Myles stood frozen for several long seconds after Lilian’s words settled into the air.
Dead. The word echoed hollowly inside his mind.
His relationship with Nadine had never been defined with promises or vows. They had never spoken about the future. But they had shared warmth. Shared the nights at the empty campus class. Shared laughter in the darkness when the world outside felt uncertain.
She had been there from the beginning, standing beside him when everything first turned chaotic.
That bond had been real. And now she was gone.
The mory of her being pierced through the chest resurfaced with brutal clarity. Myles rembered the sound, the sudden spray of blood, and the shock in her eyes.
A tremor ran through him.
That was the mont he had lost control.
He rembered the surge of fury. The way sothing inside him had snapped and strange but strong power had flooded his body from sowhere unknown, feeding on his anger, magnifying it, and turning it into sothing so violent and uncontrollable.
He could still rember the feeling of that power. But not what he had done with it. The details were blurred, like burned fragnts.
He looked down at Nadine’s body again.
She lay still, her skin already pale.
Victor, at least, was still breathing. It was weak and shallow. But he was still alive.
Strangely, the grief he expected to feel did not explode outward. Instead, there was a heavy numbness spreading through his chest. A suffocating emptiness.
That numbness made him angrier at himself. He should have been faster and stronger.
If he had not been immobilized earlier... if he had been able to move when Ryan attacked... maybe she would still be alive.
Myles released a long, shaky breath. It carried helplessness with it.
Tears began to roll down his face before he realized it.
He stepped forward slowly and lowered himself beside Nadine’s body. The ground was still warm from burning debris, but her skin was cold.
"I’m sorry," he said hoarsely.
The apology felt small and worthless at this point. What apology could do when she is already dead like this?
He leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. For a brief mont, he allowed himself to simply stay there, eyes closed, holding onto the last trace of warmth of Nadine’s body.
Around him, the others watched in silence.
Ethan stood with a bandage wrapped over his left eye, tears streaming freely down his face. Samantha cried beside him, clutching her injured arm close to her body.
They were the youngest among them. The loss hit them hardest, raw and unfiltered.
Daniel turned his head away, jaw tight. George stared at the ground. Clara wiped at her eyes but said nothing. Kade clenched his jaw tight.
After a while, Myles rose to his feet.
His expression had changed. The tears still clung to his lashes but a steadier feeling had settled behind his eyes.
"We need to bury her properly," he said quietly.
One by one, they nodded.
—
They buried Nadine a few minutes later. The cetery lay half-ruined, its iron gates bent and broken, stone markers cracked by shockwaves and fire. Even so, it was quiet there.
Ash drifted through the air like pale snow as they lowered her body into the ground.
No one spoke.
Myles carved her na into a flat stone himself, his sword moving slowly and carefully.
When he finished, he planted the stone at the head of the grave and stood there for a long mont, staring at it without blinking.
Then they left. There was nothing else they could do.
They moved away from the devastated district afterward. The clash between Myles and Ryan had torn that entire area apart. They saw collapsed buildings, scorched streets, and lingering Ether distortion that made the air feel strange against their skin.
Victor could not walk even though his wounds were already mostly closed. So Daniel and George carried him between them without complaint, his arms slung over their shoulders.
Their stats made his weight not a problem, but that did nothing to ease the tension on their faces. Victor’s breathing stayed shallow the entire way.
They searched until they found a house that still stood mostly intact. Its windows were shattered and the door hung crooked on its hinges, but the structure remained solid. It was enough.
They settled there for the night.
Darkness fell fully by the ti they finished securing the place. Exhaustion filled their body once the imdiate danger passed.
One by one, they collapsed inside, so tending to wounds, or simply sitting in silence with their backs against the walls.
Myles did not go in. He sat alone on the front porch, staring out at the ruined city while fires still burned in the distance, casting orange light across streets and skeletal buildings. Smoke curled into the night sky.
The numbness still clung to him. No matter how deeply he breathed, it would not go away.
"She’s really gone..."
The thought felt unreal every ti it surfaced.
Footsteps sounded softly behind him.
Lilian ca to his side and sat down on the porch without a word. Her wings were gone now, her appearance once again that of a human woman.
She did not look at him or speak. She simply stayed beside him.
The silence between them stretched for a few minutes, heavy but not uncomfortable. The ruined city watched them both.
After a long while, Myles spoke with a low voice.
"I lost control back there," he said. "I don’t rember everything. Just... the anger."
Lilian nodded. "I know."
She knows more than Myles did about what happened to him. But she wouldn’t say it right now.
"If I had been stronger sooner," he continued, his gaze fixed on the horizon, "maybe none of this would’ve happened."
Lilian did not answer imdiately.
"That power you touched," she said at last, "was not sothing ant to be drawn out by rage alone."
Myles’ fingers tightened slightly against the wood beneath him.
"That scares ," he admitted.
"It should," Lilian replied calmly. Then, more gently, she added, "But it also ans there’s more to you than you understand. Don’t be dejected."
Myles sighed. He didn’t want to think about it for now.
The city crackled and burned in the distance as the night deepened around them.
—
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