An attack. Of course, that was the immediate assumption Burn jumped tarding Man’s state. He hadn’t yet learned Vision, so he was left fumbling in the dark, utterly uo read her mind or determine if her soul still existed.

  "Get out," he ahe young man—there wasn’t much the d could do about anything unfolding here anyway. The boy flinched and bowed, nearly tripping over himself to escape, as if the floor had suddenly turo va.

  Burn id Man’s body gently on the floor and ied the treasury. The key-bearer had been right; the former king’s regalia had an ued new beauty—it was dull and fragile, like week-old bread left out in the open.

  His gaze fell ontan’s catalyst, his eyes narrowing at this potential clue.

  "Nemo," he called, remembering how Man and Isaiah addressed it. Or her. "There must be a reason why they called you by a name and a pronoun."

  Suddenly, the catalyst trembled, a single heartbeat of motion that felt ridiculous iuation.

  "Nemo," he called again, feeling like he was addressing an etric pet rather than an object of power.

  CLATTER-CLATTER!

  The catalyst shook more fervently.

  "What happean?" Burn asked patiently. " you show me? Or are we just going to rattle like an old man’s bones?"

  “…apa!”

  Silence.

  Silence…

  "What?" Burn narrowed his eyes, suspi brewing.

  "Papa!" the catalyst chirped, its voice curiously remi of Man’s—only it possessed an i, almost too-cute young charm.

  Burn raised his hand, a storm of fury gathering above his palm, a miniature sun dying iime, bending light around it like a well-honed illusion. "Let’s drop the games, shall we? What oh happeo my wife?"

  It was hard to expin, but the hss appeared as though it might spontaneously implode from dread, tiny beads of anxious sweat trig down its surface.

  "M-m-m-mama…"

  Burn’s gre intensified.

  "Mind! Prison! Curse!" the hss blurted, spitting out words like a jumbled mess in a word sad test.

  Ah, splendid, Burn thought. A cryptic hss. Just what he needed for his day of joy and sunshine. His rage simmered beh the surface, like magma waiting for a vent.

  Here he was, pting the fate of Man, and instead, he had acquired a panic-stri hss babbling nonsense.

  "Mama! Mind prison, curse! Trap! Mama! Saint! Abyss—"

  The hss seemed to hesitate, as if floundering in the depths of its own limited vocabury, but it soldiered on, desperate for crity. "Papa kill… Mama kill…?"

  Burn frowned, his mind a tangled mess of fusion. "What do you mean?" he implored, trying to uhe cryptic threads woven by the hss. "What do you mean ‘kill’? Is she dead? Why haven’t I returo the past, then?"

  "Mama prison, curse… Papa kill… Mama return! Mama mind, prison! Papa kill! Mama say! Mama ask!"

  Burn directed his gaze baan, eyebrows arched iical wonder. Mind prison?

  So, not only was her immi death today or tomorrow not because of Mahkato waltzing onto the se with the iion to kill him—no, it turned out the real vilin was someoad closer to home.

  "She’s trapped, and she wants me to kill her?"

  He slowly sat beside her, gathering her bato his p. Her eyes, wide ope devoid of meaning, stared into the void as he wondered if she could even see or hear him. Probably not.

  Her beauty remaiterly unged, as striking as a masterpiece trapped inside an enting gss doll. Her golden hair spilled over his legs like soft silk, and her blue eyes—the bluest of blue—felt like a cruel bde twisting in his chest.

  The thought of her mind sealed away in some abyss g him.

  "What actually happeo you?" he mused aloud. Wouldn’t it be a waste if he didn’t know her memory before he killed her? And here he was, pting murder. Yes, Burn had killed her before in previous loops, but this time? It was different.

  "Memory! Nemo!" Mnemosyne’s Aeons suddenly chimed in. "Papa! Transfer—memory! Kill! Return!"

  Ah, the charming chime of a pint-sized oracle with the depth of a puddle.

  Burn turo the rickety hss perched on the floor, shaking with the sort of eager urgene could only expect from a disturbed clock.

  "Did you actually record her memory? But how are we supposed t it back to the past?" he quizzed, irritation creeping into his voice.

  "tract! Papa tract!" she insisted, her cute voice like a toddler trying to expin quantum physics.

  Burn narrowed his eyes as if sheer scrutiny could make sense of her babbling. "A tract with you?"

  "Papa! Nemo eat! Memory eat!" she rambled again from the floor, a bundle of chaotiergy. "Papa Mana, Papa memory tract!"

  It was as if she were trying to draft a legal dot while pying hopscotch. But perhaps, just perhaps, now that he’d grown aced to her adorably cryptic chatter, he could piece together the essence of her words.

  "How do I make a tract with you?" he asked.

  The rattling hss shook yet again. "Blood! Nemo!" Suddenly, the ouroboros, that charmingly morbid sing its own tail, slithered to life, ing up to him while still tethered to the hss. Looking up with a serpent’s elega hissed, "Ssssshhh—"

  "I just have to give you my blood, huh?" Burerated, raising an eyebrow.

  The snake lu his arm, biting him fiercely, only to recoil at the realization that its fangs couldn’t even pierce his skin.

  "Ow…" the hss grimaced, somehow.

  Burn sighed. With a finger shimmering with his Force, he made a deliberate sli his arm, feeding a drop to the serpentine creature. It pulled away and resumed its pastime of dev its own tail, now almost ically cartoonish—a cute little snake blissfully mung away its own tail.

  "tract! Memory! Mama pn! Nemo help? Nemo good?" it chirped, its tone oddly adorable amidst the gravity of the situation.

  Burn’s gaze waan on his p. She had po solve the memory problem, searg for a solution while Mnemosyne’s Aeons tried to help by her own will. How had she figured all this out?

  "Praise! Papa praise!" she suddenly demanded, her voice a melodic echo in the silence.

  A chuckle escaped him, mehaended. In that moment, her voice bore a striking resemban’s, but with a childlike glee that tugged at his heartstrings—an expression of innoce ed in sheer charm.

  "Good girl."

  "Praise! Good!"

  Could it be any more ridiculous? A cute co of vibrancy amidst this tract of blood ah. The juxtapositioween the ominous and the i made his heart ache with a fondness he couldn’t yet admit, even to himself. Not to mention, this object didn’t look remotely like a child.

  "Papa kill Mama?" it suddenly asked timidly.

  Burn’s gaze deepened. With his fingers, he gently closed Man’s eyes. Suddenly, she looked peaceful, as if she were merely sleeping—not trapped in a bottomless abyss of a mind prison or whatever it was.

  He brushed her soft, velvety cheek and said, "Nemo, look away."

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  ----------------------------

  When do you allow yourself to look weak or pin? When no one's around? Anonimously? I think, sometimes, evero man in the world had their moments.

  Like how Guts strangled his childhood self.