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Chapter 6: Echoes and Embers
Alice – POV
The smoke clung to her.
Even with the fighting long over, the embers cold, and the sounds of the dying gone, the smell still sat in her throat. Smoke, ash, scorched flesh, and something sharper beneath it—like iron dragged across wet stone.
The Mortum were dead.
The people weren't.
But it hadn't been her doing.
Alice didn't move. Not yet. Her limbs still felt too light, too useless, as if her body had already decided it didn't need her anymore. She could stand. She could breathe. But action felt beyond her.
In front of her, just beyond the scattered bodies, Lucien stood like a shadow that had forgotten where its source had gone.
She didn't know what she'd expected after.
Not silence.
She thought the aftermath would be loud. That people would cry, or collapse, or praise the one who saved them.
But no one moved.
Lucien didn't move.
He hadn't spoken since it ended. Hadn't looked at anyone. He stood with his back to the survivors, arms loose at his sides, body framed by the smoke curling off the scorched clearing.
The six spectral limbs were gone. The black sword had vanished. Even the ring on his finger pulsed more gently now, no longer flaring with wild light.
And maybe that was the part that unsettled her most.
Because he had saved them.
All of them.
He had been the difference between survival and slaughter. He had taken blows for strangers. Fought alongside them without question, without promise, without name. And yet, the closer she looked, the more she realized—
He wasn't untouched.
There was no visible wound. No broken bones. But it was there. In the way his chest rose just a little too quickly. In the way his right hand twitched once every few seconds. In the stiffness in his shoulders, like someone bracing against impact that never came.
He had been afraid.
And still, he moved.
Still, he fought.
Still, he stayed.
Alice exhaled slowly. It left her lungs like dust
The kind that came after failure, when you knew someone else had carried what you should have.
Lucien hadn't just saved them.
He had saved her.
She had trained. Drilled. Studied.
She had memorized strategies, practiced for command, sharpened her magic until it cut clean.
But when the time came, when the blood started, and the screaming started, and the monsters came, she had hesitated.
And Lucien hadn't.
Even though—now that she saw him—she was beginning to realize he wasn't fearless.
He had just done it anyway.
That mattered more.
She stepped forward, slowly. The others still hadn't moved. Liz lay unconscious beside a tree. Michael leaned against a broken spear. The other girls huddled in silence.
Only Titus sat upright. His eyes tracked her as she passed. But he didn't speak. He just nodded—once—and turned back to the boy in black.
Alice stopped two paces behind Lucien.
The smoke curled between them.
"I thankyou," she said quietly.
She didn't know why those were the words that came out.
Maybe because they felt earned.
Lucien turned slowly. His eyes met hers. One gold. One gray. His face was still, unreadable, but his pupils were wide. Blown.
Shock.
Still in it.
But his voice didn't crack. It was quiet. Even. Distant.
"You're welcome," he said. "It's strange hearing that… but I appreciate it."
That was all.
No retort. No silence. No bitterness.
Just acceptance.
And that, somehow, made it real.
Alice didn't speak again. She stood there beside him and let the silence settle. Not in shame. Not in pride.
Just in thanks.
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Lucien – POV
His knees had almost buckled when it ended.
But he couldn't let them.
Not with them watching.
He had to keep standing. Had to look still. Had to breathe the right way. Not too fast. Not too slow. Just enough that they wouldn't see how close he had come to losing it.
The Mortum weren't like soldiers —not quite. These were worse. Smarter. Hungrier. They didn't just attack. They surrounded. Watched. Adapted.
And he had stepped into that madness not with a plan—
But with reflex.
The moment he'd moved, it had been instinct. The Rakai had formed like it had always been part of him. The arms moved before he thought. The blade came without asking. His mana had flowed like water spilling from a broken jar.
But the backlash?
He was still feeling it.
Every muscle ached. His spine burned. His mana core felt like a bell that had been struck too hard, too fast. Still ringing. Still shaking.
The fight had been been instinctive Nothing more.
He hadn't saved them because he was strong.
He had saved them because the faded memory of two who had let die
Now he stood in the smoke of what he'd done.
And waited.
For someone to speak.
For someone to demand an answer.
For someone to look at him like they had seen the seams in his mask.
None of them did.
They just stared.
Like they didn't know what they were seeing.
Maybe they didn't.
Maybe he didn't.
Lucien looked at his hands.
They weren't shaking anymore, but the blood on them had dried in his fingernails. He hadn't washed it off. Didn't know if he should.
He remembered the sound Jel made when the wire caught him. That awful, wet snap of skin being pulled the wrong way. That moment—just before he died—when his eyes had caught Lucien's.
Confused.
Not afraid.
Not angry.
Just confused.
Lucien had told them it was safe.
Rodin had gone first.
Jel had followed.
He hadn't warned them.
Because the pass was shorter.
Because it saved time.
Because two lives was a fair trade for fifteen minutes.
Now?
He didn't know.
Would this moment even the scale?
Did saving Titus—bright, fire-wrapped, noble Titus—cancel out what he let happen in the pass?
Did pulling six strangers from a nightmare count as penance?
He didn't feel redeemed.
He didn't feel damned either.
Just present.
Here.
Alive.
The word tasted strange in his mouth. Like something not meant to be spoken.
Alive.
The others were alive, too.
Because he had moved.
He didn't know what that made him.
Redeemed
Who am I kidding your probably fuming at the fact I'm still alive
He chuckled
He didn't need them to understand.
But when Alice stepped beside him, offered her thanks with no resentment, no awe—just human honesty—
He felt the smallest shift.
Not in them.
In himself.
It didn't heal anything.
Didn't change what he had done.
But it stayed with him.
The way Jel's stare used to.