Episode-964
Chapter : 1927
The way he stood, with his weight balanced on both feet, ready to move. The way his eyes scanned the room, checking the perimeter before settling on her. It was the man from the tarmac. It was the man who had knelt in the rain.
Airin stared at him, her mouth slightly open. The image of the dream-Lloyd overlayed the real-Lloyd. She saw the mud on his face that wasn't there. She saw the love in his eyes that he was currently hiding behind his professor mask.
"Scholar Airin?" Lloyd asked, tilting his head slightly. "Is everything alright? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Airin swallowed hard. A ghost. That was exactly what she was seeing.
"I..." Her voice failed her. She cleared her throat and tried again. She tried to summon the courage of the woman in the dream. "I had a dream, Professor."
Lloyd raised an eyebrow. "I assume it was about logistics? That tends to happen after my lectures. I apologize for being too exciting."
It was a joke. A deflection. The soldier in the dream made jokes like that too, usually right before something dangerous happened.
"No," Airin said. She took a step toward him. The fear she usually felt around him—the fear of his status, his power, his intimidating intellect—was gone. It had been washed away by the rain in her dream. She just felt an overwhelming need to know the truth.
"I dreamt of a man," she said, her voice steady now. "He looked like you. But he was wearing strange clothes. Green clothes. Like a soldier, but not from here."
Lloyd went very still. The papers in his hand didn't move. His face didn't change, but the air around him seemed to freeze. His eyes, usually so guarded, suddenly sharpened. It was the look of the Major General.
"Green clothes?" he repeated. His voice was carefully neutral, but there was a tension in it that hadn't been there a moment ago.
"Olive green," Airin corrected. "And he gave me a ring. A silver ring."
She watched him closely. She saw his throat move as he swallowed. She saw his grip tighten on the papers, crinkling the edges.
"He called me a name," Airin whispered. She took another step closer. She was trembling, but she didn't stop. "He called me Anastasia."
The reaction was instant.
Lloyd dropped the papers. They scattered across the floor, a messy white carpet between them. He didn't look at them. He was staring at her with an expression of absolute, unguarded shock. It was the first time she had ever seen him lose his composure.
His mask was gone. The Professor was gone. The Lord was gone.
Standing there was the man from the dream. The man who had lost everything. The man who had been waiting in the rain.
"What did you say?" he breathed. His voice was a broken whisper.
Airin felt a tear slide down her cheek. She didn't wipe it away.
"He called me Anastasia," she said again. "And I think... I think I loved him."
The silence in the library was deafening. It stretched between them, heavy with the weight of a history Airin didn't understand but felt in every fiber of her soul.
Lloyd took a step toward her, his hand reaching out instinctively before he stopped himself. He looked at her not as a student, but as if he was seeing a miracle and a tragedy at the same time.
"Anastasia," he said, testing the word. The way he said it—with that specific cadence, that specific pain—sent a shiver down Airin’s spine. It was exactly how the man in the dream had said it.
Airin knew, in that moment, that her life as a simple scholar was over. The dream wasn't a dream. It was a memory. And the man standing in front of her held the other half of it.
"Who are we, Lloyd?" she asked, using his first name for the first time. "Who were we?"
Lloyd closed his eyes for a second, taking a deep, shuddering breath. When he opened them again, they were filled with a profound sadness, but also a deep, resolving strength.
Lloyd walked around the table. He stopped right in front of her, close enough that she could smell the ink on his hands and the faint scent of soap.
"Airin," he said, his voice rough. "I need you to answer two questions for me. And you must be absolutely sure."
She nodded, unable to speak.
Chapter : 1928
"The man in the green uniform," Lloyd said, his voice tight. "Did he wear a small silver pin on his collar? A pin shaped like a spreading eagle?"
Airin blinked. The image flashed in her mind. The rain. The heavy olive jacket. The flash of silver metal near his neck—the insignia of the Defense Forces he served with such absolute loyalty.
"Yes," she whispered, the memory sharpening. "Yes. A silver eagle."
Lloyd’s face paled. He looked like he might fall down. He took a step closer, his hands twitching as if he wanted to grab her shoulders but was holding himself back.
"The second question," he said. His voice dropped to a whisper, filled with a pain so raw it made Airin want to weep. "In the dream... did we have a child? A son?"
Airin gasped. A memory she didn't know she had slammed into her. A crying baby. A small room painted blue. The smell of baby powder. The feeling of absolute, overwhelming love.
"Yes," she choked out.
"What was his name?" Lloyd asked. He was pleading now. "Tell me his name."
Airin didn't have to think. The name bubbled up from her soul, a name she had never spoken in this life but knew better than her own.
"Yohan," she said. "His name was Yohan."
The moment she said the name, Lloyd broke.
He didn't cry out. He didn't collapse. But the strength that always seemed to hold him upright, the iron will of the Lord Ferrum, seemed to snap. He stumbled back, leaning heavily against the library table for support. He put a hand over his face, hiding his eyes.
"Yohan," he repeated. The word was a prayer and a curse all at once. "My God. Yohan."
Airin watched him, terrified and confused. She wanted to reach out to him, but she felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff.
"Lloyd?" she asked softly. "Is it true? Am I... am I going mad?"
Lloyd lowered his hand. His eyes were red-rimmed. He looked at her, and for the first time, Airin saw the full weight of the eighty years he had lived before this. She saw the war, the loss, the loneliness.
"You are not mad," he said. His voice was steady again, but it was the steadiness of a man walking through a fire. "You are remembering."
He gestured to a chair. "Sit down, Airin. Please."
She sat. Her legs felt weak. Lloyd pulled up a chair opposite her. He sat close, his knees almost touching hers. He looked at her hands, resting on her lap.
"We have lived this before," Lloyd said. "Not here. Not in Riverio. In a place called Earth."
He began to speak, and the world of the Academy faded away. He told her a story that sounded like a fairy tale and a nightmare combined. He told her about a world of metal towers that scraped the sky. He told her about carriages that moved without horses and birds made of steel that dropped fire from the clouds.
"I wasn't a Lord there," Lloyd said. "I was a soldier. An engineer. My name was Evan."
He looked at her, his gaze intense. "And you... you were Anastasia."
Airin felt a shiver run down her spine. "Anastasia," she whispered. It fit. It fit perfectly.
"We met at Officer Candidate School," Lloyd continued. A small, sad smile touched his lips. "You were tougher than me. You could run ten miles with a full pack while I was still gasping for air. You cleaned my rifle... checked my gear... when I was too exhausted to move."
He told her about their life. It wasn't a life of magic and monsters. It was a life of uniform codes and early morning drills. He talked about the government quarters they were assigned on base—clean, sterile, and safe, but always feeling temporary. He talked about the nights they spent arguing over deployment schedules, and the mornings they spent drinking coffee in the mess hall before the sun came up.
"It was disciplined," Lloyd said. "But it was good. We were a team."
Then his face darkened. The shadow of the soldier returned.
"But the orders came down," he said. "I was deployed overseas. And while I was gone..."
He stopped. He couldn't say it. But Airin knew. The memory in her head surged forward. The feeling of cold. The feeling of stopping.
"I died," she said.