The Summoner's Rebirth: Awaken, Milady

Take me. 

Raon expressed his wish to die alongside with the others.

In this entire realm, only he was left alive in the forest. The place where a small town used to be established in, the place where he called home and had lots of lovely people that he treasured. The child couldn't take it anymore upon realizing that there was no meaning for his life anymore.

"Please.. take me too.. kill me, end this all!" Raon sprawled down to the ground and picked up the same stone he attempted to kill himself with the first time. However, he really couldn't end it on his own.

He wanted the dragon to mercilessly kill him like the others so that he didn't have to take his own life.

He couldn't kill himself at all.

"...I got it," Aria laid on the ground, blood seeping out of her body as she looked at the young boy who immediately ran away from her embrace and went to sacrifice himself on his own accord even though the dragon had already fled.

The boy looked at the sky with despair as the Bone Dragon exited his view range and disappeared without a trace. The world, the 'illusion' was beginning to fall apart.

She was dying, and that death seemed to also trigger the destruction of the illusion. In the corner of her eyes, she could see Raon desperately running towards the leaving Bone Dragon. But his intentions weren't to fight the dragon and beat him. Instead, it was to just go and die like everybody else.

This was really an illusion, but the proper way to get out wasn't to survive this ordeal, but rather die alongside with the others.

When she first took a good look at Noel after she resolved the disaster in the past, his eyes were filled with bravery, but once she took him under her influence, he always went to the back rooms after each training session. There, he would cry his heart out and call his sister's name multiple times.

She realized this fact and let him grieve because she thought that it would be for the best to not bother him. Noel wanted to hide his vulnerable side. He hated himself because he couldn't die with everybody else at that time, and the thought of the others waiting for him haunted him every single as he became stronger and stronger.

The thought of dying under a powerful monster, in order to make it a honorable death was always prominent inside his mind. But because he always travelled with colleagues, he did not want to drag them down and tried his hardest to solve the abundant crisis events that were thrown to him.

He knew, deep within, that he was unwilling to die. He was scared of what came after death.

The toxic cycle of constantly being clouded with the thoughts and desires for death, contrasted with his desperation for more life made it hard for Noel to keep a sane mind.

He always kept a calm composure on the outside, not because it was his true side, but because he was trying to shield himself from the outer world.

This was what Noel envisioned. Everyone dying around him, but he was left alone and rescued.

When he survived, the bravery inside his eyes weren't due to his will to live, but rather because he wasn't able to depart with his sister altogether. At that time, Eliza must have said the same thing to Noel as her parting words.

Live on.

Just two simple words from his one and only beloved sister were able to make the young boy fight off the dark thoughts that loomed inside his mind, and supported his willpower to live.

How devastating was Eliza's death to him? Nothing could ever surpass his mental pain.

Back then, if only Aria was much more compassionate and gave more care to Noel, could he have forgotten this kind of pain? Probably not. At best, Aria could only become a comforter.

However, the fact that she failed to see Noel's desire and complications, while only noticing the superficial sides of his 'bravery' and 'shyness to show his weakness' was shameful. As his master, she was ashamed that she couldn't do better. Her judgement was not sharp in terms of things like this that involved complex emotions and she couldn't help but be blinded to it.

The world finally finished warping up, and the entire realm broke up into fragments and revealed a sinister black void behind it. Aria felt her consciousness fade away, and she let the realm's shift carry her back to reality.

The Noel in her Tower. It was time to go back to the adult Noel that couldn't depart safely to heaven and was left chained up instead.

When she woke up, she was back in her original body. She could feel the connection with her spirits and could also see her status. She let out a relieved sigh and looked upwards.

Noel was there. Her heart instantly felt a pang of pain as she struggled to get up from her fallen state.

"Noel." Aria said, dry tears streaming down her face as she had not only experienced severe pain in the trials she had went through in the realms, but the realization that struck her hard was also starting to cause her heart to ache.

Was it her fault? That she wasn't that emotionally capable. In the end, Noel had to suffer like that. If only she was better, would things have changed?

What other things went unnoticed under her radars as she marched onwards without thinking much details about the others? She knew that she prioritized herself much more over the others, but just how big of an effect did she cause?

She really wondered. Noel was a child. No matter how strong he tried to be, he was just a child who had seen the people he got along with daily all die in front of him. However, when it came to his turn, he was let go.

He had already given up, but was somehow left with this pointless hope.

He was waiting to be killed. Because he couldn't kill himself. Couldn't bring himself to do it. He wanted death, but he feared death.

As such, it kept him going on and on. For years. Until he became strong enough that even facing a Bone Dragon was not that hard of a task for him.

Only, everything had already crumbled down, and his sister would never return to his side anyway. Wasn't it all just pointless to him?

"I am.. sorry," Aria croaked out of her throat. Noel was still hung by the chains, but she could tell that he had been struggling a lot internally. When she was carried into the alternate realm, if the child even had the slightest bit of desire to harm her, then her life could be considered as forfeited.

The fact that she was still here, devoid of any injuries, meant that Noel restrained himself. Even though he must have gotten suspicious after being chained here for who knows how long, and the first person who visited him being the teacher who disappeared from his side without any further notice.

Wanting to hurt Aria, but couldn't. The child was so gentle, how could he possibly hurt her?

This gentle child was the same one that was stripped away from his childhood and familial care. She too had once encountered a similar situation in her childhood, but her mental fortitude was much better than the others. She was able to detach her experiences when it came to work or official matters, making it easy for her to maneuver around her feelings and think strictly based on logic.

Logic was not omnipotent. It had flaws. Some things were meant to be understood with emotion, other things were better executed without them.

As for Noel's matter, it leaned more towards emotional reliance- something that she had only learned to explore on after she underwent the betrayal that sparked a massive surge of rampaging emotions inside her.

It triggered her feelings, leading her to feel extremely anguished for the child. She felt a compelling desire to embrace the man who had now grown up from the child state she was familiar with, and she ended up following her instincts as she wrapped her hands around Noel and soothed his struggling state.

She remained still, not letting go of the man. In the end, the struggles also stopped and she felt a damp patch start to form in the place where Noel's face was buried in.

"I am sorry, Noel. I am sorry," Aria kept repeating. In the dark eerie chamber, the two stayed still like that for a long time. The environment around them began to change, but Aria paid no heed to that in the current moment. She was so fixated on the child and the mistakes she had committed in the past.