Borris stood in the doorway, fists clenched so tight his knuckles cracked. His jaw was locked. His chest rose and fell with rage that had nowhere to go. A distant drip echoed in the pause, like a countdown to an unseen catastrophe.
Luther stood next to him, pale and silent. His lips were shaking, and his mouth was gaping. His empty eyes stared as if he had seen a god bleed, frozen with fear and awe.
Nimbus had turned into a miniature dragon. Her scales dimmed. Her snake-like, draconic body curled around Charles's resting form, protecting him. Her breath sparkled like frost on dying coals.
And on the cold, burned stone floor…Micah Sorelle wept.
Not the quiet kind. Not a gentle ache. This was the kind that breaks through the ribs.
Tears streaked down her cheeks, leaving cold, wet trails. Her eyes stared glassy and unfocused, haunted. She curled into the corner, muscle and bone rigid, all attention fixed on him—terrified he might dissolve if she so much as blinked.
She cried for Charles.
For herself.
For the man she never really saw until it was far too late.
She was too traumatized to engage with the others.
Diana and Geo burst into the room. The air changed.
Diana's coat hung half off her shoulders, trembling hands betraying the panic in her wide eyes, but her stare cut sharply—already calculating. Geo's knees wobbled, shoulders hunched, while his fists sparked with wind qi as though clinging to composure by force.
Diana turned to the others, voice firm through the fear.
"Prepare recovery salves and qi rebalance tonics. Draw a full diagnostic runeweb around Charles within ten minutes," Diana ordered, her instructions clear to everyone in the room.
"On it," Wendy said instantly, already moving.
Borris grabbed the medical kits, handing one to Luther, who took it silently and then quickly moved with Borris to Charles's side.
Then Geo's voice cracked.
"He stopped breathing!"
Diana's blood ran cold. She raised her staff—hands trembling—and light burst from the crystal head in a desperate flare.
The chamber glowed pale gold, the light wavering like a candle in a hurricane.
She collapsed next to Charles. The taste of blood filled her mouth. She slammed her staff into the ground so hard her bones rattled. Tears dripped down, breath ragged with panic, hands shaking as terror and hope ripped her face apart.
"Divine Light Sanctum Pulse!" she yelled, giving up a piece of herself with each word.
Each casting wore her down. Not only her energy drained—her essence faded too. Every desperate invocation took years off her life.
The runes along her arms lit up one by one. Pure agony burned in them. Her sigils seared through cloth and skin. They bled light.
The air hummed. Healing poured into him in waves. Flesh mended. Blood pulled back into veins. The tremor in his ribs slowed. Barely.
He was slipping.
She screamed the chant again, faster this time, voice raw.
"Come on, you stubborn bastard, BREATHE!"
Bones realigned with sickening cracks. Qi lines burned as her own energy poured into him like wildfire.
Every breath she forced into his lungs stole one from hers. Her mana ran dry.
Her qi shattered, razored slivers biting inside her chest. A banshee wail rang in her ears, drowning out reason. Blinding white nipped at her vision's edge, warning her body was one breath from collapse, each second tilting her closer to oblivion.
Still—she didn't stop.
Her vision swam. The staff wavered.
Then Borris was there, shoving a mana crystal into her palm. "Take it. Absorb!"
Wendy quickly dropped to her knees beside Diana and pressed both palms against Diana's back, channeling qi directly. Rob, Anton, Alvin, and Alina each stepped up in turn, placing their hands gently over Diana's or on her shoulders and adding their energy to the healing spell. All worked in coordinated silence, Wendy controlling the flow of qi.
The room filled with the hum of life being spent on a sacrificial altar that held Charles.
The floor became a burning constellation. Mana crystals shattered one by one.
Every spark was a heartbeat. Every crack a prayer.
Diana sobbed once, wiped her tears, and kept casting. She remembered another night—long ago. Blood. Fire. The Duchess of Ziglar was lying broken in her arms. Evelyne's lips cracked, her breath failing, but her eyes… her eyes still soft.
A dying mother.
A baby crying in her arms.
A promise whispered through ruin.
"Promise me… take care of my Charles…"
She had sworn it. On blood. On steel. On the graves of the fallen.
Now that promise screamed through every nerve in her body.
"Sanctum Pulse… Rebirth Matrix… Resurgence Halo—go! GO!"
The light flared again. Diana collapsed. Borris caught her. She pulled herself up and shoved him away. She cast again.
Each spell was a scream. Each chant—a plea. Her throat tore. Arms bled from qi backlash. Still, she refused to stop.
Even when her heart began to stutter.
Even when her vision turned white.
Even when the air smelled like ozone and burnt life.
She kept going.
Because once, long ago, she had promised a dying woman that this boy would live.
And Diana never broke her word.
Micah stood frozen a few feet away. Her body didn't move. Her eyes didn't blink.
Micah looked carved from raw silence—frozen, wide-eyed, face blank but for a tremor at her jaw. Fingers gouged deep grooves in the stone, nails gone white and shaking, desperate for something solid in a world splintered by grief.
She stirred, not so much regaining strength as being yanked upright by an invisible chord. For a heartbeat, defiance flared—love, regret, a scream behind her eyes. She rose, spine snapping straight, sudden and fierce as a war drum's call.
Something older than pain, deeper than fury, pulled her upright. Like a summoning spoken from the marrow of her bones.
Micah Sorelle didn't just stand. She rose.
The chamber seemed to notice.
The air shifted. The hum of mana crystals dulled—reverent quiet. Dust held still in the light. Even the scent of blood and steel paused. It was as if the room itself was holding its breath.
A light qi breeze whipped at her feet. She took a deep breath, but not from her lungs; she took it from her dantian. The energy spread outward, steady and measured with purpose.
And then the blades came.
They shimmered into existence around her. Translucent, weightless edges. Qi-forged weapons that hovered like memories unsheathed.
But they didn't strike. They softened.
What once felt like instruments of war became threads of light—fine, glowing strands drifting from her arms, her spine, her soul. They didn't cut. They wove. With every pulse, they carried intention not to destroy, but to repair.
Her dress lifted around her ankles, stirred by power rather than wind. The air thickened again, charged with something sacred.
She levitated. A few inches from the floor. Just enough to break contact with the world that had tried to break her.
Silver light bloomed behind her pupils. No longer just eyes—now lanterns in a storm.
Still, she couldn't shed any more tears like a pool drained dry.
And yet her voice came, soft but sharp, as if echoing through a cathedral built from shattered memories.
"O breath of the dawn,
Light of the unseen star…
Heal what was broken,
Bind what was torn.
Through wind and warmth,
Return what was mine—
Restore this soul. Rekindle this spine."
Light coalesced in her hands.
Not soft. Not warm. It shone gold and pulsed like a heart inside a sun. Not just a spell. More than qi.
It was a divine light summoning.
A defiance. A scream turned into a promise that the world wouldn't take him too.
Six magic circles spun around it, making patterns in the air. Glyphs came to life: one from the Codex of Wind and the other from the Gospel of Light.
These symbols were made out of grief. Forged from will.
The air smelled like rain on rocks. Of incense burning in a temple that has been empty for a long time. Of memory.
She walked forward toward Charles, her movements steady and deliberate. With each step, the weaving spell held firm, and the divine light never wavered from her outstretched hands or her unwavering gaze.
Then, with both hands, she placed the divine light orb against Charles's chest.
The impact wasn't loud—but it was final.
The room shook, not violently, but with resonance, like a bell struck deep within the earth. A ripple ran across the chamber, scattering motes of light that danced through the air like stardust.
Charles arched.
Not with a scream. Not with pain.
With resistance. Like death was being told to wait.
A breath escaped him. Not drawn in—ripped back.
One of his hands twitched. His shoulder popped into place with a wet crack. His eyes remained shut. His pulse stayed faint. But something had changed.
Something anchored.
Micah's body dropped. All at once, like a puppet with its strings cut. The light vanished from her eyes. The glow of qi faded. Her legs folded beneath her, too drained to scream, too empty to even breathe.
But before her face hit the marble, Wendy was there. One knee down, arms out. Catching her like she'd been born for that moment alone.
Behind her, others rushed in. The room lit up again—mana crystals flaring as healers poured qi into the floor, their auras colliding in desperation.
Micah didn't speak. She didn't need to.
Her face, even in unconsciousness, held no pain.
Only peace.
The orb of Divine Light faded from Charles's chest. In its place, just beneath the skin, a soft glow lingered.
Faint. Barely there. But alive. A second heartbeat.
Not his.
Hers.
A borrowed light. A promise.
And though beyond those walls the world still roared with assassins, betrayals, and the weight of fate...
For now, in that room, between one body that had died and one soul that refused to break—
Hope breathed.
Three Days of Silence
It had been three days since the trial ended.
And still, Lord Charlemagne Ziglar is in a coma.
There he lay, draped in deep navy silks and soft light from the mana orbs above, like a charming prince. Carved from moonstone and stubbornness, he lay unmoving, ethereal, and somehow irritatingly serene.
Even in a coma, he still exudes a magnetic allure.
"He looks annoyingly peaceful," Wendy muttered, arms folded across her chest.
Diana gently lowered her staff across the room and drew a rune over Charles's chest. She watched as it pulsed softly. The sigil lit up green, which meant that the bones were clean and knitted.
Another gesture made her fingers dance over a different rune, which glowed for a moment, indicating that tissue regeneration was complete. She was happy and turned her attention to the neural waves and mana readings. Her hands moved gracefully as the spell matrix showed stable signs of his health.
His body was fully healed. No more shattered ribs or internal bleeding. Even the soul tears had sealed, leaving no trace of the near-fatal fractures or elemental burns.
And yet.
"So…" Geo whispered, blinking. "Why isn't he waking up?"
Diana sighed, shoulders sagging with helpless elegance. "Because he doesn't want to."
Geo blinked. "Wait, he's—what?"
"He locked himself in." Her tone was gentle but firm. "Mind, soul, heart—all shut. Sealed behind walls so deep, no magic can reach. It's like… he decided to rest at the bottom of himself."
The room fell quiet.
Wendy sat on the edge of the bed and brushed a silver strand of hair from Charles's forehead, fingers moving with a kind of reverence.
"Let him rest," Wendy said quietly.
"He's been through too much. No pauses. No mercy. Just war, pain, chaos. Let him breathe. We'll handle the rest until he wakes up."
She paused, just long enough to let the weight of her words settle, then added with a familiar smirk, dry and knowing:
"...So, he doesn't get up and yell at us for screwing something up."
Rob let out a short laugh through his nose. "Oh yeah, gods forbid he wakes up to disorganized banquet receipts or mismatched battle formation drills."
Laughter spread through the chamber like sunlight breaking through soot. And then they sat.
Not as soldiers. Not as officers. Not as any of the roles the world tried to brand them with.
Just people. Just them.
The room went quiet again, but it wasn't empty. It was full of soft sounds—the drip of wax sliding down half-melted candles, the quiet creak of a floorboard settling under someone's weight, the rustle of cloth as a sleeve brushed against skin. Someone flipped a page in an old book without even realizing they were holding it. Their breaths fell into rhythm, not planned, not perfect, but shared.
Time moved differently inside that room. Slower. Heavier. Like every second was holding its breath with them.
No one said it out loud, but they were keeping vigil.
Not just over a friend or a leader. Over the last bit of light that hadn't been extinguished by the things they couldn't stop.