Masha's question hung in the air between them, fragile and desperate. "Dante… will we ever go home?"
He didn't answer right away. He simply stared into the bonfire, the flames dancing in his dark, unreadable eyes. The silence stretched, each second making the crushing weight of her fear feel heavier. In this dark, bloody forest, she was just a scared girl clinging to a fading memory of a life that felt a million worlds away.
When he finally spoke, his voice had no warmth. It was as cold and final as a closing tomb. "No."
The word hit her with a physical force. She felt the air leave her lungs, the last sparks of hope turning to ash in her chest.
"Derek's final piece of information was about the wish," he continued, his tone purely analytical, as if discussing a tactical problem. "The Goddess grants a blessing to the first survivor. But he specifically said we can't wish to go home. It's a fundamental limit of this world."
Her face, which had been turned towards him with a desperate hope, fell. The final door had just been slammed shut and locked. They were trapped. The fight, the killing, the Bone Dragon… it wasn't a trial to be overcome. It was just the violent entrance exam to a new kind of prison.
He must have seen the despair on her face, because he added, "But why not make this world our new home?"
She looked up, startled. "What are you saying?"
"We don't have to be slaves or soldiers," he stated, his logic as sharp and unyielding as a shard of glass. "With the power we are gathering, we can carve out a piece of it for ourselves. We can rule it."
The word 'rule' sounded so alien coming from him, so completely empty of the emotion it was meant to represent. She stared at him, trying to understand the mind behind those eyes. He saw this world as a set of problems to be solved, kingdoms as lands to be conquered.
"That's not what a home is," she said, her voice barely a whisper. The words felt weak and sentimental. "A home isn't something you rule. It's… a place where you feel safe. Where your family is. It's not about power."
He tilted his head, a gesture of genuine, intellectual curiosity. "How can I know what that feels like," he said, his voice flat, without a trace of self-pity, "when I don't have parents?"
Masha flinched as if he had struck her. The statement was so simple, so direct, it cut through all her arguments. She looked into his eyes then, truly looked. They weren't sad or bitter. They were empty. They were the eyes of someone who had looked out at the world his entire life from behind a wall of glass, observing feelings and connections he could analyze but never truly feel.
Her own grief and fear seemed to shrink in the face of that profound emptiness. She moved from the log she was on and sat on the ground beside him, a silent offering of closeness.
"Do you know who they were?" she asked softly.
"No," he replied, his gaze returning to the fire. "I grew up in an orphanage. The only thing I heard was that they left me on the steps because I was a mistake. An accident they wanted to erase."
He said it with the same detachment he would use to describe the stats of a goblin. There was no pain in his voice, only the cold statement of a fact. And that, somehow, was more heartbreaking than any tears could ever be.
"Dante," Masha said, her voice thick with an emotion she couldn't name—pity, but also a deep, aching respect for the sheer strength of will it must have taken to survive that kind of emptiness. "You're not alone now. You have us. We're… we're your team."
He didn't respond, but she felt him listen.
"And speaking of the team," she continued, a small, sad smile touching her lips. "There's Erica."
At the mention of her name, Masha saw the faintest flicker of something in his eyes. Confusion? Annoyance? She couldn't be sure.
"I don't know what happened when you collapsed," she said, choosing her words carefully. "But it was like watching a switch flip. The shy girl who used to hide behind me is gone. In her place is… something else. Something fierce. She would go on a rampage for you. She would kill anyone, even one of us, if she thought they were a threat to you."
She leaned in a little closer, her voice dropping. "When you were unconscious, she held you. She never left your side. She looked at you not like a leader, but like you were the only thing in the universe that mattered. The shy girl is a mask, Dante. Underneath it, she's a warrior forged in your shadow, and her only loyalty is to you."
She let the silence sit for a moment before finishing. "You are special to her, Dante. In a way that I don't think even she understands yet. So whatever you believe about being a mistake… don't forget that now, in this world, there will always be someone waiting for you. You are not alone anymore."