The Anomaly's Path

[Amelia’s POV]

Luck.

Some people are born with it. Some aren’t. That’s just how the world works.

I was one of the lucky ones.

Born as the only daughter of Duke Nightshade—one of the Four Great Houses, one of the strongest men in the Human Domain. My father built this house from nothing, rose to heights most people can only dream of.

He’s not just strong; he’s respected. Feared, even.

But with me? He’s just... Dad.

The man who ruffles my hair and tells me I can be anything I want to be.

My mother wasn’t a warrior. She had a low-rank core and never trained for combat. But she was kind in a way that had nothing to do with power. Capable in her own right, running the estate with a steady hand that made everyone respect her.

She was loved by everyone in the city—when she walked through the market, people smiled and waved. She taught me that strength isn’t just about mana or swords—it’s about how you treat people when no one’s watching.

And then there was Nana.

My nanny. She had gray hair and warm hands, always smelling like the lavender soap she made herself. She’d braid my hair in the mornings and tell me stories about heroes and monsters and love that made my heart ache. She wasn’t family by blood, but she was family in every way that mattered.

Everyone in the estate was kind to me.

The servants smiled—real smiles, not forced ones. The guards nodded with respect, and sometimes the younger ones would tease me gently. The nobles from other houses praised my beauty, my grace, my potential, and even if some of it was politics, some of it felt real.

I never had to fight for anything. Never had to struggle. Just being born into this family, surrounded by these people—it felt like a blessing.

Then two people entered my life.

...And everything changed.

_

I couldn’t sleep tonight.

Something felt wrong. A weight in my chest. A voice in the back of my mind whispering that something terrible was about to happen. I’ve learned to trust that feeling over the years.

So I got up. Pulled on my cloak. Walked through the silent estate with no destination in mind, just needing to move.

I didn’t plan to end up at the training hall.

I didn’t plan to see him.

Arthur.

He was walking ahead of me, his silhouette barely visible in the pre-dawn darkness. I almost called out—almost let him know I was there. But something stopped me. The tension in his shoulders. The way he moved like he was carrying something too heavy.

I followed him instead.

I know—it’s creepy. It’s wrong.

But I couldn’t help it. I needed to know where he was going, what he was doing, why he was up at this hour just like me.

He entered the training hall. I waited a moment, then slipped in behind him, staying in the shadows near the door.

What I saw made my blood run cold.

He walked to the console. Pressed his palm against it. I couldn’t hear the words, but the AI’s voice echoed faintly. Then he went to the weapon rack and grabbed a real sword—not practice wood, not training steel, but a blade that could kill.

My heart stopped.

What are you doing, Arthur?

He set the simulation to a rank above his own. Expert. A full level higher than him. And then the dummy rose from the floor, its red eyes glowing, its own sword ready.

He was going to fight it alone. In the dark. With no one to stop him if something went wrong.

I should have called out then. Should have stopped him. But I was frozen, watching, my hand over my mouth, my heart pounding so loud I was sure he’d hear it.

The fight started, and despite everything, it was beautiful to watch.

Terrifying, yes—but beautiful in a way I couldn’t look away from. He moved like water, like light, like someone who had been born with a sword already in his hand.

I’d seen him train before—everyone in the estate had, at some point or another—but this was different. This was something else entirely.

He was holding his own against a machine designed to kill him.

But then things started to go wrong.

The blows kept landing—once, twice, more times than I could keep track of. But every time he went down, he got back up. Every time, he kept fighting, kept pushing forward with a desperation that made my chest ache just watching him.

Stop, I wanted to scream. Please stop. You’re hurting yourself.

I wanted to move, to speak, to do something—anything—but my body wouldn’t obey. All I could do was stand there and watch as he slowly, inevitably, started to lose.

The dummy caught him in the chest and sent him flying into the wall.

I heard the impact. The crack of his body against stone. Saw him slide down, coughing, blood spraying from his mouth onto the floor.

I took a step forward, then another. I was going to help him—I didn’t care if he got angry, didn’t care if he pushed me away. I just needed him to stop, to rest, to breathe.

But before I could reach him, he started screaming.

Not in pain. Not in fear. Something else entirely. Something worse. He was shouting at nothing, swinging his sword at empty air like there was an enemy only he could see. His eyes were wild, unfocused, staring at things that weren’t there.

I wanted to run to him. I wanted to shake him, hold him, make him see me. But my legs wouldn’t move. All I could do was watch as he fought shadows, as he screamed at ghosts, as he fell apart right in front of me.

Then, somehow, my voice finally worked.

”...Arthur...?”

The words didn’t reach him. He kept fighting, kept swinging, lost in a world I couldn’t enter.

”Arthur!”

I called out louder, my voice echoing off the walls, but he didn’t stop—didn’t even slow down.

”ARTHUR!”

I screamed his name with everything I had, pouring all my desperation into the hope that somehow, through the chaos in his mind, he would hear me—that he would remember where he was, who he was, that I was here with him.

He froze.

The dummy had stopped moving—the simulation must have ended, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just stood there with his sword still raised, his chest heaving, blood dripping steadily onto the floor beneath him.

Slowly, so slowly, he turned.

When his eyes met mine, I felt my heart crack open. They were empty. Hollow. The eyes of someone who wasn’t really here, whose mind was still trapped somewhere far away.

But then, gradually, something began to flicker in them. Recognition, maybe. Or confusion. Or pain. Probably all three.

”...Amelia?”

His voice broke on my name. It was the most broken sound I’d ever heard.

I was crying. I didn’t know when I’d started—the tears were just there suddenly, hot against my cold skin, streaming down my face faster than I could wipe them away.

”Arthur,” I whispered, my voice barely holding together. ”Please. Look around you. Please.”

He blinked slowly, like someone waking from a dream. His gaze dropped to his hands—to the blood, to the sword still gripped in his fingers.

Then he looked at what was left of the training dummy. Pieces of it lay scattered across the floor, sparking and smoking, metal twisted beyond recognition. An Expert-rank training dummy, something that should have taken hours to damage, reduced to scrap metal by one boy’s rage.

”I... I did this?”

His voice came out so small, so young—nothing like the warrior I’d watched cut through that machine like it was paper. For a moment, he sounded like the broken boy I’d first met all those years ago.

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t find words for what I was feeling.

He looked back at me, and I saw that his eyes were wet now too—tears cutting tracks through the blood on his face, his expression lost and confused and terrified all at once.

”Amelia...”

I took a step toward him. Then another. Then I was running, closing the distance between us, throwing my arms around him before I could think about whether it was the right thing to do.

He held me back like I was the only thing keeping him from falling apart.

”I’m here,” I whispered into his chest, my voice muffled against his torn clothes. ”I’m here, Arthur. I’m not going anywhere.”

He didn’t say anything. Just held me tighter, his whole body shaking against mine.

And for a moment—just a single, fragile moment—the world stopped breaking.

We stayed like that for a long time, not speaking, not moving, just holding each other in the dark. And in the silence, with his heartbeat steady against my ear, my mind drifted back to everything that had brought us here.

_

The first time I saw Arthur, he was covered in blood.

I was eight years old, playing in the garden without a care in the world, when I heard the commotion. Servants were running past, guards shouting orders, someone calling urgently for the healer.

I hid behind a pillar and watched.

They carried a boy through the estate. He was small—smaller than me. His clothes were torn, stained with something dark and terrible. Blood covered his face, his hands, his clothes, matted in his hair. I couldn’t tell where it ended and he began.

But it was his eyes that I remember most.

They were gold. Bright gold, like nothing I’d ever seen. But they were empty. Hollow. Like someone had taken everything that made a person a person and scooped it out, leaving nothing behind but a shell.

For weeks after that day, he barely spoke. He barely ate. He just sat in his room, staring at nothing, not reacting to anything or anyone. The servants whispered that he was broken, that he’d never be normal again, that the Duke had made a mistake bringing him here.

I didn’t believe them.

I couldn’t explain why—I just knew, somehow, that there was still someone in there.

Someone worth reaching.

One day, when the estate was quiet and no one was watching, I snuck into his room. He was sitting by the window, watching the rain fall against the glass, his expression blank and distant.

”...Hi,” I said softly, my voice barely above a whisper.

Nothing. No response, no indication he’d even heard me. He just kept staring out the window like I wasn’t there.

I sat on the floor beside him anyway, close enough that he could feel my presence but far enough that he wouldn’t feel trapped.

And then I waited.

”I’m Amelia,” I said after a while. ”I live here.”

Still nothing.

So I just started talking. Told him about the garden, about the butterflies I’d been chasing, about the cookies the kitchen made on feast days—anything I could think of to fill the silence between us. I talked until my voice grew hoarse, until I’d run out of meaningless things to say.

Then, after what felt like hours, he spoke.

”...Why are you here?”

His voice was rough and broken, like he hadn’t used it in days.

”Because you shouldn’t be alone,” I said simply. ”No one should be alone after something like that.”

He looked at me then. Those gold eyes met mine, and for the first time, I saw something flicker in them—something small and fragile, but there.

Then he looked away. But he didn’t tell me to leave.

I came back the next day. And the day after that, and the day after that—every single day without fail, I sat beside him and filled the silence with meaningless chatter until eventually, slowly, he started talking back.

Slowly, almost without me noticing, he started to change. First it was small things, like eating properly and leaving his room for short walks. Then bigger things, like talking more and meeting my eyes when I spoke. Before long, he was living instead of just existing.

One day, I worked up the courage to ask.

”What’s your name?”

He was quiet for so long I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then, so softly I almost missed it:

”...Arthur. Arthur Vale.”

I smiled. ”Arthur Vale. That’s a pretty name.”

His cheeks turned pink. Just a little.

I laughed—not at him, never at him. Just because it was such a human moment, so real and ordinary and perfectly him.

From that moment, I knew he would be okay. Not perfect, not healed, but okay. And somehow, I knew he would be part of my life for a long time.

But there was another boy too. One who entered my life around the same time, though I don’t remember exactly when.

He had bright blue eyes that sparkled like the ocean under sunlight, and he was always laughing—always curious, always asking questions about everything.

Why is the sky blue? How do swords cut? What does mana feel like?

His eyes would light up whenever he discovered something new, and without thinking, he’d grab my hand and drag me off to show whoever would listen.

He was my... fiancé.

Arranged when we were too young to understand what that word really meant. But back then, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was my friend.

My best friend.

The three of us were inseparable. Always together, always laughing, always getting into trouble that made the servants shake their heads and smile.

He was the heart of everything. Arthur was the quiet one, the steady one. When Arthur smiled—really smiled—it was like watching the sun come out after a storm.

I thought my life was perfect.

But fate is truly cruel. It gives you everything just so it can take it all back.

It started when he awakened his core.

B-rank.

In a family of prodigies, in a world that expected greatness, he got a B-rank core.

I watched him change after that—the light slowly draining from those bright blue eyes, his laughter turning bitter, his curiosity twisting into jealousy, his kindness curdling into resentment.

He started drinking, pushing us away, and worst of all—he started looking at Arthur with something that looked a lot like hatred.

I tried to reach him, tried to remind him that we were still his friends, that we still loved him no matter what. But he wouldn’t listen anymore.

The arguments got worse with each passing day, the silences stretching longer and longer until they felt permanent.

And then—

He raised his hand against me.

I try not to think about that day. The look in his eyes—like I was a stranger, like I was nothing. The way Arthur stepped between us without hesitation, ready to protect me even from someone we’d both loved. The way everything ended in that single moment.

The engagement shattered. The friendship crumbled. Everything we’d built together over the years collapsed like a house of cards.

After that, he became someone I didn’t recognize.

Cold where he used to be warm, distant where he used to be close, cruel where he used to be kind. He surrounded himself with people who only wanted his money and status, people who laughed at his jokes and took his coin and never once cared about him.

He drank himself stupid night after night, stumbling through the estate like a ghost haunting halls that used to feel like home.

I lost him...

Not to death. To something worse.

Arthur never stopped training after that. Never stopped pushing. But the nightmares started. I saw it in his eyes sometimes—that hollow look, the same one he’d had when Father first brought him home.

He’d wake up gasping, drenched in sweat, seeing things that weren’t there.

All those years, those nightmares have haunted him—the memories he can’t escape, the guilt he can’t outrun, the part of himself he’s been fighting every single day.

I’ve watched him.

I’ve seen the way his hands shake sometimes when he thinks no one’s looking. The way he flinches at certain sounds. The way he trains like he’s trying to outrun something that’s always right behind him.

And now, holding him in the dark, feeling his heart beat against mine—

I understood something I hadn’t before.

He wasn’t trying to outrun the memories. He was trying to outrun the guilt. The guilt of surviving when his family didn’t. The guilt of living when they died.

He carried it every single day. And tonight, it had finally crushed him.

I held him tighter.

I don’t know what happens next. I don’t know if he’ll be okay, if the nightmares will fade, if the memories will ever stop hurting.

But right now, standing here in the dark with blood on his clothes and tears on his face and his arms wrapped tight around me—right now, none of that mattered.

He was alive. He was here. He was still fighting.

And I would be here too, for as long as it took.

Days, weeks, years—I didn’t care. Because that’s what you do for the people you love. You stay. Even when it hurts, even when you can’t fix anything, even when all you can do is hold on and hope that somehow, someday, it’ll be enough.

I was lucky once, born into a good family surrounded by people who loved me. But luck isn’t the same as happiness. Happiness is this—right here, right now, with him holding me back just as tightly as I held him.

I tightened my arms around him and closed my eyes.

Whatever came next, we’d face it together.