*(A/N: Well… this chapter is long. But I didn’t want to separate it. You will understand when you read it. So… sorry for the overprice.)*

*******

My eyes widened and widened with terror.

My body never stopped shaking.

I was speechless. I couldn’t make a sound, I could only wait… where I was.

But then… a miracle happened.

Sue’s body trembled slightly, almost imperceptibly. As if… trying to tell me she was alive.

I threw my cane aside, I didn’t even care. As soon as I saw the slightest movement in her body, I collapsed on top of her, turned her body over, and put her head on my lap.

“Sue, Sue! Can you hear me?”

Her body was cold. She had lost a lot of blood, she was pale, and… near death.

Her eyes were open a little. But… they seemed to have lost their vitality.

And yet it was there. Because… her pupil turned slightly toward me and tried to focus on me, even though she couldn’t manage it.

My lips curled up involuntarily, trembling.

“O- okay… okay, don’t talk. Don’t. Just… just hold on.”

I grabbed her hand with my right hand and put my other hand just above her stomach. I was going to try to heal her with blue flames.

But then… I realized something.

I had no mana.

“Oh, shit… I forgot… I forgot!”

I raised my arm, opened my watch, and tried to call someone quickly.

But… the communication in the city was still not working properly.

I couldn’t even make a call.

“Fuck… Fuck!”

I put one arm under her back and the other under her legs. Then I forced myself to stand up.

My right arm hurt like it was going to fall off. My legs were shaking like crazy because of my disability and weakness, I even felt like falling, but… I managed to get up.

“Hang on… hang on… hang on… We just need to get to the city center, it’s not far…”

I paused, my mouth hanging open for a brief moment.

There were… at least three kilometers between me and the city center.

I gritted my teeth. I heard a few of them crack, a sharp pain spread from my mouth to my whole body, and the metallic taste of blood entered my mouth.

“Hang on… you have to hang on…”

I took my first steps with difficulty. Sue… wasn’t heavy. On the contrary, she was quite light. But it was hard for my crippled body to even carry her.

I looked at the sky out of the corner of my eye. Desperation and anger darkened my eyes, but… I still tried to keep my composure.

“Caora! I know… I know you’re watching me, listening to me…”

Order and chaos… even if they were quite primitive, had consciousness.

“I know I’ve exceeded the limit you gave me…”

And they were not energies that ’existed’ in the body of their users.

If someone tried to use ordea or caora, they would draw it directly from the atmosphere into their body. The bodies of living beings were not suited to continuously holding them.

So… caora and ordea had certain limits that they gave to each person with their primitive consciousness. The limit that appears in the statistics window…

And once this limit was exceeded, it was impossible to use them for a while.

“But… please… please help me…”

There was… no answer.

“I will do anything, I will give you as many negative emotions as you want… I will create as much chaos in this world as you want… Just… please…”

I felt tears welling up in my eyes, and as I struggled to walk, I begged, with all my being… with everything.

But there was no answer. The night… was just dark.

I tripped over something and found myself falling to the ground.

I forced my arms up higher and higher to make sure nothing happened to Sue, and I landed right on my chin. All my bones, my brain, rattled.

“P- please… I beg you…”

But… there was nothing.

I gritted my teeth again, forced myself to stand up again, stubbornly, without stopping, not caring that my muscles and bones wouldn’t listen to me. And… I started to run, even if slowly.

I ran.

I ran more and more.

Sue, who had been mostly still until now… leaned her head against me as I kept running.

I gripped her body even tighter.

“Hold on… Hold on…”

I saw her dark blue eyes focused on me, then upward… to the sky.

One of her hands grabbed the chest of my t-shirt, holding it tightly.

“Yes, hold on to me. Just hold on a little longer…”

Her lips opened as if she wanted to say something.

But I silenced her.

“Don’t try to talk, don’t waste energy… just be quiet. Hold on…”

“Stop it… Aiden…”

I couldn’t stop my eyes from twitching, accidentally biting my lip when I meant to clench my teeth.

“No, no stopping. We will make it. I won’t die from straining my body, but you will.”

She just looked at me for a while. She didn’t focus on anything else, she just looked at me.

“Aid…”

She tried to mumble something to me with her wheezing voice, and then she stopped herself.

“Ethan…”

She told me my real name, not my identity in this body… but the name of the true soul inside me.

But I ignored her.

“I…”

She paused, pushed herself harder.

“I… lo-”

And again…

But, this time, instead of pushing herself even harder, she looked at me for a while longer as if she had changed her mind about something.

Her lips curved upward slightly as her eyes left me and turned back to the sky.

“I’m… sorry…”

As she continued to stare at the sky for seconds, minutes… she said one last thing.

“Please… forget me…”

Then, she fell silent. Not saying anything else again.

And I… ran.

*******

After night fell over the city, the explosions stopped. Thanks to the reinforcements, most of the attackers were repulsed, some were even captured.

The attack… at this point, it was completely over.

Even though the damage they had done was enormous… it was over.

The city center was largely quiet now.

I sighed slightly, slowly looking at the person lying on the gurney next to me… Alice.

Like Aiden said, I didn’t tell anyone anything about her, but… I’m not really sure if I did the right thing. Is it really a good idea… to keep someone working with the people who did this to the city?

“Hey, Adrian.”

I paused at the sound of the voice and when I saw the person approaching me, I snapped out of my thoughts and a big smile appeared on my face.

“Julian!”

I quickly got up from where I was sitting, then examined his clothes and appearance.

“You look too good for someone who hasn’t been seen since the attack started.”

Julian gave a small laugh.

“Heh, at least I have some dust and blood on me. You look too good, not a trace of blood on you.”

He was going to say one more thing, then he paused. His eyes turned behind me, toward the gurney where Alice was lying.

“She doesn’t seem to have any injuries, but… did she hit her head or something? Why is she unconscious?”

“It’s… something like that, I guess. We were ambushed in a street. I killed all the attackers, but she was unconscious when it was over.”

That was the story I made up. It was a story that I thought Alice would be able to follow on her own when she woke up. So that’s what I was telling everybody.

“I see… What about Celine and Sue? Any news about them? I ran into Aiden on the way, but I didn’t see them.”

“Last time I checked, Celine was helping the wounded. I don’t know about Sue, she never came to the city center. She’s probably hiding somewhere… Aiden will find her soon.”

Julian’s expression instantly darkened.

“Aiden… hasn’t come back yet?”

“No.”

“I… saw him about half an hour ago. He was heading toward the edge of town, toward the industrial area. Which isn’t that big… Shouldn’t he be back by now, considering he can fly?”

There was some truth to that.

Still…

“Maybe he ran out of mana… I don’t know, Julian.”

We had no idea what the truth was, so all we could do was speculate.

“For now… the only person we don’t know if she’s okay is Sue.”

“Aha, here you are!”

Julian and I turned at the same time toward the familiar voice we heard. And… we found Celine, who was talking to the soldiers and tending the wounded, smiling beside us.

“The soldiers confirmed that the situation is completely under control, the attack is over. The wounded are still being treated, but… there is no one left for me to take care of. A lot of doctors and nurses have arrived.”

In short… she was here because there was nothing better she could do.

I fixed my eyes on the floor, sighed deeply, and asked in a low voice.

“The soldiers… said we weren’t allowed to walk around the city, right?”

“Yes. Once stepped into the city center, it is forbidden to go outside until the next morning right now.”

“…”

I was silent for a short while. But, strangely enough, it was a silence in which the others could understand quite clearly what I was thinking.

“I know, Adrian. I too… want to search for Aiden and Sue right now. But there’s nothing we can do, if we complicate the situation further, we’ll be doing them harm than good.”

I know that.

Still… it’s eating me up to stand idly by.

Thinking about Aiden desperately searching for Sue here and there… or dwelling on worse possibilities.

It’s giving me a headache.

“Hmm?”

All my thoughts were interrupted by Celine’s sudden voice. It was probably the same for Julian… because he turned toward her at the same time as me with a puzzled expression.

“Celine? Did something happen-”

“Stop, wait…”

She didn’t even care about my question, she closed her eyes and just focused. Julian and I looked at each other, neither of us had any idea what was happening. Still… we waited, trusting Celine.

After a short time… Celine opened her eyes with an expression of horror. It was so sudden that Julian and I were both stunned for a moment. But to our surprise… Celine quickly ran past us both and started running in a certain direction.

“H- hey, where are you going?! Wait, Celine!”

I didn’t stop where I was, I quickly chased after her, Julian right behind me.

In this way, we ran all the way to the other end of the city center. Celine… didn’t answer any of our questions and didn’t stop running. She didn’t stop until she was right next to the barrier covering the center… and when she finally stopped, she turned her eyes toward a street, panting.

I looked at the street and then at the panting figure of Celine.

“What’s going on? Can you tell us wh-”

I was interrupted when I noticed that her eyes, already wide with terror, began to widen even more.

I slowly turned back to where she was looking, toward that street.

So… I could finally see the figure that had appeared there.

And… I stood there, just like Celine.

“Ai… den?”

He was limping toward the barrier, sweat pouring down his face. His eyes were not even in front of him, his face was completely turned toward the person he was carrying in his arms. He was mumbling something, it was obvious from the movement of his lips.

But… most importantly… it was the person in his arms.

“Is that… Sue…?”

I literally froze when I saw how bloody her dress was, how pale her color was, how her eyes were closed, how one of her arms hung limp.

Julian was behind us, I couldn’t see how he was reacting but… Celine covered her mouth with her hands and stepped back involuntarily.

“H- help…! Help! HEY!”

Then, his voice entered my ears. He was full of fear, desperate. It was so… bad that I found myself just shaking where I was.

But I wasn’t the only one who heard his voice.

A small team of doctors and nurses who were running around the center rushed to where Aiden was, and when they got there, Aiden put Sue down as fast but gently as he could.

His arms, especially the right one, were shaking like crazy. His fingers couldn’t stay straight as if he couldn’t feel them.

“I- I found her in the middle of a street, she’s lost a lot of blood. Fast… we have to be fast!”

But the doctor… didn’t really listen to him. She gently placed her hand on Sue’s forehead, then leaned down and put his ear to her chest.

Aiden, meanwhile, continued to talk.

“S- She made it this far, I brought her this far… Do something!”

The doctor slowly raised her head. She was an old woman, her hair was quite short and gray. Her green eyes, which a few seconds ago had a serious look, were now… filled with a completely different emotion.

Aiden smiled awkwardly as he looked at the doctor, his gray eyes filled with hope.

“Why… are you looking like that? C- come on… save her. Don’t waste time!”

But his voice grew more broken, thinner with each word. Then, the doctor… spoke for the first time at this moment.

“She is… already dead.”

Aiden stared at the doctor for a moment, not moving a muscle. Seconds passed, but he just stared at her. A deep silence fell on our side of the barrier.

Then… the half smile on his face widened. He broke the silence with a tiny laugh.

“Pft, ahahah…! Good… good joke…”

Then his eyes narrowed, and his gray eyes, full of hope, suddenly took on a coldness I had never seen before.

It was like… he was going to literally kill her on the spot.

“But it wasn’t funny.”

The doctor lowered her head, her eyes fixed on the floor. She spoke as… calmly as she could, just like before. But even her voice was a little cracked.

“There’s… nothing we can do.”

“DON’T LIE TO ME!”

Aiden’s voice was loud for a moment, even high-pitched and wheezing at one point.

“HEAL HER, DON’T JUST STAND THERE! WHY ARE YOU STANDING THERE?!”

He took his eyes off the doctor and turned them to Sue. He stroked her hair with his hands, pulled her aside. He looked at her pale face, and then… he froze.

“S- Sue…?”

His eyes widened and widened, his lips trembled.

“H- hey… what happened? Why… why are you… quiet? Didn’t you… just apologize to me…?”

His head dropped as if he couldn’t stand upright any longer, and he lifted her off the ground with his arms.

“I told you… to hold on. Just… just now you were watching the sky…”

Slowly, he pulled her toward himself. He stiffened again when her head hung back weakly, just like her arm.

With a trembling hand, he straightened her head without letting it bend any further, holding her as he gently ran his fingers through her hair. His voice became even lower, even more inaudible.

“D- don’t leave me alone…”

He hugged her tighter as tears rolled down his cheeks.

Then… he said the last sentence I could understand.

“Please… Please come back…”

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