Keeping his promise to Busch became Aeternus’s central mission each day at the pasture. He watched over the cattle dutifully, but more of his attention remained fixed on that lonely figure who was always working by herself.
He tried every possible way to approach Historia.
"Good morning, Historia."
"Do you need help carrying water?"
"Look, don’t those clouds resemble sheep?"
Her responses were always minimal. A nearly imperceptible nod, a whisper-thin "Thank you" or "No," and more often than not, she would merely glance at him with those clear blue eyes, separated from the world by a layer of ice. Then, like a startled fawn, she would lower her head, clutch her tools, and hurry off to her next task, leaving him with nothing but her back, isolated behind an invisible wall.
Aeternus could sense the hard shell of self-protection around her. She expected no kindness, because kindness was so often followed by deeper wounds. Whenever Busch was present, the children who prowled like hyenas kept themselves in check, and the pasture was able to preserve a fragile peace. Aeternus used those brief moments of calm to observe Historia in silence while staying alert for potential threats.
Yet the balance was soon broken. One day, Busch left on business. The moment that guardian departed, the suppressed malice began to spread once more.
Aeternus was watching the cattle graze, but his gaze was fixed on Historia in the distance, struggling to clear away cow dung. Familiar laughter rose in the air, bold after testing the waters.
Several older children led by Jack gathered around her again.
"Hey! Bastard! No one’s here to protect you today!"
"Get over here and lick our shoes clean!"
A stone larger than usual slammed viciously into Historia’s back.
Her body trembled faintly. She did not dare turn around, only lowered her head even further and worked faster, as though the humiliation would end if she were quick enough, obedient enough.
Several more stones struck the ground by her feet. Dirt sprayed everywhere, silent warnings probing the limits of her endurance.
Aeternus’s heart suddenly clenched, as though seized by an invisible hand.
He instinctively took half a step back—not from a child’s cowardice, but because memories buried in Diablo’s bones were screaming:
Stay away from conflict! Do not get involved! Record everything, preserve the data, and survive—that is the highest priority!
The rationality of an adult whispered in his mind:
"You can’t save her. You’re only eight years old. If you rush in now, you’ll only get beaten with her."
"This isn’t your fault."
But in that instant of hesitation—
Another voice, faint yet extraordinarily clear, pierced through his cold calculations like a spark:
That was the promise he had made to Busch.
"Stop!" A child’s voice, slightly shrill but exceptionally clear, cut through the air—and severed his inner struggle.
Aeternus clenched his fists and walked to the fence, trying to force a measure of presence into his slight frame. "Y-you can’t bully her like that!"
Jack and the others stopped, looking in surprise at the little runt who had suddenly appeared. Then they erupted into contemptuous laughter.
"Hahaha! The Andres boy? You want to be a hero?"
"Get lost! Or we’ll beat you up too!"
Aeternus forced himself to stand his ground. "Busch told me to look after her!"
"Busch isn’t here today!" Jack sneered as he shoved open the fence gate and rushed inside with the others. Their target shifted in an instant.
Shoves and kicks rained down like raindrops. Aeternus had no ability to fight back. He swung his arms and kicked his legs, but it was only the chaotic instinctive resistance of a child. They knocked him to the ground with ease, and he could only curl up to protect his head and face. Dirt covered his clothes, and waves of pain assaulted him. Humiliation and helplessness drowned him. The soul of a twenty-eight-year-old was trapped in the frail body of an eight-year-old—will without strength. The disparity had never seemed so bitterly ironic.
"D-don’t... don’t hit him..." Historia tried to step forward, her voice choked with tears, but they shoved her away roughly. She fell to the ground.
She looked at Aeternus being beaten, her eyes brimming with tears of despair. Scrambling to her feet, she ran desperately toward the main house, as though grasping at her final lifeline.
Behind the warehouse, she found her grandmother, Krista Lenz.
"Grandma! Grandma!" She was panting, tears streaking her face. "They... they’re beating Aeternus! Please stop them!"
Krista stopped what she was doing and slowly turned her head. There was no concern in her eyes, no anger—only a cold, tranquil indifference that ran to the bone. She looked Historia over in her bedraggled state, her brow creasing slightly as though she were examining a defective object that had caused trouble.
"Have you finished your work?" Her voice was dry as iron. "Don’t waste time on people and matters that have nothing to do with you. Go back to work."
In that moment, the last light in Historia’s eyes went out. She stood there blankly, as if her blood had frozen. Her last avenue for help closed silently before her, without even the slightest ripple.
When she walked back in a daze, the children had already scattered. All that remained was the mess on the ground and Aeternus, leaning against the fence, covered in dirt and bruised black and blue.
Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. His forehead was bruised, his clothes disheveled, but he remained conscious, breathing heavily. There were no tears in his amber eyes—only a weariness far beyond his years and... a spark that refused to go out.
Historia silently crouched beside him. She took out a waterskin and a clean cloth, dampened it, and carefully wiped the dirt and blood from his face. Her movements were clumsy, yet extraordinarily focused.
"I’m sorry..." Her voice caught as tears slipped down her cheeks. "It’s all because of me... In the future... don’t bother with me anymore." Her words carried deep exhaustion and self-denial, as if she had been born the source of misfortune.
Aeternus lifted his head and looked at her through his swollen eyelids. The pain in his body persisted, but a stronger emotion surged up—not regret, but a resolve like steel tempered in fire.
"No," he rasped. The wound at the corner of his mouth made his speech unclear, but every word was distinct. "I promised I’d protect you." He paused, trying to make his tone sound more dependable. "A promise... has to be kept."
Those words were like a faint yet scorching ray of light, suddenly shining into Historia’s gray, frozen heart. No one had ever been so steadfast for her. No one had ever treated a promise made to her as something so important—more important than their own pain.
A tide of gratitude, guilt, and an unprecedented impulse drove her onward. She stopped wiping his face and extended a small hand, cool and marked by labor. Extremely gently, as though touching something fragile, she brushed her fingers over the fresh, still-warm bruise on his cheek.
She wanted to offer him a trace of comfort, a trace of warmth.
The instant her fingertips touched his skin—
Bzzzz!
An invisible and violent tremor did not come from the physical world. It struck directly at the core of Aeternus’s consciousness, as though a tuning fork in the depths of his soul had been violently struck. His vision blurred and twisted at once. The pasture grass, the fences, the cattle, and Historia’s tear-streaked little face close before him peeled away and scattered like shattered fragments of a mirror...
Darkness swallowed everything, only to be replaced in the next instant by an endless, cold white light.
He was "standing" there again.
Beneath his feet lay endless fine, cold white sand. Above him stretched a bizarre sky locked in eternal twilight. In the distance, that towering tree formed from pure light still stood silently, radiating an indescribable pressure and an attraction born from life’s primal instinct.
But this time was completely different from the last, when he had been dragged in passively and fled in panic.
He was awake. His consciousness had become an anchor connecting this void with reality—an active observer.
Looking down, he could see the translucent outline of his eight-year-old "body." Around him, scenes from the real world—the pasture fences, the green grass, the vague outlines of distant cattle—overlapped eerily with this white sea of sand like reflections in water, like superimposed transparent layers. They seemed both real and unreal, utterly unstable.
Historia’s little hand touching his cheek seemed, in the gap between reality and this space, to have become an extremely faint yet genuinely existing bridge of light, sustaining the brief connection between the two worlds.
Aeternus—or rather, the portion of Diablo’s consciousness that had fully awakened—looked around in shock. The instinct of a researcher made him understand the situation at once, and a shiver combining terror and immense curiosity swept through him.
"This place... really is the Paths..." he murmured. His voice was especially clear in this emptiness so silent it made the heart tremble.
This was not a dream. He, a non-Eldian soul, had actively set foot in this mysterious dimension that connected all Eldians—a place that did not belong to him—using Historia’s touch and the intense fluctuations of his own mind as a bridge.
And the key that had guided him here appeared to be Historia herself.
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