Leaving the horror of the cave behind, Alphard and Philip boarded another carriage to make their way back to the hotel. High above, the full moon hung motionless, bathing the night in its cold light while Philip slowly recovered his composure.
A dense, oppressive silence soon settled over the cabin; a suffocating pause broken only by the steady clatter of hooves against the cobblestone.
By the time they reached the hotel room, darkness swallowed them whole. Alphard sat on the edge of his bed, sunk into an almost catatonic stillness, while Philip took the other side of the room.
"Don't blame yourself. That man's sentence was already written," Philip said, his tone calm and cold. "Do you understand now why I warned you his nature ran far more macabre than it seemed?"
Alphard couldn't bring himself to answer, and simply kept his eyes fixed on the floor.
"He enslaved, tortured, and subjugated the helpless among the lower classes. You saw the atrocities he committed down there yourself, didn't you?"
"Yes..." Alphard sighed.
"Then don't dwell on it any longer. The job's done. Besides, we recovered a valuable object from the wreckage — possibly a Door relic. We head back to the capital first thing tomorrow morning."
While Alphard stayed mute in the dark, Philip called it a night, turning over in bed to find sleep.
The locomotive's whistle cut through the dawn air, stirring the crowd gathered at the station. Alphard stared straight ahead, his gaze somewhere far away, while Philip scanned every corner of the platform, waiting for the train to Saint-Rémont.
They boarded without delay and took their seats in first class. Only a few minutes passed before a young woman with chestnut hair, amber eyes, and an elegant petrol-blue dress approached their compartment.
"A thousand apologies — the exhaustion's finally catching up with me," she said, settling into her seat with a practiced grace.
The intricate black silk embroidery lining her bodice and the hem of her skirt made her comfortable upbringing plain; that kind of clothing didn't belong to someone accustomed to hardship.
The train lurched forward with a dull jolt, and the city outside began dissolving behind the fogged glass. Alphard kept his face turned toward the window; his gaze searched for nothing in particular, drifting through the districts as they faded, giving way to scattered trees, rugged hills, and the somber vastness of a leaden sky.
"Allow me to introduce myself: I'm Evangeline Vance. A pleasure. And with whom do I have the honor of traveling?"
"Philip Crowley," he answered, his tone even. "And my companion here is Alphard Quinn."
The young woman arched an eyebrow, studying him with renewed interest.
"Of the Quinn lineage? The famous Marcus Quinn? I'll admit, back home that name stirs up quite a bit of controversy, though no one can deny its weight in the annals of history."
"Yes..." Alphard murmured, barely lifting his eyes from the window, his mood as grey as the afternoon outside. "In Saint-Cyr, it doesn't hold much esteem either."
Aware she'd touched a sensitive nerve, Evangeline chose not to press further into the wound. Still, far from backing down, she straightened her posture and smoothed the folds of her skirt. There was a spark of stubborn conviction in her bearing as she broke the silence once more:
"My goal is to join an order where I can carry out true justice," she declared, fixing them both with a flawless resolve.
"Justice?" Philip cut in, tilting his head with a faint air of condescension. "This world is a good deal murkier than it looks through the windows of a first-class carriage. Do you truly believe you're equal to it, Miss Vance?"
"Of course I am!" she shot back, not yielding an inch. "I know the road ahead is difficult, but that won't stop me from fighting for what's right, for as long as my strength holds out."
Philip allowed himself a faint smile and glanced sideways at Alphard's silent, brooding figure.
"Your moment will come someday, Miss Vance."
The conversation dissolved as the roar of Saint-Rémont's central station flooded the compartment.
Amid billowing clouds of white steam and the constant bustle of travelers and porters, Evangeline offered them a courteous nod before disappearing into the crowd on the platform.
Alone again, Alphard and Philip made their way outside. They climbed into a carriage for hire, its rattle over the cobblestones accompanying a heavy, silence-dominated ride.
Arriving at the station's sober building, the air shifted; it smelled of fresh ink, pipe smoke, and stale dampness. They walked the creaking wooden corridors until they stopped before a familiar door. Philip raised his hand and knocked twice, firm, against the oak.
"Come in," Charlotte's voice rang out from within.
Crossing the threshold, they were met with the rapid scratch of a pen against paper and the thickness of tobacco smoke. At the back of the room, behind a wide desk buried under stacked files and reports, Charlotte remained absorbed in her work, stamping seals and sorting documents without looking up.
"We're back, boss," Philip announced, closing the distance with an unhurried step.
"Mission accomplished?" she asked, without pausing the pen's motion across the page.
"No complications. Alphard carried out his part with total efficiency."
That was when Charlotte stopped, her pen hovering, and turned a probing gaze toward Alphard. She sized him up in an instant: beneath the rigid, distant front he was trying to project, a latent unease lingered.
His eyes, usually calm, kept avoiding direct contact, and his fingertips rubbed against each other in a small, involuntary tic.
"Alphard, come here," she ordered, her voice commanding, fixing him with a stare that admitted no argument.
He obeyed at once. He crossed the room in silence until he stood a couple of meters from the desk, level with Philip.
"I carried out the assignment," Alphard said, holding the briefcase steady. "Here's the target we recovered. Based on what we found during the mission, there's reason to believe it's a Door relic, though we can't say for certain."
Charlotte didn't blink. Her expression stayed unyielding as she slowly extended her hand across the desk, demanding the evidence be handed over.
She took the briefcase. Philip gave a brief nod of the head, stepped back two paces out of deference, and prepared to leave alongside Alphard. But before either of them crossed the threshold, Charlotte's voice cut through the air:
"Stay a moment. I need to speak with you."
Alphard froze in place. He said nothing; he simply walked in silence to the leather sofa in the corner and let himself sink into it.
The sharp click of the door closing confirmed that Philip had left the office.
Charlotte rose from behind her desk and crossed the room with a firm, measured stride before settling into the armchair directly across from him. This was the third time the two of them had been alone in this room, but the atmosphere felt drastically different from before.
Where, in previous meetings, Alphard had sat upright, alert to everything around him, steady in the face of his superior, this time he kept his eyes fixed on the wooden floor, hands clasped, forearms resting heavily against his thighs.
Without a single word passing between them, Charlotte understood immediately where the crack had come from. She set aside her usual authority, reached out, and, in a gesture heavy with unexpected tenderness, gently ruffled the young man's hair.
"I know this is hard," she murmured, her voice soft. "It's not a burden meant for just anyone, let alone someone your age... but I couldn't leave you to face it entirely on your own either."
Alphard barely lifted his gaze, his voice cracking under the weight of guilt:
"Am I a monster?"
"We all are," she answered, holding the contact. "But that doesn't stop us from protecting the people we love most. No one's perfect, Alphard. But every one of us still holds the capacity to redeem ourselves."
Charlotte withdrew her hand slowly and straightened back into her seat. The fleeting warmth folded itself back behind her usual armor.
"I won't let you walk away from this," she declared, recovering her composure. "But the final choice is yours. You decide whether you continue with this, or you give up. If you choose to give up, you'll need to settle the debt by returning the money, and you'll remain under constant watch."
Alphard finally lifted his eyes.
Studying her, he caught an unsettling contradiction: though her gestures, her posture, and her words all carried an unyielding coldness and firmness, deep in her eyes, a small spark of comfort and understanding still burned.
No, I can't just stay like this. Even if I do make it back to Earth someday, I wouldn't know how to look my parents in the eye. Even now — how am I supposed to look at Helena?
She'll think her brother is the best, the kindest person alive. But no — she's not looking at Alphard. She's looking at a murderer wearing his face. All I'm doing is dragging her brother's name through the mud.
God, what a miserable excuse for a person I am!
Alphard sat sunk in a thick silence for several minutes. His gaze drowned in the varnished shine of the wood, where his own reflection warped into something like a stranger's shadow. He pressed his fingertips against his forehead, crushed under the weight of the decision ahead of him.
Closing his eyes, he tried to summon the full sequence of his memories, reconstructing every fragment of his existence from the moment he'd first been transmigrated into this world: the hours spent with Helena, the long conversations with Alexi, Antonie's lessons... and even that strange, inexplicable certainty of shelter that, somehow, Charlotte's mere presence had come to give him.
I can't undo what I've done. But if the sacrifice I made, and the weight of the life I took with my own hands, ends up amounting to nothing — then their deaths were for nothing, and I really am just a murderer.
In the end, I'm nothing but a wretch fighting against himself.
I have to be strong. I have to clench my fist and hold firm! It doesn't mean what I'm doing is right, or that it justifies my actions — but it'll give it a purpose. And that purpose is going home.