The silence that reclaimed the Deep woods was heavy. The deafening shrieks of the Abyssal Weaver had ceased, replaced only by the hissing of its corrupted purple blood melting the frost on the forest floor.
Sergeant Garrick dragged himself out of the freezing mud. His breath hitched in his chest, rattling against cracked ribs, and a steady stream of dark blood painted the left side of his scarred face. He ignored the blinding pain; dropped his ruined oak shield and limped frantically toward the center of the clearing.
Kaelen was already there. She knelt in the bloody snow beside the small, motionless form of the young lord. Her left arm hung at a sickening angle, utterly useless. Her breathing was shallow to accommodate her own shattered ribs. Yet she used her one good hand to cradle Seiyuu's head, lifting him from the freezing muck.
"My lord," Garrick rasped, dropping heavily to his knees beside them. He pulled his leather gauntlet off with his teeth and pressed his thick, trembling fingers against the boy's neck.
The pulse was there, but it was terrifyingly faint. It fluttered like a dying moth trapped in a lantern.
Seiyuu's skin was flushed a dangerous, unnatural crimson. He was radiating a dry, blistering heat that melted the snow beneath him. The reckless channeling of the raw Aether had scorched his young veins, leaving his body to fight a catastrophic internal fever.
"We have to move him," Kaelen stated. Her voice was stripped of its usual icy calm, replaced by a tight, clipped urgency. "The blood will draw scavengers. Worse things than the monsters we have fought so far."
Garrick looked down at his ruined broadsword, then back at the boy. He possessed the strength and endurance that anyone would be envious of, but he was helpless against the silent war raging inside Seiyuu's body. He could only watch the young lord slip deeper into the dark.
Beneath the physical world, in the deep void of Seiyuu's comatose mind, a different struggle unfolded.
The darkness was absolute, save for a blinking blue light hovering in the periphery of his consciousness.
[Notice: Host physical vessel sustaining critical systemic failure.] [Action Required: Allocate 3 Unspent Attribute Points to stabilize biological functions.]
There was no response. The boy was asleep, drowned in the agony of scorched channels and torn muscle fibers.
[Warning: Host Vitality dropping below survivable threshold. Organ failure imminent.] [Awaiting Host input.] [Error: Host unresponsive.]
The celestial gears of the anomaly ground together in the silence. The system was designed to facilitate the growth of the host, but growth required a living vessel.
[Executing Emergency Protocol: Override engaged.] [Auto-allocating 3 available points to Vitality to prevent host expiration.] [Vitality: 9.5 -> 12.5]
A violent jolt tore through Seiyuu's body.
His eyes snapped open, wide and bloodshot. He gasped, pulling a ragged, desperate breath of freezing air into his lungs.
The sensation of the sudden attribute increase was horrifying. It was a deep, agonizing itch in the very marrow of his bones. Torn muscle fibers in his legs violently knit themselves together. The scorched, bleeding aether channels sealed shut, forming crude, painful scar tissue deep within his flesh. The process generated a wave of heat so intense he felt he was being roasted on a spit.
He stared up at the canopy of black pines, his chest heaving. He tried to speak, to assure the terrified veteran and the pale assassin that he was alive. His jaw refused to open. He tried to raise his hand. His limbs felt as though they were filled with wet sand. The system had forcibly stabilized his internal organs and sealed the worst of the trauma, but the sheer shock left him entirely paralyzed.
Garrick let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief. He bowed his head, resting his bloody forehead against the frozen earth for a brief second.
"He breathes," Garrick whispered, looking up at Kaelen. "The gods preserve us, he breathes."
Kaelen's rigid posture softened by a fraction of an inch. She carefully rested Seiyuu's head back onto a bed of dry moss. She looked at Garrick, her pale eyes hardening once more into the cold, calculating gaze of a survivor.
"Bind my arm to my chest, Sergeant," Kaelen ordered. "Then bind the boy to my back. I will carry him."
"You have broken ribs, girl," Garrick protested, wiping the blood from his eyes. "You cannot carry his weight through these woods. I will take him."
"You will carry the beast," Kaelen countered smoothly, nodding her chin toward the massive corpse of the Abyssal Weaver.
Garrick stared at her as if she had lost her mind.
"Lord Aldous requires proof," she continued, her logic flawless and devoid of sentiment. "The chitin is harder than tempered steel. The venom sacs hold a fortune in the lower cities. We do not leave a prize like that to the rot. House Walderose needs the capital. Your the only one with the strength to carry. I can manage carrying the boy."
Garrick looked at the mountain of black chitin and purple veins. He understood the brutal reality. Survival was not enough. The wealth provided by this kill could be the turning point for House Walderose.
He drew his skinning knife. He spent the next hour butchering the nightmare. He separated the impenetrable carapace plates from the thorax. He carefully extracted the glowing, toxic venom glands and wrapped them in thick hides. He bound the heaviest, most valuable sections of the monster into a massive, dripping bundle using the creature's own tough sinew.
When he finished, Garrick hoisted the grotesque package onto his broad shoulders. The weight would have crushed a normal man. For Garrick, possessing the raw, unyielding strength of a true veteran, it was a heavy burden he simply accepted.
He turned to Kaelen. He used thick leather belts from their packs to strap the paralyzed Seiyuu securely against her back. He bound the boy's arms over her shoulders and his legs around her waist, ensuring the young lord would not fall.
They began the long march back to the keep.
The journey took five grueling days. The Iron woods offered no mercy. The temperatures plummeted at night, freezing the blood on their clothes into stiff, rust-colored armor. They ate the last of their dried rations on the second day. After that, they subsisted entirely on melted snow and sheer, stubborn will.
Seiyuu drifted in and out of consciousness. The pain of his scorched channels was a constant, dull roar in the background of his mind. He spent the hours staring at the back of Kaelen's neck, listening to her steady, rhythmic breathing. Despite her broken arm and cracked ribs, she moved with impossible grace. Her monstrous agility allowed her to navigate the treacherous roots and icy ravines without ever jarring the injured boy on her back.
Behind them walked the Sergeant. Garrick became a walking mountain of endurance. He never complained of the crushing weight of the chitin plates pressing into his bruised shoulders. He kept his good eye trained on the shadows, his heavy boots marching a steady, relentless beat against the frozen earth.
They were a tragic, bloody procession. A broken girl carrying a paralyzed child, followed by a bleeding old man hauling the severed pieces of a nightmare.
On the afternoon of the fifth day, the dense black pines finally broke. The crumbling stone spires of Walderose Keep rose from the desolate, frozen landscape of the western ridge.
The horn of the watchtower blew a long, frantic note. The heavy iron gates began to grind upward.
Seiyuu rested his chin against Kaelen's shoulder. He watched his father and mother running across the frozen courtyard toward them, surrounded by shouting guards. The panic and terror on their faces were palpable.
He closed his eyes, surrendering to the exhaustion. He had slain a monster and lived, his comrades alive too. It was good to be home.