They should've made my grave even fancier.
I narrowed my eyes as I stared at the modest headstone and grave made of pure white marble.
They should've at least put some red designs, a black dragon here, and a few flames along the sides.
Although I do understand why people don't complain about the designs of their graves.
The dead don't have dedicated customer support, as far as I know.
But I must say, they did choose an excellent location for interring their dead royals.
The Royal Resting Grounds.
A sprawling expanse of trees and sculptures about fifteen minutes from the Royal Square if you walk at a normal pace.
Many graves and mausoleums were scattered along this massive garden like islands, each a monument to the final resting places of long-dead Pendragons.
Mine was in a rather secluded spot, surrounded by arlants and trees that produced beautiful glowing flowers.
Looks like this was the spot reserved for this generation of Pendragons because mine was not the only grave here.
My gaze drifted toward another beautiful grave of white marble embellished with emerald green, just like my daggers.
A pang of melancholy struck me as I read the name engraved on the headstone, which was decorated with green flowers.
Here lies High Queen Morgause
Beloved wife
The best mother
Dearest friend
The Goddess of the Blade
"The best mother, eh?" I couldn't help but smile. Gawain and Morgan must've truly loved her.
Something the Mordred of this world never got to fully experience, for she had passed away when he was still an infant.
Apart from pictures and people's words, he and I didn't know her much.
If she had been alive…
If Mordred was never born…
I shook my head.
This is now my world, my life.
And she is my mother.
"Mum…" I touched the headstone. It was freezing to the touch, but eventually faded to a pleasant warmth.
I felt a familiar presence appear behind me, as if from thin air.
"Has Uriel left?" I asked, looking back to see Phoebe a few steps behind.
"Not yet," Phoebe said, shaking her head. "She went to have tea with the High Queen."
She gave me a curious stare. "You humans really like your tea."
I chuckled. "Only us Kingdom folk are obsessed with that stuff. We have it as frequently as water."
"Ah." Phoebe looked at me. "And you are here alone?"
I nodded. "Alisax was curious about the Crown District, so Morgan decided to show her around."
I glanced at my watch. "They'll be back in thirty minutes."
"Thirty minutes with the dead," she said simply and looked at my headstone.
"So this is a grave."
I gave her a curious glance. "Lumini don't have graves?"
Phoebe shook her head. "My lumini do not age; they are long-lived."
Her vacant gaze drifted to the sky. "And even if they die, they simply dissolve into light. The fallen remain in our memories forever. The lumini did not need monuments for remembrance."
"But," she looked between mine and Morgause's graves, "now I wonder if I should've made graves. I have too many memories now."
"And now you have the chance to get rid of them," I said with a smile. "You're free to do anything you want, Phoebe."
"Free to do anything…"
Phoebe stood still, contemplating those words before looking at me.
"I want to stay by your side, Mordred."
I couldn't help but chuckle. "I am honored, Phoebe, but I think it is good if you explore this world."
"I can do that as well," Phoebe answered. "I can be in multiple places at once."
I let out a sigh. "I forgot you could do that. But it's better to explore like a normal person."
I met her crystalline gaze. "But if it's what you want, then I guess you can tag along."
She again fell silent for a few seconds before answering.
"I can follow your advice and travel around. Just call my name, and I will be there. After all, I am your familiar."
She then gently grabbed my shoulders and pushed me down.
I frowned as I let her sit me down on the grass. "Phoebe, what are you doing?"
She began to unbutton my shirt. I started to panic a bit.
"Oi! What is this?"
"This seems to be a good place," Phoebe said as she wrestled with me to take off my shirt. "We are surrounded by trees, and there is an abundant and diverse amount of Ardor in the atmosphere."
She met my gaze, making me freeze.
"Perfect conditions for restoring your right arm."
I blinked.
"Oh."
I allowed her to take off my shirt. Her gaze briefly flickered over my scarred body before settling on the stump where my right arm used to be.
"This will take some time," she informed me, her crystalline eyes beginning to glow with Lux. "And it will be a bit painful. Restoring your utterly destroyed arm is a difficult process."
I straightened my posture and nodded.
"I understand."
"Let's do this."
*******
It took Phoebe five minutes to restore my arm.
"I could've restored your arm in an instant, normally." A rare frown crossed over Phoebe's face. "You are a difficult human."
"I've heard that a lot." I chuckled as I clenched and unclenched my right hand, newly restored without a single blemish.
Even the hole in my palm was gone.
"I could remove the scars on your body," she offered, then tilted her head. "But I don't think you would want that."
I nodded. "The scars on my body are a reminder of everything I endured. They are now a part of me, and I don't intend to part with them."
"An interesting choice." Phoebe nodded before coming to a stop.
She looked ahead.
"It appears we have another visitor."
I buttoned my shirt and nodded. "Yes, we have. I detected her presence a minute ago."
It was unmistakable, even after all these years.
"I thought you disappeared," I said with a smirk.
"Says the one who came to visit his own grave," she replied with a sneer.
Five years had changed her.
Her golden hair was now longer, highlighted with green streaks.
The black hoodie and jeans she wore accentuated her slim figure, while her fair face remained as beautiful as ever.
Annoyingly, she was now a bit taller than me.
But it wasn't her appearance that caught my attention.
Something about her had changed.
Her presence felt colder. It was a drastic contrast to the bright personality she had possessed five years ago.
It was especially evident in her eyes. Her sapphire-blue gaze now carried a cold, sharp glint, along with a spark of bitterness.
I wonder…
Is this the Elaine Pendragon I knew?
She stopped a few steps away from me, her eyes narrowing as she studied me.
"Goodness." Her voice was casual. "You've turned out to be a fine young man, Mordred."
"Thanks." I nodded. "And you have become a fine young lady. Or should I say, High Princess?"
Elaine laughed.
It sounded lifeless and broken.
"You think so? Thanks. That is a rare compliment."
Her blue eyes fell on my right arm before shifting toward Phoebe.
"I see that the Lux Incarnus has restored your arm."
She curtsied, her movements eerily perfect, almost like a lifeless doll.
"I, Elaine Pendragon, express my reverence to Phoebe of the Restoration."
"You are well informed, child," Phoebe said, studying Elaine. "It is nice to see you, High Princess."
She turned to me, a faint glint in her crystalline eyes. "I will leave you two alone. You seem to have a lot of catching up to do."
Elaine bowed her head with a smile. "Thank you, Lady Phoebe."
She turned to me. "Shall we go for a walk?"
*******
We were back at my grave after walking in silence for some time.
"It must've been weird to see your own grave," Elaine said, giving me a sideways glance.
I shrugged. "Meh. I've seen enough graves to last a lifetime."
"The Tomb, huh?" She nodded. "I've read about it. An entire mountain carved hollow to house fallen Deathwalkers."
She gave me another sideways glance. "You have changed a lot."
I nodded. "So have you."
I looked at her. "You know what happened to me, but I know nothing about what happened to you. Neither Morgan nor Mother told me anything."
She smirked. "I thought you hated me so much that you didn't bother?"
"The Abyss has changed me, Elaine." I looked ahead. "It has hollowed me. My hatred towards you was smothered by the pain of my suffering."
"I simply didn't have the luxury to maintain that hatred for ten torturous years."
"Besides…" I looked at my name carved into the white headstone. "We're adults now, so I believe we should be a bit more mature here."
Elaine let out a deep breath.
She looked… exhausted.
"You're right," she said. "I have changed a lot."
She looked at me with a bitter smile.
"And it's all thanks to you."
I arched my eyebrows.
"You were right, Mordred. I wasn't careful with my choice of friends."
"That does not surprise me," I said with a small shrug.
She pursed her lips.
"Yeah. About a week after you left for the Shield, I had the Phantom Knights look into those in my social circle."
Her gaze lowered.
"Most of them were only there because of my status as a High Princess. Their families had sent them to manipulate me."
"Henry, Fiora, and Rose. They were the only ones I had who were genuine friends."
"It's funny, isn't it?" She chuckled bitterly. "You, who had no friends, were a better judge of character than I ever was."
I didn't respond.
I simply stood there in silence, letting her speak.
"So I cut ties with most of them. I even beat up some of the unruly ones," she said, smiling bitterly. "I foolishly thought that would be the end."
The bitterness in her voice made it clear how wrong she had been.
"Not quite?"
Elaine shook her head.
"Nobility is a brutal competition. What I did was essentially disgrace those families, and they retaliated, even if I was a High Princess."
She sighed.
"Soon, word began to spread about how I tormented you, about how I was one of the reasons why you were sent to the Shield."
I stared at her.
"Well. That was true. You did bully me."
She frowned.
"Yes, I did. But according to them, I was the chief instigator. I forced the other kids to torment you."
Her expression darkened.
"According to them, I was the one who impaled your hand with a red-hot dagger."
I frowned.
"Now that's just hogwash. You were too much of a coward to do that."
Elaine's lips twitched faintly at the insult, but the expression quickly disappeared.
"So they pinned all the blame on you?" I asked.
Elaine shrugged. "Kind of like that. But the stories became even wilder. There was even a rumor that I was… intimate with you."
I was aghast and equally disgusted.
"Ew."
Considering my past life, the thought of incest made my stomach churn.
Elaine wore the same disgusted expression.
"Ew indeed."
"Of course, Dad immediately went to work putting out those weird rumors, but they had already done their damage."
She sighed. "My reputation was torn to shreds. My support gradually dwindled. No one wants to back a troublemaker princess."
"In a rather ironic twist of fate…" Her expression turned bitter. "I began to experience bullying."
She looked away.
"It was horrible."
Then she gave me a bitter smile. "I guess that's what you call karmic retribution."
I simply stared at her, not knowing what to say.
Deep inside, a small part of me was glad that she had experienced what the old Mordred had endured.
It was a dark thought.
One that immediately fizzled out.
Now, I only felt pity for the young woman beside me.
Elaine's voice trembled as she continued.
"Fiora, Henry, and Rose. They stood by my side through it all. They protected me from the bullies, even getting hurt sometimes for my sake."
A pained admiration shone in her eyes.
"Henry was amazing. He could beat up any bastard who tried to torment me."
That brief light immediately vanished.
"That was… until three years ago."
"Rose and Fiora… they died."
Elaine's eyes trembled, but no tears fell.
"They were killed in a conflict between several noble families. It was a brutal competition between them."
"And soon after that…"
She swallowed.
"Henry disappeared. He just… vanished off the face of Asteris."
She took a deep breath.
"Those three were my anchors. They protected me from the raging sea of deceit and torment."
Her gaze lowered. "The torment continued, except I no longer had anyone to help me."
"Mom, Dad, Morgan, and Gawain did everything they could to help me, but it only made things worse. I became known as an uncontrollable troublemaker who misused her authority."
"I realized I was becoming the disgrace of the Pendragons."
She gave a bitter smile.
"Mom and Dad would never have seen me that way. But I did."
Elaine walked around my grave, her blue eyes seemingly empty.
"I couldn't endure the torment, so I shut myself away. I stopped going to school and distanced myself from our family."
"But I couldn't exactly hide myself away forever."
Her gaze darkened.
"And my tormentors were enjoying their lives while mine was falling apart."
"So I studied. I trained. I pushed myself to my limits, learning new codes and refining my strands."
She opened her palm.
Two orbs of fire and water materialized above it.
I had forgotten that Elaine was blessed with two strands, Ignis and Aqua.
Like Morgan and Gawain, she was a genius.
But she had always been lazy, never putting in the effort to improve herself. She had been too absorbed in her own self-importance to do so.
But now…
I looked at the two strands dancing above her palm.
She had changed.
Combined with the mental trauma she had endured, the harsh training she had subjected herself to, and her natural talent…
There was no doubt about it anymore.
Elaine had reached the realm of S-rank.
She met my gaze. "In just a year, I had become quite strong."
A dark smile stretched across her face.
"And I was able to have my revenge on my tormentors."
"I utterly destroyed them."
She closed her palm, disintegrating the two orbs.
"Of course, doing so burned away my already ruined reputation. But I didn't care anymore."
"The rumors about me became even more vicious. More vile."
She frowned. "They appeared faster and were even wilder than Dad could extinguish them."
"Huh."
I raised an eyebrow.
"I understand rumors can get out of control, but what you described seems… unnatural."
Elaine nodded.
"It was."
She looked at me.
"And we eventually understood why."
"All those false stories, tabloids, social media posts…"
Her expression soured. "They were all traced back to the work of a single person."
"A vile, sleazy man with the tongue of a snake."
She paused.
Then she looked into my eyes.
"Charles Augustus Milverton."