Nazarick did not sleep.
Its halls breathed in gold and shadow, tended by servants who needed neither rest nor reason. Magic lights never flickered. Walls never cracked. Time, here, didn't pass—it waited.
And in the middle of it all, Elijah stood.
No orders. No enemies. No purpose that wasn't self-defined.
He had stayed. That decision still echoed inside his chest like a question unanswered.
He wandered. Watched. Observed.
He saw Shalltear duel herself in a hall of mirrors—each clone screaming for blood in the same voice. He watched Demiurge rehearse conversations in multiple languages, his tail twitching with delighted malice. He saw Mare—timid, brilliant—terraform an entire training field into a hostile ecosystem, just to measure the kill-time of imported beasts.
And not once did anyone stop him.
Elijah knew the power of each guardian. Their history. Their combat specs.
But none of that mattered as much as the silence that followed them.
They obeyed. They served. They didn't question.
And now that he was "trusted," they extended the same non-suspicion to him.
That's what unsettled him most.
---
He passed Albedo once in the central garden.
They didn't speak. Just walked.
She smelled of polished armor and floral oils, her heels clinking softly against marble. She never looked at him, but she didn't walk away either.
They reached the edge of the garden. She turned down a separate path without a word.
Elijah stood alone for a moment longer, surrounded by beauty that had no heart.
Then he moved on.
---
Sometimes he ended up back in the Room of the Supreme Beings.
Not to worship. Not to question.
Just… to sit.
The statues meant something to them. To the Guardians. They were memories cast in stone. Proof that someone greater had once walked these halls.
To Elijah, they were reminders.
Of players.
Of people.
And of one in particular who used to say: *"Because saving someone in need… is always the right thing to do."*
Elijah didn't know what he was saving anymore.
But for now, he stayed.
Still. Watching.