The boy is useless. Yet, the two idiots refuse to see the truth. They will throw their lives away fro someone they don't even know.

Speaking from experience, something is terribly wrong with the boy. I have my fair shares of run-in with the Nines but my suspicions stemmed not from that.

Something about the boy just rubs me the wrong way.

My bones are telling me that the boy is not someone we should be bothering ourselves with. The way he made Cilia and Alexander trust a non-combatant scholar like him in a deadly dungeon with just some simple words, backs my suspicions enough.

When the monsters attacked, he just stood there and stare at the world blankly, not making a single move. Whether he set us up or he is just scared, it makes no difference.

Fucking incompetent and useless. He must have surely use his companion as meat shields. And I am a hypocrite but the difference between him and I is that I'm not that obvious.

Alexander died saving the boy and Cilia is going to meet the same fate if she doesn't stop her blind trust in that boy.

And she did meet the same fate as Alexander. What a stupid bitch.

I declare them hopeless to be persuaded but my declaration came far too late and it does not matters.

The boy's grasp on them is too tight already. Whatever he is, he has doomed us all. I can't allow myself to be with him in the same room any longer.

Fuck him.

Fuck them.

Fuck them all.

They don't want to listen, is their funeral.

I will have no part in this. I wll not join them.

Fuck them all.

Karma is a bitch. How long will I hold out? How long until this aged body of mine will give up?

"Why do you struggle to live on?"

Great length of solitude went by and finally, a voice spoke to me. A dark voice that echoes after each word.

"Who...." I asked back, meekly. I am buried under pile a hill of stones and rocks. I didn't know what happened. The whole dungeon just suddenly collapse. I have tried to outrun it but my feet carried me far too slow.

After braving through so many dangerous monsters, I'm defeated by a caved-in. What a joke.

"Who I am is not essential to my question at you. Depends on your answer, you might be granted salvation."

I'm thirsty, cold, hungry, and tired. I have not a single ounce of fucks to give of my likely savior. "Who the fuck knows? Maybe I have lived this long and my long life got to my head, thinking that miracles always happens?"

I am no saint. I have done a lot of bad things but always away from the eyes of the law. However, it is solely because of that sort of way I conduct myself in, I have managed to live this long. I learned that being a kind person doesn't get you far in this world and I have known that since young, through the hard way.

"Hope." The voice said. "You are clinging onto an unfounded hope. You are wishing for a blind miracle. Convenient happenstance."

Guh.... I'm too old for this. I was never an admirer of poems. "Just tell me what you want."

The voice went silent for a while. When it spoke, its words shook my belief of meeting my maker very soon. "If you could trade anything of you for a future, a tomorrow, would you?"

Will I? What do I have to live for? My whole life, I have been living as an adventurer. I am neither successful in being one nor a failure. I'm just your usual adventurer you can find at every tavern. What's more, I'm old. I'm way past my prime. What more do I have to go on for?

"Yes." Nevertheless, I answer such. "But what will it cost of me?"

"Surely something like a rise from an apparent death is a miracle, wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes, of course." I answered the voice nonchalantly.

"An eye for an eye. A life for a life."

I expected nothing else from such wish. "Who do I have to kill?"

"You wouldn't be taking a life."

"I wouldn't?" Am I suppose to save one? I'm no hero if that's what it's asking.

"No. You will be saving not just one life but at least thousands."

"But...."

"Shh..... Just answer me this."

I stay quiet, waiting for the next preternatural question to come.

"Why do you kill?"

"I.... I don't.... I don't understand."

"Did you kill because it's necessary or was it because you took an interest in taking a life? Do you find having control of one's life, exciting? Thrilling? Compelling? Invigorating? Intoxicating?"

What is this voice saying?

"Which?" The voice pressed on.

I'm at the end of the line. A few more hours under this ruble, I would have depart from this world. I have nothing more to loose. Whatever my answer is, it would not turn the situation into something worse. "It was for survival at first but.... I find myself getting good at it. So, I continue to make a living by taking lives without any discrimination. It's easy and the thrill that comes along was nice touch."

"Necessary initially but grown intoxicated to such heinous acts. You are just the right person."

"I'm the right person to save dozens of lives because I'm skill in the art of killing."

"Taking a life can sometimes save many."

I use to believe that philosophy but down the line, I came to believe that it's just something people says to soothe their conscience.

"Does it ever get easy for you?"

"Killing is easy if you know how and when."

"Not the act itself but the things that haunts you after, do they get easier for you? Do those voices and faces of your victims' last moment, do they ever die out?"

Do they? I don't know. I never really did thought about that. I never hesitate to take a life or abandon one if I deem it necessary.

Do they get easier?

As much as I hate to admit it, "Never. It always leaved a bad taste. You might not realized it in your youth but everything comes back to haunt you when the appropriate time comes. For me, it's already starting to sink in. But you say to yourself; I have done so much already, what's wrong with taking one more live among the thousands that I have taken?"

The voice chuckles at my answer, then it stops. When it spoke again, it was like the chuckle from before is just my imagination. Is it?

"But what if I tell you, your soul can be put at ease. The pain can be taken away, not now but eventually."

"You can do that?"

"Not me."

Figures. "Who?"

"The Harbinger. A bringer of great change. My brethren's salvation and it will also be yours if you help me. Help me to save the shepherd from being led astray himself."

The Harbinger? I never heard of such person but truth or not, nothing can be worse than my situation.

"What say you?"

"Yes."

"Wise choice but unfortunately, you are out of my reach and so are you."

I scoff. "Then what do we do?"

"Simple. Repeat after me."

Okay?

The voice then begin speaking in some ancient language that I have never heard of. I understood nothing but I recite every word after it.

{....the long awaited dawn, a world where home will be, a blind miracle. The devils we will be to turn such unfounded hope into reality. A debt is due.}

{....the long awaited dawn, a world where home will be, a blind miracle. The devils we will be to turn such unfounded hope into reality. A debt is due.}

With those last lines of gibberish, I feel the voice vanishes.

I thought I've been had but....

[Well done.] The voice resounded form within my head. [Now, allow me.]

When it said those words, the feelings of apprehension grew as they seep into every part of me.

[You shall be my new vessel, mortal.]

Said the voice which sounded full of contempt.

The tone that came with those words is something I'm all too familiar with after the fifty plus years of my life,

.... it is the tone of betrayal.

There was no face but I can picture its triumphant grin in my mind,

as clear as the day.

I guess this is truly the end of the line for me.

But before I fade, I struggle to ask my last question. It wouldn't help me but it's just a simple curiosity.

"Who are you?"

[I am an idea. The embodiment of my brethren's wish. I am Aedrox. The wrath of the Void. Your sacrifice will be one of the many foundations we have laid. By my will, I will open the eyes of our shepherd. By his guidance, we shall usher into the long awaited dawn.]

The devils we will be if such blind miracle is to be true.

A debt is due.