'Huh? Again?'
I thought, my heart doing a stutter-step against my ribs. 'Why is it dropping now?'
It was making me confused. The logic of this world—or at least the logic of this "Void" I was inhabiting—seemed to shift every time I thought I had a handle on it.
"Rio?" Elena whispered and moved closer, her face now so close that I could feel the heat radiating from her skin. Her hand finally made contact, pressing firmly against the center of my chest.
"You're pale again," She said, her voice dropping the sharp edge of a command and replacing it with a terrifyingly gentle concern. She reached out, her hand moving from my chest to cup my cheek. Her skin was burning hot against my deathly chill. "Your eyes... they're losing that light. Talk to me. What is happening to you now?"
[ALERT: STABILITY CRITICAL]
[4.1% ... 3.8% ... 3.5%]
'Damn it, Elena, stop caring so much!' I screamed internally.
The more she tried to care for me—the more the Void collapsed. I need to send her away.
"I told you... I need... time," I wheezed, my lungs starting to feel like they were filled with that mercury again.
I had to break her focus. I had to turn this "Obsession" into something else, before it hurts me too much.
"Please... Just leave me alone... For a bit," I managed to squeeze the words out.
The resonance was going down even faster. My hands twitched, my legs trembled under the thin sheets, and a pained expression—raw and involuntary—tightened my face. It felt like my very atoms were trying to drift apart, lost in the suffocating warmth of her presence.
Elena's expression shifted from confusion to sheer, unadulterated worry. "How can I leave you here when you look like you are about to pass out any moment?" she countered, her hand tightening on my cheek as if she could physically hold my soul inside my body.
[2.2%... 2.0%... 1.8%]
[CRITICAL WARNING: DEATH LOOMING!]
The gray static was clawing at the edges of my vision. If she stayed, if she kept looking at me with that heartbreakingly sincere desire to save me, there wouldn't be anything left of "Rio" to save.
"Just leave me alone, fuck!" I shouted, the sudden burst of profanity and volume tearing through the quiet room like a physical blade.
Elena was bewildered. She flinched as if I had struck her, her hand recoiling from my face as if my skin had suddenly turned to white-hot iron. She stood up abruptly, the bed swaying with the sudden movement.
The air in the room, which had been thick with her protective mana, suddenly spiked with a different frequency: Shock. And behind that shock, a rising tide of Indignation.
[NOTICE: EMOTIONAL FEEDBACK SHIFT (SHOCK/OFFENSE)]
[RESONANCE STABILITY: 1.8% -> 2.5%]
'AH, now it is rising again?'
"You..." Elena started, her voice trembling not with fear, but with the sheer disbelief that the brother she had just carried across the palace—the one she was currently agonizing over—was swearing at her. "I spend my afternoon making sure you aren't murdered by our siblings, I bring you here, and you have the audacity to... to speak to me like that?"
[RESONANCE STABILITY: 2.5% -> 3.2% ... 3.8%]
The more her face hardened, the more easier it became for me to breathe.
"I didn't ask for a nurse," I hissed, forcing myself to sit up despite the world spinning. I leaned forward, my eyes—now dark and hollow again—locking onto hers. "I asked to be left alone. Your 'care' is suffocating, Elena. It's pathetic. Do you really have nothing better to do than hover over a dying man like a vulture waiting for a meal?"
That did it.
The last trace of "gentle concern" vanished from her face, replaced by a cold, sharp fury that was much more familiar to a Dragon of the Aragon line. She stepped back, her posture straightening until she looked like the commander she was.
"Fine," she said, her voice a low, dangerous whisper. "I was a fool to think that a near-death experience would change the core of who you are. You want to be alone? You want to rot in this room with your secrets?"
She turned toward the door, "Then rot. And don't you dare call for me when any of our siblings tries to kill you."
SLAM!
The door didn't just close; it shook the entire wall.
[NOTICE: EMOTIONAL FEEDBACK (PURE ANGER/REJECTION)]
[RESONANCE STABILITY: 4.5% (STABILIZED)]
I collapsed back onto the mattress, my chest heaving, a cold sweat breaking out across my forehead. The gray haze was gone. The clarity was back. But my heart felt heavy for a completely different reason.
I had pushed away the only person who actually gave a damn, just to keep the engine running.
'She hates me now,' I thought, staring at the ceiling. 'But, what else could I do other than making her angry.'
I didn't waste time wallowing. I rolled off the bed, my movements surprisingly fluid now that the stability was back at a safe level. I crawled toward the wardrobe.
I needed the 'Blood-Ink Testament' book. I need to understood the "Override" mechanism, I needed to know if there was a way to stabilize without needing to constantly play the villain or getting pampered.
I opened the book, and the ink began to swirl into a new message.
"THE FIRST SEAL HAS CRACKED. THE SECOND REQUIRES A SACRIFICE OF WILL."
"Huh?"
I subconsciously let out.
"Just this? Nothing else? No manual or anything?"
I began to frantically flip to the next page, then the one after that. I even clawed at the back cover, searching for a hidden compartment or invisible ink, but I saw nothing else. The parchment remained a stubborn, taunting blank.
"Damn it, give me something!" I hissed, my fingers stained with the faint, phantom residue of the purple glow. "I'm running on fumes and family trauma here!"
The liquid ink on the page began to churn violently. It didn't form a map or a spell. Instead, the droplets raced across the surface to form four jagged, shivering words:
"Stability is not survival. Balance is."