Zestial had not forgotten.
An Overlord of his standing did not forget. He merely had... priorities. The troubles of a sinner with whom he'd shared only a handful of agreeable encounters had, regrettably, never reached the top of that list.
Not when there were archives to reorganize for what was surely the fifth time. Not when an entire afternoon had been spent tracing the origin of a particularly fine nightshade tea blend. Such pursuits might have seemed frivolous to another, yet to Zestial they were the quiet labors that kept eternity from stagnating.
He sighed, rubbing a hand across his brow.
The matter had resurfaced only because he'd stumbled across it while searching his journals for something entirely unrelated. In recent years he'd taken to recording nearly everything, a concession to the slow erosion that centuries worked upon even the keenest mind. The difficulty, he had found, was no longer remembering what had happened, but where he had written it.
Perhaps, he reasoned, the delay had proven a kindness.
Surely, by now, the matter had resolved itself. Such conflicts often did. Hell was not a place that rewarded dependence, and there was little virtue in allowing an Overlord to solve every quarrel that crossed one's path. Better to cultivate resilience than forever seek shelter beneath another's shadow.
A promise, however small, ought not be abandoned.
The tavern emerged from the haze as he stepped from one shadow into another. The familiar prickling at the edge of his thoughts, the strange sensation that had lingered ever since Kostya first mentioned the "friend", returned with renewed insistence at the sight of the store front. It was maddening, like a forgotten name poised just beyond recollection.
He could have materialized within the establishment itself.
There was little sense in startling whatever unfortunate soul the rat had become entangled with.
Instead, he crossed the threshold at an unhurried pace, seeming less to walk than to drift. The tavern's peculiar blend of wood and grandeur suited him oddly well, as though the room had been awaiting his arrival for decades.
One patron abandoned his drink altogether, making hastily for the door the moment an escape presented itself. Several others stiffened where they sat, careful not to meet his gaze. Fear had long since become part of Zestial's presence; he neither encouraged nor discouraged it. It settled upon him as naturally as his cloak.
He had come for a purpose.
Kyota's descriptions had been... sparse, according to his own notes. A sinner who commanded rats. One with little affection for the modern age.
Hardly an impossible figure to locate.
The dull ache at the back of his mind sharpened all at once, blooming into something perilously close to pain.
Recognition stirred before memory itself, ancient and insistent.
Without betraying the slightest flicker of surprise, Zestial made his way to the bar.
He came to a measured stop beside the man, his expression composed as ever.
"...Old friend," he said quietly.
The words carried neither accusation nor certainty-- only the weight of centuries.
