"How did you enjoy your stay, Young Lord?" Maa asked, "I hope you have all you need."

Maa was sitting in the center of the room, with Lydia by her side.

"Not at all. I didn’t miss anything."

Maa, Lydia, Nia, and I were seated in the middle of a room, which I came to learn to be Maa's.

One day has passed since my arrival here in the Aristocracy's fortress, and it was only today that I was finally given the opportunity to meet her, since we met on the day where Nia and I split, in other words, almost two entire weeks.

"I see, that’s a good thing. From the moment we heard of your return, we’ve made preparations for your arrival," she explained. "I wish it happened under better circumstances instead of the one we put you in when you just finally came back to us."

Attending to her side, "I understand, Maa. I really do. " I reassured

She looked at me with the same tenderness. I remember her looking at me when I was still a child.

No matter how oblivious I was, it was obvious to me that a lot of people had suffered as a result of what happened that night and the consequences that followed from it and from me.

I am no longer as innocent as I was before that night. Not anymore. The only thing I have left of those days was the bond I had with the people that, in the end, suffered the most from the consequences of our actions.

"Just like I did, just like Syrus did, I know you’ve tried your best, which is why, today, I ask, how are you doing, Maa? You look tired."

With the deed being done, this, caring and trying to fix what I messed up is the only thing I can now do.

She stared at me for a moment before, with a gentle and somewhat relieved sigh, announcing, "I’m fine, Young Lord. Though I admit, I think all of this... this war is not for ancestors like Lidy and I. "

"Maa…"

She exchanged a nod with Lidy, who was at her side, and said, "Time has come for me, for us, to step down from all of this and relinquish authority. I hope the Young Lord has no objection to that. "

"Of course no!" I blurted out loud.

Because I hadn’t. In fact, I even wanted to recommend this. The reason I still haven’t is that I didn’t want to sound haunty and like I was undermining what she had accomplished.

"I have for the last few days prepared everything that needed to be done for me to retire, but before I do, there is something I had to do, something I had to tell the Young Lord."

Maa exchanged a strange look with Nia and Lydia, a look whose meaning was clear to the two of them but eluded, in the room, only me.

"What is it?"

"It is about the Young Lord’s mother…"

"My mother?"

"Yes, but not her alone, but also the woman that we all refer to as "the mother". I had avoided mentioning it when we first met again, but it is time for you to know about the two of them before you meet them."

As she had said, Maa proceeded to reveal what it was to me, and only after I had fully properly understood what had been going on did she invite me to the room where she was "the mother," so we could finally meet.

***

"After the night that set the Young Lord and I apart, that night, I was, a few days after the event of the Night Ecarlate, as I was already hiding myself from the church who was investigating the Young Lord's past, approached by someone working for her."

I was led by Maa to a giant metallic yet magnificent door.

"Though I had made preparations beforehand for the Young Lord's initially planned meeting with Lord Armand, it was only by her orders, and thanks to her help, that my involvement in anything regarding the Young Lord's existence was kept secret from the church, the Fourteen, until very recently. She saved me from the fate Serena had to go through. It was also thanks to her that we were able to get Vicar Serena out of the confinement she was put in by the church. Every other event I was remotely involved in could be traced back to her.

As she spoke, I heard in her voice a distinct genuine respect each time she made mention of "the mother".

"Beyond that door, Young Lord, she awaits us, you."

The door on itself opened, allowing a glimpse of the room’s interior.

"Though I have announced to the world that I am the one leading to the aristocracy," Maa said as she entered the room, "it is she who leads it, who has laid the groundwork for what is now known as the "Aristocracy" years before I was even aware of its existence."

Walking inside the room, I arrived at a large hemispherical room in the middle of which one could see a large ascending staircase. A staircase that did not ascend to a floor but, instead, a throne.

And on that throne, arrogantly overlooking that which was below, a woman sat, and standing at her left was the scavenger named Raziel, and at her left, the boy, Aryan.

She was dressed in nothing but black. She was dressed in such a way that anyone meeting her would assume she was mourning a loved one. The opulence of the dress she was currently wearing suggested otherwise.

With long black hair reminiscent of the hair and the face of that woman from that night, yet melanged with whiskers of gray, she, from her throne, overlooked us with her cold and emotionless golden jewel-like eyes.

"Mathilda…" the woman called warmly when we arrived at the base of the stairs.

As my gaze was fixed on her, my fist and jaw unintentionally clenched.

Maa had told me everything that I had to know about that woman.

It was she who, behind all the aristocracy-related incidents, was the mastermind.

It was she who built and worked toward the creation of the hidden domain that is this place.

The scavengers swore their allegiance to her, because she was the one from whom all children of light sprang forth so mysteriously for so long.

She was ‘The Mother'.

"Mother..." Maa responded, looking at her upward before exchanging gazes with me.

As her gaze drifted toward me from that woman's, I saw respect and reverence, but when fully set on me, I saw these expressions shifting into concern and uncertainty. Yet still clear and loud, she announced, without tarnishing time on any other details, "Just as you asked, I have brought him to you, Mother."

"Indeed," the woman, ‘the Mother’, from her throne, nodded at these words. And from above, her golden eyes slowly drifted from Maa to me. "We finally meet the Faceless One."

I immediately corrected, "It's Ronandt."

I, at this point, couldn’t care less about that appellation. In fact, I have fully embraced it, yet from that woman’s mouth, being called Faceless One felt like a sting in my heart.

"I see, I might have overstepped my bounds with this, I apologize," she simply said, brushing it off before throwing at Maa a gaze that wordlessly made her suggest:

"Should I take my leave?

"Please."

Without a protest, Maa agreed. Before she left the room, she murmured to my ears, "Young Lord, I do understand what you might feel about her, but please listen to what she might have to say," before taking her leave.

Maa left the room, "Please, leave us be." She also requested the two people beside her. Just like Maa, the two of them acquiesced and took their leave, each in their own way.

With the three of them gone, there were only the three of us inside the room; me, Nia, and her.

"I heard a lot from you, from Mathilda, from Princess Nia,… I was highly anticipating the day you and I would meet. "

"Really? I was under the impression that you would be expecting the inverse. "

She, wondering what I meant by that, threw a glance at me, then at Nia, whose mere nod made her realize what I was talking about. "So, it was that. I was hoping to be the one to reveal to you the truth, but it seems Mathilda went ahead in that regard. "

"You're right, there was a time when I didn't want to make contact with you, her son." But that was before I realized that you were the Faceless One the church was so desperately hounding after. Had I known earlier, I would have spared you the fate that separated you from Mathilda; together we would’ve accomplished much more. "

It has only been a few words, but those were enough to make me understand how Maa came up with the radical decision of getting rid of the Erweins brother.

There was in her voice and her words a clear implication that she did not see people as what they were, merely a tool for her to arrive at her means.

I realize how clouded my judgment is currently, but it was one of the very first times since Kiady that I've felt this incontinence for someone.

"Aunt,…please." Nia pleaded, sensing the mood that was slowly setting in with me.

"The Mother" looked at me with condescension and arrogance in her eyes, making me understand that she was aware of what she was doing to me, before standing up from her throne and slowly descending the stairs.

The woman, with each step she took down, made appear behind her back, connected to her, innumerable thin floating thread-like embranchements of light.

"I understand that you know what I am," she said, by the time she reached the base of the stairs. "I understand that you loathe what I am and represent." And by the time she did, the countless thread-like embranchements of light she now possessed behind her back had transformed her into an angel, with the embrachments forming as they floated together in wing-like patterns.

I did not need to be told to know what these threads of light were, what they represented for her, as their mother. These threads were the connection she held to every child of light in the present and of the past as well.

"I know, just like the church, I have done you my fair share of wrongs, for I, just as they had you separated from Mathilda, severed you off the opportunity to reunite with her, your own mother,"

Years ago, when Maa was summoned to the castle to assist Ramia’s mother with Elliel’s birth, she took that opportunity to make for the three remaining months she had left to visit my mother, who was left under the care of Maa’s family, the Douglas. She’d seen, as she had learned from the letters she often received from her family, that indeed, my mother had recovered from what happened to her, to the point that she, four years after my birth, was able to even assist Maa's brother with his business.

Seeing how well my mother had recovered, Maa, there, unbeknownst to Lord Emilien and Luke, decided to reveal to my mother my existence, for she more than anyone believed that a child's place is at his parents' side.

One day, Maa took it upon herself to tell my mother about my existence, but that day Maa was met by my mother with an answer, which was that she did not want to have anything to do with me.

Maa did not insist further and accepted my mother’s decision without revealing anything to anyone about the content of their discussion. Which is why Maa, upon her return, never insisted on anything regarding my mother, nor did she suggest to me in one way or another that I make contact with her. It was because she knew from my mother’s own words that she did wish to see me.

Maa kept it a secret for herself alone, but years later, when she, after the event of the night ecarlate, was helped by "the Mother" men and personally met her, Maa realized that which leaned the most in my mother's decision to forsake me even though she knew about my existence.

The answer lay with that woman ahead.

"I know the wrong I’ve done to you and to her, but I feel no regret for the path which I walked, which is why I will not apologize," she announced with a resolved and unwavered expression.

She approached, walked up to me,

"After all these years, I have forgotten what it feels like to feel regret," she announced, not threatening but clear enough to say that she would be willing to fight back if needed to.

Blaming everything on one’s etherealness... that was quite an easy way to get off of things.

I sighed out loud, wanting to tone down the ongoing animosity, and asked the question that was weighing on my mind,

"Why did it have to be her?" I asked.

"When I came back to this world, I was helpless, less than any child of light born into this messy world. I had nothing, only her. " I awakened cornered, unable to show myself, for I knew if I did, I would have, just like you were, been hounded down by the church. I needed someone to rely on, someone to take authority on my behalf. It was then that I looked over her, helpless and at a loss as I was at this unchanging age, which is why I chose her. "

"Only that?"

"Only that," she confirmed, "but that was enough. I could not have her return to your side because, as together we learned, on my behalf she'd fought; in my name she would spread the words of my return; she was my very own apostle."

I could not understand why she chose to, but at that she withdrew her wing-like light appendage.

"What are you truly after ?" I asked after a while.

"Fate has brought me back to this land of the living to shatter the same order that brought me here."

"Didn’t you already accomplish that by no longer producing children of light?"

That was, at least, something that happened over the continent that did not find its way back to me, not directly, at the very least.

"It is not," she said, and for the first time, I could hear a whiff of anger in her voice. "It is time for this era to come to an end, and for things to change," she said.

Maa had told me who she was and what she was. And I knew what she, for thousands of years, by producing children of light, wanted to achieve, so it came across obvious that she, by her last words, was blatantly lying or, at the very least, not revealing what she was truly wishing for.

"I realize I should be ashamed as I am now to stand in front of you, and as such, I do not expect you to understand me." She threw Nia a glance and added, "I know from Princess Nia that you consider us a remnant of the past that deserves nothing but to be purged out of existence, and right now what you could only wish for is to purge the likes of us, but I would request you to please dwell on it."

"But if you still come to an unpeaceful decision for both of us, for my little one to be born once more in this world, I will fight tooth and nail." She ultimately warned, "I will not go down without a fight."