“My name was once Gil,” Anta began. “I was an orphan from a young age. Are you familiar with the term?” He asked sincerely.

“I’ve heard of that,” Tiki replied. “That’s when a child loses a parent to death, right?”

“That’s correct,” Anta confirmed. “My parents were dead, and I had no siblings or extended family to raise me. I was sent to an orphanage, a place for homeless, parentless children like me to be given a poor substitute for what we’ve lost. We were given the bare essentials, a hard wooden bed, a small amount of gruel, a small yard to play in. But through all that, I gained something: a friend. He was the greatest gift a child like me would never dare to ask for. I didn’t see how I was worthy of someone like him. He was too good for a place like that… but there he was, beside me, day and night. He even said that I was a gift to him.

“We spent all our time together, hardly a moment apart. We ate together, studied together, played together, bathed and slept together. I loved inventing, he loved trying new things. I’d make all sorts of contraptions, and he’d be my test pilot. The cruel world and the orphanage didn’t seem so bad when we had each other. Eventually, the time came when we were old enough to leave the orphanage, and we knew exactly what we would do once we got out of there. We decided to travel the world, and that’s what we did.

“Like the three of you, we traveled all over the continent. We discovered so many beautiful things that the world had to offer. There was so much to see that one lifetime wouldn’t have been enough time to see it all… but we didn’t even get that one life.

“A war started. A massive war between continents. They drafted everyone, including the two of us. We were no strangers to battle, with our experiences traversing dungeons and fighting monsters, but this… This was different. Man versus man, in seemingly endless bloodshed. Bodies littered across the battlefield. People just like us. This wasn’t the kind of battle we enjoyed. Lives were lost… millions of lives. Every time I thought the battle would end, we kept on going. I saw so many people die, some at my own hand. My friend and I tried to be strong. We thought, as long as we were together, we’d get through this.

“One night, when we had a moment of respite at camp, eating and chatting with the other soldiers…”

Anta paused and stared at his tea cup. He’d been stirring it absentmindedly without drinking from it.

Tiki could tell this was hard for him. As much as she thought she shouldn’t pity the enemy, it was hard not to. “Take your time,” she said, in a tone of serenity that she usually saved for Prota when they were alone.

The white haired man took a deep breath and looked up at the beautiful woman. The sight of her seemed to ground him in reality. He couldn’t stop there. He needed her to know everything. “He was shot,” Anta revealed. “Someone shot an arrow through the opening of the tent when we were all drinking and had our guards down. He collapsed. I was talking to someone and didn’t see it happen. But I heard the thud. I looked over with a smile on my face, thinking it wasn’t anything serious, and…”

Anta’s hand was on the table next to his teacup, in a tight fist. Tiki’s heart bled for him. She reached out her hand, and her dark, slender fingers wrapped gently over the back of his icy white hand.

“Blood poured out of him,” Anta continued. “We all rushed to his side, but… The arrow was deep in his lung. He bled out too quickly. There was nothing we could do.”

He was silent for a moment.

“After that, I couldn’t bring myself to fight. They let me return home.” He scoffed. “I didn’t have a home. Home was wherever he was.

“I thought of dying. But when I saw the people still dying everywhere I turned, the people suffering as their loved ones were ripped from them, I thought… I can’t leave the world like this. Someone had to fix things. And if there was one thing I could do, it was fix things.

“I decided to devote my life to creating a machine that would eradicate death. It took decades, but I stayed true to my resolve. I believed it was possible. In that time, the war ended and life had started picking up again. And finally, my goal came to fruition.

“But in order to achieve this, I had to make a sacrifice,” he said, as his voice turned quiet and ominous. “And that was…”