Hester sat beside the silent boy, the carriage rattling like an old throat swallowing grief.
The countryside blurred past them in streaks of grey and winter-burnt gold, but Toji didn't look at any of it. He sat hunched, hands folded tight in his lap, shoulders stiff as iron bars hammered too young.
Hester studied him out of the corner of her eye and wondered—foolishly, briefly—if she should tell him about the prophecy. About the eternal. About the curse chewing at the edges of his bloodline.
But she looked at the boy's face, pale and exhausted and already carved with the beginnings of a man's tragedies, and she killed the thought before it could breathe. He was already broken. She would not be the one to hand him a new reason to jump off the edge.
So she opened her mouth, voice low, soft as a hand brushing dust from a gravestone.
"Toji… where do you want your mother to be buried?"
He didn't lift his head.
He didn't blink.
He didn't even breathe for a moment.
Instead, he asked quietly, "Where are we going, miss?"
Hester forced her spine straight.
"To Frump Manor. You'll be living with me from now on."
The boy's eyes flickered—pain, suspicion, the cold defensive instinct of someone who already expects to be abandoned again.
He stared forward for a long moment before asking the question that slid between her ribs like a thin blade:
"What were you to my mother?"
Hester swallowed, feeling the truth claw up her throat.
"She was like my own daughter," she said. "She was… my friend."
Toji didn't even hesitate.
"A mother," he said, "wouldn't let their daughter suffer abuse from a pathetic man."
The words struck her like a whip cracked against old wounds.
Hester opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
She wanted to explain—how she tried, how she begged Shoko to leave Naoya, how she offered her shelter, safety, escape. How she promised she could protect her.
But Shoko always refused, smiling that soft, tired smile, saying she didn't want to disturb Hester's life, that she could endure it, that it would get better.
None of it mattered.
Every explanation tasted like ash. Every truth sounded like an excuse.
And the boy beside her… he wouldn't believe any of it.
Why should he? All he had left was loss, and loss has sharp teeth.
Hester looked at him—at the bruised spirit forced into a child's body—and realized the cruelest truth of all:
No matter what she said, she would sound like she was trying to wash blood off her hands.
So she closed her mouth.
And the carriage rolled on.
And the silence between them grew heavy enough to bury the dead all over again.
The road darkened as the sun slipped beneath the hills, and the carriage lamps flickered to life—two small flames fighting an ocean of night. Inside, the silence thickened until it felt alive, pressing against the walls, filling the space between Hester and the boy like a third passenger.
Toji finally moved.
Not much—just a quiet shift, the tiniest turn of his head toward the window—but it was enough for Hester to see the reflection of his eyes in the glass.
Empty.
Not the emptiness of peace, but the emptiness that follows a storm powerful enough to strip a person hollow.
She had seen hardened soldiers with softer eyes.
Hester forced herself to look away. She had made many mistakes in her life—some forgivable, some not—but never had she felt the weight of them as sharply as she did now, sitting beside the son of the girl she had failed to save.
When Toji spoke again, his voice was flat, mechanical—a child reading the final lines of his own tragedy.
"Miss Hester… is it true my mother wanted to leave him?"
The question made her throat lock.
She answered anyway.
"Yes."
He didn't blink.
"Then why didn't she?"
Hester inhaled slowly. The truth tasted like rust.
"Because she was gentle in a world that only respects the loud and cruel. She believed people could change if given enough chances."
She paused.
"And she believed she wasn't allowed to take up space… even in her own suffering."
Toji's jaw tightened.
"Naoya is the reason she's dead."
Hester didn't contradict him.
There was no point dressing the truth for a child who had seen it naked.
The carriage turned off the main road and began the long climb toward Frump Manor. Through the trees, the mansion rose like a dark cathedral carved into the hillside—sharp lines, tall windows, old stone glinting like a blade under the moon.
Most children would have been intimidated by it.
Toji wasn't.
He looked at it the way a wounded animal looks at a new cage—calculating, silent, waiting.
Hester braced herself.
"Toji," she began, "I will not pretend that living with me will erase what happened. I won't lie to you."
"Good," he said coldly. "I'm tired of lies."
They reached the iron gates. They creaked open with a long metallic sigh, as though the manor itself was waking from a long, reluctant sleep.
As the carriage rolled toward the entrance, Hester tried again—one more attempt to reach the boy before he vanished behind the armor tragedy had welded to his bones.
"I don't expect you to forgive me," she said. "Not now. Maybe not ever. But I will protect you. That much, I swear."
For the first time since they left the house of horrors, Toji looked directly at her.
His eyes were ancient.
Older than any child's eyes had the right to be.
"You're too late to protect me," he said. "But maybe you can teach me how to protect myself."
The carriage stopped.
Servants rushed to open the door, but neither of them moved.
Hester stared at him—this small, broken boy who spoke like a condemned man choosing his last words—and something inside her cracked. Not a loud crack. A quiet one. The kind that echoes later, when you're alone.
She nodded.
"Toji," she said, voice steady despite the storm inside her, "I will teach you everything I know."
He stepped out of the carriage.
The night swallowed him.
And for the first time, Hester understood:
This child wasn't walking into a new life.
He was walking toward the weapon he would one day become.