A/N: This chapter will have spoilers for Halloween 2021 episode 1 and 5, please don't proceed if you haven't finished the whole Halloween story.

For all his life, Silver had trained to deal with crises like this, and nothing had ever made him feel as unprepared as this moment, paralysed at the doorway of his father's room, seeing the bedsheet dishevelled and unoccupied, drums by the bed toppled over and rolling to his feet.

"Father?" He called out once.

He intended to take a deep breath, but it didn't quite make it past his throat.

"Father!" He called out again.

He scanned the room, eyes sharpened, and scenarios flashed before him as the dreadful scream he had heard continued to echo in his ears. Was father hurt? Did father struggle? Dragged away? Did he grab onto the bedsheet or bedposts and yelled for help? Was he trying to hang on until—

Silver slammed his fist onto the door frame. He was too late.

A lump of something pounded in his chest, something that swamped the air he exhaled through his clenched teeth with heat and fire.

And for a moment, his aurora-coloured eyes were the colour of ice. For a moment, he felt quite fearless.

Fearless enough to leap out of the window, give chase while the trail is hot. Fearless enough to track the culprit with magic, fight them, strike them down, and retrieve Lilia before anything worse happens.

…but could he?

He clicked his tongue and rushed to the next room, banging on the door, "Malleus-sama! Malleus-sama, are you inside?"

The silence of the night silenced his "bravery".

He was carrying on his shoulders more than the weight of his own head.

If he gives pursuit right now and he fails, falls… then what of those he must protect? Who would find them then? Who would save them then?

He dragged his hand across his head, taking a deep breath and pretending it washed away his worry. His feet were aching to hunt down the enemy, but he forced them to change direction.

"Sebek! Wake up, now!"

In all seventeen years his father spent raising him, Silver has next to no recollections of ever feeling anything but delight whenever he sees his father's big, hearty grin.

Yet when Lilia pronounces so cavalierly "Obviously, I'm the culprit!", complacent with the 'entertainment' he planned for them all, Silver could not share that joy.

What was Silver supposed to infer when the father he thought to be invulnerable disappeared after a frenzied holler? That it was a game? That it was 'fun'?

He doesn't think it was very fun to make a reasonable conjecture that his family was in danger.

Once again, he feels a heat that swamps his breath. It spreads from his throat to his eyes and to his head so that he can't think. With his mouth opened wide, his normally sluggish voice booms, "…You both have gone far beyond jesting this time!"

The vivid memory of the choice he had to make just a few minutes ago is what burns him.

It was either letting some heinous ghosts possess his revered monarch and his dear father, and he would never see the 'them' he loved so much ever again; or doing something as unthinkable as pointing his blade at his own family, and taking the risk — no matter how astronomically small a risk it was — that he could've hurt them.

In a lack of choice he chose the latter, but if he was allowed the time to do so, surely he would've been trembling and gasping and wishing both were nothing but nightmares.

So how dare they say this was a game?

"…I'm sorry, Silver." Lilia apologises simply once he can talk to his son alone, "I did not expect you to be that worried about us."

He honestly did not, but the thought of the fury that tainted his son's visage gnaws at his old heart. Few things can make a wise man feel gravely mistaken, yet this does the job.

It must've been scary, he concludes. What child doesn't fear when the most dependable figures in their lives suddenly vanish?

Then he would let them hold his hand, and he would promise that he wouldn't be going anywhere else now that he's back. They're bound to be at ease then.

But he was mistaken once again.

"Please, at least allow me to be worried about you." Silver speaks softly, calmly, the anger before seems to have been washed off somewhere, "No matter how strong you are, you are still an irreplaceable father to me."

Lilia's outstretched fingers curl back inside his sleeve.

Perhaps this is the first time he sees that he also weighs on someone else's shoulders.

"Oh how you've grown…!" Lilia exclaims, a billow of pride swelling in his chest.

To fear that someone you should protect would slip through your fingers and without saying farewell they're torn from you… most pitiable, but he couldn't help feeling happy to be on the receiving end.

"Whoever raised you to be such a wonderful young man!?" Well who else could Silver have taken after? "Aha, it was me!"

Silver gazes at that big, hearty grin. A wisp of a relieved sigh escapes him.

Tonight has been taxing. But, if, for the sake of those he holds so close to his heart, no matter where he must venture and no matter how long the battle drags on…

He'd stay awake for it all.

The End