Sitting opposite the silver-haired boy, Azriel didn't know what to say.
From the mont he arrived, it had been one surprise after another.
'What a crazy person... I an, who almost attacks the person they invited!?'
Perhaps he should have just stayed with his father...
Unable to bear the silence any longer, Azriel spoke.
"...What is your na?"
The boy blinked at him a few tis as if still processing what Azriel had just said.
A look of understanding ca to his face as he nodded.
'What is up with this guy...?'
"...Nol. My na is Nol."
Azriel nodded in acknowledgnt.
"Alright, Nol. My na is-"
"Azriel. Azriel Crimson. I know perfectly well who you are."
"R-right..."
'I guess that makes sense; otherwise, he couldn't have exactly sent an invitation.'
But the question still remained.
Why?
"You really don't rember, huh..."
'Rember?'
Azriel looked confused at Nol.
"You are the one who nad Nol."
"...!"
Azriel's eyes widened.
Nad him?
How was that possible?
He was sure he had no mories of such a person, let alone naming him.
Besides...
'Did I na him when I was a baby or sothing...?'
That was impossible.
Azriel was convinced that Nol was simply... crazy.
"You don't believe ?"
"I don't."
How could he?
It was ridiculous, to say the least.
"I don't rember eting you ever in my life."
"I thought as much..."
Nol went silent for a few seconds until a tired sigh escaped his lips.
"...I guess we should start from the beginning."
"Sure."
No matter what Nol said, Azriel was sure it was just crazy talk.
Honestly, he had already accepted the invitation, so couldn't he just go back?
But how?
'How troubleso...'
"You and I t for the first ti more than a year ago."
"...!"
Azriel almost stood up in shock hearing his words.
'W-what... a year ago?'
Impossible.
He was supposed to be dead...
He was about to speak until Nol continued.
"Let finish. It will all make sense after I'm done, or at least kind of..."
"..."
In the end, Azriel reluctantly nodded.
"Ever since I can rember, I have always been here."
Azriel looked at him in shock again but didn't interrupt.
"I had no na, no dreams, nor any will," Nol continued.
Simply put...
"I was an empty shell."
His eyes gazed above Azriel while his lips gently curved upward, reminiscing about his distant past.
"Locked in this prison, a warden and an inmate at the sa ti. Ti here is weird. It flows slower than outside, but a day here feels like ten years while ten years feel like a day."
What he said confused Azriel, but at the sa ti, he felt like Nol was right.
It felt like his perception of ti was getting ssed up in here.
'I need to leave soon...'
"Then one day, you ca here... the first person I ever laid my eyes upon. You looked beaten and battered yet relieved after finally finding a place to rest."
The more he spoke, the more Azriel beca confused.
He had already figured out that this was a separate space.
How did he manage to arrive in this place?
It didn't add up...
"I didn't have any ans to heal you, so you spent your days here with until you recovered. If I had to guess, it took four whole months for you to recover from those injuries."
Azriel sucked in a cold breath.
Four months...
Just how injured was he?
"In those four months, you taught everything there was to know about the void realm and earth. You nad , ntored , and gave dreams."
He spoke passionately about their ti together, to the point that Azriel was starting to believe him.
"Unfortunately..." Nol suddenly grimaced.
"nothing lasts forever. Your injuries healed, and you made a full recovery. It was ti for you to leave. Of course, you couldn't leave this place without my permission, but..."
His eyes locked with Azriel's.
"You made a promise."
Saying that, Nol suddenly raised his right hand and then removed a ring from it.
"...!"
The ring... It was Azriel's.
His storage ring that he had gotten from his parents on his 13th birthday.
Clink-!
The ring spun briefly on the marble table before finally settling with a soft, resonant chi.
Its obsidian surface almost sucked all the light in the hall.
Azriel looked at him in shock and confusion.
"How...?"
"You gave it to as a promise. A promise that you would return and a reminder of you, who I consider my master,"
Nol spoke calmly, but each word made Azriel feel the opposite.
"With your help, I even learned more about what I can do in here and how this place is my unique skill, White Haven. I can invite people to co here, though it takes a toll on my mana, and anyone who accepts is not allowed to use their powers here."
Nol narrowed his eyes dangerously toward Azriel, making him break out in a cold sweat.
"Yet whenever I invited you, you never accepted. I was starting to think that you abandoned ."
"But... it wasn't that you abandoned ; you simply forgot about . No, not just —you forgot a lot, didn't you?"
Azriel nodded his head this ti. He had no mories of the last two years. He had thought it was because he was dead, but...
It seems he was wrong.
He didn't die.
Sohow.
"This chessboard... you were the one who taught how to play,"
"Saying that the one who taught you how to play was your father,"
Azriel froze.
He felt his throat go dry because...
"...What did you just say?"
His father, Joaquin, never taught him how to play chess.
No.
It was Leo's father who taught him how to play chess.
"That your father taught you how to play chess..." Nol repeated, looking confused.
'What does this exactly an...?' Azriel thought, his mind racing.
"How did I arrive here if you didn't even invite ?"
Azriel asked, trying to piece everything together.
Nol rely shrugged his shoulders.
"Beats . You arrived here out of nowhere. At first, master, you were acting all weird and stuff, saying how you didn't belong here and were about to die from void creatures when you were just reading so kind of book re minutes ago."
"After almost dying, you lost consciousness and arrived here,"
"Heh, I think that was the first ti I actually laughed... you were so weird at first."
Azriel was getting a headache.
What did all of this an?
Didn't he teleport to Europe when he first arrived in this world?
'Those two missing years... that wasn't because of the previous Azriel being dead. No... it was taking his body, but...'
He had lost his mories.
'How...?'
Just what happened in those two years?
"I told you my na was Azriel Crimson, right?"
To his surprise, Nol shook his head.
"Not at first. Only after an entire month did you reveal your na to ."
Right now, it felt like Azriel was trying to complete a puzzle without having all the pieces.
'I need to find a different approach...'
"How can you invite a person?"
"There are two conditions I need to et for inviting a person to White Haven. First, I need to have a little bit of their blood, and second, I need to know their full na."
'That's...'
Inconvenient.
Wasn't it basically impossible to invite soone when he couldn't even leave this place?
How was he supposed to acquire one's na or blood?
'Yet I sohow arrived here without those conditions...'
But Nol couldn't invite him this entire ti until today.
"If I'm honest, after you left, soone else managed to get here without eting those conditions."
"Huh? Who did?"
"A person that goes by the na Dante."
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