"He's fine, by the way..." Aurora said, her voice cutting through the charged air of the room.
Relief, sharp and sudden, tried to bloom in my chest, a small, foolish thing reaching for the light. Fine. Kaz was fine. The chaotic fight, his injuries, his depleted mana – he made it.
The thought hadn't even fully formed before a searing, impossible agony ripped through my left arm.
Slash.
My vision exploded into white. A sound tore from my throat – a raw, desperate scream, a sound that felt like it was being ripped from the deepest part of my being. My body convulsed on the stool, trying to recoil from the sudden, horrific pain. My arm. It was... it was gone. Severed just below the shoulder, a clean, brutal cut that felt like fire and ice simultaneously. Blood immediately began to pump from the wound, a thick, dark, horrifying flow against my pale skin.
I gasped, reeling, clutching the stump, my mind struggling to process the impossible. How? She was standing right there, calm, only a few feet away. I hadn't seen her move. Hadn't felt any mana buildup. Just... gone.
"Sorry for this," Aurora's voice cut through the agony, calm and cold, utterly detached from the screaming pain I was experiencing. Her red eyes, moments ago merely striking, now felt like chips of glacial ice. "But, if you join our side, this'll happen with you, more or less." She gestured vaguely towards my bleeding stump, towards the reality she had just brutally enforced. "Pain. Loss. The world tearing pieces off you."
She watched me, watched the blood, watched my face contorted in agony. "Still wanna join us?"
The pain was immense, a firestorm consuming my senses. My body screamed, a primal, desperate cry for help, for healing, for it to stop. But through the haze, through the red-tinged agony, my mind, battered but unbroken, began to process. This. This was the reality. The raw, brutal, unpredictable violence. Kaz hadn't just been fighting monsters; he'd been fighting this. Akari hadn't just been my sister; she'd been a combatant in this.
Pain. Loss. Pieces torn off you.
But then, another thought surfaced. Survival. Adaptation. Kaz. He was missing a hand, injured, but still fighting, still operating. Pain was temporary. Mutilation was... a new state of being. Could I live like that? Could I fight like that?
A wave of defiance, grim and utterly insane, washed over the agony. They wanted to break me? To see if I could handle the cost? Fine. I had already died once. This was just... less convenient.
A grim, fearless smile stretched across my face, a grotesque contrast to the tears streaming from my eyes (from the pain, not from sadness) and the blood pouring from my shoulder.
"I will get used to it," I said, the words a hoarse rasp, but clear. It wasn't a boast. It was a promise to myself. I would get used to it. Because I had to.
Aurora's cold composure broke. Her red eyes widened, just like Noah's had earlier, but with deeper shock. She looked at my bleeding stump, at my blood-stained face, at my horrifying smile.
Then, in a jarring shift that made my already reeling brain stumble, she dropped her sword and reached out. Her hands, cool and gentle, cupped my cheeks, tilting my face up to look at her. The warmth of her touch on my cold, blood-smeared skin was a horrifying sensation.
Aurora's eyes widened. Just a fraction, but noticeable. The calm, cold mask she wore fractured for a moment, revealing genuine shock. She hadn't expected... this. Not from someone she'd just maimed.
She stepped closer, the coldness in her eyes receding. She reached out, her hand, the same hand that had just severed my arm, gently cupped my cheek. Her touch was surprisingly soft, a stark contrast to the brutality that had just unfolded.
"Oh, Leon," she murmured, her voice softening, losing its cold edge, sounding genuinely... kind? "You can either stay with them," she didn't specify who, but I knew – Akari and Sarah, the complicated, dangerous bond on the 'other' side, "or stay with us." She wasn't acting cold anymore. This was her, revealed.
My sister. Akari. Summoned by a different god, strong, a Hero. Part of a faction that hunted mine, that wanted us dead. She loved me, in her own overwhelming, terrifying, deeply inappropriate way. She had come back for me. Saved me, in her own way. But being with her felt like standing on a live wire, constantly one wrong move away from electrocution, for both of us. Her mission, her nature, clashed fundamentally with mine.
And Kaz. Part of this side. Hunted. Outnumbered. Not the strongest, by his own admission, but he fought anyway. For me. He took pieces off himself – mana, perhaps literal blood and bone in past fights – just to give me a chance. He didn't kill my sister, one of the people he mostly hated, so that I wouldn't commit suicide. He had seen something, valued something, in me. He had earned a different kind of loyalty.
Being with Akari felt like a constant, unpredictable storm, one that would eventually pull both of us down, or crash into Sarah. This side... felt like a desperate, uphill battle, yes, filled with pain like this, but maybe... maybe it was a fight I understood better. A fight where the rules of engagement, however brutal, were clearer than the chaotic emotional and moral landscape I'd been navigating.
"I know there are several gods," I said, my voice regaining strength, the initial shock giving way to a cold resolve. "And that my sister was summoned by a different one." I knew the basics, the core conflict.
I met her gaze, my eyes, still wide from shock and pain, locking with her mesmerising red ones. "If even half of what Kaz told me is true," I stated, making the choice, burning the bridge behind me, "then I will join Kaz's side. And by heart." It wasn't just about survival anymore. It was about aligning myself with the reality he represented, the reality he fought for. "Even if my sister and Sarah wouldn't want that. Even if I'll have to stay apart from them. And even if I'll have to keep enduring pain all my life." It was the price. I accepted it.
Aurora looked at me, her expression complex. "You'll join Kaz's side, not ours?" she asked, a hint of confusion in her voice. The faction. The 'us'.
"Is he on a different side?" I asked, genuinely unsure. Kaz was the link, the definition of the 'side' for me.
"No," she said simply.
"Yeah," I confirmed, the choice made, solidified. "I'll join his side, not yours." It was a distinction only I probably understood. Loyalty to the person, not just the abstract faction.
A faint, playful smile touched her lips again, her red eyes dancing. "Even though I'm this cute?" she teased, the absurd question a stark contrast to the pain still throbbing in my arm.
My gaze didn't waver. The pain was a dull roar now, a constant reminder. Cute didn't matter. Beauty didn't matter. Only reality, loyalty forged in shared blood and impossible choices, and the grim path forward.
"Can we end this, please?" I asked, my voice quiet, steady. I didn't want to be naked, bleeding, and discussing attractiveness. I just wanted... to process. To start getting used to it. My eyes, fixed on hers, probably held the cold reflection of everything I had seen and endured. The abyss, looking back.
Her playful smile faded, replaced by a thoughtful expression. She seemed to accept the shift in atmosphere. "Alright," she said, her voice becoming serious again. "Let me ask this last question. Which side will you go after he died?"
"The side he chose," I answered without hesitation. My choice was tied to him, to the reality he represented and fought for. Even if he wasn't there, that fight, that reality, would be his legacy to me.
Aurora laughed then, a short, clear sound. It felt surprising after the intensity. "Can I ask you what magic has he done on you that even surpassed my beauty?" she asked, amusement back in her voice.
Magic? Pheromones? She still didn't get it.
"It's not like that," I said, shaking my head slightly. The pain in my arm was a constant throb. "I just admire him." Admiration. A cold, analytical term, but in my lexicon, it meant something profound. Respect forged in fire and betrayal.
"I'll ask him where he got such pheromones that attracts newcomers easily," she chuckled. She paused, looking at my arm, then back at my face. "Hey, wanna see him?"
Yes. I needed to see him. To understand. To confirm the choice I had just made, written in blood.
She reached out again, a green light similar to the healing magic I'd seen before pulsed from her hand, enveloping my severed arm. The searing pain subsided almost instantly, the wound sealing, flesh knitting itself back together with astonishing speed. In moments, it was whole again, just a phantom ache lingering.
Then, she gestured towards my clothes, neatly folded on a nearby surface. "Get dressed, Leon. The interrogation is over."
The blood was still there, on my skin, on the stool. But the wound was gone. I pulled on the rough shirt and trousers, the familiar weight a small comfort. Regaining that physical covering felt important.
Aurora turned and led me out of the room, down a short, clean corridor. She stopped at a door and opened it.
It was a medium-sized room, simple, functional. And in the center, on a cot, was Kaz.
I stopped dead in the doorway, my breath catching. He was... still. Too still. His body rigid, stiff. Unconscious. From the looks of it, he was paralyzed. Or... or dead. The thought sent a fresh wave of cold dread through me.
A golden retriever lay curled up beside his cot, its tail thumping softly against the floor as we entered. And perched on the back of the cot, watching us with bright, intelligent eyes, were two small birds, fluffy and colorful, unlike any I'd seen before. Their presence here, beside Kaz's unnervingly still form, felt profoundly strange.