Theo looked up to see that he had wandered to the side of the castle, the same side where both he and Psyche walked towards when the girl guided him out of the forest.

Deep within the said forest, where the voice spoke out from, Theo saw a small silhouette walking towards him. In the dark, a pair of red eyes glowed like fireflies, never blinking. Only one person could have such eyes in Arcadia.

"Psyche?" Theo asked, incredulous to find the girl emerging from the forest.

"In the flesh." Psyche replied, placing one hand on her hips. She let off some sort of majestic air around her, one that was threatening and told Theo that no one should make an enemy out of her. Theo didn't know how, but he could tell that she was in a real bad mood.

Even so, compared to when he last saw her, Psyche didn't change. Apart from the bells on her neck and left wrist seemed to have multiplied that is. She looked thinner and paler too, which would have bothered Theo if he wasn't so shocked to find her speaking to him for the first time by her own will after a long time with no contact.

...Wait a minute...

"You can understand me?" Theo asked, his voice ringing in odd angles as he cocked his head to a side. Psyche didn't even looked shocked, a little surprised maybe but she shrugged like she had dealt with these kind of curses every day. She crossed her arms and shifted most of her weight to her left leg, looking annoyed.

"I knew you were a bit of a blockhead." Psyche said, scowling. "But you really have no fear do you?"

Theo blinked.

"Excuse me?"

"That bell." Psyche said, pointing at the tiny object on the palm of his hand. "That is not an ordinary bell. That is a soul of dead. A spirit that wandered around in this forest."

Theo took a moment to process what she said and stared at the tiny bell on his palm. Then he yelped, almost dropping the innocent inanimate object in the process and shot Psyche a look of disbelief.

"Why did you give me a dead guy!"

"Because I am one of the Guardian of this forest you dundering fool." Psyche spat without missing a beat. "I gave you that soul so that it would send me a signal whenever you are in fear or whenever you are in danger while I am fulfilling my duties in the forest. The only reason why I even agreed to be your Scabbard was because there weren't any other Scabbard to protect you!"

Theo gulped as the girl stormed towards him with such ferocity he almost thought she was going to split the ground in half, just by stepping on the ground alone. If she tried hard enough or if anyone tested her long enough, Theo supposed that she could accomplish just that.

When she stepped out of the bushes though, he noted that her feet were transparent again. They were wispy, as if even the gentlest breeze could make her fade away molecule by molecule. However, when he blinked, her feet solidified once more, as if what he saw earlier was just a mere illusion.

Yet, he saw it happen twice. He couldn't help but wonder if it really was coincidence or there was something behind the cause of it all.

"But you are a klanking, dangfering idiot!" Psyche yelled, her scowl growing to a glare. Theo turned his attention back to her and stiffened when he felt a cold chill run down his spine. Past experience had taught him that whenever he felt that, something bad was going to happen, sooner or later.

He had seen Psyche irritated before but most of the time it was subtle. Right then, he was startled by how much force and power she emitted from just by glaring alone. She looked like she was going to pull out her gigantic axe and separate his head from his neck again or worse, slice him from limb to limb.

"You kept that soul in your pocket instead of wearing it." Psyche continued, her eyes glowing. "How was it supposed to know when you are in danger when you keep that poor soul in the dark? The only thing it could do was to ring me whenever you are scared, but even in the face of danger you have no fear. Are you really some valiant hero or a patient that needs a brain transplant!"

Theo blinked and stared at the girl, confused. Psyche continued to glare, her nostrils flared in anger while with each passing second her aura became more menacing. Looking at her in another light, she might even looked even cute being angry, but that was not the point there! He was sure that they were not in the same page, or to be accurate, he wasn't on the right track.

Deciding to use his brain to get a clear picture of the situation a bit clearer, Theo glanced at the bell once more. He took in what Psyche had told him and started putting the puzzle pieces together until it made sense to him.

According to what she said, the bell sent a signal to Psyche whenever Theo was in danger by ringing on its own. If his hunch was right, she would somehow teleport to where Theo was and save the day.

The time when he first encountered the girl, he was terrified of her and the bell rung. When Hugo tried to pulverise the humans a few months ago, he was scared of the elf's wellbeing. At that time, the bell rung too and Psyche was there. It was as if it had taken note of Theo's heart rate and sent a telepathic signal to the girl who was, perhaps, thousands of miles away.

However, during the time he was beaten up by the humans in the bathroom, he wasn't scared. He was angry. Even when he was ambushed earlier, he was more shocked than frightened. During those scenarios, the bell didn't ring. It had been in his pocket the whole time, in the dark and unaware of its surroundings.

"Oh..." Theo said, feeling guilty and stupid once it hit him. A part of him was relieved though, to find that Psyche had not forsaken him as he had thought. It was all a huge misunderstanding.

"Sorry?" Theo said in a sheepish tone, scratching the back of his head while hoping it would simmer down Psyche's wrath. He soon learn that luck was not on his side anymore.

"Sorry doesn't cut it." Psyche snapped, causing Theo to flinch. He was starting to feel the bite from Psyche's sentences. Each one felt like a jab to his chest and Theo wanted to crawl to a hole and rot to bones then and there. He hung his head down low while feeling like a child caught red handed for doing something naughty and forbidden.

In a sense, he admit that he deserved it for ever doubting on the girl.

"You had only one job," Psyche continued, her face growing purple with rage. "If you don't want me to be your Scabbard then just say so!"

To this, Theo perked up and stared at her with disbelief.

"Why would I want to do that?"

"Well I don't know." Psyche answered without missing a beat. "I've been replaced with other Scabbards before. This is nothing new. I can do my Job as Necronite in peace then."

For a long minute, silence blanketed over them. Theo ignored the unfamiliar term and stared at her, dumbfounded. His chest soon grew heavy as if someone filled it with water, drowning him. It occurred to him then that the matter of Scabbard and Meister relationship was something personal to Psyche, which was why she was expressing out more emotions than he had ever seen her with before.

He had heard rumours about her and he knew better than to trust them. After all, not even one of the student in Arcadia High knew about Psyche's true gender. This was proven when Theo regarded the girl as female and everyone stared at him as if he grew another head.

Nevertheless, none of the rumours was decent either. They cloaked her as a horrible person, making her out as a villain than she really was. There was one thing, though, that they all agreed on as fact.

No one wanted her to be his or her Scabbard.

The thought of being rejected from the whole school made him pity her. Sure, she never came back and she was always missing in Arcadia. Maybe she was a bit terrifying, but for all time's sake, Psyche was a girl. A normal, Lillin girl with powers that he haven't fully comprehended and carrying another responsibility on her own. A girl with feelings, not a demon that everyone make her out to be.

"I won't do that." Theo said after a while, trying to reassure her. "You are an awesome Scabbard. In fact, it's an honour to be your Meister."

Theo saw as Psyche stiffened and her eyes widened by a fraction. However, they hardened and the girl glared sideways, all of a sudden looking interested in a rock nearby. It made the tip of Theo's lip curl up as an unexplainable urge to tease her bubbled inside of him.

However he brushed it off. He still liked his head intact thank you very much.

"Give me that." Psyche said after a brief period of silence, her tone sharp and brisk. She raised her hand with her palms wide opened. Theo stared at the outstretched hand before he realised that she wanted the bell from him. Gulping nothing but air, he placed the tiny bell on her palm with caution, lest she snapped if he was not careful.

Psyche didn't say a word as she curled her fingers over the bell, enclosing it in her palm. However, about three seconds later, she opened her palm once again. Instead of the bell from before though, a ball of silver light floated in its place, giving off an ample amount of heat.

"Woah, how'd you do that?" Theo asked before he could stop himself. Psyche just rolled her eyes and ignored him on the spot. The blonde lad would admit that wounded him a little.

The ball flew off from her hand but remained suspended in the air. That was when Theo noticed that the ball of light was not pure silver. It was blemished with dark patches of purple and black, preventing it from shining to its full potential.

The girl held her hands out, as if trying to warm them up by the floating ball. Then like magic, the dark patches started dissolving away and the light shone brighter than ever.

Theo watched as the girl enclosed the light with both of her hands, as if in prayer. She muttered something under her breath and he caught on a few words that sounded from another language. He half wondered if it was the same language Theo was cursed with speaking.

When she opened her hands up again, the ball of light was gone and in its place, the silver bell appeared again. She then looked up and glared at him, causing him to flinch.

"I take it that you won't repeat the same mistake again?" Psyche asked, but from the tone of her voice, Theo knew it was more of an order than a question. Unable to trust his voice, he nodded.

Psyche nodded as well, as if in satisfaction and held out the bell before him. Theo plucked it out of her fingertips, ignoring how cold and nebulous her hand felt when his fingers brushed against her skin. He could feel Psyche's gaze on him as he wore the bell around his wrist, as if she was making sure he was not going to stuff it in his jeans pocket again.

He still felt guilty about that. He was certain if souls had the capability of doing so, the last thing he would remember was being a grilled fish. After all, even he would feel annoyed to be stuffed in a pocket with nothing but darkness all around to see.

"How do you know what I am saying anyway?" Theo asked after making sure the bell was not going to fall off anytime soon. Perhaps the person who knew about the language that Oracle had mentioned was Psyche all along?

"It's Old Latin." She answered, shrugging. "How I know it, a mystery."

Theo stayed quiet, wondering if she was going to elaborate any further but it seemed like she was not.

"How did you know I was here?" Theo asked when the silence started making him antsy.

"I didn't." Psyche replied, her tone sharp as always. "I was coming back to report to Oracle when that soul told me what you had been up to."

Theo frowned, staring at the bell on his wrist before turning to Psyche.

"You can communicate with souls?"

"I think I made that clear when I said Necronite." Psyche deadpanned.

"What's a Necronite?" Theo asked, knowing all too well that it's something different from Necromancer. Then again, he had a fish for a teacher so the odds of them being same was not slim.

"Nothing you should get your pretty blockhead pondering over it." Psyche answered, her voice clipped.

"Really? Can't you just-

Theo was cut off from his own words when a sharp pain tugged in his head. He shrank back and shut his eyes from a new wave of pain that came pounding. He groaned and attempted not to let it bother him, but it proved to be complicated. It wasn't the usual pain he felt that required medical attention.

"Theo?" Psyche asked, her voice sounding distant.

"Nothing." Theo managed to mutter but ended up hissing in pain. "Ah, klank."

After a while, he opened his eyes to find darkness greeting him. For a moment, Theo thought he went blind and his hearing went awry. Everything sounded like some traffic in a metropolitan city.

A familiar voice spoke. The same scratchy and demonic voice that recited something to his mind in the forest a few months back. Even though he had heard it once, it still made him shiver in disgust and horror.

"In this little, run-don house lived a mother, a father, and a girl and a boy.

Their lives were very needy, but the mother and father were kind.

The children were always hungry, but they did their best to endure it."

Theo blinked numerous times as the words dawned on him. They sounded familiar, more like he had heard it thousands of times before in his present life. Where in the world did he heard of those sentences before?

"The woods were dark, and she didn't know her way back. The girl closed her eyes and thought.

"Why? Is it because I was weak?"

As she mumbled to herself, the boy talked to the girl.

"...I'll be strong, so you can be weak.""

"---eo! Theo!" A voice spoke, breaking Theo out from his stupor and he looked down to see Psyche shaking him by the shoulders. Her scowl was gone and was replaced with so much worry; Theo had to examine her close to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. She looked like she had witnessed a person who was dear to her dying.

"Psyche?"

"You weren't responding." Psyche answered before she returned to her icy shell of composure. "And you were saying something to yourself."

"I was?" Theo asked, the faculties in his brain not quite reaching up to its usual processing speed yet.

Like a bolt out of the blue, a high-pitched scream pierced the sky, almost grating his ears deaf. Theo jumped, but Psyche remained calm as she snapped her neck to the direction where the sound came from, which happened to be overhead to the sky.

Theo looked up too, and no later when he did, he gasped. Like a poorly edited movie, fragments of glass flew out in unison. It was a remarkable sight with a mesmerizing beauty. They appeared to fall with the grace of snow, yet in truth it is more of a wild avalanche and just as deadly.

If it were not for Psyche, who conjured up a last minute barrier to shield them while letting out a string of foreign curses, Theo knew that both of them would have shards of glasses sticking in their skin where they don't belong. The shards rained down on them, bouncing off against Psyche's barrier that made a pleasant sound to Theo's ears.

Then, another figure appeared in sky above.

This time it was a person and he descended much faster than the glass shards. As if in synchronicity, both Theo and Psyche leaped back on instinct just as he landed in between them. If Theo didn't know any better, he could have sworn that just before the figure's feet touched the ground, his descent slowed down, making him land with such grace, he could make any ballerina jealous.

Before the figure straightened up, Theo did a quick study of him. He was wearing a black cloak that covered him from head to toe. However, when he moved and when he was suspended in the air, Theo had noticed that he wore a dark grey tunic with a sheath shackled against his belt. He had a pouch shackled on his belt too but Theo could only guess what was in it.

"Someone, stop him!" A voice cried out from above. The figure froze before he shuffled, looking like he was going to bail and flee.

Theo didn't know what came over him but one thing he knew was that he reached out to the runaway figure. Perhaps it was the adrenaline pumping in his veins, making him do reckless things but Theo already grabbed a hold on the runaway figure's arm. With every strength he could muster, he yanked the runaway figure back.

This caused the figure to yelp and stagger. In the midst of it all, his cloak flied behind him and the oversized hood fell down. Theo felt his heart skip a beat and his body grow cold when the figure's face was revealed. He stared at the figure in disbelief when he realised who it was.

A pair of multi-coloured eyes stared at him back.

"You!" Theo cried aloud with the right amount of inflection to give away his shock. The stranger widened his eyes too but a smirk made his way to his face.

"Would love to chat." The guy said as he reached out his sheath. Theo stiffened. He had nothing to defend himself.

"But gotta go so ta-ta!" The guy said with glee and unsheathed his sword. In an instant, Psyche was there, pushing Theo back while conjuring up a sword, out of nowhere, of her own. Their swords clashed and sparks peppered around them. Theo heard the stranger gasped and fumbled back, but he tightened his grip on the hilt and pushed back, his smirk growing broader.

"Ah, dear Psyche." The stranger said, swinging his sword again to which Psyche deflected with ease. "You really know no limits. What ever should I do to get you off my case?"

Theo, who was standing back feeling helpless as he watched, thought the girl was going to retort something witty back. However, she just grunted under her breath and pushed his sword off of hers. Then, it happened so fast, Theo would have missed it if he had blinked.

Psyche went still, unmoving. She then twirled her sword with her left hand, making it expand and morph into the size of her infamous gigantic axe. She spun around and swung it forward without any hesitation.

The stranger, who must have got distracted by the morphing of her weapon, could not react fast enough as the axe made contact with his dominant arm. Theo shrieked when the stranger's arm fell limp on the floor with a loud thud. It was a clean cut, straight off the stranger's elbow.

Psyche held her axe in a defence position, showing no signs of remorse with what she had done and looked like she was ready to slice off the other arm. It made Theo somewhat frightened of her.

For some strange reason though, the only reason why he wasn't puking his guts out by then was that no blood oozed out from that wound. Even the stranger wasn't even screaming in anguish.

In fact, he just stood there, staring at his missing limb in a calm manner before sniggering.

What in the world?

"You really don't hold back." The stranger mused as he nodded to his fallen limb. It twitched, making Theo jump. The blonde lad stared at the sliced off arm in mystification when it started to move on its own, pushing itself upright and started crawling towards the stranger.

However, it did not went far when Psyche's foot slammed down on it and Theo could have sworn the multi-coloured eyed stranger winced in pain.

"Not letting me go?" The stranger asked while Psyche returned it back with a glare. She swung her axe at him before stopping just as the blade almost struck his neck. Theo shuddered when a small portion of the stranger's hair fell from the force of the momentum alone. He could not understand why the stranger kept on grinning though. If he was in his shoes, Theo would have fainted from fright by then.

"But like I said." The stranger started, shrugging his shoulders in a nonchalant manner. "I really have to go."

Before either of them could react, those darn glossy black wings erupted from his back again, shining under the sun. Psyche was the first to recover though, but the wings enveloped the boy in a cocoon faster than her axe that swung his way. Both the arm and the boy dissolved away to thin grey smoke that parted when Psyche's axe sliced through it. When it faded away, Theo stared at the empty spot dumbfounded.

"Who is that guy?" Theo asked with incredulity. So many questions swam through his mind, like fishes blowing bubbles at him and boy did he not like them at all, not one bit.

Psyche didn't respond at first but she glaring at the spot where the figure last stood. Theo thought a hint of sadness dusted across her gentle features, but it was gone as soon as it came, making him wonder if he imagined it all.

He made a mental note that he was starting to imagine a lot of things when Psyche was involved.

"That guy is someone you must absolutely stay away from." Psyche said at last, turning to him. If her eyes didn't glow before, they were now ablaze with red fire, making him shrink back at the ferocity behind them. Theo didn't have to ask to know that their brief fight was more than personal. Who on Arcadia was that strange dude to go at Psyche's bad side?

"What even is he?" Theo asked, to which Psyche twitched.

"An Alice, like you."

Author's note: Yes a cliffhanger, I know but I can't help it! Updates on this story is going to be very erratic from now on so *hides* don't come at me with pitchforks and torches people! Also I discover I suck at chapter titles, oh well.

Anyway, 700+ reads and 100+ votes! What is up with that? I swear it was like 500 reads and 50 votes the last time I checked! I nearly had a heart attack when I saw how much it bloomed. Thank you so much! I wish I could sent all of you presents of appreciation but the least I can do is to give you all virtual cookies (QvQ)/ My beta reader is going for a trip at the moment so I am not quite happy with this chapter, but if you see any mistakes please notify!

Oh and don't forget to vote!