One week after her vow for strength, Eleanor sat in her room holding a tightly sealed envelope addressed to Abraham.
There hadn't been much time in her schedule to communicate freely with the boy; the endless studying, practicing, and reading that would all contribute to her revival were consuming her life.
Yet, on a rare day without anything but the gym, she had finally been able to sit down and write out a message to the child.
"I summon thee, messenger of spirits."
"I implore thy guidance."
"Let your graceful winds carry it afar."
A heavy silence shot through the space, drowning out the sound of the quill as she placed it back in the inkwell.
Beside her, on a small ritualistic altar she had set up before the summoning, candles burst into flame with a single ember landing right onto the paper before her.
One second later, a raven stared into her eyes, questioning her sudden change in physical and mental state.
"SMELLY ANGEL! CORRUPTION NEARLY GONE!"
Craning its neck and reading who the message was destined for, the animal bit onto the envelope, taking it within its maw.
Struggling to speak afterward, it mumbled out the remainder of the requirements it still had.
"COIN!"
And once again, before she could react, it snatched the coin and leaped out the window, vanishing into the city to deliver the parchment.
Quite an eccentric creature…
Sighing and relaxing back into her chair, she looked skyward, the pressure of the room around her bland, but also slowly starting to feel like home.
How much longer must I stay…
…
"Is what you said true?"
The black-haired child nibbled on a cookie that the newly appointed bookstore owner had given him.
"It is."
Eleanor looked back at him with a certain seriousness that she only reserved for church confessionals and funerals, not daring to look away.
Abraham himself closed his eyes and breathed heavily.
"You're the first Angel to tell me such a thing… They mustn't have sworn you to secrecy like the rest, then, which is good… Good…"
He mulled over the word 'good' as if searching for the context behind it, the term odd, unfamiliar even in a world that had always wronged him.
"Well…"
The boy spoke weakly.
"If that is all, then I'll be taking my—"
A man appeared from Eleanor's shadow, with white wings unfolding behind him.
"Leave…"
Finishing the remainder of the sentence that had been cut off, Abraham stared blankly at the Angel he remembered more completely than any other.
The false Angel smiled regardless of the clear hostility being directed towards him, speaking with his pleasant accent.
"Hello, Abraham. I think it's time we have a chat."
The 2-meter-tall gentleman allowed the mana in his hand to consolidate around the unique, altered Mark of Souls that harnessed his tiny piece of the Divine Authority of Death.
Using that power, he invoked a simple miracle that he had acquired during his voyage to the Realm of Spirits two centuries prior.
Allowing him to summon weak spirits, he used them to bring him gifts during the night, and one such gift happened to be a chair from the Sea of Dreams, one made of an oak and birch hybrid.
"A chat about what?"
The child hissed out a reply, never once letting his guard down against the man who, time after time, had made up excuse after excuse to never allow his money to be given to the Angelic Order.
This time, Eleanor spoke out.
"I invited him here to bring you good news."
The boy's brow furrowed inward, confusion and doubt evident on his face.
Chuckling quietly, Antoine's light hair rattled in his face before he finally revealed the contents of his message.
"Three days ago, Eleanor Lynn proposed an Angelic Reformity to the Angelic Order and the sitting Archangels on its council."
He paused, glancing over to the blonde-haired girl who crossed her legs and did not make a sound.
"She, alongside Lady Strixen, stated that in exchange for you giving up your goal to fade away into nothingness, you would gain something far greater in return."
Abraham's breath hitched; the private wish he had been begging to have granted for thousands of years and denied each and every time, now being spoken of as a bargaining chip.
"There isn't anything I would give up for my—"
Once more, he was cut off by Eleanor.
"In exchange, you will be granted Angelhood and a twenty-year-old body."
He didn't speak.
How could he?
The words that the girl he had met on a whim was saying were so foreign and impossible that he couldn't help but laugh aloud.
Not only that, but he nearly fell over himself, roaring with a laughter so ferocious that if it were Death doing such a thing, the Great Beyond would've collapsed eons ago from the force.
Sir Antoine frowned, taking a deep breath.
"It is no lie."
Snapping his fingers, a golden piece of parchment appeared in front of him, the rules of the Great Beyond now floating in front of the boy.
Glancing up from what he saw as humor, he actually paled, his eyes scanning the newly added golden ink.
Reading it once, then twice, and over and over again until the paper vanished from in front of him, he didn't blink once.
"H-how… W-who…"
He sank back in his chair, tears spilling from his eyes faster than he could think to control them, the emotions of five thousand years erupting out at once.
Allowing Eleanor to come closer to the boy to comfort him, the Angel of Reverence spoke proudly.
"Nine of the ten sitting Archangels agreed to the motion, with the sole nay being held by Lady Ariel, who, in the case of a unanimous decision, must vote against the majority to preserve the fairness of this land and all it represents."
Abraham didn't even care about the results, just the idea of the Angels advocating for him, the person that they had discredited, ignored, and hated for thousands of years, stunning him more than he could believe.
This was something he could never foretell: the events of that day, something he would never forget.
"W-why… W-why would they… Now…"
Understanding his question, the priestess who had been patting his back spoke quietly.
"Using my knowledge of a certain figure I once asked you about, I was granted one undeniable wish, although with the caveat of nothing divine."
The boy's watery eyes fluttered with confusion.
"B-but you could've received anything for yourself! W-why did you help someone you've hardly known!? I would've found a way to thrive for another million years… So why… Why did you…"
She cut him off.
"I've been told I'm a selfless person, but I don't really think so…"
Eleanor turned her gaze towards the dim lights on the ceiling.
"Everything I do helps me far more than it does you, even if you might not see it as so."
The Angel sitting across from them turned his eyes towards the floor as the girl stared back towards Abraham.
"Seeing the joy on the people I help makes all the choices, all the hardship in the world, worth it. Even if it costs me my own joy."
There was a long silence after she spoke, drowning away the happy moment into one of mixed thoughts and resilience.
Yet even as their conversation concluded and Abraham walked away with a strange, almost perfectly unique posture that hadn't been seen before, and later, when Antoine had disappeared into the night once more, Eleanor was left alone to walk back to her residence.
It was a short walk, but this time it felt different.
Almost every goal she had found and created during her journey into the Great Beyond had been completed as of now.
She had vowed to aid the Wanderer, Nautilus, who had forgotten himself in every way.
With her help, he had achieved clarity and reassurance like never before, even daring to bet his tool, his Aether, on the next generation.
Abraham, whom she had met on a chance encounter, had been granted his freedom from the eternal cycle of work and sleep he was subjected to, now achieving Angelhood.
Ariel and Death's missions to her placed her through three trials that reassessed her own self-worth, her memory, and her choice, all of which contributed to a single name that she read in that book.
Last but not least, it contributed to Aaron's only wish as of the last time she saw him: the discovery of who he was, and where he had come from.
With the lead on a woman by the name of Ruby Grimstall, who had ascended to Angelhood on January 1st due to Esmerelda's incarnation, only a few days prior to Aaron's disappearance, and also the words of the God Slayer, the God of Death, and the Wanderer, she now had a clear drive forward.
She, with every fiber of her being, would stop the man who had slain deities and save Aaron in the process, for, in the end, she was someone who, despite being selfless and altruistic, was possibly the most greedy of them all.