The phantom screams lingered in the quiet of their tree-hollow room. Kael sat on the floor, his back against the wall, knees drawn to his chest. He stared at his hands, half-expecting to see them stained with the black frost of his power or the psychic filth of Korbin's assault. His body was whole, but his mind felt... violated. Scrubbed raw.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Sera dissolving, heard the Mistress Path shrieking in his ear. The cold power within him, once a distant, ominous thread, now felt like a live nerve, hypersensitive and twitching at the memory.
He flinched when Sera moved from her post by the window, approaching him slowly as one would a skittish animal. She didn't speak. She simply knelt before him, her expression unreadable in the dim light.
"Look at me, Kael," she said, her voice soft but firm.
He forced his gaze to meet hers. The amethyst depths were calm, a stark contrast to the storm raging inside him.
"It was not real," she stated, her words a simple, powerful incantation. "The mind is a battlefield, and they weaponized your greatest fears against you. But they are just phantoms. I am here. I am real."
She reached out, her fingers gently brushing a stray lock of hair from his damp forehead. Her touch was cool, a balm on his fevered skin. It was an echo of her tenderness in the river cave, but now it felt more deliberate. More intimate.
"I couldn't protect you from that," she whispered, and for the first time, he heard a thread of genuine guilt in her voice. "My power... this seal... I was useless."
"No," he said, his own voice rough. He uncurled one hand from his knee and covered hers where it rested on the floor between them. Her fingers were slender and strong beneath his. "You were the only thing that was real in there. When I saw you... I remembered what I was fighting for. I remembered how to listen."
Her eyes widened slightly at his touch, but she didn't pull away. A faint, rosy hue colored her pale cheeks. The air in the small room grew thick, charged with all the unspoken words and shared suffering that lay between them.
"You can't always be my shield, Sera," he continued, his thumb tracing a slow, absent-minded circle on the back of her hand. He wasn't even sure he was doing it; it felt as natural as breathing. "But you are my anchor. You keep me from getting lost in the storm. That's more important."
He was leaning closer, drawn by the vulnerability in her eyes, by the need to quiet the echoes in his own head with something real, something warm. Her breath hitched, her lips parting slightly. The sorrow in her gaze was still there, but it was now mingled with a desperate, hopeful longing that mirrored his own.
For a heartbeat, the world outside—the Remnant, the Temple, the cursed Path—ceased to exist. There was only the small, quiet space between them, filled with the sound of their breathing and the electric potential of a touch about to deepen.
Then, a shadow crossed her face. The shutters came down. She gently, reluctantly, pulled her hand from beneath his, folding it in her lap. The moment shattered.
"We cannot," she said, her voice barely audible. She looked away, toward the window slit. "This... complicates things. Distraction is a luxury we cannot afford. It makes you vulnerable. It makes me vulnerable."
The rejection stung, but it was laced with a truth he couldn't deny. He saw the pain in the set of her shoulders, the way her fingers clenched in the fabric of her robe. She wasn't pushing him away out of coldness, but out of a fierce, protective fear.
He leaned back against the wall, the cold seeping back into his bones. The phantom screams were quieter now, but the silence that replaced them was almost worse.
"You're right," he said, the words tasting like ash. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," she replied, still not looking at him. "Just... be ready for tomorrow. It will be worse."
They sat in silence for a long time, the ghost of what almost was hanging between them. The anchor held, but the storm was far from over. And Kael knew, with a chilling certainty, that the greatest battles would not be fought in sunken clearings, but in the small, quiet space between his heart and hers.
---