Night was alive.
Not with serenity, but something more restless. The wind didn't sing—it whispered brittle warnings through the trees. Leaves twitched with unease. In the distance, something howled; not at the moon, but at something darker, unseen.
The forest breathed like it knew.
Two figures trudged through that living dark, making their way toward Varis.
Mercy was bloodied but upright, dragging one heavy foot after the other uphill. Strapped to his back, limp and silent, was Lucius—unconscious, or pretending. Mercy's armour-like coat clung to his skin, damp with blood. His ribs ground together with every breath, his left shoulder sagged unnaturally, and his knuckles were split open from mana recoil and direct clashes. He'd downed a low-grade recovery potion earlier—just enough to stay moving.
He hadn't given Lucius any.
Not because he didn't care. Because he knew the boy better than that.
Lucius had used the last potion recklessly, weaving mana through it to hyper-focus healing into specific organs. It was stupid. Brilliant. Dangerous. It worked.
Mercy didn't approve, but damn if he could argue with the results.
The Valgura was dead. Finally. Its aberrant body—twisted by corrupted mana and old injuries—was sealed away in Mercy's storage ring, along with its core. An SS-ranked terror, taken down without an army.
It should've been a full-scale operation. Hell, it should've never happened. That kind of beast wasn't supposed to appear this deep into the Outer Rim. Not without warning. Not without alerting the guild and the Knights division within Varis.
And yet… Lucius had gone after it. Alone.
Mercy had too many questions. Who tipped the boy off? Why didn't he report it? What the hell was he thinking?
But questions could wait.
Right now, getting the kid back to the city without being seen came first. He wasn't with his squad. He was underage. If the Knights caught them, it'd be more than paperwork—it could be a tribunal.
And then, he felt it. A flicker. The subtlest tightening of fingers against his collar. A change in breathing.
Mercy didn't slow his pace. "How long have you been awake?"
Lucius didn't answer right away. His whole body hurt. Breathing was a negotiation, not a reflex. But eventually, he croaked out:
"...A while."
Mercy exhaled through his nose, stopping under the crooked arch of a tree. "We'll rest here."
He knelt, gritting his teeth as pain lanced through his side. Then, slowly, carefully, he let Lucius slide off his back. The boy grimaced as he hit the earth but said nothing. He propped himself against the trunk, spine straight, legs out, trying not to look as broken as he felt.
Old habits. He used to do that as a kid, too—bleeding from the mouth, teeth clenched, posture perfect.
Mercy sat a few paces away, stabbing his summon blade into the soil behind him and leaning back on it like a wall.
For a long time, they didn't speak. The silence wasn't awkward. Just... full. Dense. Like smoke in the lungs.
Lucius broke it first. "Aren't you gonna scold me?"
His voice was quiet. Flat. "I did drag you into this mess."
Mercy didn't look at him. "No."
Sharp. Cold. No softness in the tone.
Lucius's mouth felt dry. He remembered Mercy's words from 2 days ago, 'If I ever see your face again, I won't spare you.' The man had kept that promise today… and still broken it in the end.
Lucius had wanted to apologise back then. He hadn't. Tonight, it felt even harder.
Still, he forced the words out.
"Thank you," he said. "For coming. For saving me. Again."
Mercy said nothing.
"And I'm sorry for how I acted... Then, today. I wasn't thinking, not really. Just reacting... It wasn't right."
Mercy reached into his coat and pulled out a battered cigarette. He lit it with a small flick of mana—his fingers trembling slightly from pain—and inhaled deeply. Smoke curled around his face like a shroud. He held the breath for a long moment before releasing it into the forest air.
The Empire had banned them decades ago. Too dangerous for sentient bodies. But out here? Out here, rules were more like rumors.
Lucius hated the smell. Always had. It clung to Mercy's coat, his breath, even his mana sometimes. But tonight, he said nothing.
"You're grateful," Mercy said at last. "I can see that."
Another inhale. Another breath of grey.
"But you're not sorry. Not for today."
Lucius looked down. Said nothing.
Mercy didn't accuse. He stated. "And that's fine. You shouldn't be. What you did was reckless, stupid and dangerous… but it wasn't thoughtless. You planned it. Lured me in. Played it like a strategist."
Lucius didn't deny it.
"You figured an SS-ranked Lunarknight could take down the Valgura," Mercy said. "Especially after you softened it up."
Lucius gave a tiny nod. "It was the safest play. Risky, but… the only one I had."
Mercy didn't praise him.
Didn't scold him.
He just stared into the trees, eyes narrowed against the dark, the cigarette dimming between two fingers.
"You were right," he said, after a pause. "But next time you try this—make sure your body can handle the aftermath."
Lucius gave a dry, lopsided smile. "So I'm not banned from your life again?"
Mercy grunted. It might've been amusement. It might've been pain. Maybe both.
"Depends. You planning to keep making me carry your unconscious ass up cliffs?"
Lucius chuckled. Immediately regretted it—coughing hard as fire burned in his chest. Mercy flicked the ash off his cigarette, wordlessly handed him a flask of clean water.
Lucius took a sip. Then another.
They sat there, under the open break in the canopy, where stars blinked like distant sentinels. The silence was softer now. Not peace. But understanding.
Something had shifted.
Maybe not enough.
But something.
Mercy leaned his head back, resting against the flat of his blade. "You're chasing something, kid. I don't know what it is yet. But I've seen that look before… in men who walk into storms thinking they can tame lightning."
Lucius didn't respond. His eyes were on the stars now.
And Mercy?
Mercy was starting to believe that Lucius wasn't just walking toward danger.
He might be becoming it.
***
Mercy exhaled a long breath. The cigarette had burned down to its end, leaving only the lingering scent of ash and something strangely nostalgic in the night air.
"Let me tell you something most folks in the big cities already know," he said, his voice low, almost tired. "Something the secluded towns still pretend isn't true. The ranking system—beast, human, whatever—is a broken compass. Outdated. Sloppy. Damn near useless."
Lucius didn't respond immediately, but his face shifted—eyes narrowing slightly, his shoulders tensing as the words dug in deeper than expected.
"That Valgura?" Mercy continued. "Technically S-ranked. But it was injured—already limping from a past encounter. Then you weakened it further. Even so, that thing fought me like hell. Like it didn't give a damn about ranks."
He paused, his gaze distant now, somewhere past the trees.
"Despite everything—I'm an SS-rank, with an elemental affinity—and it still held its own. Took direct hits, kept coming. That ranking system didn't mean jack in that moment."
Lucius wanted to argue. There were valid reasons Mercy had struggled; he was weaponless, after all, and had to protect Lucius too. Plus, the Valgura's natural resistance to elements was a serious threat. But deep down… he couldn't deny it. An S-ranked beast shouldn't have dragged an SS-ranked knight into such a drawn-out war of attrition. Not after Lucius had already hit it with everything he had.
Mercy looked at him again, eyes steady.
"To take down a healthy Valgura? You'd need two, maybe three SS-ranks. Just to play it safe. And if it had truly awakened—if it'd unlocked its potential—" He paused, a bitter smile twitching at his lips. "Then I wouldn't be here talking to you. And you? You'd be bones in the dirt."
Lucius swallowed. That thought sat heavy in his stomach.
"There's a reason those monsters are so rare," Mercy said. "Nature has its own balance. The stronger the species, the fewer its numbers. It's not kindness. It's survival math."
Lucius let the silence sit for a moment before asking something that had been nagging him for years.
"Then what about us?" he said. "Humans, I mean. We're everywhere. A billion of us. And we've got the highest concentration of mana-users on the continent, as a species. Isn't that… a contradiction?"
Mercy laughed quietly—dry and without humour.
"Yeah. It is. But humans are different. We don't follow nature's script. We're unpredictable. Resilient. We adapt when we shouldn't be able to. That's our whole thing... our 'speciality'."
He flicked the burnt stub of the cigarette into the underbrush.
"Some say we were chosen. I don't know about that. But there's something about us that even the gods don't understand."
Lucius hesitated, the firelight catching the glint of thought in his eyes. Then, carefully, he spoke.
"There's a theory," he said, watching Mercy's expression. "That mana… has a will of its own. That it chooses who it favours. Scholars, saints, even the top-ranked mages—they all say it's alive. That it listens. That it picks favourites."
He waited, unsure what response he wanted.
Mercy didn't scoff. Didn't roll his eyes. He simply nodded once, slow and deliberate.
"They're not wrong," he said.
Then his eyes lifted—meeting Lucius's, unwavering.
"I've got living proof of that theory sitting right in front of me."
Lucius blinked.
His throat tightened.
He knew what Mercy was talking about: Absolute Zero. Telekinesis. The things Lucius had no real explanation for, not even to himself.
He opened his mouth, ready to speak—ready to confess the pieces of himself he still didn't understand.
But Mercy lifted a hand. A single, quiet gesture.
"Not yet," he said.
Not here. Not like this.
And Lucius closed his mouth, the words burning on the tip of his tongue.