Elisa hesitated, her gaze caught between distrust and exhaustion. Then she yielded. Not to him, but to what he represented in that instant: Maggie’s last chance. She stepped back just slightly, just enough to not be in the way. Dylan knelt beside the torn flank.
"Sorry..." he whispered, but that word wasn’t ant for anyone. It was a murmur to the universe, to his own body, to the absurdity of the act he was about to commit.
He pushed aside the soaked fabric, pressed his open palm against the wound. And on his back, beneath skin stained with soot and dried blood, the stigma began to glow.
It wasn’t a gentle light. It was raw. Harsh. As if the flesh refused to yield, but opened anyway under the force of a silent oath. A gash slowly opened on his own flank, exactly where Maggie was bleeding. A perfect mirror. The transfer had begun.
A stream of blood imdiately seeped from him—warm, thick, more black than red. Maggie, anwhile, stopped bleeding. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, her breathing grew less ragged.
Dylan was already faltering.
The pain speared through him like a blade. Each heartbeat was a hamr blow. He felt the muscles in his legs give way, and had to brace against the ground to avoid collapsing face-first. But he didn’t let go of her wound. He had to see it through. He had to. He didn’t want his body to keep living if not to nd what he had broken.
Spiritual essence coursed upstream through his veins like a wild torrent. It wasn’t just a wound he was taking—he was taking all the pain, all the trauma of that night, all the invisible blades that had torn Maggie from the inside.
And it was breaking him.
He scread this ti. A hoarse, strangled, animal cry. The wound on his side widened. Blood, tears, saliva—everything mingled with the cold earth beneath him. He thought he might die. He realized, with horror, that Maggie had borne this all this ti without collapsing.
His mind was fracturing.
That’s when Elisa approached him again.
Without a word, she seized his left hand, pried it open—he no longer had the strength to resist—and placed a stone into his palm. It was the size of a plum, glowing like a dying star.
An anima gem. Black with athyst gleams, crackling with ancient power.
"It’s the Midnight Lady’s. Absorb it, now."
Elisa’s voice was firm but trembling. Charged with sothing urgent. Sothing personal. She knew the value of this gem. She knew what it ant. And yet she gave it to him.
Dylan, in an almost animal reflex, closed his fingers around the stone. It began to pulse.
And then... sothing happened.
The gem’s energy did not resist him. It didn’t reject or tear at him. On the contrary. It recognized him. Like a key sliding into the lock of a forgotten past. A warmth flooded through him—not gentle, no. A dense, heavy warmth, like a burning, painful mory.
The essence of the Lady poured into him as if it were returning ho. Now that the Lady was dead, the fragnt she had planted in Dylan responded to the one inside the stone, calling to it as though it were an integral part of himself.
And the wound began to close.
Not just his. Maggie’s too. The invisible suture happened in mirror. The scars vanished together, as if a debt had been paid, a balance restored. Dylan collapsed onto his side, breathless, his body emptied but intact, his soul trembling.
He lay there, panting. Maggie’s breathing was calr. Elisa watched him in silence.
And in the silence that followed, there was nothing but the breath of dawn, and the distant echo of a broken pact—rebuilt, perhaps even... transfigured.
⸻
The morning wind had risen in a quiet breath, almost reverent, sweeping away the last veils of mist around the clearing. Pale light filtered through the torn canopy, washing the scene in timid gold. Maggie slept a feverish sleep—but she was alive. Elisa, kneeling at her side, kept a hand resting on her, as if to anchor her to the world.
And Dylan...
Dylan stood.
Every movent was a struggle against exhaustion. Not just of the body, but an older fatigue, sothing deep-rooted. He felt like his bones were made of glass, and that walking ant betraying gravity itself. Still, he moved. Barefoot in the damp grass, legs trembling, one step at a ti. He left behind the lingering warmth of Maggie’s body, the silent presence of Elisa, and walked straight toward the Guardian.
He lay there, like a broken statue toppled by the gods.
Helt cracked, breastplate dented in several places, arms like shattered columns sprawled on either side of the black Jian. And that sword... strange, silent. It emitted no light—on the contrary. It swallowed brightness. Drank the mist. The world seed just a little less alive around it.
Dylan crouched near the body. The Guardian had no face. Just a cracked visor, a mute mouth that had never spoken. And yet... he felt sothing. A residual wave, a final breath of intention still clinging to the corpse.
He murmured,
"You knew."
Not an accusation. A simple truth.
"You knew I was tainted by the demon’s soul... and that sooner or later she’d co for . But you still let stay."
He closed his eyes for a mont, listening. Nothing. But it was enough. He felt peace—or at least, what passed for it in a broken world.
Then he reached for the Jian.
The hilt was cold. Too cold for tal. As if it didn’t exist in the sa temperature as the air around it. But it didn’t resist him. It didn’t push him away. It was heavy in his hand, yes, but not like a burden. Like a responsibility. Like a pact.
He lifted it slowly.
The blade gave off barely a sound as it left the ground—a tone too short to be a song, too deep to be an echo. But around him, the leaves rustled. The mist gently tore itself apart. And Dylan felt sothing stir within him—not the demon, no. She was gone. What awakened now was sothing else. Sothing new. Unspeakable. A freshly reopened spiritual scar.
He held the Jian in both hands. His reflection in the black tal was different: more solemn, more grounded. The fragnt of the Lady, though now absorbed, glowed with a new hue, as if it no longer truly belonged to darkness... or to light.
He stood.
The mist receded with each step—not in submission, but like a curtain rising on a new scene. He returned to the two won. Maggie still slept, her complexion showing so color again. Elisa looked up at him, first at the sword, then at his face. She said nothing. She didn’t need to. A nod was enough. Tired, solemn, but clear.
Sothing had changed.
And everything remained to be rebuilt.
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