Vel's breath came in rapid, deep gulps as his eyes scanned for any movement.
The whole arena had been transformed. Glass waves spread where sand had been, still cooling, the air above them rippling with residual heat.
Yet the portal remained untouched by any kind of magic.
Across the arena, where the wraiths had stood in their swaying circle around the portal, only thin curls of smoke rose from the glass floor. Their dark forms had been consumed in the cyclone of plasma, fire, and stone. Still the ward held, just as Elyssia had analyzed.
The remains of the cultists had disintegrated. Only burning shapes of what used to be human remained, fragments of their robes fused into the glass floor below.
Nothing else stirred except the pocket dimension, which pulsed with increasing frequency, its surface rippling like disturbed water.
Raising the appraisal crystal, Vel opened his interface to analyze what remained of their opponents. Before he could process the data, the pocket dimension stirred more violently. Then it cracked, light from beneath spilling out through the breach.
The dark blue sphere exploded with a thunderous crack. A blast propelled both Elyssia and the Demon Lord outward, sending them in opposite directions. They crashed into the arena floor, sliding across the newly formed glass.
The Demon Lord struggled to his feet, his once-immaculate appearance now in tatters. His robes hung in shreds, his hair undone, partly charred and standing, his previously confident demeanor vanished, even his breath uneven.
But Elyssia... she wasn't moving. The Archmagister lay crumpled where she had fallen, her magnificent robes stained dark with blood. Her hair splayed around her, soaked through.
No...
Vel's heart sank. He ran to her side and dropped to his knees.
Blood was pooling beneath her body, dark against the glass floor. His mana was almost gone, but he had one spell left that might keep her from slipping past saving.
"Lienthar Solith Revinuem," he whispered, directing the faint green energy toward her.
The spell wrapped around Elyssia, seeping into her wounds. Her breathing stabilized slightly, but she remained unconscious, unresponsive to the magical intervention.
Vel turned his attention back to the Demon Lord, who was surveying his fallen generals with narrowed eyes. A flash of surprise crossed the entity's face. Clearly, he hadn't expected this outcome.
The Demon Lord's lips curled with disgust as he regarded the insect and Clara, who remained motionless on the ground.
"Useless..." he stated coldly, his voice carrying easily across the arena despite its softness. "Useless, useless!"
The word fell three times, each one heavier than the last, the verdict of someone whose patience had been exhausted long before this moment.
"Incompetent vermin."
His gaze drifted toward what remained of the cultists.
Then his eyes drifted to his generals.
"My so-called generals, defeated by mere students."
His attention shifted to Elyssia, lying broken across the glass floor.
"Your strongest mage, broken at her own choosing. Building a cage that would doom her from the start. And yet she made me waste my time on it."
His tone did not rise. It only cooled further, the contempt of someone disappointed in tools that had failed him.
"This is what your world raises to defend itself. This is what stands between you and what is coming."
His head tilted toward Vel, slow and curious.
"What hope do any of you have, truly?"
A pause. He let the question hang in the air, looking around the arena as if expecting an answer that no one was capable of giving. When none came, the smile returned to his face.
"No matter. A contract is a contract. A small gain is better than nothing."
He took a measured step forward, his eyes settling on Elyssia.
"Hand the mage over, surrender, and the rest of you may keep your lives."
Vel glanced around, the gravity of the situation hitting him with full force. Celia stood beside him, swaying on her feet but still standing, her rapier hanging at her side. Tomas lay unconscious. Lyvenna remained on the ground, completely drained. Elyssia was incapacitated.
Elyssia's life for the rest of theirs. Anyone who treasured their lives would have taken the offer.
But not Vel. He knew not to trust any word coming out of this creature. Even if the Demon Lord honored the terms, giving up Elyssia would be handing over the key to saving this realm.
"No..."
The Demon Lord stilled. Not because of the rejection itself, but because he had not anticipated a response more imbecile than this.
"The duel is not over," Vel added.
The Demon Lord's facade cracked. His mouth twitched between a smile and something closer to rage.
"Human..." The word escaped him in total disgust.
He paused, taking one quick gaze of the surroundings. Every person and creature in the arena was on the ground or struggling to stand. The only ones still on their feet were Vel and the Demon Lord himself.
"Again and again, you choose suffering over salvation."
His gaze settled on Vel.
"Even now, offered survival, you cling to ruin."
A pause.
"There's something deeply wrong with your kind, isn't there?"
Vel noticed the Demon Lord's eyes darting briefly toward the barrier. The entity seemed rushed, almost anxious, perhaps he sensed what Vel suspected. The plasma nova might have cracked the barrier from the inside, weakening it enough that the combined forces outside would soon break through.
His tone settled.
"As you wish. Time to end this charade."
The Demon Lord rose into the air, his feet leaving the ground as he hovered ominously. The dark energy surrounding him intensified, casting eerie shadows across his face.
With one fluid motion, the Demon Lord launched himself toward Vel, palm extended like a spear. The intent was clear, he meant to impale Vel with his bare hand, ending this confrontation decisively.
Vel raised his hand to form a defensive spell. The gauntlet flickered. The flame at his palm guttered down to nothing.
His interface flashed red.
Warning: Mana Low. Overcasting. Life force in danger.
Shit!
His mind swayed, his ears rang, balance slipping from under him. He had to cut the spell short or he would lose consciousness. He raised his hand again, this time as a last resort, bracing for whatever impact the strike would bring.
Before the Demon Lord could reach him, a silhouette rushed in front of him.
A sword rose to meet the strike. Sparks shot out in every direction as steel met palm.
Vel's vision sharpened back into focus.
Celia stood between him and the Demon Lord. Her hands were shaking. The rapier threatened to fall out of her grip.
Before Vel could do anything to help, the Demon Lord pulled his other hand back. Palm open. He drove it forward.
Vel's heart squeezed. His stomach turned to lead. The palm went through Celia's body from the front, the hand visible behind her back.
Red splashed across Vel's face. Warm.
"CELIA!"
Her rapier shattered in fragments, the force breaking it apart in her grip.
But Celia still moved. She caught a falling fragment with her hand and drove it into the Demon Lord's chest.
Electricity filled the space, racing along the broken blade, climbing her whole body. No one could still emit this much power after exhausting themselves. Unless...
The lightning exploded from the point of contact, throwing the Demon Lord backward.
Vel ran over to Celia's falling form. His hands shook. His mind went blank.
"Celia! Why?!"
She turned. Blood hacked out through her mouth.
"Save... my... sister..."
Then her body gave.
Vel fell with her.
She lay motionless in his arms. Blood spilled in a wide pool around him, a gap torn open through her chest.
Vel held his breath as he grimaced at the still body in his arms.
One devastating word left his mouth.
"CELIAAAAA!"
The scream tore the air, and the ice came with it. Frost burst from him in a violent wave, racing across the arena floor faster than the eye could follow. It tore up the columns, slammed against the walls, locked the arena in a sheath of cracking blue.
In mere seconds, the arena had transformed into something like a frozen lake, the layer of ice climbing halfway up the barrier.
The temperature plummeted so rapidly that the air itself seemed to crystallize. Vel's breath emerged as dense white clouds as he cradled Celia's body protectively. The Demon Lord stumbled backward, his feet adhering to the slick surface beneath him.
Even Clara's unconscious form and the insect warrior became partially encased in the spreading frost. The ice seemed to recognize friend from foe, threat from ally.
The Demon Lord's eyes widened. Something he had not shown before crossed his face. Uncertainty. He stared at the figure across the ice and saw no one looking back, only the shape of a human filled with something else.
"What are you?" the Demon Lord whispered, his voice barely audible over the creaking and groaning of the expanding ice.
Vel didn't answer. He couldn't. His grief had transcended words, manifesting instead as this unstoppable elemental fury that continued to transform the arena around them.
Vel stood up, letting go of Celia's body, his face still fallen toward the ground. He didn't look at the demon lord. His mind was already elsewhere.
The demon lord hesitated as he observed this unknown threat. The entity's fingers flexed cautiously, dark energy crackling between them as he assessed the situation.
First One...
A faint voice echoed deep inside Vel's mind, like somewhere from the abyss, barely audible, both strange and familiar at the same time.
The voice reached again.
"First One..."
It was no mistake, the voice of the Air Primordial calling to him. Zephyr. The vision he'd glimpsed now reaching out with clarity.
"Allow me in... First One."
A notice appeared on Vel's interface, floating before his eyes like a ghostly window:
[Accept Air Primordial connection?]
Yes/No
There was no reasoning behind what came next. His mind was driven by nothing but rage and grief. The real person who had been making decisions was now in the back seat.
As soon as Vel accepted the connection, an aura of energy emanated from his body. The very air seemed to shimmer around him, distorting his outline like heat waves rising from sun-baked stone.
The Demon Lord sensed the shift in power despite Vel standing like an uncontrolled doll. The entity took a step back, an instinct of self-preservation.
"What trickery is this?" the Demon Lord hissed.
Without looking, Vel took a step away from Celia. One hand moved slowly above her form. Multiple magic circles appeared at once, layered on top of each other and spaced apart. His mouth whispered something no one could hear.
[Stasis]
The space around Celia seemed to stop moving. Even the dripping blood stopped, the cloth ceased its subtle movement.
[Ice Tomb]
Crystalline structures rose around her body, forming a perfect sarcophagus of transparent ice. The formation sealed completely, creating an impenetrable barrier between Celia and the outside world.
[Restoration]
Tendrils of healing with brilliant light energy wrapped around Celia's wounds. They climbed around her toward the gap in her chest like roots finding water. The skin grew and found itself, slowly closing the gap.
Healing spells would not bring back the dead. That was the rule of the universe, the code of the system. But Vel's subconscious was rejecting it, refusing to accept the permanence of her sacrifice.
Then Vel lifted his head, eyes glowing with energy locked onto the Demon Lord. His irises had transformed completely, becoming swirling vortexes of air and light. The winds around him intensified, whipping his clothing and hair in a localized tempest that left everything else untouched.
Through the haze of Zephyr's power, Vel spoke with a detached, ancient cadence.
"Avaricious Soul."
The Demon Lord's expression shifted from wariness to confusion. Before he could respond, lightning began to dance around where Vel stood, curving outward and arcing back to him. Dust and grit lost their gravity, hanging suspended in the air.
A tendril of lightning reached out from Vel's charged body, snapping toward the Demon Lord and forcing the entity to dodge with inhuman speed.
The next one came an instant later. And another after that. Each one reached out like a tentacle converging on a single target. No command. No gesture. The lightning acted as quickly as thought itself.
The Demon Lord's movements grew increasingly desperate as he evaded the relentless assault. Frustration twisted his features.
He launched forward, hand extended just as it had been when he struck Celia.
But this time, Vel raised his palm straight forward, almost like catching an object.
That object was the Demon Lord. The entity's momentum halted right before Vel, hanging mid-air.
Their eyes met.
And for the first time, fear appeared on that face.
With his other hand raised, Vel pulled slowly, closing his fingers into a fist.
The air itself became a weapon. He was not physically holding the Demon Lord the way he had the cult leader. He was manipulating the very space the entity occupied.
The pressure increased exponentially, compressing the entity's body from all directions.
The Demon Lord's body started to deform. Then the first cracking sound. Then another.
Just before the crushing force could squash him together, the Demon Lord vanished in a flash of dark energy. He reappeared several feet away, sprawled on the ground. His limbs bent at unnatural angles, body partially crushed by the tremendous pressure he had barely escaped.
Through a glimpse of shared consciousness, Vel could feel the power thrumming and building, ready to deliver the final blow. His hair stood on end. The lightning around him changed color to red.
The Demon Lord's gaze darted toward the portal, desperation evident in his movements. With remarkable speed despite his injuries, he launched himself toward it, dark energy propelling his broken body through the air.
Multiple whips of lightning extended from Vel's hand. This time they were literally tentacles of energy, wrapping around the Demon Lord's legs like serpents constricting their prey. The being's momentum halted abruptly, leaving him suspended in mid-flight.
The energy slowly pulled, shortening its length.
The Demon Lord looked around frantically, desperately, toward his allies. No help came. The insectoid's charred black carcass lay where it had fallen. Clara lay unconscious.
Without any further hesitation, his hand sharpened into a blade of darkness. He swung it down and severed his own leg at the knee. The severed leg remained caught in the lightning whips. The rest of him plunged into the portal, his broken body vanishing into the dark beyond.
The portal's edges began to waver, its surface rippling like disturbed water before slowly shrinking inward. Within seconds, it had vanished completely.
The energy and lightning subsided. Yet Vel, or whatever now took control of him, stood still.
The first cracks of the arena ward had begun to show, faint hairline fractures spreading across its dark surface.
Tomas lay sprawled a few steps from his fallen wand. Elyssia was crumpled face-down on the floor. Clara lay next to her sword, her metallic arm sparking like broken machinery. And her sister, Celia, now encased inside an ice coffin.
The only witness, who had beheld the true sight behind Vel's transformation, was Lyvenna. She sat flat on the floor, shaking, eyes filled with terror at the very thing she had helped to unleash.
"What are you..."
Vel's head snapped toward her, eyes glowing with unsatiated vengeance.
"You..."
"All of this was your fault."
"What...?" Lyvenna's voice pitched high and dry.
"You should be taking her place."
Vel disappeared in a crack of lightning and reappeared directly in front of Lyvenna.
He grabbed her by the collar and pulled her up.
"You should be the one to pay the price, not her." His hand squeezed.
Lyvenna stared into Vel's eyes. Nothing was left of the student she used to know. What looked back at her was something dark and dreadful.
She gritted her teeth. Tears welled out of her eyes. Her throat started gasping for air.
Yet something in her eyes came with acceptance. She knew she deserved this. There was no struggle. Both her arms dragged down at her sides, heavy with the weight of everything she had been part of.
A thunderous blast echoed through the arena as the ward finally shattered, raining down fragments of magical energy that dissolved before reaching the ground.
Beyond it, the forces from outside were revealed. They began filing in, taking precautionary positions across the perimeter.
No one understood what had happened. All they saw was Vel holding his own instructor by the neck.
"What's happening?" one of the adventurers asked, a platinum plate hanging on his belt.
They tried to close in. Lightning shot out at anyone who came near, forcing them to step back.
Color started to change on Lyvenna's face. Her mouth moved but no voice came.
I'm sorry...
"Is she part of the cult?"
"Looks like it."
Beyond all the noise, a voice came loud and clear.
"Young Master!"
Hileya's voice reached him. Vel's hand twitched slightly, just enough that Lyvenna could pull a thin breath.
Whatever reason there had been to spare Lyvenna was no longer in the equation. His mind only wanted to eradicate every source that had caused any of this.
Anything that threatened the people he cared about had to disappear. The grip tightened again.
"Young Master. Please!"
Hileya stepped in closer, pushing past the gathered adventurers. They tried to stop her. She slipped past them, her eyes fixed on Vel and only on Vel.
Through the bond, she was the only one who understood the pain Vel was going through.
A bolt of lightning shot at her. She flinched back. But she did not stop.
"Please. Don't do something you can't undo."
Another arc snapped past her shoulder, close enough to singe her sleeve. She kept pushing forward, step by step, despite the numbness of the electricity around her.
She understood. The master she knew, the person who would not normally make this kind of decision, was no longer there. He was buried deep beneath the raging emotion, and she had to reach for him.
Just as Lyvenna gave out, her body going limp, Hileya lunged forward.
She wrapped herself around Vel from behind, her arms locking across his chest, her face pressed to his shoulder.
Vel took a sharp gasp at her touch. A flash of energy burst between them.
Everything went dark.
---
[**]
Hileya opened her eyes.
The surroundings were dark. Empty. No sound, no light, only herself and the darkness pressing in from every direction. She could not feel the floor beneath her feet, yet she stood. She could not feel the air against her skin, yet she breathed.
Confused yet determined, she took a step forward.
What is this place?
A strange door slowly came into view, as if the darkness itself had stepped aside to reveal it. Sleek in design, painted white, with a small silver handle she had to study for a moment before understanding how it was meant to work. Nothing in her world looked like this. Nothing she had ever seen in a noble's manor, a guild hall, or a temple. The door belonged somewhere else entirely.
She reached for the handle. She twisted it and stepped through.
Another dark space.
But this one had a source of light, glowing softly from one corner, spilling pale blue across the dark.
The light came through like a window. A monitor, though Hileya had no name for it. Strange symbols and shapes moved silently across its surface, none of which she could read.
And in front of it, a figure sat slumped in a chair, his arms resting on his knees, his hands covering his face.
She knew the shape of him even before she saw it clearly. She would have known him in any darkness.
"Young Master?"
The figure reacted to her voice.
He removed his hands. They fell from his face. But he did not turn. His elbows stayed on his knees, his head still bowed.
Hileya could not make out the person's face. The darkness shifted strangely around it, the features changing between someone she knew and someone she only thought she knew, between the master she had served all her life and a stranger she had never met.
"Young Master. Is that you?"
The man did not answer.
"Please come back. We need you."
No answer.
Silence stretched on. It felt as if it would never end.
The man finally spoke.
"I've... failed."
Hileya listened closely, holding still.
"I was full of myself."
"Thinking I was above the system. Because I had created it."
Nothing made sense to Hileya, though she tried to understand. System. Create. These were words she knew, but the way he spoke them belonged to someone else.
"He was right..."
A pause.
"I was not ready for the cost."
"This time was Celia. Next time... next time it could be you."
"That's not true!" Hileya's voice cut through the dark, sharper than it had been before.
"You wanted us to stand on our own. So that you could rely on us. As much as we rely on you."
"Rely on me for what?" The words tore out, his voice climbing.
"To watching the people I care about throw their lives away while I stand there powerless?"
"Celia...she died because I let her..."
"If only we ran the first moment we could..."
His throat closed around the rest. Tears welled in his eyes, gathering at the edges before they could fall. He bowed lower, burying his face deeper into the darkness.
Hileya knelt down beside him. For a long moment she said nothing.
Her hand reached out and touched his arm. Or the arm of the person who resembled him. The fabric beneath her fingers felt right. The warmth beneath that fabric felt right. It was only the face she could not place.
"You were trying to help..."
Her voice came soft, then steadied as she found the rest of it.
"It's who you are."
"And I am proud to serve someone capable of such compassion. Even toward people who did not deserve it."
"The Academy is in your debt. The kingdom is in your debt. They just don't realize it yet."
"I don't want to save the Academy. Nor the kingdom." Vel replied, the words flat against the dark.
"What was the point... when I failed the only person who mattered?"
The space between them grew thicker. A silence returned.
"And there's nothing I can do to turn it back..."
A beat. Then Hileya spoke again.
"When it happened..." Hileya leaned closer. "I felt it too."
She lifted her other hand and pressed it gently against her own chest, as if to point to the place she meant.
"I felt the air leave my lungs. Something heavy pressing on both ends. A place where I could feel you, feel her, just gone. Empty with no warning."
She had to pause to find the next words. They were heavier than she expected.
"But had it been you..."
Her hand tightened on his arm, just enough to remind him she was still there.
"Me, Miss Celia, and everyone else would blame ourselves too."
"I'd rather it had been me," Vel said quietly. He pulled himself further into the shadow, as if there were still somewhere left to retreat to. "I deserve it."
The monitor flickered. The image on its surface settled into a loop. Celia's back, again. The silhouette stepping in front. The arm coming through her chest. Again. Again. The same fraction of a second, played without mercy.
Hileya looked at it, and the breath went out of her. She held still until she could find it again, until her shoulders remembered how to hold themselves up.
Then she wrapped her arms around Vel and pulled him into her, the way she would have held something small and broken.
"I'm sorry I couldn't be any help."
The words came out smaller than she meant them to, cracking around the edges.
Like a dam that could no longer hold, her tears came. Slowly at first, then more.
She had been holding herself together, for her master, for the hope of comforting him. But who would comfort her? Celia was gone. The only friend she had, the only person she could call family beside Vel. The one who listened and told her stories until they both fell asleep. The one who helped braid her hair in the mornings. The one who gave her the feeling of being alive, rather than just serving.
Their tears flowed together. Vel did not turn toward her, but he did not pull away. His breathing leaned against her shoulder, quiet, broken.
Hileya spoke through the tears.
"During our nights together..."
The words tried to come and faltered.
"...she always talked about you."
A breath, broken by another sob.
"About how fate took her sister, but gave you in return. And she didn't regret a single second."
Her voice broke. She drew in air, forced herself to keep going.
"About how she believed that whatever happened, as long as we have each other, everything will be fine."
She had to stop. The next words sat in her throat, refusing to come up clean.
"As long as we have you."
Vel twitched in her arms.
His head did not lift, but something in him went still in a different way than before. The words had found somewhere inside him to land, somewhere he had been trying not to leave open.
"That night under the mirror moons..." Hileya said softly, almost to herself. "When we came back to our room afterward, just her and me."
A breath.
"'Let's go adventure together. When we graduate the academy, when you finish your training.'"
A pause.
"I just didn't think it would be the last thing I ever heard from her."
For a long time neither of them moved. The monitor's light fell across them in pale blue, and the loop kept playing. Hileya's crying eased into something quieter, irregular, the way breathing returns after it has been forgotten.
Hileya turned her eyes to the monitor. The moment was still replaying there, still clear.
Then, out of curiosity, she asked softly.
"Why did you freeze her in an ice coffin?"
It took a while before Vel moved. When he finally lifted his head, he looked at the screen as if he were seeing it for the first time, as if the figure on it had been someone other than him.
Hileya released him slightly, sensing Vel finally reacting to her words.
He moved closer to the screen. He observed it again and again.
"The healing spell... it failed to bring her back," Hileya said quietly, studying the screen as Vel also watched it. "But... why the others?"
Vel's fingers were still formed into knuckles. They twitched slightly, in rhythm.
A familiar gesture Hileya recognized. He was thinking, analyzing the problem.
He spoke slowly, as the realization of his own doing came together.
"It... it wasn't for bringing her back."
"That spell sequence..."
A pause.
"...was to preserve her."
Vel leaned back. Recognition hit him.
"Young Master," Hileya said carefully, "Miss Celia said you always know what to do. Even with what happened, she still told you to save Miss Clara."
A breath.
"Did she make that decision out of pure desperation? Or did she trust that you would find a way?"
Vel looked at Hileya. Then back to the monitor. His hand moved to the keyboard below it. He rewound the moment, finding the exact second when Celia spoke, then the sequence of spells he had cast after.
He watched it play through. Twice. Three times.
"She... might not be dead."
Hileya's eyes widened slightly, looking between the screen and Vel. She did not fully understand what she was seeing, but she understood his face.
"Is it true?"
"No..."
"She's not dead. But not alive either."
His eyes stayed glued to the screen, scanning every detail.
"It seems I subconsciously tried to save her by... stopping death from happening at all."
Understanding finally dawned on Hileya.
"So she's somewhere in between?" Her voice rose, a thin thread of hope finding its way through. "It means we can still save her?"
Vel sat with the question and held it. There was no answer in him to give her.
The silence settled. Hileya did not press him.
Then he pushed himself up from the chair. Slowly, as if testing whether his body still knew how. His fists were closed at his sides, his head bowed, but he was standing.
"Maybe... there's still hope."
He spoke quietly, as if afraid the word itself might break.
"I'm not sure what to do to bring her back. But as long as it's not final..."
He had thought Landre was dead, but she wasn't. He had thought Clara was gone, but she was here. And now Celia...
Each person he came to care about suffered the same fate. Because he had not done enough. Because he had settled for the bare minimum instead of extending himself for them, instead of making sure they were alright.
"No more optimization," Vel said quietly.
Hileya straightened, looking up at him.
"Hileya..." A breath. "From now on, we will not settle for 'just enough.' I will do everything, anything, to bring Celia back to us. I promise."
He turned and took a step toward her.
He pulled her closer into his embrace.
Hileya was surprised, though not in a way that was unpleasant. She leaned her head against his chest.
Then his voice came soft, slightly above her ear, the words breaking toward the end.
"I don't want to lose you too."
For the first time, Hileya forgot her role and her manners as a servant. All she wanted to do now was to return the feeling she had been holding back for so long. So she did.
She extended her arms and wrapped them around his back.
"I'll always be here with you, Master."
"Thank you," Vel said gently.
Then light came on. Not around them, but from between them. It flared up and consumed both of them, and everything around them, into a blinding white.
---
The arena returned into view. The blinding white peeled away in fragments, sound rushing in first, then light, then the weight of his own body finding the ground again.
Vel's legs gave out beneath him. He landed flat on his back against the floor.
Hileya dropped beside him a moment later, still clinging to him.
A haze of noise and footsteps surrounded them. The ice and glass surface beneath was crushing back into sand under the boots that had flooded in.
Above, the sky had turned dark purple. Stars were already glowing across it. The tournament match was supposed to have ended a lifetime ago.
Despite everything, it stayed the same. A shooting star flew across it. But now, only one moon hung in his view.
His vision blurred. Among the crowd attending to them, he found a figure standing apart from the gathering, hands at his sides, watching but not approaching. The build was familiar. The shoulders were Kein's, strained, held firm as if to keep from shaking. His gaze was directed somewhere else, not at Vel.
Whatever was on Kein's face, Vel could not read it before his vision went soft at the edges again.
A weight pressed at the back of his eyes. His body wanted to let go.
"Leave her be!" His voice came weak, barely carrying.
Vel managed one last word as he turned toward the ice sarcophagus. His hand raised toward it, shaking.
"Celia..."
Hileya pushed herself up and knelt steady over him, pressing her hand against his arm.
"It's all right, master. Leave everything to me, for now."
The thought faded as exhaustion finally claimed him. His muscles went slack, and he collapsed completely onto the frozen floor.