Somewhere Between the Sea and the Sky.

Episode 1: Chapter 6.

Jongho never thought black and red flowers could make such a pretty environment, really. The youngest of the crew found himself surrounded by pure wood buildings and exotic plants, the town and nature perfectly intertwined with each other.

Small shops and market stalls created incredible fragrances and, honestly, were making him hungry.

The town's name was Ellond. The captain guided them there, and while him and Yeosang were talking, Jongho decided to stay some steps back to talk to himself a bit.

The second story started there.

The thing Jongho noticed the most wasn't the architecture or the food, actually. It was the people. All kinds of people walked around him, a lot of them showing clear traits of being non-humans.

They had different reactions to strangers, of course. Yeosang was more than welcome and well seen, the prince was one of them and having an amazing time in the place. It was probably what the captain wanted.

Hongjoong, on the other side, was getting some dirty looks. He understood and ignored it, conscious that the town was home to people most humans wanted dead.

But the thing was, Jongho was feeling those judgemental gazes on him too.

Non-humans didn't consider him one of them, but the red tie on his arm reminded him he wasn't human either. Jongho felt trapped between both words, he didn't belong to any of them. He didn't even know what he was or what those scales meant, gods.

Did he have any clues to follow? Not much, really. The scales extended through his arm when he used all his strength, it always happened.

It also happened on his back, the scales appeared to help him heal his wounds. Now that was weird. He felt like something in the arrows made him react, but he checked and they were absolutely common ones.

Perhaps it wasn't about the arrows, but about the archer.

It had to be a soldier, of course, but which kind of soldier? He didn't know a lot about the weird guys from the army, the only unit he knew well were the Monster Killers. He loved those guys.

A team of soldiers who faced giant beasts, monsters and creatures, they were so cool. But there was no archer, and Jongho was no giant monster.

So he had nothing.

Maybe Yunho would know something. The blacksmith didn't really trust the soldier, but he was the obvious answer to his questions. Perhaps he would have a talk with him when they went back to the Aurora.

Ah yes, nothing like a sweet talk with the dumbass soldier who got him in a pirate ship, that sounded like an amazing plan.

The murmur of his thoughts managed to eclipse the people talking around him, even his crewmates voices disappeared from his mind. Just just his own voice and a hurricane of ideas, memories, questions. A mistake, actually. If he were paying attention he would have noticed that the Hongjoong and Yeosang stopped his steps, Jongho would have avoided colliding with the captain's tiny body. The blacksmith let out a soft 'oof', then his mind went back to reality and his surroundings. Why did they stop? Did they find what they came looking for?

Jongho fastly checked his surroundings, nothing caught his attention. He stared at the others then.

They were looking at him, clearly concerned.

"Are you okay?" The captain finally spoke. "You seem a bit distracted."

"Uh, yeah?" He lied. He didn't want to worry the others, honestly. Jongho was just a bit confused, but he'd been like that since the scales showed for the first time. He was just overwhelmed with everything happening around him. Right? "I'm just admiring the place, it's pretty. The architecture is cool."