Restless

Through all day, Tristessa couldn't get Tiara's warning out of her head. At lunch, the afternoon she spent with Lucahn learning about glyph writing, dinner, and at bedtime: in the back of her mind, the matriarch's words kept resonating in an endless echo.

"Run and don't look back…" she muttered in the darkness, her voice muffled under the sheets that covered her head. The window panes vibrated in the face of a thunderclap that broke the stillness of the night, visited by a light rain, the first since her arrival in Nekrom. "Ah! Uhh… You're a coward, Tessa."

Angry with herself, she stood up and pulled the sheets aside in a show of foolish bravery. The penumbra of the room was a portal to a known, bloody, violent past… The play of light and shadow created illusions, showing things that weren't there. Another lightning that broke the sky briefly illuminated the entire interior, like a flash from a photograph, and Tristessa's mind manifested a sitting humanoid shadow in the middle of the room. And two bright eyes that looked at her, close to the floor...

It wasn't real. None of it was real at all, but in another timeline it had been, and that was enough for her to cover her mouth to stifle a scream.

"...Mmm, aghk...Kkjjj!"

Her eyes filled with tears and boiling vomit accumulated in her throat, forcing her to jump out of bed and practically shove her head inside the metal bucket in which she was forced to relieve herself.

"Pathetic...pathetic...pathetic...!

Her breathing was labored and her body was the victim of sporadic convulsions. The mixture of urine and vomit made everything worse, and as she expelled the contents of her stomach and a thread of foul drool continuously fell into the dark interior of the bucket, she kept insulting herself.

For how terrified she was, for how helpless she felt, and now for the concerns that the conversation with Tiara had left her with.

"I can't be that miserable, can I?"

She was like that for hours, again protected under the indestructible and bloody white silk sheets, doing her best to ignore the smells coming from the bucket and the passing storm, until the light of the new day arrived. A dark grey day, with no more rain but with the presence of the Sun dramatically reduced.

Already dressed, Tristessa carried the metal bucket to the archaic bathroom on that floor and cleaned herself with water that had been replaced but frozen by the lack of pipes and a boiler. Then she went down the stairs to find the house submerged in darkness.

"Strange… Normally everyone is awake at this hour," she thought as she walked through the halls, careful not to make noise…and cautiously, aware of her surroundings. "…"

Beyond the Discord and the supernatural she witnessed in the intermediate states of Death and Resurrection, the darkness of Nekrom was… Creepy. As if there was always something there, watching and never revealing itself no matter how far one advances through the veil of shadows.

"…there's nothing here. Stop being such a coward!"

Admonishing herself, the girl continued her exploration, but never letting her guard down. In the left wing of the house, the couple slept in one room and Lucahn in the other, while in the right wing the rooms were divided into a dining room, a storage room, and an armory. The latter was the only room with light filtering in around the edges at the moment.

"Hehe… The hunter, in his personal sanctuary."

Tristessa knocked softly on the door, and soon it opened with a small creak. And Jin's head peeked out and looked in amazement at the girl, illuminated by the light inside.

"Oh, Tristessa! Up so early?" he asked, surprised and confused by the grimace the girl was making, until she could not resist any longer and let out a tender giggle. "What's wrong, do I have something on my face?"

"Y-yes, your beard is all stained with oil!" She said, her laughter increasing as she watched the hunter quickly pull a rag from the pockets of the leather duster he was wearing and wipe it over his face, red with embarrassment. "Ha… I needed that, thank you, Jin."

"Anything to see a smile on that adorable little face of yours." The hunter smiled with a father's nostalgia and stroked Tristessa's head, unable to resist the impulse. The girl was not far behind, feeling a pull towards lost memories, which were still hidden but had left a warm and comforting warmth in the dark path. "You shouldn't waste today's morning, go and sleep some more. Or did Tiara drag you out of bed by force before? Ha ha!"

"No, but I heard the stories about your wife and punctuality, I would not like to tempt fate," she said, shivering at the possibility that the woman does to her the same thing she did to Jin and Lucahn when they slept overtime. "I still don't understand what's so special about today."

"Of course, you don't remember: today is the seventh day and the end of the week. It is customary for non-military people to sleep a little later, after so much work and effort," he explained. "As Nekronomika after creating all of existence, we also deserve a rest, don't you think?"

"I don't see you resting right now, Jin. Nekronomika will be sad to know that you are not sleeping next to your wife, although she might feel a little jealous if you do."

At Tristessa's joke, Jin let out a laugh that he instantly regretted, as it echoed all the way down the hall.

"…you better go on, and let's hope that Ursall momma hasn't woken up."

The room housed a large work table made of wood, display cases with tools, and shelves full of weapons that Jin regularly used to hunt, either to bring food to the table, or to keep the predators that roam near the edge of the Sea of ​​Trees at bay. There was also a small altar where Jin had lit incense, in front of a beautifully painted canvas of a one-winged angel armed with a bow and arrow.

"What is an Ursall?" she asked, taking advantage of the light from the lamp energized with a power crystal to observe the weapons in detail. Hunting knives, machetes for cutting wood, various pistols and gunpowder rifles. "I think Lucahn explained to me in passing, is that beast similar to a bear? The head is in one of the display cases in the atrium, if I'm not mistaken."

"I don't know what a bear is, but if you're referring to the beast with black fur, a small snout and a luminescent organ that attracts its prey, then you're right. Don't tell Tiara, okay? That woman has a good wrist for slapping." Jin winked at her and went to the workbench to continue servicing a rifle that Tristessa instantly identified: it was the one Jin had used to shoot her in the previous timeline, and it had attached to the end that bayonet that had ended up extinguishing her life. "Isn't it a beauty? Casimir model, made of titan tree wood for lightness and stability, with a muzzle and handle to cushion the recoil… Oh, don't be afraid. There's no way it will spontaneously fire if the antechamber isn't full of gunpowder."

Jin had interpreted Tristessa's frightened stare for the wrong reasons. She let out the air she was holding inside, banishing the ghosts of her second Death, and broke eye contact. For the sake of her mental stability.

Killing time, she devoted herself to observing the firearm sets, obtaining some technical information from the hunter from time to time that Tristessa did not fully absorb.

"Tell me Jin, why don't you use these?" she asked shortly after, pointing to the only glass display case that protected two revolvers with a cylinder for pointed bullets, modern ammunition compared to gunpowder and spherical bullets. And therefore, more efficient when it comes to killing.

"Oh, you have a good eye! They are a gift from a good friend who is no longer with us," he explained, unconsciously stroking his beard and getting oil on it again. "Those revolvers are the sacred weapons of gunslingers, they are worth a fortune in soul-jewels, and I am not worthy of carrying them. It is like wanting to wield the blessed sword or the greatshield of a guardian, it is simply beyond my reach."

"Are there gunslingers in this wor…? I mean, are gunslingers important in Nekrom?"

"Of course they are. Being a gunslinger is being an Imperial Knight: along with the Guardians, there is no higher title a man or woman can aspire to in the Night's Watch Empire." There was some nostalgia in his voice, but from the smile that adorned his hairy face, the memories he had were not bad at all. "Hunting was always my thing, and Tiara served in the Imperial Army Intelligence Squads as a didactum for a few years. Neither of us aspired to higher status, but many of our friends dreamed since they were children of being knights and serving the Empire as Guardians or Gunslingers. I never heard from them again… I don't know what happened to them, if they managed to fulfill their goals and dreams. Severus did what he could to bring us good news, but it seems that no one wants to communicate with us after we were banished."

"I see…"

The Night's Watch Empire. It seemed to be taboo to talk about the subject in that house, despite living in that nation, in one of the six Dominions that comprised it. Tristessa understood it, considering the fate to which the imperial authorities subjected the Mercer-Archeos family.

All the mysteries and restricted information in that house were irremediably connected to the family photograph in the guest room. Tristessa's curiosity was voracious, so much so that it would not be a surprise if it ended up playing against her.

"Jin," she called out to him, watching as the man brushed a metal piece of the disassembled rifle. "Tiara told me about Mellion. The eldest son in the photograph, right?"

The hunter did not stop his task, although the slight tremor in his hands was noticeable.

"That's right…," he murmured, his voice muffled. "Tell me, did she tell you about our daughter?"

"No… Not a single word."

"…"

One had to be blind not to see the pain imprinted on Jin's face. The man was a mountain, firm and with years of experience on his shoulders that turned the soul into a hard, unbreakable shell. But when it came to family, the thing for which one returned home after a long and hard day of work, there was no barrier or mentality that could resist the birth of a tragedy.

That's why when Jin's eyes filled with tears, one could see how deep the wounds he carried in his restless spirit were.

Tristessa wanted to go and hug him, to apologize for making him talk about a painful past. She would have done so, if it weren't for Tiara's voice breaking the stillness of the house:

"Jin! Come, quickly!" The hunter stood up suddenly, and both he and Tristessa went to the door in a flash. Perhaps they were both thinking the same thing; that the day had come to welcome a new member of the Mercer-Archeos family, but the woman transmitted another message, from the end of the hallway. "It's Lucahn!"