*I don't think I can hold myself together anymore,* Dan thought desperately, his knees buckling as the suffocating pressure of his own surging power threatened to tear his mind to shreds. *I can't. If I leave this tower... if I lose control out there... it'll be an absolute disaster for everyone.*
Then, a sudden, dark thought struck him like a bolt of lightning.
With trembling fingers, he reached into the pocket of his rapidly disintegrating coat and pulled out a small, steel hunting knife. The ambient, chaotic mana bleeding from his skin was so volatile that the metal began to wither, rust, and flake into black ash the moment it settled into his grasp. Ignoring the searing heat, Dan forcefully pressed the decaying blade directly against his own throat.
The cold metal bit into his skin, drawing a tiny bead of crimson.
*I can die, right?* he thought, his vision blurring as the black rings in his eyes spun erratically. *If I just end my own life right here... wouldn't it all finally be over? The prophecy, the curse, the danger... all of it. But... do I actually have the resolve to slide the blade?*
"MASTER!!!"
A sharp, piercing scream tore violently through the suffocating atmosphere of the tower, shattering the eerie silence of his suicidal trance.
Dan's heart dropped straight into a freezing void. The dark, ring-like pupils of his eyes slowly drifted toward the source of the voice, his jaw clenching so hard his teeth groaned. "Areia...?" he muttered through gritted teeth, his voice barely a cracked whisper.
Areia stood at the entrance of the fractured chamber, her chest heaving as she took in the horrific sight. The inner walls of the tower were a chaotic nightmare, bleeding red light and shedding heavy stone debris, but all of it paled in comparison to the boy standing in the center. Her deep purple eyes widened in absolute, paralyzing shock as she saw the blade pressed against his throat.
"What the absolute hell do you think you are doing?!" she growled, her voice a terrifying mix of raw anger and pure panic.
"It's just... I-I thought..." Dan stammered, his mind short-circuiting as he looked at her. But he never got to complete his words.
Areia crossed the distance between them in a desperate blur, her leather boots slamming against the cracked stone floor. Before he could even react, she raised her hand and landed a heavy, resounding slap squarely across his face.
*SLAP!*
The force of the blow snapped his head to the side, the rusted knife slipping from his fingers and clattering uselessly to the ground.
"Wait—Areia, get away from me!" Dan roared in sudden terror.
The moment his emotions spiked, a violent wave of uncontrolled kinetic energy exploded outward from his body like a shockwave. Areia didn't even try to dodge. The concussive blast caught her dead-on, shooting her small frame clear across the massive room and slamming her hard against the jagged stone edges of the far wall.
The ancient masonry cracked upon impact, dust raining down around her, but she didn't stay down. Gritting her teeth, she forcefully pulled herself out of the rubble. The oppressive pressure in the room was heavy enough to crush a normal warrior to death, but she ignored the agony, dragging her bruised body forward and etching closer to him, one slow, deliberate step at a time.
"Do you have any idea how long I waited just to see you again?!" she yelled, her voice cracking with an emotional weight she had carried for years. "Do you have any actual concept of the pure agony you put me through when you just up and left?!"
"I'm... I'm sorry," Dan replied, his voice breaking as he stared at his hands, the dark rings in his eyes wavering.
"I don't want to hear your pathetic apologies!" she screamed, a tear finally breaking free and cutting a clean line through the dust on her cheek. "You honestly think you can just get away with anything, don't you?! You think you can just make all the decisions for us! Honestly... I fully expected to have a nice, beautiful reunion when I finally found you. But I didn't realize just how incredibly angry I was about all of this until I actually got to look at your stupid face!"
"I'm so sorry, Areia... I only left because—"
"I know exactly why you left! I know, and I completely understand! I am not stupid, Dan!" she yelled into the dark, echoing expanse of the shaking tower. Her hands were clenched into tight fists, her knuckles white. "Your father and Flynn specifically asked me to take care of you. They literally laid down their lives and died to save your sorry ass! And yet, here you are... sitting in the dark and contemplating suicide?! If you're just going to slit your throat, then what on earth was the point of all their sacrifices?! What was the point of it all?!"
"I was just..." he began, his head dropping as the guilt began to suffocate him.
"You are so fucking inconsiderate!" she yelled, her voice filled with a profound, aching betrayal. "What if I had arrived just a few seconds late?! What if I hadn't managed to get here at all?! I would have kept walking around the earth like a fool, searching every corner of the world for you, never knowing that you died quietly in some stupid, fucking tower outside our realm!"
She took another heavy step forward, the dark aura of his power rippling against her skin like fire, but she didn't care.
"You're a fool, Dan," she said, her voice dropping into a shaky, heart-wrenching whisper. "You always try to act so smart, but you are easily the biggest idiot out of all of us."
Dan made a desperate move to speak, his lips parting, but Areia wildly waved her hand to cut him off, her purple eyes burning with unyielding fire.
"No. Don't you dare speak right now," she breathed, her shoulders trembling as she stared at him through the gloom. "I am going to clear my mind first."
"What do I even mean to you?!" Areia's voice tore from her throat, raw and bleeding with a pain that no sword could ever inflict. "You've always hurt me harder than any physical wound ever could. I know... I know I can't possibly understand what you've truly been through here. The trials, the torment, and whatever this absolute shithole of a place is... but is it really worth throwing your entire life away for?! You literally came to this tower to help save someone, and now you've turned yourself into a pathetic victim!"
She took another heavy, unyielding step forward, her leather boots grinding into the cracked, pulsating stone of the floor.
"I'm pissed, Dan! I'm so extremely angry right now! I can never get a single moment of peace when I'm around you. I swear I'd die of a heart attack at this rate if we keep this up!" The ambient red mana from Dan's aura lashed at her skin like invisible whips, but she didn't even flinch. She slammed her hands violently against her own chest, right over her pounding heart. "It seems like you don't understand how greatly you've affected my entire life. You *gave* me these feelings, Dan!" she screamed, the dam finally breaking as heavy tears cascaded down her pale cheeks. "I just... I don't know what to do anymore! Just what am I honestly supposed to do?!"
She choked on a sob, her small frame trembling violently under the weight of years of unspoken agony.
"You never let me do anything! You constantly call me your knight, but you never actually let me do my godforsaken job! You just keep pushing me away whenever something big happens. Am I really that weak to you? Do you really think so little of me that you have to treat me like a helpless child?!"
Inside Dan's skull, his head throbbed with a sickening, violent intensity. He couldn't think straight. His mind was an absolute, chaotic mess of fractured memories and roaring power, but a single, devastating realization managed to cut through the noise, repeating itself over and over like a death knell: *I made her hate me. I somehow made Areia hate me.* He had never seen her like this in his entire life. The always cool-headed, unmovable vanguard knight who constantly wore a flawless poker face was screaming at him in absolute, unbridled fury. It felt like he had been violently plunged into a freezing ocean, the shock of it paralyzing his lungs.
"And yet... I can't bring myself to hate you," Areia said slowly, her voice dropping from a scream into a shaky, heart-wrenching whisper. "You make me completely lose my mind. My heart literally cannot keep up with you. Even right now... I think my heart is going to explode."
She stopped a few feet away from him, her purple eyes locking onto his ringed, hollow pupils with an intensity that seemed to still the very air in the room.
"I love you, Dan," she said softly. "And no... don't you dare take that in some safe, platonic sort of way. I love you, Dan. And that is precisely why I get so completely wretched and broken when you always leave me behind, choosing to go through all your horrific pain entirely alone."
Dan looked up at her as the dark rings in his eyes violently wavered but didn't die down, the chaotic aura around him flickering like a dying flame but didn't extinguish. "But... I..."
"There's absolutely no need for your explanations," Areia interrupted, a small, incredibly beautiful smile breaking through her tear-stained face as she aggressively wiped her eyes. "I love you, Dan, and absolutely nothing you say or do is ever going to change that fact. Do you remember... do you remember that time in the forest? Right after we ran from the kingdom on your father's final orders?"
She took multiple fast, deliberate steps directly toward him. With every inch she closed, the oppressive, crushing pressure of his unchecked magic increased exponentially, gravity threatening to break her bones, but she forcefully marched right through it.
"I told you back then, and I'll say it again. If you choose to become a villain... I will be right there by your side. If you choose to become a horrific slave trader, a mass killer or whatever... I will be right there. If you choose to be a legendary hero... I'll be there. Dan, I don't care what you do to this world, as long as you keep me by your side!"
She finally closed the gap, stepping directly into his suffocating aura, her purple eyes burning with an unyielding, terrifying devotion.
"I absolutely hate it when you try to carry the weight of the world on your own when we've been together from the very, very start. I know you're going to ask me why. I know you're going to question it. But I will say it over and over and over again until it is permanently sunk into your thick, stupid skull."
She reached out, her small, warm hands grabbing him tightly by the collar of his shirt, forcing him to look at her.
"I love you, Dan. I love you so much I can't even control myself anymore."
"You don't have to accept my feelings right now," Areia said slowly, her breath catching as her face remained inches away from his. Her unyielding warrior facade had completely evaporated, leaving behind a raw, breathtaking vulnerability. "I know I may be coming off far too strong... but please, just bear with me. I've never actually done this before, so I might be a little rough."
Before Dan's fractured mind could even register the words, Areia closed the remaining distance. She wrapped her fingers tightly into the fabric of his shirt, pulled him close, and firmly planted her lips against his.
Dan completely froze.
When Areia gently pulled away, her face was flushing a bright, beautiful crimson. She looked straight into his eyes, staring directly at the hollow, pitch-black rings that had consumed his pupils. Yet, the emotional breakthrough didn't quiet the storm; instead, Dan's catastrophic power kept growing, skyrocketing exponentially as it fed on his deep, bubbling grief. The ambient pressure in the chamber doubled, the stone walls groaning under the sheer weight of his aura.
"I'll fight your battles for you from now on," Areia said, a fierce, reassuring smile breaking through her tear-stained face as she gently rubbed his burning cheek. "There's no need to keep it all locked inside. Lay it all on me. I'm your knight, after all."
She leaned closer, her hands resting over his chest. Beneath her palms, she could feel him vibrating violently, but there was no pulse. Of course, Dan had never possessed a beating heart.
Recognizing that his runaway mana was reaching a critical mass that could obliterate the entire dimension, Areia didn't hesitate. *She activated her core.* A soft, lunar light began to thrum beneath her skin as she actively began pulling his toxic, hyper-dense magic directly out of the atmosphere, absorbing the volatile essence into her own body. She felt Dan twitch violently as the raw energy flooded her system, a searing heat tearing through her veins, but she refused to release him.
"It's fine. You don't need to worry about a single thing," she said softly, keeping her voice steady despite the agony of the forced mana-meld. "I can handle your essence, Master."
"I think... I think I'm a bad son to my parents," he began slowly, his voice dropping into a cracked, hollow whisper as the terrifying noise in his head finally began to recede, anchored by her touch. "So many people died because of me. Mother is missing... Father is gone... the brave warriors of the kingdom... all of them sacrificed themselves. But for some strange, pathetic reason... I'm not blinded by vengeance."
"No one ever asked you to be," Areia responded instantly, her purple eyes locking onto his.
"No, no! I'm *supposed* to be!" Dan said, his voice rising in panic as his grip suddenly tightened around her waist, his fingers digging into her leather armor with terrifying, dragon-like strength. "I can't let their sacrifices go in vain, Areia! I'm scared... I'm so terrified of the Sphere! I don't know what I'm supposed to do anymore! Everything was okay before, but the moment I took the memories of Isis, something fundamental changed inside of me."
The black rings in his eyes spun faster, bleeding a dense, dark fog that Areia desperately fought to siphon away.
"I realized that even when left completely alone, the good and the righteous always end up suffering," Dan cried out, the existential unfairness of the world fracturing his tone. "Why is it always like that?! Why can't people like us just be left alone in peace?! I didn't ask to be born this way! Why do the people I care about the most always have to suffer just for my mere existence?!"
He buried his face into her neck, his body shaking under the pressure of his own evolving biology.
"I think... I think I've suppressed my dragon half for far too long, Areia. I'm so sorry for rambling like a madman. I'm so sorry for leaving you behind. I knew it would hurt you... but I never truly realized it would hurt you this deeply."
"Dan?" Areia whispered, her voice tight as her core strained under the sheer, infinite volume of the dragon prince's magic.
"Yes...?" he responded blindly through his tears.
"Don't you dare pull back."
Before Dan could even ask what she meant, his eyes widened. He felt an instantaneous, colossal drain at the center of his soul—as if an immense spiritual plug had just been violently pulled from his core. Something unyielding and completely insatiable within Areia was aggressively sucking the runaway mana straight out of his body, forcing the two of them into a terrifying, symbiotic lock as the tower trembled around them.