"Young Master?" she breathed, the words barely a vibration in the air.
She crept forward, her boots making no sound on the thick carpet of dust. She reached the corner where he had been and found the narrow gap in the stone wall—a dark, yawning mouth leading down into the foundations of the world.
"Did he go inside?"
The air coming from the hole didn't smell like a basement. It smelled like the sky before a thunderstorm. It smelled like... him.
Hazel didn't hesitate. She didn't think about the monsters that might live in the dark or the Duke's wrath if she were caught. She stepped into the crawlspace.
The descent was steep. The walls were cold and slick with ancient moisture. As she moved deeper, the silence of the manor above was replaced by a low, rhythmic thrumming.
Then, the light changed.
"What... Is this?" Hazel's eyes widened in awe and amazement. She had never seen anything like this.
A shimmering, ghostly blue began to bleed upward from the depths, illuminating the jagged stone. It was beautiful, but it felt heavy, pressing against her skin like an unwanted touch.
She reached the bottom of the incline and stopped.
There, at the end of a long, vaulted tunnel, stood Aiden. He was bathed in a terrifying radiance, his hand pressed against a wall of shifting geometric light.
'Y...young...'
Hazel's breath caught. She saw the way his body was shaking. She saw the sweat soaking his tunic. And then, as the blue light flared with a violent, and Aiden leaned against the wall, she saw the dark crimson drop fall from his nose.
The "Blue Wind" of the tunnel—the raw, unrefined mana pulsing from the leak—suddenly felt like a personal insult.
The fear she had for her own safety vanished instantly. It was now replaced by a cold, quiet roar in her ears that drowned out the humming of the ancient seal.
Her eyes, usually wide with timid uncertainty, narrowed into two sharp points of blue glass, reflecting the flickering glow of the Void Lock.
He was hurting. The "blue light" or the "Magic" or the "Wall"—whatever it was—was making him bleed.
Hazel's heart began to race so fast in her ribs that felt like it would burst through her chest. The hand holding the now-lit lantern began to tremble, the flame dancing wildly and casting jagged, manic shadows against the damp stone.
'He is hurt?! My Young Master is... because of this?'
The thought was a jagged blade in her mind. A dark, suffocating heat rose from her stomach, clouding her vision.
For a split second, the lantern's glass cracked under the sheer pressure of her grip. She wasn't just worried; she was becoming a void of focus where only Aiden existed.
Then, the sound of his ragged breathing broke her trance. She realized she was standing still while he leaned against that hateful, glowing surface. The realization snapped her back to the present, shattering her frozen stance.
Hazel stepped forward, her boots no longer cautious, but heavy with an intent that made the very air in the tunnel go still.
Hearing the footsteps, Aiden turned around to find Hazel standing there.
"Young... Young Master?" she whispered. Her voice was thin, but it carried an intensity that felt sharper than the biting mana in the air. "You... you are bleeding, Young Master."
Aiden, momentarily paralyzed by the impossibility of her appearance, took a long moment to process the sight of her.
"Hazel? How did you—" He stopped, the metallic taste of blood grounding him. "Oh, it's... it is nothing. Just a bit of strain from the air down here."
He tried to wipe it away with the back of his hand, but before he could complete the gesture, Hazel spoke, her voice devoid of its usual stutter.
"Stay still. I will clean it."
"Huh? No... it's fine—"
Aiden's protest died in his throat. Hazel walked to him, closing the distance until she stood directly in front of him. The timid girl who usually flinched at loud noises was gone; in her place was a silent, focused force.
More importantly. She didn't wait for his permission.
With a movement that was both gentle and terrifyingly firm, she reached up. She didn't use a cloth or a rag. Instead, she took the hem of her own sleeve—the clean, white fabric of her uniform—and pressed it against his face.
Aiden froze. The contrast was jarring: the ancient, god-slaying architect was being mothered by a maid in a hole under the earth. He could feel her hand trembling, not from fear of the darkness, but from the raw, vibrating energy of her own distress.
"You should not have to bleed," she murmured, her eyes fixed solely on the crimson smear as she wiped it away with meticulous, obsessive care. "Not for this. Not for anything."
The white fabric of her sleeve was quickly stained with his blood, a deep scarlet mark that she didn't seem to mind. If anything, she looked at the stain as if she wanted to pull the pain right out of his veins and into her own.
For a second, Aiden felt a chill that had nothing to do with the mana leak.
He remained frozen as the white fabric of Hazel's sleeve absorbed the crimson from his face. She moved with a delicate, haunting precision, her thumb grazing his cheek to ensure not a single stray drop of red remained.
"It is clean now," she whispered.
She looked at the patch of skin where the blood had been as if she were inspecting a sacred relic she had just restored. The obsessive focus in her eyes was terrifying—she wasn't looking at him as a servant looks at a master, but as a believer looks at a wounded god.
Aiden was simply too stunned by the event unfolding to move. His mind, which usually processed thousands of magical variables a second, had completely stalled.
'Just what the heck is happening here?'