The walk home was quiet. The sun was setting, casting long, bruised purple shadows across the streets of Nairn.
Rebecca walked beside him, holding Marco's hand. She glanced at Lencar every few steps, but she didn't push. She sensed the fragility in him, the glass-like tension that threatened to shatter if poked too hard.
When they entered the Scarlet household, the noise hit them. Luca was trying to feed Pem, who was screaming and throwing mashed peas. The babies, Noah and Mia, were crying in a harmonious duet of hunger.
Usually, Lencar would step in. He would use a minor wind trick to entertain Pem, he would warm the milk bottles with perfect thermal control, he would restore order with a smile.
Tonight, the noise felt like physical blows.
"I'm... I'm going to wash up," Lencar muttered, retreating to the bathroom before anyone could ask him for anything.
He stayed in there for a long time, splashing cold water on his face, staring at his reflection. The eyes looking back were older than sixteen. They were tired, ancient eyes.
When he finally came out, dinner was on the table. He ate mechanically. He didn't taste the bread. He didn't taste the soup. He just fueled the biological chassis because it required calories.
After dinner, the kids gathered on the rug.
"Story time!" Marco cheered, grabbing Lencar's leg. "Tell us about the Wizard King fighting the Giant Spider!"
"Yeah! Spider!" Pem echoed, clapping his sticky hands.
Lencar looked down at them. Innocence. Pure, unadulterated innocence. Marco looked at him with hero worship.
Lencar felt a surge of self-loathing so strong it almost choked him. I can't tell you a hero story, he thought. Not tonight. Tonight, I'm the villain.
"Not tonight, guys," Lencar said, his voice flat. "I'm... very tired."
"Awww!" Marco whined. "But you promised!"
"Please, Lencar!" Luca pleaded.
"I said no," Lencar snapped.
The room went dead silent. The kids froze, eyes wide. Lencar never raised his voice. Never.
Lencar winced. "I... I mean, I can't. Sorry."
Rebecca stood up. She walked over to the kids, her face calm but firm. "You heard him. Lencar is not feeling well today. No stories. Everyone, teeth brushed and into bed. Now."
The kids looked at Rebecca, then at the pale, hollow-eyed Lencar. They realized this wasn't a game. They scrambled up, whispering quiet goodnights, and retreated to their room.
The house fell silent.
Lencar sat at the table, staring at the grain of the wood. Rebecca busied herself cleaning the dishes, the clinking of ceramic the only sound in the room.
Finally, she finished. She dried her hands on a towel and walked over to the table. She sat down opposite him.
She didn't say anything for a long time. She just watched him.
"Do you want to tell me what's going on?" Rebecca asked softly. "And don't tell me you're just tired. I know tired. This is... haunting. You look like you're carrying a corpse on your back."
Lencar flinched at the word corpse. He looked up at her. Her red hair was loose, framing her face in the candlelight. She looked kind. She looked moral. She was the anchor he was afraid he had just cut loose.
He forced a tired smile. "It's nothing, Rebecca. Just... thinking about the world. It's a heavy place sometimes."
"Lencar," she warned.
He sighed, rubbing his face. He couldn't tell her the truth. He couldn't say, I'm building a secret army and I tortured a man to death last night.
But he needed to know. He needed to set his moral compass right, and she was the only True North he had.
"Rebecca," he started, keeping his voice casual, though his heart was pounding. "Hypothetically... what do you think of justice?"
"Justice?" She blinked, surprised by the shift. "That's a big word for a Tuesday night."
"Justice?" She blinked, surprised by the shift. "That's a big word for a Tuesday night."
"I mean..." Lencar traced a crack in the table with his finger. "Imagine there's a person. A bad person. Someone who kills innocent people. Someone who loots, burns houses, maybe even... hurts women. Rapes them."
Rebecca's expression hardened instantly. The kindness vanished, replaced by the steel of a woman who had raised five siblings in a world that didn't care if they lived or died.
"That's not a person," she said coldly. "That's a beast."
"Right," Lencar nodded, swallowing hard. "So, if someone... stopped them. But to stop them, they had to be cruel. If they had to... say, burn them alive to make sure they never hurt anyone again. Is that justice? or is that just being another monster?"
He looked at her, holding his breath. He felt like a defendant waiting for the verdict. Tell me I'm a monster, he thought. Tell me I crossed the line so I can hate myself properly.
Rebecca looked at him. She saw the desperation in his eyes, even if she didn't know the source. She thought for a moment, her fingers tapping the table.
"Lencar," she said, her voice steady. "This world is cruel. We live in the Common Realm, near the Forsaken lands. We see what happens when 'bad people' are left to roam. The Magic Knights don't come here. The King doesn't care."
She leaned forward.
"If someone hurts the innocent... if someone preys on the weak..." Her eyes flashed with a dark, protective fire. "Then they don't deserve mercy. They don't deserve a quick death. If they burn? Good. Maybe the fire purifies the sin. Maybe it scares the next wolf away."
Lencar stared at her. He was stunned.
He had expected the innocent, 16-year-old girl to be horrified. He had expected her to say, Killing is always wrong. He had projected his own modern, Japanese, 21st-century morality onto her.
But Rebecca wasn't from Tokyo. She was from the Clover Kingdom. She was a survivor. She understood the law of the jungle better than he did.
"He deserves it," Rebecca repeated firmly. "And the person who lit the match? I'd buy them a drink. Because they did the dirty work the rest of us are too scared to do."
Lencar let out a breath he felt like he'd been holding for twenty-four hours. The tension in his shoulders collapsed.
It wasn't absolution, exactly. But it was validation.
"You're... surprisingly ruthless, Rebecca," Lencar whispered, a genuine, albeit weak, smile touching his lips.
"I'm a big sister," she said simply. "I protect my own. And sometimes, protection means destroying the threat."
She stood up, sensing the conversation was over, sensing that the darkness lifting from Lencar's shoulders was enough for one night.
"It's late," she said, her tone returning to gentle warmth. "Let's go to sleep. You look like you might actually rest tonight."
Lencar looked at her. "Yeah. I think I will."
They walked to their respective rooms.
"Goodnight, Lencar."
"Goodnight, Rebecca."
Lencar entered his room and closed the door. The darkness felt different tonight. It wasn't menacing. It was just quiet.
He sat on his bed and pulled out his grimoire.
He thought about his own internal turmoil. He had tortured himself all day, thinking he was losing his soul, thinking he was becoming a monster. He had judged himself by the standards of a peaceful world that didn't exist here.
"I was naive," Lencar whispered to the empty room.
He had thought he was the cynical, hardened analyst. But Rebecca—the girl who baked bread and changed diapers—had a clearer view of reality than he did. She accepted the violence of survival without flinching. He was the one crying over spilled milk.
I tried to apply the ethics of a sheep to the life of a wolf, he realized. That was the error.
He felt a sudden vibration in his hand.
He looked down. His grimoire was trembling. It wasn't a violent shake; it was a low, resonant hum. The pages fluttered slightly, as if the book was laughing.
Lencar stared at it. The golden aura of the Sovereign's Mark pulsed briefly on the cover.
"You agree, don't you?" Lencar muttered, running his thumb over the leather. "You think I was being pathetic. You think I was being a child."
He felt the connection to the book deepen. The hesitation, the fear of his own power—it evaporated, replaced by a cold, steely resolve. The dissonance between Kenji Tanaka and Lencar Abarame finally snapped shut.
He chuckled. It was a dry, rasping sound, devoid of humor but full of clarity.
"I won't make that mistake again," Lencar promised the book. "No more guilt. Only results."
He placed the grimoire under his pillow. He lay down, and for the first time since the forest, the smell of burning flesh was gone, replaced by the scent of fresh bread and the cold, comforting logic of necessity.
He closed his eyes.