuck out to a guarded area of the kingdom’s library, but I couldn’t find it anymore when I came to that place.”
“Did the book go missing?” he asked curiously. “I don’t think I’ve read something like that, but I’ve heard some interpretations about Lord Akivili’s deeds. There are many legends about them and their deeds as they traveled through various connected worlds.”
“No,” she sighed and shook her head in disappointment. “Books represent recorded memories by our people and the ‘unworthy’ memories, sometimes also books, are gathered to be forever destroyed. This kingdom has a duty to fulfill by filtering those memories from the unworthy for our Lord Fuli.”
“I see…” he also sighed and his grip tightened subconsciously.
They soon realized that he was still holding her wrist and their shocked eyes met almost immediately. He quickly let her go and took a couple of steps back from her side.
“S-Sorry, I didn’t…” he stuttered, casting his gaze away from her as he gently rubbed the back of his head. “Orders or not, I really shouldn’t… I… I might accidentally hurt you or something…”
Eileen sighed in disappointment, “It’s… okay…”
She stole another glance at him as her curiosity was piqued by his presence next to her. She felt that there was something in him that caught her attention the moment she laid her eyes on him. He had a strong gaze, telling her of the many hardships he might have faced in the past. Among the hardships, there was something in his eyes that she felt to have shared with her.
His eyes had a lonely gaze, much like hers.
He suddenly moved as she was watching, putting his hands on the frame of the window.
“If… if there’s anything you need from me," he turned to gaze at her with a smile, “just let me know, okay? I want to help as much as I can while I’m here.”
Her face was beaming the moment she heard his offer. She clapped her hands together as her eyes sparkled in anticipation.
“Tell me about the outside world,” she said with a wide grin. “I want to know the world outside the kingdom from your eyes.”
“The outside world, huh?” He returned her smile before looking around the darkness. “Well, there are places as dark as this room and others filled with sunlight all around. Too many to mention.”
“Oh, I want to hear every single detail!” She quickly removed herself from the window side to sit on her bed, which was hidden under the blanket of darkness. “Tell me about all the places you’ve visited! Every. Single. One!”
He chuckled lightly before he retold her the stories of his travels.
There were things she never knew outside the walls and he was the first person who would tell her. She was like an excited little girl hearing a heroic story, but her excitement soon turned into exhaustion. It was getting late at night, but it was the most exciting night she ever had.
After so many years of being locked up in the tower, she finally made a new friend.
Warmth filled her heart.
She slowly recalled the day in her past life when her life turned around because of her first meeting with him.
Her eyes were still shut as more memories flashed in her head.
Her memories before her meeting with him were present, though not as clear as the ones after she met him.
“A clearer memory means something you once held dear in your heart.”
She recalled the diviner’s words as she was retracing her past.
Who she was, her responsibilities, her duties. Those were the things she first wanted to find out but as she recalled her past self, her curiosity only grew. She wasn’t expecting to see Caelus of all people to be someone from her past.
What was her connection with him?
With that question in mind, she reached out for the deepest, yet clearest part of her lost memory.