The Anomaly's P Chapter 48: The Ones Left Behind

Chapter 48: The Ones Left Behind

[Alia’s POV]

Luck.

So people are born with it. So aren’t. That’s just how the world works.

I was one of the lucky ones.

Born as the only daughter of Duke Nightshade—one of the Four Great Houses, one of the strongest n in the Human Domain. My father built this house from nothing, rose to heights most people can only dream of.

He’s not just strong; he’s respected. Feared, even.

But with ? He’s just... Dad.

The man who ruffles my hair and tells

I can be anything I want to be.

My mother wasn’t a warrior. She had a low-rank core and never trained for combat. But she was kind in a way that had nothing to do with power. Capable in her own right, running the estate with a steady hand that made everyone respect her.

She was loved by everyone in the city—when she walked through the market, people smiled and waved. She taught

that strength isn’t just about mana or swords—it’s about how you treat people when no one’s watching.

And then there was Nana.

My nanny. She had gray hair and warm hands, always slling like the lavender soap she made herself. She’d braid my hair in the mornings and tell

stories about heroes and monsters and love that made my heart ache. She wasn’t family by blood, but she was family in every way that mattered.

Everyone in the estate was kind to .

The servants smiled—real smiles, not forced ones. The guards nodded with respect, and sotis the younger ones would tease

gently. The nobles from other houses praised my beauty, my grace, my potential, and even if so of it was politics, so of it felt real.

I never had to fight for anything. Never had to struggle. Just being born into this family, surrounded by these people—it felt like a blessing.

Then two people entered my life.

...And everything changed.

_

I couldn’t sleep tonight.

Sothing felt wrong. A weight in my chest. A voice in the back of my mind whispering that sothing terrible was about to happen. I’ve learned to trust that feeling over the years.

So I got up. Pulled on my cloak. Walked through the silent estate with no destination in mind, just needing to move.

I didn’t plan to end up at the training hall.

I didn’t plan to see him.

Arthur.

He was walking ahead of , his silhouette barely visible in the pre-dawn darkness. I almost called out—almost let him know I was there. But sothing stopped . The tension in his shoulders. The way he moved like he was carrying sothing too heavy.

I followed him instead.

I know—it’s creepy. It’s wrong.

But I couldn’t help it. I needed to know where he was going, what he was doing, why he was up at this hour just like .

He entered the training hall. I waited a mont, then slipped in behind him, staying in the shadows near the door.

What I saw made my blood run cold.

He walked to the console. Pressed his palm against it. I couldn’t hear the words, but the AI’s voice echoed faintly. Then he went to the weapon rack and grabbed a real sword—not practice wood, not training steel, but a blade that could kill.

My heart stopped.

What are you doing, Arthur?

He set the simulation to a rank above his own. Expert. A full level higher than him. And then the dummy rose from the floor, its red eyes glowing, its own sword ready.

He was going to fight it alone. In the dark. With no one to stop him if sothing went wrong.

I should have called out then. Should have stopped him. But I was frozen, watching, my hand over my mouth, my heart pounding so loud I was sure he’d hear it.

The fight started, and despite everything, it was beautiful to watch.

Terrifying, yes—but beautiful in a way I couldn’t look away from. He moved like water, like light, like soone who had been born with a sword already in his hand.

I’d seen him train before—everyone in the estate had, at so point or another—but this was different. This was sothing else entirely.

He was holding his own against a machine designed to kill him.

But then things started to go wrong.

The blows kept landing—once, twice, more tis than I could keep track of. But every ti he went down, he got back up. Every ti, he kept fighting, kept pushing forward with a desperation that made my chest ache just watching him.

Stop, I wanted to scream. Please stop. You’re hurting yourself.

I wanted to move, to speak, to do sothing—anything—but my body wouldn’t obey. All I could do was stand there and watch as he slowly, inevitably, started to lose.

The dummy caught him in the chest and sent him flying into the wall.

I heard the impact. The crack of his body against stone. Saw him slide down, coughing, blood spraying from his mouth onto the floor.

I took a step forward, then another. I was going to help him—I didn’t care if he got angry, didn’t care if he pushed

away. I just needed him to stop, to rest, to breathe.

But before I could reach him, he started screaming.

Not in pain. Not in fear. Sothing else entirely. Sothing worse. He was shouting at nothing, swinging his sword at empty air like there was an enemy only he could see. His eyes were wild, unfocused, staring at things that weren’t there.

I wanted to run to him. I wanted to shake him, hold him, make him see . But my legs wouldn’t move. All I could do was watch as he fought shadows, as he scread at ghosts, as he fell apart right in front of .

Then, sohow, my voice finally worked.

"...Arthur...?"

The words didn’t reach him. He kept fighting, kept swinging, lost in a world I couldn’t enter.

"Arthur!"

I called out louder, my voice echoing off the walls, but he didn’t stop—didn’t even slow down.

"ARTHUR!"

I scread his na with everything I had, pouring all my desperation into the hope that sohow, through the chaos in his mind, he would hear —that he would rember where he was, who he was, that I was here with him.

He froze.

The dummy had stopped moving—the simulation must have ended, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just stood there with his sword still raised, his chest heaving, blood dripping steadily onto the floor beneath him.

Slowly, so slowly, he turned.

When his eyes t mine, I felt my heart crack open. They were empty. Hollow. The eyes of soone who wasn’t really here, whose mind was still trapped sowhere far away.

But then, gradually, sothing began to flicker in them. Recognition, maybe. Or confusion. Or pain. Probably all three.

"...Alia?"

His voice broke on my na. It was the most broken sound I’d ever heard.

I was crying. I didn’t know when I’d started—the tears were just there suddenly, hot against my cold skin, streaming down my face faster than I could wipe them away.

"Arthur," I whispered, my voice barely holding together. "Please. Look around you. Please."

He blinked slowly, like soone waking from a dream. His gaze dropped to his hands—to the blood, to the sword still gripped in his fingers.

Then he looked at what was left of the training dummy. Pieces of it lay scattered across the floor, sparking and smoking, tal twisted beyond recognition. An Expert-rank training dummy, sothing that should have taken hours to damage, reduced to scrap tal by one boy’s rage.

"I... I did this?"

His voice ca out so small, so young—nothing like the warrior I’d watched cut through that machine like it was paper. For a mont, he sounded like the broken boy I’d first t all those years ago.

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t find words for what I was feeling.

He looked back at , and I saw that his eyes were wet now too—tears cutting tracks through the blood on his face, his expression lost and confused and terrified all at once.

"Alia..."

I took a step toward him. Then another. Then I was running, closing the distance between us, throwing my arms around him before I could think about whether it was the right thing to do.

He held

back like I was the only thing keeping him from falling apart.

"I’m here," I whispered into his chest, my voice muffled against his torn clothes. "I’m here, Arthur. I’m not going anywhere."

He didn’t say anything. Just held

tighter, his whole body shaking against mine.

And for a mont—just a single, fragile mont—the world stopped breaking.

We stayed like that for a long ti, not speaking, not moving, just holding each other in the dark. And in the silence, with his heartbeat steady against my ear, my mind drifted back to everything that had brought us here.

_

The first ti I saw Arthur, he was covered in blood.

I was eight years old, playing in the garden without a care in the world, when I heard the commotion. Servants were running past, guards shouting orders, soone calling urgently for the healer.

I hid behind a pillar and watched.

They carried a boy through the estate. He was small—smaller than . His clothes were torn, stained with sothing dark and terrible. Blood covered his face, his hands, his clothes, matted in his hair. I couldn’t tell where it ended and he began.

But it was his eyes that I rember most.

They were gold. Bright gold, like nothing I’d ever seen. But they were empty. Hollow. Like soone had taken everything that made a person a person and scooped it out, leaving nothing behind but a shell.

For weeks after that day, he barely spoke. He barely ate. He just sat in his room, staring at nothing, not reacting to anything or anyone. The servants whispered that he was broken, that he’d never be normal again, that the Duke had made a mistake bringing him here.

I didn’t believe them.

I couldn’t explain why—I just knew, sohow, that there was still soone in there.

Soone worth reaching.

One day, when the estate was quiet and no one was watching, I snuck into his room. He was sitting by the window, watching the rain fall against the glass, his expression blank and distant.

"...Hi," I said softly, my voice barely above a whisper.

Nothing. No response, no indication he’d even heard . He just kept staring out the window like I wasn’t there.

I sat on the floor beside him anyway, close enough that he could feel my presence but far enough that he wouldn’t feel trapped.

And then I waited.

"I’m Alia," I said after a while. "I live here."

Still nothing.

So I just started talking. Told him about the garden, about the butterflies I’d been chasing, about the cookies the kitchen made on feast days—anything I could think of to fill the silence between us. I talked until my voice grew hoarse, until I’d run out of aningless things to say.

Then, after what felt like hours, he spoke.

"...Why are you here?"

His voice was rough and broken, like he hadn’t used it in days.

"Because you shouldn’t be alone," I said simply. "No one should be alone after sothing like that."

He looked at

then. Those gold eyes t mine, and for the first ti, I saw sothing flicker in them—sothing small and fragile, but there.

Then he looked away. But he didn’t tell

to leave.

I ca back the next day. And the day after that, and the day after that—every single day without fail, I sat beside him and filled the silence with aningless chatter until eventually, slowly, he started talking back.

Slowly, almost without

noticing, he started to change. First it was small things, like eating properly and leaving his room for short walks. Then bigger things, like talking more and eting my eyes when I spoke. Before long, he was living instead of just existing.

One day, I worked up the courage to ask.

"What’s your na?"

He was quiet for so long I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then, so softly I almost missed it:

"...Arthur. Arthur Vale."

I smiled. "Arthur Vale. That’s a pretty na."

His cheeks turned pink. Just a little.

I laughed—not at him, never at him. Just because it was such a human mont, so real and ordinary and perfectly him.

From that mont, I knew he would be okay. Not perfect, not healed, but okay. And sohow, I knew he would be part of my life for a long ti.

But there was another boy too. One who entered my life around the sa ti, though I don’t rember exactly when.

He had bright blue eyes that sparkled like the ocean under sunlight, and he was always laughing—always curious, always asking questions about everything.

Why is the sky blue? How do swords cut? What does mana feel like?

His eyes would light up whenever he discovered sothing new, and without thinking, he’d grab my hand and drag

off to show whoever would listen.

He was my... fiancé.

Arranged when we were too young to understand what that word really ant. But back then, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was my friend.

My best friend.

The three of us were inseparable. Always together, always laughing, always getting into trouble that made the servants shake their heads and smile.

He was the heart of everything. Arthur was the quiet one, the steady one. When Arthur smiled—really smiled—it was like watching the sun co out after a storm.

I thought my life was perfect.

But fate is truly cruel. It gives you everything just so it can take it all back.

It started when he awakened his core.

B-rank.

In a family of prodigies, in a world that expected greatness, he got a B-rank core.

I watched him change after that—the light slowly draining from those bright blue eyes, his laughter turning bitter, his curiosity twisting into jealousy, his kindness curdling into resentnt.

He started drinking, pushing us away, and worst of all—he started looking at Arthur with sothing that looked a lot like hatred.

I tried to reach him, tried to remind him that we were still his friends, that we still loved him no matter what. But he wouldn’t listen anymore.

The argunts got worse with each passing day, the silences stretching longer and longer until they felt permanent.

And then—

He raised his hand against .

I try not to think about that day. The look in his eyes—like I was a stranger, like I was nothing. The way Arthur stepped between us without hesitation, ready to protect

even from soone we’d both loved. The way everything ended in that single mont.

The engagent shattered. The friendship crumbled. Everything we’d built together over the years collapsed like a house of cards.

After that, he beca soone I didn’t recognize.

Cold where he used to be warm, distant where he used to be close, cruel where he used to be kind. He surrounded himself with people who only wanted his money and status, people who laughed at his jokes and took his coin and never once cared about him.

He drank himself stupid night after night, stumbling through the estate like a ghost haunting halls that used to feel like ho.

I lost him...

Not to death. To sothing worse.

Arthur never stopped training after that. Never stopped pushing. But the nightmares started. I saw it in his eyes sotis—that hollow look, the sa one he’d had when Father first brought him ho.

He’d wake up gasping, drenched in sweat, seeing things that weren’t there.

All those years, those nightmares have haunted him—the mories he can’t escape, the guilt he can’t outrun, the part of himself he’s been fighting every single day.

I’ve watched him.

I’ve seen the way his hands shake sotis when he thinks no one’s looking. The way he flinches at certain sounds. The way he trains like he’s trying to outrun sothing that’s always right behind him.

And now, holding him in the dark, feeling his heart beat against mine—

I understood sothing I hadn’t before.

He wasn’t trying to outrun the mories. He was trying to outrun the guilt. The guilt of surviving when his family didn’t. The guilt of living when they died.

He carried it every single day. And tonight, it had finally crushed him.

I held him tighter.

I don’t know what happens next. I don’t know if he’ll be okay, if the nightmares will fade, if the mories will ever stop hurting.

But right now, standing here in the dark with blood on his clothes and tears on his face and his arms wrapped tight around —right now, none of that mattered.

He was alive. He was here. He was still fighting.

And I would be here too, for as long as it took.

Days, weeks, years—I didn’t care. Because that’s what you do for the people you love. You stay. Even when it hurts, even when you can’t fix anything, even when all you can do is hold on and hope that sohow, soday, it’ll be enough.

I was lucky once, born into a good family surrounded by people who loved . But luck isn’t the sa as happiness. Happiness is this—right here, right now, with him holding

back just as tightly as I held him.

I tightened my arms around him and closed my eyes.

Whatever ca next, we’d face it together.