The door to the back room creaked open, and Aelira stepped out. She looked weary, the glowing emerald light that usually surrounded her hands now faded to a dim spark. She leaned against the doorframe, exhaling a breath that smelled of pine and spent magic.

  "The process is done," Aelira said softly. "The threads are as straight as I can make them. She has woken up."

  Aiven was on his feet instantly, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Is she... can I go in?"

  Aelira nodded, a small, knowing smile touching her lips. "Yes. In fact, she asked to see you immediately."

  Aiven didn't wait for a second invitation. He pushed past the door, his boots making a soft thud on the mossy floorboards.

  The room was dim, lit only by the bioluminescence of the forest outside the window. Virelle wasn't floating. She was sitting—actually sitting—on the edge of the cot. Her feet touched the floor, her hair draped over her shoulders like a heavy shroud. Without her usual levitation, she looked smaller, more fragile.

  She looked up as he entered, her eyes red-rimmed and hollow. "Master," she whispered. She looked down at her hands, then back at him. "I... I apologize for being so unsightly earlier. A scion of the arcane should not succumb to such... primitive hysterics."

  "Virelle, stop," Aiven said, walking over and sitting on the small wooden stool beside the bed. "You don't have to apologize. Not to me. As long as you're alright, that's all that matters."

  Virelle let out a shaky breath, her fingers twisting in the fabric of her lavender skirt. "I don't know what happened. When that girl... I think the male vampire called her Sylphaine... when her thread touched me, it felt like a dam breaking. The visions didn't just appear; they flooded me."

  Aiven leaned forward, his mechanical arm whirring softly as he steadied himself. "What did you see? Specifically?"

  Virelle looked toward the window, her voice dropping into a distant, haunted monotone. "Screams. So many screams. I saw a town... a beautiful town with airships being docked. But it was being engulfed by white flames. Not fire, Master. Mana. Pure, white destruction."

  She paused, her breath hitching. "And I saw her. A blonde girl with a brown scarf. She was waving toward a silhouette... someone who looked so much like you. And the worst part..."

  She turned to him, her eyes wide with terror. "I wasn't watching it from the outside. I was seeing it through my own eyes. I saw my own hands—hands wreathed in that same white light—reaching out. As if I were the one calling the fire down. And there was a part of me... a cold, dark part of me that felt a sense of calmness. As if it were only natural for me to erase those things from existence."

  Aiven stayed silent. The air in the room felt like ice. Hearthport. Catastrophe #3. He remembered the feeling of the world ending.

  "I'm afraid," Virelle whispered, and Aiven could see her hands trembling violently. "Master, what if I’m not who I think I am? What if I'm not your protector? What if I'm just a monster that's been waiting to wake up?"

  Aiven looked at her trembling hands—the same hands that had shielded him from many threats.

  He swallowed, his gaze fixed on her shaking fingers. Those hands. They might the same hands that had torn him away from the life he once dreamed of—the quiet, foolish hope of adventuring alongside Lyra. In a way, they had dragged him headfirst into chaos, into a world of running, fighting, and never quite knowing if tomorrow would exist.

  And yet—

  They were also the hands that had pulled him out of death's doors. That had protected him, guided him, sometimes too stubbornly. She had provided him the warmth that he desperately needed after losing Lyra, the warmth that glowed softly in the dark when everything else felt hollow.

  Maybe they had destroyed one future. Maybe they had forced another upon him. But they had never let him face it alone.

  Whatever truth waited behind her fear—whatever she truly was—this moment was real. Her trembling was real. The way she looked at him, terrified of hurting him, was real.

  And somehow, impossibly, they had become each other’s anchor in the storm.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Deep down, Aiven wanted to believe that Virelle played no part in Catastrophe #3. There was a lack of conclusive evidence to which extent had been Virelle involved, but if the worst case happened and Virelle was truly the one causing Hearthport's destruction, at least he wanted to believe it's not this Virelle, but another version of her, one that he didn't know about.

  Once the truth was revealed, he would see how it might affect him, whether he would truly break down or not.

  But for now, he chose.

  He reached out and grabbed her hand, his warm, human fingers interlacing with her cold ones.

  He recalled Rysa's words on the floor of the hut—about how time spent doesn't equal the strength of a bond. He looked Virelle in the eye, his own gaze steady despite the storm in his mind.

  "Virelle," Aiven said firmly. "Look at me."

  She slowly raised her head, her eyes searching his.

  "We've only known each other for a few weeks," Aiven continued, his voice grounded and sure. "But in those weeks, I’ve seen who you are. I’ve seen your earnestness, your honesty... even your ridiculous obsession with keeping me safe. You chose to protect me when you didn't have to. You chose to stay in to fight that vampire so I could get away."

  Aiven asked softly. "Are you still the same Virelle I know?"

  Virelle blinked, a faint, sad smile flickering on her lips. "I... I think so.”

  "And do you still want to protect me?"

  "Yes," she said without a second's hesitation. "More than anything."

  Aiven squeezed her hand. "Then tell me... are you still looking forward to it? To us venturing out to the other islands? To me getting you those new outfits we talked about?"

  A single, fresh tear rolled down Virelle’s cheek. "Yes," she whispered, her voice regaining a tiny spark of its old theatricality. "You can't back off from that now, Master. You... you promised."

  "I did," Aiven said, nodding firmly. "So we’re going to do this. We’re going to unravel this mystery and fight off whatever threats come our way. Together."

  Virelle looked down at their joined hands. "But what if I keep on bringing you harm, Master? What if my very presence is what draws these monsters to your door?"

  "Then we'll figure it out," Aiven replied. His voice grew harder, a rare spark of steel appearing in his muted eyes. "With the vampires or whoever else was involved in what happened at Hearthport... I can't just sit idly by anymore. I need to know the truth. For my sake, and for Lyra’s too."

  He looked at the window, toward the distant, hidden horizon of the world. "Whatever you were before doesn't change what you are to me now. We’re finding the answers, Virelle. All of them."

  "Master," she whispered, her voice cracking in a way that felt entirely too human. "I find myself haunted by a cycle I cannot seem to break. I worry...that the next time the shadows lengthen, I will fail you again. I failed you in the thickets, forced to watch as you were broken because my arrogance outpaced my speed. And here, I failed yet again..."

  She looked up, "I am meant to be the one who erases battlefields for you. Yet there I was, pinned and helpless, while you—someone who should never have to know the heat of a fireball—dashed into the reach of those leeches to pull me out. It is a humiliation I cannot scrub away, Master. The stronger I claim to be, the more you seem to pay for my inadequacy.

  "Virelle, you spent your whole life—or at least the life you remember—looking down at the world to keep me safe," Aiven said, his voice quiet but unshakable. "But you don't have to carry the sky by yourself anymore."

  Aiven glanced at the glowing white lines of Armvil Mark 3. "I have this power now, too. Even if it's small compared to yours, I'm going to use it. If you start to fall, or if those memories try to pull you under again... I’ll be there to pull you back. I’ll do my best to help you, just like you’ve done for me."

  Virelle’s breath hitched, a tiny, genuine smile breaking through her gloom. "A clerk offering to save an archmage? Your audacity is truly your most endearing trait, Master." She reached out, her fingers grazing the cool brass of his arm. "Very well. If you insist on being so stubborn."

  There was a beat of silence, “…Thank you,” Virelle said softly. “For this. Your hand is warm, Master. I find it… comforting.”

  Aiven cleared his throat and gently pulled his hand away, letting it fall back to his side. There was a beat of silence.

  Then Virelle blinked—once. “…Why did you do that?” she asked, tilting her head. Her tone wasn’t wounded. If anything, it carried a faint, amused lilt. “I did not say you had to stop.”

  Her lips curved into a small, knowing smile, eyes glinting with renewed life. “I would not have minded,” she continued, voice dropping just enough to be troublesome. “In fact, it might have been… pleasant to do this more often. From time to time.”

  Aiven cleared his throat—again—and stood, pointedly looking anywhere except at her smile. “W-we should probably check in with Aelira. And Rysa. Figure out what we’re doing next.”

  Virelle didn’t respond right away.

  She simply watched him as he straightened, her smile softening—not mischievous now, but fond, quiet, unmistakably present.

  “…What?” Aiven asked, glancing back at her. “Is something wrong?”

  Virelle’s shoulders lifted in a small, elegant shrug. “Nothing is wrong, Master.” She rose smoothly from the cot, her feet leaving the floor as she drifted upward, lavender skirts swaying gently.

  She hovered there, steady and light, as if the air itself welcomed her back.

  “It appears,” she added, a faint brightness returning to her voice, “that I am no longer being weighed down by those… unhelpful thoughts.”

  Her eyes met his once more, calm and certain.

  “I am still here.”