Aelius moved through Magnolia's streets with measured steps, his presence a quiet contrast to the chaos unfolding around him, his cloak stilling around him in the breeze. The shadows were short. It was early afternoon, and the city was alive.
Children darted down the cobblestone alleys with sticky fingers and sun-flushed cheeks. Market and game stalls hummed with activity—vendors calling out the prices of pears and smoked fish and thread-dyed silks. Somewhere to his left, the clang of a hammer echoed from a smithy, rhythmic and clean. The town breathed. Laughed. Carried on.
As if nothing was wrong.
As if there weren't battles sparking like kindling in the bones of the city.
But Aelius heard them.
Not loud—nothing that would draw attention from the crowds that weren't already used to it—but they were there. Magical detonations tucked behind alley walls. A sudden whoosh of displaced air. The unmistakable chime of clashing enchantments, brief and brutal, like punctuation marks. He recognized a sound from Natsu behind him, fists still clashing with Freed's runes. He could see faint smoke trails from his left, likely Macao.
He exhaled slowly, breath steady.
This wasn't new. Fairy Tail had always been loud, wild, and self-consuming. But this was different. This was division, not chaos. And that made it dangerous.
He stepped down onto the main street, walking with measured quiet, neither hurried nor sluggish. His cloak fluttered behind him, catching slants of light, and his boots rang against the stone in a cadence he didn't think about anymore. People moved around him without realizing it, parting instinctively, as if something in their bones reminded them they were prey in the path of a silent predator.
Aelius wasn't trying to be seen.
He wasn't trying to be anything.
But the anger inside him burned low and bright—like coal banked under snow. Hidden. But no less deadly.
He passed a bakery. Fresh bread perfumed the air. He passed a bookshop. A stack of tomes sat sunlit in the window, undisturbed. At the corner of the square, a dog yawned beneath a fruit cart and stretched out long, oblivious to the tension threading through the seams of the world just a few blocks away.
Aelius kept walking.
There was no rush in his stride, but no comfort either. His boots moved of their own accord now, as if pulled by the muscle memory of a soldier without a war. The streets curled through Magnolia like veins beneath skin—familiar, worn, and winding in ways that seemed to change every time he tried to map them.
A sigh ghosted past his lips, barely audible.
He kept his head angled down, just enough to keep his eyes in shadow beneath the fall of his cloak, but they never stopped moving. Tracking movement. Faces. Windows. A flash of reflection could be a spell. A glint of glass could be her.
But none of it was.
Finding people wasn't in his skill set.
He wasn't built for this kind of pursuit. Not subtle searching. Not cat-and-mouse. People came to him. Trouble found him. It always had—from the back alleys to cold sands. Even in the labyrinth, He was a wall, not a net.
But today was different.
Today, the enemy was someone who had once stood beneath the same banner. Someone who thought they understood what strength looked like. Someone who thought being feared was the same as being followed.
He was going to show her fear.
He paused by an old stone well tucked between two buildings, the cool scent of moss rising from the lip of it. A child's laughter carried faintly from a balcony somewhere above. The weight in his chest didn't move, but it throbbed—tight, rhythmic, like pressure waiting for release.
Another thirty minutes passed.
Aelius hadn't found her. Not even a trace.
And with every step, every corner turned without a glimpse of that irritating glimmer of petrification magic or the shine of those ridiculous glasses, his rage twisted tighter. Not an explosion—not yet—but a steady compression. Controlled. Engineered. And getting heavier by the breath.
He was still composed, as always. The still water above the fire. But that fire was moving. Licking higher. Reaching ribs now.
He didn't let it show. Not here.
Here it was different.
Here, the city pulsed with life.
He passed a narrow intersection where a group of women were setting up colored lanterns, their laughter bright and sharp. Just beyond them, a boy trailed behind his father carrying a basket of ribbons—festival decorations, probably for the southern plaza. He saw a pair of teenage girls dart across the street with candied plums on sticks, shrieking with joy as one stole the other's and took off into the crowd.
Mothers called from windows, calling their kids down for lunch. A carpenter stood outside his storefront, wiping sawdust off his arms. An older man adjusted the chalkboard sign for his tavern, humming to himself with no idea the world could shatter in the next breath.
Aelius moved among them like a ghost in broad daylight.
Children raced across his path in dizzy arcs, chattering and laughing, oblivious. Merchants barked out prices with wide, easy gestures. An old woman leaned from a second-story window, scolding someone below with affectionate exasperation. Aelius observed it all with an unblinking gaze, absorbing the world's peaceful ignorance without resentment.
No. Not resentment.
Only the slow, inevitable press of need. Not desire—not anger in the way most would understand it—but something colder, heavier, built into the marrow of him. Evergreen needed to be found. She had to be corrected.
And he needed her to understand what so many forget in their brief little lives—You do not mock your betters without consequence. You do not spit on power without expecting it to wipe you from the earth.
He passed a narrow courtyard where a carpenter leaned outside his storefront, brushing sawdust from his forearms with slow, work-heavy gestures. Across from him, an old man knelt to write the chalkboard sign for his tavern, his humming weaving a harmless, formless tune into the air. A song from an easier world—one without monsters, without reckoning.
Life unfolded around Aelius in delicate, thoughtless patterns.
Open. Soft. Exposed.
They had no idea. How easily it could be broken. How little effort it would take to erase it all.
He moved through it untouched, detached, as if the streets themselves recoiled instinctively from something they couldn't name. Every breath he took tasted like restraint. Every blink was a choice.
Because power like his was not a hammer to be swung carelessly. It was a blade pressed gently to the world's throat. And for now, only for now, he stayed his hand.
He turned a corner, the path angling subtly toward the fashion district of Magnolia.
Aelius didn't need to know Evergreen personally to predict her movements. Her voice—poised, self-satisfied, dripping with an almost lazy vanity. She believed herself untouchable, fair beyond judgment, a creature meant to be adored. It was written into every word she spoke, every glance she cast at those she considered beneath her.
She wouldn't be skulking in shadows or crouching behind crates like a common thug. No, Evergreen would be playing this ridiculous game by Laxus's command, yes—but she'd do it on her terms. She'd wrap her hiding in comfort, in self-indulgence, as if even this confrontation were nothing more than an inconvenience interrupting her rightful admiration.
Aelius could see the pattern forming clearly now. If she wasn't waiting in some gilded café, she was nearby—browsing the festival stalls, admiring dresses in sunlit windows, pretending at normalcy while assuming none could touch her.
A mistake.
He shifted his pace slightly, angling down a side street lined with finer shops—boutiques with expensive embroidery displayed on mannequins, glimmering jewelry winking in the afternoon sun. His expression didn't change, but something colder, sharper uncoiled behind his eyes.
She was close.
And when he found her, there would be no hiding behind silk and gold.
The street ahead curved lazily, drawing Aelius deeper into the heart of the fashion district. More storefronts lined the cobblestones here—lace-draped displays, polished windows catching the sun at glittering angles, perfumes spilling out through half-open doors.
He walked without hurry, feeling the rhythm of the place, the warmth of a city still pretending nothing was wrong.
Then, without sound, without warning—
The runes snapped up around him.
A square, wide enough to encompass the street, flared to life, ancient, curling script burning bright against the pale stone. It ringed him completely, towering upward, forming an unmistakable barrier. The magic was not subtle; it wasn't meant to be. It was a declaration—loud, theatrical, almost mocking in its formality.
Across the top of the rune circle, the words seared themselves into visibility:
AELIUS VS EVERGREEN
He stopped mid-step, the faintest tilt of his head the only sign he'd registered it.
Aelius halted mid-step, his gaze lifting to the shimmering runes now encasing the street. The barrier, etched with ancient, curling script, flared to life without warning, forming an unmistakable enclosure. The magic was not subtle; it was a declaration—loud, theatrical, almost mocking in its formality.
A low hum of tension coiled beneath his skin—pleasure, almost. He stepped forward, unhurried, the runes rippling faintly in response to his movement. His cloak brushed the air like a whisper, his hands still resting loosely at his sides, relaxed.
Come out, he thought, voice dark and steady in the hollow of his mind. Come out and see what it means to play with something you don't understand.
The hunt was over. The lesson was about to begin.
The shimmering runes overhead still pulsed faintly as Aelius took another step forward, his boots soundless against the cobbled street. Above him, a subtle shimmer caught his eye—movement, delicate and deliberate, perched atop the tiled roofline.
Evergreen revealed herself with theatrical flair, rising like an actress onto a stage. Her arms extended in an elegant sweep, and the air around her thickened, the sunlight catching a haze of glittering dust now pouring from her form. Her voice rang out, bright, confident:
"Fairy Machine Gun!"
Without hesitation, the sparkling dust condensed into dozens—no, hundreds of needle-like projectiles that screamed toward him in a radiant storm.
Aelius watched their approach with a dispassionate, judging gaze. They were fast. Unrelenting. Beautiful, in a way.
But beauty had never impressed him.
He moved one hand lazily upward, palm facing out, fingers curling in a slight beckoning motion.
"Plague God's: Aegis," he intoned, voice low and resonant, carrying through the hushed street like a crack of thunder hidden beneath velvet.
The air before him shuddered—and then split.
A shield of blackened, translucent magic erupted into existence, a sickly green shimmer crawling along its surface like living rot. The dust needles struck it with a series of sharp, metallic pings... and simply died. Each projectile fizzled into ash the instant it touched the barrier, the magic consuming them hungrily, devouring their light until only a faint, bitter smoke lingered.
Aelius stepped forward again, the Aegis folding inward and vanishing without ceremony, as though it had only been an afterthought.
Above, Evergreen faltered—not visibly to most, but Aelius saw it. The slight stiffening of her shoulders. The twitch of her fingers, preparing the next spell faster than she'd intended.
Desperation, masked poorly as poise.
Good.
Without speaking, without so much as lifting his head fully, Aelius began to advance, slow and steady, like a drawn-out inevitability. The faint scuff of his boots against stone was the only sound accompanying him now, louder even than her frantically swirling dust.
Evergreen gritted her teeth. With a sweep of her hands, she conjured another barrage, twin currents of magical dust swirling into fresh, serrated storms.
But he didn't stop. Didn't rush. Didn't even raise his hands this time.
The needles slammed into the ground at his feet, ricocheting off the cobbles, some mere inches from his boots—and still, Aelius walked, untouched, unbothered.
Evergreen's breath hitched. It was faint—but to him, it was deafening.
Aelius let the silence stretch, a cold, suffocating pressure in the space between them. His next step was deliberate, the sound of his boot grinding against the stone almost ceremonial. He lifted his head slightly, eyes gleaming with a cold, hollow promise.
"Give up," he said, his voice even, almost conversational—too casual for the threat it carried. "And I'll make what I'm planning to do to you… less painful."
He didn't shout. He didn't posture. He spoke the words as if they were simply fact, as if he were offering her a choice between two inevitable, equally grim endings.
The dust swirled thicker around Evergreen now, betraying her nerves. She masked it with another sharp gesture, summoning a dense, sparkling cloud between them, trying to obscure herself, trying to reset the field, the tempo.
Aelius simply walked through it. The particles burned away against the aura that clung to him, a subtle distortion in the air, like heat shimmering off scorched ground.
No spells. No shield this time. Just him—and the sheer, oppressive weight of his presence.
Every second stretched thin, brittle.
Evergreen retreated a half-step on the rooftop, her hands tightening into fists at her sides. She had fought before. She had seen arrogance. She had seen power. But this wasn't arrogance.
This was inevitability.
Aelius tilted his head, almost idly, studying her like a craftsman studying a flawed piece of marble he was about to break apart and rework from scratch.
"I won't ask again," he said, quieter this time, so soft she might have thought she imagined it if not for the way the magic hanging between them seemed to recoil.
Another step forward—another inch of her spirit splintering.
The lesson was only just beginning.
She plastered a brittle smile across her lips and called down, her voice laced with a desperate bravado she no longer truly felt, "You think you're scary? You're just another guild thug playing at being a monster!"
Aelius didn't answer.
He didn't even pause.
Without breaking stride, he bent his knees, the green folds of his cloak gathering like smoke around him, and jumped.
The rooftop cracked faintly beneath his landing, a small spider web fracture spreading out from under his boots. He straightened without hurry, meeting Evergreen's wide eyes across the short distance now separating them.
Level ground.
No more barriers.
Only inevitability.
Evergreen recoiled—just a fraction—but Aelius caught it all. The way her shoulders tensed. The way her fingers twitched faster through the next spell, rushing now, sloppier.
She whipped her arms forward with a sharp, desperate gesture. "Fairy Dust Lance!" she cried, firing a hail of needle-thin spikes toward him.
They moved fast—brilliant little daggers of compressed magic.
Aelius, for the first time, raised his hand slightly, palm facing outward in a loose, lazy gesture.
His voice dropped, low and steady:
"Plague Gods: Aegis."
The response was immediate.
A second skin of rotted, sickly magic unfurled before him—a translucent shield humming with silent menace. The lances struck the Aegis with an almost musical rhythm, each brilliant spike disintegrating the moment it touched the barrier's surface. They didn't even leave marks—only thin wisps of blackened ash drifting down like dead snow.
Aelius didn't stop moving.
He advanced slowly, the Aegis pulsing outward with each step like a heartbeat made of decay.
Evergreen's breathing grew sharper, shallower.
Still, she didn't give in. Pride—or fear—drove her.
"You—!" she snapped, voice cracking under the pressure. "You think you're untouchable!?"
Aelius's eyes, cold and flat, pinned her in place.
Evergreen bared her teeth and gathered the last of her strength. Dust surged around her wildly now, laced with panic, thick enough to choke on.
Fine.
She would show him something he couldn't just walk through.
Her hands snapped up. The dust compressed into a brutal, heavy mass, crackling dangerously at its core.
"Fairy Bomb: Gremlin!!" she shrieked.
The spell detonated outward—a savage explosion of energy meant to engulf him entirely, rip apart the rooftop, and force him to react.
For a heartbeat, the world was nothing but roaring noise and blinding, glittering destruction.
And then—
The smoke cleared.
The air cleared.
And Aelius still stood, shielded behind the shimmering, corroded dome of his Aegis.
Not a hair out of place. Not even a thread of his cloak disturbed.
The Aegis shimmered faintly once more before withdrawing, vanishing into the thin, heavy air.
He looked at Evergreen then—really looked at her—and there was no rage in his eyes. No heat. Only cold, bitter disappointment.
"You bore me," he said, voice soft as a grave being filled.
He stepped forward again, the rooftop tiles crunching quietly beneath his boots.
Slow, Inevitable.
As if her resistance had already ended—and only the formalities remained.
Evergreen stumbled a step back, her hands raised—not to attack this time, but trembling at the ready, clutching her last, desperate card.
"Stay back!" she snapped, voice high and thin. "If you touch me—if you lay a hand on me—the girls still petrified…" She swallowed hard, chest heaving, "…I'll shatter them. I swear it!"
The words hung in the air, trembling, toxic, desperate.
For the first time, Aelius stopped moving.
He tilted his head slightly, studying her as if weighing the value of her words, the way a jeweler might examine a cracked gem. His coat shifted around him in the wind, silent and implacable.
Then he smiled.
It wasn't a pleasant expression—
And even though Evergreen could not see his face, she felt it all the same.
A crushing presence, heavier than any wound, radiating from him—pure, unfiltered malice, steeped so deep it seemed to poison the very air around him.
It pressed down on her, suffocating, a silent promise that whatever humanity he had was no shield against what he could do if she pushed him further.
"Go ahead," Aelius said, voice low and almost kind, like he was offering her a drink at a table rather than inviting her to ruin.
Evergreen froze, eyes darting wildly across his face, searching for any flicker of doubt, any sign she could still control the board.
She found nothing.
Aelius's tone sharpened—not louder, not angrier, but sharpened like a knife sliding across glass.
"You think this is the first time someone's put a blade to something precious and told me to back down?" he asked, almost conversational. "You think you're the first to dangle lives in front of me like bait on a hook?"
His steps resumed, slow, deliberate, each one eating away the little ground she had left to retreat.
"I've stood with kingdoms burning behind me," he said, his voice darkening, gaining a terrible, inevitable weight. "Watched better threats than you make better bargains. And do you know what I learned?"
He paused just a few paces away now, so close Evergreen could feel the pressure radiating off him, thick and stifling.
"You lose your cards the second you play them."
The faint sneer in his voice was surgical. Measured.
"If you shatter them—" He leaned in, just enough for his shadow to fall over her, his eyes burning with cold fury. "You lose every inch of leverage you have. You make yourself useless. And then…"
He let it hang for a breath.
"You'll wish for death before I'm done with you."
Evergreen's mouth opened and closed again. Her hands trembled where she held them half-raised, as if caught between the choice to cast the spell or to let them drop. She looked at him and knew.
It would not save her.
Nothing would.
The rooftop, once a broad and open escape, now felt like a cage. A silent, crumbling trap she had built herself into with every mistake, every coward's bluff.
Aelius straightened, looking down at her as one might look at a fallen, trembling animal, not with hatred, but with final, effortless dismissal.
He looked down at Evergreen the way a man might look at something small and broken—not with hatred, not even anger—but with final, effortless dismissal. Like it simply no longer mattered what she did.
His voice, when it came, was steady and cold, stripped bare of any performative cruelty:
"You made the mistake of stepping out of line," he said, each word heavy as iron. "You made the mistake of threatening the one person I actually like."
He took a slow step closer.
Evergreen flinched.
Aelius kept coming.
"I'm going to fix that."
Without ceremony, without even a flicker of hesitation, he lifted his hands to his head.
Fingers brushed the edges of the heavy mask he wore—the familiar, impassive barrier he rarely removed among others.
And then, without reverence, without drama, he pulled it off and let it fall.
The mask struck the rooftop with a hollow clatter and rolled once before settling face-down, forgotten.
Evergreen's breath caught audibly at the sight of his face—his real face—unshielded, sharp, and coldly human in a way that was somehow far worse than any monster she might have conjured.
There was rage there. Not loud, not wild—no roaring beast—but a terrible, burning fury, banked and honed to a perfect, lethal stillness.
His eyes-those emerald eyes—seethed with it, a vivid, living green that seemed almost to glow in the half-light. Not with magic. But with the raw, furious life of him.
Aelius's gaze locked onto hers—and in that instant, Evergreen understood: he had not lost control.
He had chosen.
He had chosen her.
And then he spoke, voice softer than before, almost intimate in its finality:
"I want the last thing you see to be me."
Evergreen stumbled back a half-step, the rooftop's edge scraping against the soles of her boots.
She opened her mouth, some last desperate plea curling on her tongue—but the weight of him crushed it before it could form. She had no ground to stand on anymore. No power.
No chance.
Only Aelius.
And he was coming for her—slowly, inevitably, as if her final surrender was not an 'if,' but a 'when.'
The rooftop around them seemed to narrow, the bright city sounds far below dulling to a hush, as if the world itself held its breath, waiting for the end.
Evergreen's hands trembled visibly now, her fingers twitching as if still weighing the thought of a last, hopeless spell—but she knew better.
Swallowing hard, she forced herself to speak.
"I… I let them go," she stammered, voice brittle as glass, wobbling on the edge of shattering. "The petrification—it's lifted. They're fine. You don't have to—there's no reason to—"
Aelius did not move. He didn't blink. He simply watched her, emerald eyes burning like twin embers, patient and pitiless.
Evergreen licked her lips nervously, rushing now, words spilling out fast like water trying to find a crack in stone.
"You can just use your magic—tear through the runes and go! Laxus—he's at Kardia Cathedral!" she said, almost gasping now, desperate to get it all out before that unreadable gaze swallowed her whole. "You don't need to waste your time on me! I surrender. See? I surrender! There's no point in hurting me, right? Not anymore."
She managed a shaky, hopeful smile, though it didn't reach her eyes. Not even close.
The rooftop seemed to hold its breath around them.
Aelius still hadn't moved. Not a step. Not a flinch. He simply stood there, the full crushing weight of his presence pressing down on her, as if the very act of existing beneath his gaze was a punishment all its own.
For a moment—an eternal, frozen moment—it seemed he might let it be.
That he might simply turn away, silent and merciful, and leave her to drown in her own shame.
But Aelius was not built for mercy.
Aelius moved.
No warning—no wasted breath. One gloved hand snapped out and seized Evergreen by the throat, lifting her effortlessly off the rooftop.
She barely had time to choke out a startled gasp before he was holding her aloft, boots scraping uselessly against the stone, fingers clawing weakly at his grip.
He held her there—suspended, weightless, powerless—watching her struggle with the same calm detachment one might show an insect pinned to a board.
Slowly, he tilted his head, his voice low and steady, cutting through her ragged breathing like a blade:
"I've become softer," he said, almost contemplatively. "Softer than I used to be."
The words should have been a mercy.
They were not.
He shifted his grip slightly, tightening it just enough to make her vision swim at the edges.
"But not soft enough to forgive this."
His gaze sharpened, emerald eyes burning with cold, unwavering fury.
"You tried to take something from me," Aelius said, his voice dipping even lower, into something almost tender—and all the more terrifying for it. "So I will take something from you."
And without another word, he slammed her down.
The impact shook the rooftop, a crack spider webbing through the stone beneath her as her body crumpled under the force of it.
Evergreen let out a strangled cry, limbs spasming, stunned from the brutal suddenness of it.
A flash of light sparked in the corner of her blurring vision. She managed to lift her head just enough to see it:
Aelius's free hand—no longer gloved. The dark leather had vanished in an instant, leaving his bare hand revealed, fingers slightly curled, faint trails of sickly green magic already gathering along his palm.
The rooftop seemed to pulse with it—a slow, poisonous rhythm—answering the call of something far older, far crueler than anything she had touched before.
And Aelius, standing over her now, spoke again—soft, final, merciless:
"You broke the rules of survival. But, you get to live to regret it."
Aelius's free hand hovered above her, the single droplet of purple rot trembling at the tip of his bare finger. It pulsed with a sick life of its own—thick, oily, corrupt—and the very air around it seemed to sicken, warping faintly, as though reality itself recoiled from what he was about to do.
Evergreen stared up at it, her body shuddering violently. Her legs kicked uselessly against the stonework of the roof. Her hands clawed at his wrist, his cloak, the ground—anything. She begged. She pleaded, voice cracking into broken, choking gasps:
"No—no—please—I'll behave—I swear—please don't—!"
Aelius moved like a machine. No faster. No slower.
His fingers closed, directing the bead of violet corruption precisely above her right eye.
Then, without hesitation.
"Plague Gods: Sight Eater Blight."
He shoved his finger into her eye.
It wasn't a strike. It wasn't a punch. It was a slow, deliberate penetration.
Her eyeball gave way with a soft, sickening schlup, her eyelids fluttering violently against his knuckles as she shrieked—shrieked so loudly it tore at her throat. Blood, thick and bright, welled around his finger almost immediately, running down her cheek in hot rivers.
Her heels beat against the rooftop—wild, frantic—but he pinned her down easily with the weight of his knee across her stomach. Bones ground against bones.
The Sight Eater Blight seeped into the delicate pathways beneath her cornea, rotting her magical structure from the inside. It didn't just damage her—it hollowed her out, like acid poured into fine silk. She could feel it: the unraveling, the destruction of years of training, the core of what made her special being devoured molecule by molecule.
She screamed again—this time higher, rawer—as Aelius twisted his finger slightly, grinding the corruption deeper.
The sound her throat made wasn't even human anymore.
Her right eye, now flooded with invasive blight, rolled slackly in its socket as he finally withdrew his hand. A thick string of blood and viscous infection snapped and slapped wetly onto her cheek.
Evergreen sagged, gasping, sobbing openly now, her body trembling uncontrollably.
Her vision on that side was gone. Not darkness—something worse. Colorless distortion.Pain.Void.
But Aelius wasn't finished. Not even close.
He watched her without emotion, his emerald eyes gleaming like dead stars.
When she realized he was reaching for her other eye, she began to beg again—worse than before, frantic, incoherent:
"Please—I'll tell you everything—I'll work for you—I'll do anything—I'll cut ties with Laxus—I'll turn against him—I'll swear it—please don't—please—PLEASE—"
Her nails clawed at the stone, at his boots, even trying to scratch her own face to protect herself.
Anything.
It didn't matter.
Aelius caught her wrists easily in his free hand, pinning them above her head. His strength was absolute—undeniable.
Then, with cold patience, he pressed the still-tainted fingertip to her left eye.
Evergreen shook her head desperately, thrashing with all the ferocity of a dying animal, but there was nowhere to go.
The rooftop was her grave. He was her grave.
A second later—with even less ceremony than before—he plunged his finger into her other eye.
There was a horrific, wet crack as the pressure gave way, her screams reaching a level of pure agony that shredded the very air around them. Blood exploded outward in a messy arc, splattering across Aelius's hands, his cloak, the rooftop stones.
The second blight entered her.
Her magic—her second sight—collapsed utterly, folding in on itself like rotting meat left too long in the sun.
There was a gurgling, hiccuping sound in her chest as she choked on her own terror and pain.
Her legs kicked weakly now—no more fight. Only twitching. Only the mechanical, dying spasms of someone who had nothing left.
When he finally drew his hand away, the world was silent but for her broken sobs.
Both her eyes—clouded, corrupted, bleeding—stared sightlessly at the midday sky. Not destroyed entirely. Repairable, if anyone cared enough. If he allowed it.
But the magic—the pride, the power—was gone.
Extinguished like a candle beneath a boot.
Aelius stood over her, blood dripping slowly from the tips of his fingers, his cloak stained and fluttering lightly in the warm afternoon breeze.
He looked down at her without hate. Only satisfaction.
For a long, long moment, he said nothing. Just watched her—broken, gasping, blinking uselessly at a sky she could no longer see.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low and utterly steady, as if handing down a verdict already decided long before this day:
"Next time you raise your hand against me—you won't get a warning. You won't get to crawl away. You'll vanish, screaming, into a place that doesn't even have a name."
He let the words sink into the marrow of her bones.The truth of them. The finality.
Then he crouched down beside her, one hand resting lightly on his knee, lowering himself to her level with a terrifying kind of casualness—like he had all the time in the world.
His voice dropped even further, almost a whisper now, meant only for her shattered ears:
"Remember this mercy—the Master, the one you turned against, gave to you—because it's the last you'll ever get."
He stood, wiped the blood from his fingertips onto the edge of his cloak without a second thought, and turned away from her. She was nothing more than a discarded threat now—a failure bleeding on the stones.
He left her there.
Left her to weep. Left her to rot, a beacon of what he was, what he still could be if pushed.
And he didn't look back.