Cameraman Never Dies

"My lord..."

The whisper floated through the room like a mosquito on a stealth mission — faint, persistent, and irritating enough to make Judge want to slap the air like he was performing interpretive dance in his sleep.

"Five more minutes..." Judge mumbled, half-conscious and clinging to his pillow like it was his emotional support plushie. He rolled over with the poise of a collapsing scarecrow, managing to tangle himself further into the blanket burrito of denial.

"My lord! Awake! The day is already plotting against you — rise before it triumphs!"

The voice now had the volume of a medieval town crier who had just discovered opera. It was dramatic. It was shrill. It was aggressively motivational — the kind of tone that might guilt a rock into running laps.

Judge jolted upright like a horror movie extra getting possessed. "WHAT?!"

His neck immediately staged a mutiny, sending a lightning bolt of pain down his spine. He groaned and reached up to rub it, which only made it worse. Clearly, his body had unionized overnight under the Department of Pain and Overreaction.

Standing over him with all the subtlety of a tax collector was Solarae, his spirit companion. Once considered a humble servant, Solarae was rapidly shifting roles — and now sat somewhere between hovering parent and celestial parole officer.

Judge squinted at his surroundings. The walls, the ceiling, the complete lack of chaos — nope, this definitely wasn't his room.

"Where am I?" he asked, blinking like a dazed goldfish.

"This is your domain, my lord," Solarae replied, straightening his posture like a particularly smug coat rack.

"In the studio?" Judge furrowed his brows. "Why am I here? Wait — why are you here? No — how are you here?!"

He pointed an accusatory finger at Solarae, then stopped halfway, realizing it was also the hand he'd just dislocated by sleeping wrong.

As far as Judge knew (which admittedly wasn't far), nobody could enter the studio without his royal thumbs-up. Unless Clio had been keeping secrets again. Which, let's be real, was 85% of her job.

"I've always been able to enter, my lord," Solarae said matter-of-factly. "I assumed you were aware."

Judge gave him the blank, dead-eyed stare of someone who just discovered their diary had been read by the entire family group chat.

"What?" he whispered, not even surprised anymore. Just tired. Cosmically tired. Tired on a spiritual level. Disappointed, like a dad whose kid just tried to microwave a fork.

He raised a hand to object, then lowered it again.

Of course Solarae didn't say anything. Of course he thought Judge already knew. That was the kind of logic that got people turned into toads in old fairy tales.

"Did you bring me here?" Judge asked instead. Fоr а bеttеr rеаding еxpеriеnсе, visit М(VLЕМРYR).

Solarae hesitated — the kind of pause that said, "I did something dumb but noble, please don't yell."

"Yes, my lord. I did."

Judge's expression didn't change, but internally, he screamed.

"Why?" His voice was quiet, like the calm before a paperwork storm.

"It was the best course of action," Solarae said diplomatically, as though he were trying to justify dropping a birthday cake down the stairs. "The party was returning, but maid Lediya's plan did not align with your best interests."

Translation: Lediya was about to commit a war crime in the name of discipline, and Solarae had acted like a metaphysical Uber driver.

Judge sighed, peeling himself off the bed like a leftover lasagna noodle, and he definitely wasn't the one who created the bed.

The realization that Solarae could rearrange his studio furniture at will was horrifying.

He made a mental note to hide all the embarrassing furniture items. Especially the beanbag throne.

Still, priorities.

There were problems bigger than uninvited spirit visits. Like Corwin — Selena's father — now very, very dead. And Percival, who'd apparently decided to moonlight as a demonic meat puppet.

And Seraphis — Seraphis, the indestructible, the woman who once turned Judge into a lawn ornament in combat — had been bisected. Judge wasn't sure how you came back from that. Probably with glue. Or dark magic. Or a therapist.

"So, uh… how do I get out of the ship?" Judge asked, stretching his sore limbs. "Because if I walk out now, I'm 90% sure I'll materialize directly into Lediya's wrath — and that woman has the aim of a sniper with a frying pan."

Solarae stared.

Not blinked. Stared.

The kind of stare that said, "Do you… do you even read the manual?"

Joke's on him — Judge didn't even know there was a manual.

"What?" Judge asked, nervously checking his sleeves for signs of obvious stupidity.

"My lord..." Solarae said with the soft horror of someone realizing the pilot doesn't know how to land the plane. "Have you never experimented with your skill?"

"Yeah, of course I have." Judge shrugged.

Then paused.

"…Wait, why?"

Solarae visibly aged a thousand years in two seconds.

"If you had paid attention," he said with saintly restraint, "you'd know that you can return to a different spot you teleported from."

A pause.

"...Right. Why did I forget that? And I even did that several times." Judge slowly remembered his episodes with Lucifer and Seraphis, like a raccoon trying to solve a Rubik's cube.

"Exactly. Though I do not know how you forget things you are familiar with."

Another pause.

"Oh," Judge said, nodding. "So if I left now, I could go anywhere but still reach my mother when I want to."

"Precisely, my lord."

"...Neat."

He clapped his hands, instantly pretending he had known all along.

"Well then. Let's maybe not do that. And get out of here."

———

Judge's guard stared at the maid, "I swear he just... he just disappeared."

"Don't worry," Lediya consoled him. "The patriarch won't punish you, he knows Judge can use a strange principle that lets him disappear."

"But... this is the second time." The guard wasn't complaining, but he was actually impressed. So young, but he could already escape the clutches of such powerful knights as them. "You won't follow him?"

"No," She turned to walk towards Liam's room. She wasn't Liam's assigned maid, but his assigned maid had a few problems of her own to be taken care of. Gereon, the patriarch, understood the circumstances and let her finish whatever she intended to do.

"Why?" The other guard asked, it was a question out of curiosity rather than necessity.

"Patriarch told me to just inform of master Judge's disappearance if it ever happened and not to chase after him."

Lediya took her leave after saying that, not staying for idle conversations.

"Well, that's convenient." He said and marched to the other side.