The stalemate continued.
Yet beneath the frozen river's surface, undercurrents had already begun to stir.
As the number of their meetings increased, the time they remained together steadily grew longer as well.
What had begun as a mere ten-odd minutes had gradually become several hours.
I can’t keep wasting time like this. Aeternus thought.
On their seventh—or perhaps eighth—meeting in the [Paths], Aeternus brought about a small, almost insignificant change.
Rather than sitting down as usual, he remained standing and assumed an awkward fighting stance, clearly imitating the one Busch had taught him.
His movements were stiff, and his balance was unstable.
It looked less like a combat stance than a scarecrow trying to frighten birds from a field.
Yet he wore an earnestness that was childish and utterly out of place.
He did not do it to show off or provoke her—indeed, that clumsy display gave him nothing to boast about.
It was a test.
A gesture meant to break their absolute silence.
A wordless question: What can we do here besides confront each other?
The girl still stood beyond what she considered a safe distance, her arms folded.
Throughout it all, her gaze remained locked on Aeternus's flaw-ridden stance like an ice pick.
There was no expression on her face.
Neither surprise nor mockery.
As if she were watching some meaningless object, entirely unrelated to herself, move around.
But when Aeternus swayed slightly from the effort of maintaining such an unstable posture, exposing an utterly obvious opening—
Her icy blue pupils contracted almost imperceptibly.
Like a top student looking at a failing student's atrocious math test.
Aeternus gave a foolish grin, then lowered his stance with a touch of embarrassment, as though he had simply completed another everyday chore, before sitting down again.
As if nothing had happened.
Silence descended once more.
But this time, there seemed to be something else in the air.
Something between boredom and the faintest tremor caused by a broken routine.
On the next “night,” Aeternus decided to try words.
He no longer spoke of this space, nor did he attempt to question the girl—that would undoubtedly be both futile and dangerous.
Looking toward the eternal tree of light in the distance, he began to speak in a tone that sounded as if he were talking to himself, lightly complaining.
His voice was not loud, just enough to reach the girl without sounding deliberate.
"Sigh... I was exhausted today. Busch had me drive the herd to the northern pasture by myself. There was this stubborn cow that absolutely refused to move. Her hooves were like they were nailed to the ground. I struggled with her for ages—I feel like my feet are about to blister."
It was the truth, a trivial incident from his ordinary life.
He did not expect an answer.
It was simply another strategy.
To fill this deathly silence with harmless pieces of everyday life, slowly wearing away at her ice-like silence.
The girl lowered her head, arms still crossed, and gave no response.
She remained like a silent statue of ice.
The languages Inside the Walls and Marley differed, but they were broadly intelligible. She understood him.
But to her, this information was no different from the sound of shifting grains of sand—
It was all meaningless background noise.
Yet Aeternus was not discouraged.
Over their next several “meetings,” he shared such fragments now and then.
His mother, Luna, had once again tried to improve one of her recipes, only to produce a stew of suspicious color and strange flavor.
He had found a nest of speckled eggs by the stream, though he had no idea what kind of bird they belonged to.
Historia had finally dared to climb over the fence and go play by the stream with him, though she had hurried back after only a short while for fear of being discovered...
His words were mundane, trivial, even somewhat childish.
They fit perfectly with the identity of a nine-year-old farm boy.
He carefully avoided every subject that might touch upon his own secrets, information about the territory Inside the Walls, or Titans.
He was simply talking.
To this sea of sand, to this silent listener.
Describing the daily life of another world, one wholly unrelated to combat, missions, or honor.
The girl remained silent throughout.
As though Aeternus's voice were merely part of the background noise in this deathly silent sea of sand.
Her world was built of training, missions, her father's expectations, and that heavy burden called “honor.”
These idle words about cattle, stew, and streams were weightless.
They could not stir even a ripple in the empty lake of her heart.
Until one time.
When Aeternus mentioned that although Jack and his group no longer dared to bully people openly, they still glared viciously at him whenever they met, making him feel as uncomfortable as if he had swallowed a fly—
"Only the weak care about looks."
A cold voice, carrying obvious disdain and a trace of barely perceptible impatience, abruptly cut into Aeternus's rambling.
Aeternus fell silent at once.
For a moment, he nearly thought he had imagined it.
He sharply turned his head toward the girl.
She still was not looking at him.
The lines of her profile were taut, and her gaze remained stubbornly fixed upon some point in the void.
As if those words had come from the sand itself and had nothing to do with her.
His heart pounded several times in his chest.
Aeternus suppressed his excitement and did not answer at once, afraid of frightening away this hard-won, first attempt at “communication.”
After waiting a few seconds, he cautiously asked in a tone mixing indignation with a desire to learn:
"Then... then what should I do? Busch taught me some fighting techniques, but there are so many of them..."
This time, the girl was silent longer.
Just as Aeternus began to think she would not speak again, that her earlier words had only been his imagination—
She moved.
Not toward him, but without any warning, she burst forward with such speed that only an afterimage remained!
Aeternus saw only a blur before his ankle was sharply hooked.
The world spun, and his back slammed heavily into the sand.
It did not hurt, but the momentary weightlessness and the shock of being completely overwhelmed left him dazed.
The girl stood beside him, looking down at him from above.
There was no triumph in her eyes, only cold calm.
As though she had casually brushed away a speck of dust.
"If there are many of them, create opportunities to face them one at a time." Her voice still held little warmth, but it was no longer merely guarded. It now bore the unquestionable authority of an instructor. "Use the environment. Limit their movement. Attack their joints, eyes, and throats. Disable them as quickly as possible. Don’t hold back. That is how you intimidate the others."
She made no further move.
But the speed and precision she had displayed in that instant, along with the ruthless efficiency in her words—stripped of every superfluous emotion—sent a chill down Aeternus's back.
These were not techniques for childish scuffles.
They were killing techniques forged for survival and the completion of missions.
"Your movements," Aeternus said as he sat up from the sand, sincere admiration mingling with lingering fear, "are incredible. Who taught you?"
He tried to touch upon her past.
The girl's body stiffened almost imperceptibly.
She took half a step back, folded her arms again, and returned to that defensive posture she knew so well.
She did not answer his question about her teacher.
That involved Marley's training and her identity—taboos that could not be touched.
Instead, she coldly tossed out a question, pulling the conversation back to the only area she considered to have practical value.
"Want to learn?"
Aeternus nodded at once, his eyes burning as he discarded all unnecessary curiosity.
"I do!"
The girl glanced at him.
"Fine," she said flatly, her tone devoid of inflection. "Here, you can try as much as you want. You won’t actually get hurt, after all."
And so, a peculiar relationship of “teacher” and student was formed upon this strange white sea of sand.
The girl still spoke pitifully little.
Her method of instruction was almost brutal and indifferent.
More often, she taught Aeternus through repeated practical combat—or rather, through one-sided, efficient suppression and dismantling—letting his body learn what true balance was, what a lethal opening was, and what vulnerabilities had to be avoided at all costs.
"Too slow."
"Too many unnecessary movements."
"Your opening is too large."
"Again."
She almost never explained the underlying principles.
She simply pointed out the core problem after every clean, decisive takedown, then ordered him to try again.
Drawing upon the extraordinary comprehension granted by using the [Accelerated World] in reality, as well as Diablo's focus and analytical ability as a researcher, Aeternus absorbed everything with desperate hunger.
He discovered that this kind of pure, thought-based combat training within the [Paths] consumed tremendous mental energy, but offered advantages in the depth of technical understanding and the formation of muscle memory that the real world could scarcely match.
Again and again, he was knocked down, and again and again, he climbed back up.
He struggled to seize the fleeting essentials from his failures and those brief flashes of pain.
He broke down her movements, analyzed them, and branded them into his consciousness.
During a break in one high-intensity sparring session, in which the girl had almost completely “crushed” him on her own—
Both of them had spent enormous amounts of mental energy and sat on the sand, catching their breath.
Gazing at the eternally unchanging twilight sky above, Aeternus was suddenly overcome by an indescribable emotion.
Here, before this cold girl who recognized only strength, he could temporarily put down the pretense of being an ordinary boy that he maintained around his family and Historia.
He did not need to conceal Diablo's way of thinking or his thirst for knowledge.
"Sometimes..." he murmured unconsciously. His voice was so soft, as though afraid to disturb something, yet it also sounded like a genuine confession born of exhaustion. "...I feel like being here, facing you, is actually... simpler."
He regretted saying it as soon as the words left his mouth.
It sounded too strange, too likely to arouse suspicion and expose how abnormal he was.
The girl did not respond immediately.
She hugged her knees, resting her chin in the crook of her arms. Her short blond hair concealed part of her profile, making her expression impossible to read.
After a long while, just as Aeternus thought she would ignore that strange remark—
He heard an extremely soft sound, nearly swallowed by the whisper of shifting sand, carrying a sense of agreement.
"...Mm."
No questions. No suspicion. Not even a complete word.
Only a simple nasal sound, one that seemed to contain equally complicated emotions.
Like a snowflake silently falling onto ice, melting in an instant, yet leaving behind the faintest trace of moisture.
Aeternus turned his head.
The girl remained in the same position, but her gaze seemed somewhat unfocused.
It was no longer blade-sharp. A faint confusion befitting her age had clouded it.
And a trace of something else...
A bottomless emptiness, weary of everything.
The sea of sand was silent. The tree of light remained unchanged.
But between the two souls forced to share this space, that solid wall of ice had finally cracked open.
Their relationship had taken a step that was crucial, yet incomparably fragile.
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