Chapter 194
The spear shot forward like a bolt of lightning tearing through the gray sky, not toward the Angel who was about to pierce Saelindra, but toward Saelindra himself.
Apathy had no time to shout a warning, no time to stop the throw, no time to say anything, because the spear had already pierced straight through Saelindra's chest, striking the very scar of his broken wings that marked his exile, the very place where his heart, if a fallen Angel even possessed one, still beat with Apathy's name in every pulse.
Saelindra collapsed, his body as light as a leaf carried away by an autumn wind, and Apathy, running with all the speed he could muster, managed only to catch him before his body touched the ground already soaked with blood and tears.
"Saelindra... I'm sorry... I didn't... I didn't mean to..." Apathy sobbed.
But Saelindra merely smiled, a strange smile, one he had never shown during the four years they had spent together, a smile that said he understood, that he forgave him, that he was tired and wished to return to a place where no one would ever mock him again.
"You... you saved me, Apathy," Saelindra whispered, and despite the blood filling his mouth, the words escaped like a lullaby that was never allowed to reach its ending.
"Not from the spear... but from myself. From the decision that would have destroyed... the only thing that still made me human."
Fwoosh!!
And when the last particles of light from Saelindra's body were carried away by the endless gray wind, Apathy remained seated on the ground, his knees buried in blood that was not his own, his empty hands still outstretched like someone desperately hoping to embrace something that no longer existed.
Around him, the invasion slowly came to an end.
Not because the Angels and the Holy Beings had been defeated, but because they had accomplished what they had come to do, leaving behind nothing but a school reduced to rubble and bodies that could no longer be saved.
Shaqar stood behind him.
He did not rush Apathy to his feet.
Instead, he simply rested one hand upon Apathy's narrow, trembling shoulder, offering a warmth that was far too weak to drive away the cold creeping from within his chest.
"Come on, son," Shaqar said quietly, his calm voice serving as an anchor in the vast ocean of grief threatening to swallow everything.
"There's nothing more you can do here."
And Apathy, whose eyes remained dry even though his chest felt as though it had been split open by a thousand blades, simply nodded, a tiny nod that was almost imperceptible, a nod directed more toward himself than anyone else, a nod that said he understood, that he would keep walking even if his legs felt as though they had been forged from molten lead.
He stood, allowing Shaqar to guide him through the ruins, past flames still licking the shattered remains of the walls, past the cries of parents who had arrived too late to bring home children who would never return.
With every step he took, with every breath he drew, a single question continued to circle endlessly inside his triangular head, a question he dared not speak aloud for fear that its answer would destroy what little remained of him.
"Did I do the right thing? Was throwing that spear... was letting him die in my arms... truly the right choice?"
Decades later, on an unnamed path at the edge of a city that appeared on no map, beneath a gentle drizzle that still faithfully accompanied him, with Shaqar's final letter still tucked against his chest, Apathy, now fifty years old, opened his eyes, eyes that had never shed tears since the night of the invasion, eyes that for the past thirty years had looked only forward, never daring to glance back.
The flashback slowly released him, like a layer of mist peeling away one reality only to replace it with another that was colder, lonelier, and heavier beneath the weight of unanswered questions.
He still stood in the very same place, on the muddy ground above the eighty-eighth symmetrical step, his triangular head slightly lowered, one hand resting against his chest as his fingers searched for the letter, now damp from the drizzle, sweat, and perhaps the remnants of tears that had never fallen thirty years ago.
"Would you have done the same, Saelindra, if you had been in my place?" he whispered silently to himself while gazing at the same gray sky as before, a sky that had never changed even though the world beneath it had shed its skin countless times.
And from that empty sky, no answer descended.
Only a gentle wind carrying the scent of wet earth and the lingering traces of smoke drifting from the east.
Only a long, endless hum.
Only a silence far too heavy for one person to bear alone.
Apathy drew a breath, a breath that felt like pulling rusted barbed wire through his lungs, and then, for the first time since standing there, he allowed himself to think.
"Maybe there is no right answer. Maybe there are only choices and the consequences they leave behind. Maybe I'll never know whether I saved him or killed him. But I know one thing: he smiled. In his final moment, he smiled. And that smile, even though it never answered my question, was enough to keep me walking for the past thirty years."
He took another step, no longer toward an uncertain destination, but toward the east, toward the source of that endless hum, toward the place where the remains of the exploded castle still released smoke invisible to ordinary eyes, toward the headquarters of Team Xirkushkartum, which had become his second home during the thirty years since Saelindra's death.
Every step now felt different, no longer like the wandering steps of a lost child in a crowded marketplace, but like the stride of a soldier who had completed one mission and knew another still awaited him, the mission of staying alive, of continuing onward, of remaining a witness for those who could no longer bear witness themselves.
"I'll return to headquarters," he said to himself, to the letter against his chest, to the shadow of Saelindra who might still have been walking beside him despite remaining unseen.
"I'll submit a request for leave. Not because I'm tired, I've always been tired. But because if not now, then never. Shaqar once said, 'Even the sharpest spear must be sharpened again, and even the strongest sword must be allowed to rest for a while.'"
And inside his mind, which had begun to feel lighter, not because the burden had become smaller, but because he had finally decided not to carry it all alone, he began counting his steps once more.
Not eighty-eight steps to stop, but one... two... three... toward home, back to the place where reports, missions, and deadlines awaited him, but also where familiar faces, faces that had also lost something in the explosion on the castle's third floor, might still be sitting inside the stifling break room, waiting to hear that not every death is an ending, that some deaths are merely the beginning of a different kind of sorrow.
When Apathy arrived at the gate of Team Xirkushkartum Headquarters, an iron gate weathered by time, rain, and blood that had never truly washed away, he was not alone.
In the front courtyard, soaked by the same drizzle that had followed him there, eighteen figures stood in a formation that was untidy, yet somehow orderly in its own way, eighteen faces he could not recognize individually, yet whose sorrow he recognized immediately because it was the very same sorrow reflected in his own eyes.
They were Shaqar's subordinates who had survived the explosion on the castle's third floor, eighteen people out of the more than one hundred who had taken part in the ambush mission, eighteen people whose bodies had survived intact while their souls had been torn apart by the death of the commander they had loved like their own father.
To be continued...