My eyes feel like they've been stitched shut with hot wire. Darkness is all I have. But then, the voices start.
I'm standing in a void. Three figures loom over me, their faces obscured by a thick, oily shadow. I know them by their auras alone. Kael. Elian. The Duke.
I can't even look at them. The shame is a physical weight, crushing my lungs.
"How pathetic," Kael's voice rasps, dripping with ice.
"You couldn't even handle the easy part. I should have trained you harder... maybe then you wouldn't be such a failure."
Beside him, Elian sounds more confused than angry, which somehow feels worse.
"What happened to my clinic, Leo? I never asked you to burn it down. My potions... everything is gone."
Then, the Duke steps forward. His presence is like a mountain falling on me.
"How are you so comfortable, enjoying this sweet sleep? Your selfishness is ugly, Leo. You failed.
Everything you were supposed to succeed at... it's over. Your beloved Alisa is long gone. Live your life as a commoner. You are nothing more."
"No... you've got to be kidding me," I shout into the void, my voice cracking.
"Right? Right?! This was too early... it wasn't supposed to happen like this!"
The realization hits me like a physical blow. Alisa is dead. I failed her.
"I'm sorry, Alisa... I'm so sorry. You should have lived a longer life. If I hadn't intervened... if I hadn't been so weak..."
I collapse, hot tears streaming down my face. I'm a mess. A total wreck.
Then, a voice.
It's soft. Familiar. The one voice I would give my soul to hear again.
"Why are you crying, Leo? Is someone mocking you?"
I snap my head up, wiping my eyes with trembling hands. She's sitting there, perched on a piece of broken, ancient rock in a ruin that wasn't there a second ago. Alisa.
"No one," I choke out, trying to pull myself together. "No one is mocking me, Alisa. Don't worry about that."
She whispers, her face suddenly darkening, losing that ethereal light.
"I heard what you said earlier. Don't you want to be friends with me that badly? Why?"
Before I can answer, her face shifts—a flash of a warm smile.
"Kidding!"
But the darkness returns just as fast.
She looks down at her hands.
"I know you've been through a lot. But you don't need to push yourself so hard just for me, you know? I was just fine..."
I'm speechless. My heart is twisting into knots.
"To be honest," she continues, her smile turning soft and genuine,
"I'd rather live for a week or a month spending time with you than spend five hundred years without you. Even one hour with you is better than anything else I could do..."
The shame burns, but I find my voice.
"Right. I will save you, Alisa. Just wait for me! Like I promised! I'm always going to be with you, no matter what."
More tears. I'm a fountain at this point.
Alisa looks at me, almost cluelessly, her expression gentle. "Right... that's the promise. I will wait for you then. Now, be quiet, Leo."
My eyes snap open. Everything is a blur.
"You awake, Leo?"
A girl's voice. My instincts scream. My body reacts before my brain can process where I am. I scramble backward, my heels digging into the mattress until I'm shoved into the corner of the bed.
"Ahhh! Hmm!" The girl flinches, startled by my sudden movement.
I'm panting, my heart hammering against my ribs. Where am I? Who is this? Anyway, my head is spinning. Honestly, for a second, I thought the 'Monster of the Tran' had caught me. Did it mess with my mind? Is this another memory trick?
"Who are you?" I bark, my voice raw.
"Do I know you? Where is this place?"
The girl smiles warmly. She's... older. Taller. "Yes, duh! We know each other. Don't worry, this is just a healing room."
"For how long?" I demand.
"How long have we known each other?"
She tilts her head, thinking.
"What? Hmm... come to think of it, only for a few days."
She leans in. Close. Too close. I can smell a faint scent of herbs on her. "Is there a problem? Huh?"
My face goes nuclear. I can feel the heat rising to my ears.
"You're... you're too close."
She jumps back, looking offended. "Hey! Quit thinking weird things! You pervert!"
"You're the one who's too comfortable for no reason!" I yell back, trying to hide my embarrassment.
"And you haven't even told me who you are!"
She stops, realizing I'm actually serious. She sighs, crossing her arms. "Right... I'm Liora."
I blink. The name fits, but the face...
"This is my original body," she explains, looking at me with those familiar eyes.
In my opinion, this just got a lot more complicated. My "child" companion is now a woman, and I'm still stuck in a bed with a cracked mana core and a failed mission.
"Liora?" I whisper, finally looking at her properly.
"The one and only," she huffs, though there's a small, shy smile on her lips.
The air in the healing room was thick with the scent of bitter herbs and the faint, ozone hum of high-level restoration magic.
I stared at the woman standing before me. Liora—or the version of her that hadn't been stunted by a curse—looked like she belonged in a cathedral painting, not a dusty village clinic.
"Your original body..." I muttered, the gears in my head grinding.
"The 'Seed' wasn't just a title. You were suppressed."
"Exactly," she said, though she looked away, her fingers tracing the edge of her sleeve.
"Julian and his team used a Synchronized Reversion Circle. It's a specialized ritual that forces a soul back into its chronologically correct vessel. It's exhausting, but—"
The door to the clinic room creaked open, cutting her off.
Julian stepped in first, his silver plate armor polished clean of the soot from the fire. Behind him filed four others—the elite "Purification" unit. Two women and two men, all carrying the same aura of terrifying, quiet competence.
"Ah, the 'Monster' is awake," Julian said. There was no sword in his hand this time, but his eyes were still sharp as glass. He stopped at the foot of the bed, his team fanning out behind him.
The first girl, a spell-weaver with hair the color of frost, stepped forward and dipped her head slightly.
"I am Elena. We are the 5th Inquisition Unit. We owe you a debt, Leo. Taking the brunt of that explosion to protect the girl... it wasn't expected from one of the North's shadows."
The others followed suit—Marcus, a giant of a man with a scarred shield on his back; Silas, a quiet scout who looked like he breathed shadows; and Hana, a priestess whose hands were still glowing with the residue of the healing magic that had saved my eyes.
"We thought you were a kidnapper," Marcus rumbled, his voice like stones grinding together.
"Turns out, you were the only thing keeping the High Priest's niece from becoming a pile of ash. For that, you have our thanks."
I felt a bit of the tension leave my shoulders, but I still felt like a fraud.
"I didn't do it for the Church."
"We know," Julian said. He glanced at Liora, and a small, mischievous glint entered his eyes—a look that felt far too human for a silver knight.
"Though, I must say, I've never seen our little 'Ice Princess' so frantic. You should have seen her while you were out, Leo."
Liora's back stiffened. "Julian, don't start."
"Don't start?" Julian laughed, turning to his team. "Silas, how many times did she check his pulse in the first hour? Twenty? Thirty?"
The scout, Silas, didn't even look up from his dagger, but a small smirk tugged at his lips.
"Lost count. She almost blasted Hana's hand off because the healing wasn't 'going fast enough.'"
"I was making sure the witness didn't die!" Liora snapped, her face turning a vivid shade of pink that clashed with her elegant original form.
"He has information about the Duke's movements! It's purely professional!"
"Purely professional," Hana, the priestess, teased softly, leaning against the wall.
"Is that why you refused to leave the room for twenty-four hours? You didn't even eat. You looked like a ghost hovering over his bed. I've known you since you were a student, Liora. You've never had an interest in anything with a pulse, let alone a 'peasant shadow' from the North."
Liora looked like she wanted the floor to swallow her.
"He... he made a pinky promise! It's a matter of honor!"
Julian leaned down, his voice dropping to a whisper that still filled the room.
"A pinky promise, Liora? Really? You're thirteen in that head of yours, but you were acting like a maiden in a tragedy. Honestly, if I didn't know better, I'd say the Duke's boy managed to melt that frozen heart of yours."
"Shut up! All of you!" Liora shouted, turning her back on them, but she couldn't hide the way her hands were shaking.
I watched them, the banter feeling strange and heavy. They were a family. A team. And I was the intruder who had just failed his only mission.
The weight of the broken vial—the empty, shattered hope for Alisa—settled back onto my chest. I looked at Julian, the humor fading from my eyes.
"You used a Reversion Circle to fix her," I said, my voice low. "Could you use that on someone else? Someone whose soul is being... erase?"
The room went quiet. The teasing stopped instantly. Julian's expression shifted back into that of a cold,
"The Sun-Blade," Julian guessed.
"You're talking about the Lady of the North."
I nodded, my throat tight.
"Leo," Julian said, and for the first time, there was pity in his voice.
"Reversion magic fixes the body by looking at the soul's blueprint. But if the soul itself is being burned away... there's no blueprint left to follow. Magic can't fix what no longer exists."
I looked down at my hands.
Liora looked back at me, her embarrassment gone, replaced by a quiet, searing guilt. She knew, she had watched me run into the fire for a dream that had already turned to smoke.