Chapter 32:

  "When the Strongest Fall"

  Arc 3: Chapter 11

  POV: "???"

  The smell of the past clung to every corner of that house—aged wood, old books, the sweet, dry scent of flowers long since bloomed. Porcelain objects stood in neat rows on shelves like soldiers at attention, and a soft sofa, upholstered in time-faded tones, rested before the cold fireplace.

  The door opened with the gentleness of someone unwilling to disturb the place’s memories.

  The towering man of light entered first, his presence filling the space even as he tried to seem smaller. Behind him, a boy hesitated at the threshold—face marked by a scar climbing from jaw to almost eye, right sleeve pinned empty at the shoulder with a rusted clasp.

  Fencer crossed the threshold like someone stepping into holy ground. His eyes swept every detail—the wall paintings, the worn Persian rug, the velvet curtains filtering afternoon light.

  “Damn, what a big house,” he said, words echoing lightly in the welcoming quiet. Before Alfredo could reply, the boy was already crossing the room and sinking into the sofa, testing whether the softness was real.

  “Yeah, it is,” Alfredo said, sitting beside him, keeping a respectful distance, hands resting on his own knees.

  Silence settled between them like an old friend. It wasn’t uncomfortable—it was the kind that lets two people study each other without hurry.

  Fencer broke it first, the way someone prods a wound to see if it still hurts.

  “I don’t understand why. Why accept me here?”

  The question hung. Alfredo felt its weight—not ingratitude, but disbelief. A boy who watched his family die before his eyes no longer believed in kindness without a price.

  “I…” Alfredo hesitated, words tangling in his throat. He wasn’t a man of speeches. But when he spoke, the truth came simple and bare. “You didn’t like it?”

  Fencer looked away, face suddenly hot. Shame colored his cheeks red.

  “It’s not that…”

  Alfredo laughed—a low, surprised sound, as if he’d discovered something unexpected.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, voice softer now. “Just relax. And fair warning: I’m…” he paused, scratching his head with a sword-callused hand “…a bit grumpy.”

  Fencer smiled. Small, almost shy, but real.

  “I know how it is. I was like that too. My dad always said I was a quiet son.”

  No sadness in the memory—just the mention of a fact, the acknowledgment that someone once knew him.

  “But my mom…” the boy continued, voice warming subtly, “…she always made me talk a lot. And after a while, even I was talking more than I could.”

  The smile faded.

  Alfredo watched the change—saw the exact moment a good memory hit the wall of the present, when absence became palpable. The boy before him shrank into the sofa, the weight of what he’d lost pressing on his shoulders.

  Alfredo stood.

  “Well, I already know what I’ll do then.”

  Fencer looked up, questioning.

  “I’ll talk to a scientist I know to make you a mechanical arm. What do you think?”

  Fencer shot to his feet, eyes wide as if Alfredo had offered the moon.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. And then we can start training. What do you think?”

  The enthusiasm on the boy’s face dimmed—not gone, but retreated, like a flame meeting wind. Alfredo noticed. Waited.

  “I don’t have magic,” Fencer said finally.

  “Don’t worry,” Alfredo answered too quickly, then seemed to realize it might not be the right response.

  Fencer smiled again, but different now—a smile of acceptance, not celebration.

  Alfredo frowned, genuinely puzzled.

  “Then tell me: what do you want to be?”

  The boy lowered his head. The shyness was almost tangible, armor he wore to protect himself.

  “Scientist, I guess.”

  The answer came so low Alfredo had to lean in to hear.

  He smiled. Not the smile of someone expecting something else, nor the smile of pretended approval. It was the smile of someone who had just understood something important about the boy before him.

  “Scientist, then.”

  Fencer raised his face. Smiled too.

  And the whole room—the scent of the past, porcelain objects, soft sofa—seemed to witness a silent agreement. Two people, so different, meeting in an instant that no one else would ever see.

  Decades later, Fencer walked through the same streets, and the memory dissolved like mist in the wind.

  Fencer blinked, and the lovely house was gone. The scent of dried flowers gave way to blood and dust. The streets of the Kingdom of Light stretched before him—not the clean, orderly streets the nobles knew, but the alleys beyond the walls, where commoners lived and died far from the Tower’s protection.

  Decades had passed, but for an instant Fencer still felt the weight of Alfredo’s hand on his shoulder.

  Then the present swallowed him again.

  Doctors and soldiers swarmed the streets like ants after a storm. The trail of destruction left by Bruce and Alfredo’s blast was an open wound in the city’s flesh—houses split in half, roofs collapsed, walls that no longer sheltered anyone.

  Fencer walked among the wreckage like someone crossing a battlefield after the fight. His eyes registered everything with the precision of someone who had learned to see without feeling.

  A man fell on the ground. Blacksmith, by the callused hands and leather apron. Too bloody to be alive.

  A girl—daughter, by the way she held the man’s hand, kneeling beside the body. She didn’t scream. Just cried silently, shoulders shaking in spasms that seemed to want to break her in two.

  Fencer looked away.

  Further on, ruined houses. People are clearing rubble with their bare hands. Lost children in the crowd, calling for parents who might never answer. That was life beyond the walls—not the life nobles saw from Tower windows, but the life that bled, that wept, that died without its name remembered.

  Shouts ahead.

  Fencer quickened his pace.

  Light soldiers formed a tense line before the dark army. The two forces faced each other like dogs ready to attack, the air between them vibrating with the tension of a thread about to snap.

  Leonas stood at the front of the darkness soldiers—an imposing commander, black armor reflecting the setting sun strangely, as if absorbing more than it returned.

  “You will not pass!” Leonas’s voice cut the air like a whip. “Where is Bruce?”

  The light soldiers did not answer. Swords remained sheathed, but hands rested on hilts, ready.

  Fencer watched from the shadow of a half-destroyed building. His eyes moved from Leonas to the soldiers, from the soldiers to the approaching stretchers.

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  Luna appeared at the head of the procession.

  She walked with the rigidity of someone carrying the world on her shoulders. Behind her, two stretchers—one moving too fast, escorted by doctors running as if death itself chased them; the other slower, but no less grave.

  Leonas raised his hand. Darkness soldiers drew swords in synchronized motion that made the air ring.

  Luna stopped. Light began to emanate from her clenched fist, a golden glow that clashed violently with the gray dust of the rubble.

  Leonas watched her. No fear in his eyes—only assessment, calculation, the coldness of someone who had already decided what he would do.

  Then the voice came from the slower stretcher.

  “Stop.”

  Bruce Darking raised himself slightly under the bandages. His face was pale, dried blood still visible on the dressings, but his eyes—those emerald eyes that had seen empires fall—held the authority of someone who never needed to shout to be obeyed.

  The darkness soldiers hesitated. Leonas frowned but made a brief gesture. Swords returned to sheaths.

  The stretchers passed.

  Fencer saw the white cloth of the first stretcher—too bloody, too soaked to mean anything good. His heart, that muscle he had trained not to feel, tightened in his chest.

  And then he saw the face.

  Alfredo.

  Fencer’s expression changed. Controlled sadness, clinical observation, everything shattered in an instant. His eyes widened, pupils contracting as if trying to deny what they saw.

  “No…” the word escaped before he could contain it.

  The stretchers passed through the huge breach in the wall, followed by a procession of soldiers, doctors, and nobles watching from high windows. Luna walked beside the first stretcher, her face a mask of determination barely concealing the terror beneath.

  Flávio was among the spectators, Juliet cradled in his arms. Beside him, Amanda watched from her wheelchair, violet eyes following every movement with the intensity of someone processing information faster than she should.

  The crowd followed the wounded to the Mage Hospital, a white-stone building whose windows glowed with healing light.

  Fencer stayed behind.

  His eyes met Flávio’s for an instant—silent recognition, confirmation of what both knew but neither wanted to say.

  Then he moved. He didn’t run—Fencer didn’t run—but his steps were faster than they should have been, more urgent than he would allow in any other circumstance.

  Down below, in the prison, Empty remained with his head bowed. The guards watching his cell followed the commotion from afar, but he did not raise his eyes. He did not see the crowd, did not hear the shouts.

  He simply existed.

  Waiting.

  The Mage Hospital was a maze of white corridors and rooms smelling of herbs and antiseptic. Mage-doctors ran back and forth like panicked ants, blue robes creating waves of motion in the sterile environment.

  On the stretcher, Alfredo Lighting was surrendered to death.

  “We’re losing him!” The chief doctor’s shout echoed down the corridor, making nurses run even faster.

  Blood dripped from Alfredo’s lips, forming a red thread that stained the white sheet and dripped onto the polished stone floor. His chest rose and fell in irregular movements, each breath an effort that seemed to cost him years of life.

  Luna ran beside the stretcher. Her legs moved on instinct, because her mind was somewhere else—in a green field long ago, watching Alfredo teach her to control light for the first time.

  “No… no…” she repeated, words mixing with sobs that refused to come.

  The stretcher passed through the double doors of the operating room. The doors closed with a definitive click.

  Luna stopped.

  Her body kept vibrating for a moment, as if still running, but her feet were planted on the corridor floor. She looked at her own hands—stained with Alfredo’s blood, blood that had dripped from the stretcher and touched her skin.

  The floor moved beneath her feet.

  Raphadun was there suddenly, arms wrapping around her, pulling her into an embrace she didn’t know she needed. Luna buried her face in her brother’s shoulder and cried—not as a queen, not as a leader, but as a girl who had just seen the only father figure she had left taken to a room he might not leave alive.

  On the other side of the corridor, Bruce was led by a separate team. His stretcher moved more slowly, his wounds less urgent but no less severe.

  Beneath the bandages covering part of his face, his green eyes remained open. They stared at the white ceiling, the doctors’ faces, the passing lights—but saw none of it.

  They saw something else.

  They saw Alfredo, standing before him, arms open.

  They saw a smile.

  Finally…

  Bruce’s gaze was an abyss—too deep for anyone to probe, too dark for any light to reach.

  Luna stayed at the hospital as long as she could. When the light commanders came with updates—“Surgery continues, Majesty”—she listened, nodded, and kept waiting.

  But time was a luxury she could not afford.

  When the messenger arrived with the Council summons, Luna looked at Raphadun. Said nothing. Just squeezed his shoulder once and walked away.

  Raphadun stayed. Someone had to be there when the doors opened.

  Luna climbed the Tower of Light stairs like someone marching to her own execution. Her steps were heavy, determined, each impact a declaration that she would not retreat.

  Behind her, the light army followed in tight formation—commanders, captains, elite soldiers whose armor gleamed under torchlight. Their faces were stone, but their eyes… their eyes said everything.

  They knew what was at stake.

  The council chamber door opened with a blow.

  Luna entered.

  Leonas was already there, the darkness army at the ready behind him. Dark commanders formed a silent wall on the other side of the table, expressions as unreadable as the light soldiers’.

  Luna sat at the head.

  Silence settled like a funeral veil.

  “Alfredo…” Luna began, voice firm but with a crack in it, a microfissure anyone with ears could detect, “has only half a chance of surviving, even with surgery. He will die because of THIS!”

  The last word echoed off the stone walls, laden with rage that didn’t know where to place itself.

  Leonas leaned slightly forward.

  “That is not our fault.”

  Luna’s eyes met his. Sparks of light began to dance in her clenched fists, unconscious, instinctive.

  Leonas continued, imperturbable:

  “This was a fight made by both. A fight started by your foolishness in going to see a prisoner without Council permission. Alfredo did this under your orders—and lost. Because of your foolishness.”

  The light commanders moved as one. Light began to emanate from their bodies, a golden glow that made shadows retreat to the room’s corners.

  Leonas did not retreat.

  “Stay calm,” his voice was a command, not a request.

  Darkness soldiers did not move, but hands rested on sword hilts. The air in the room grew thick, heavy, charged with electricity about to discharge.

  Leonas raised his eyes to Luna.

  “You are extremely important to all of us, Luna Lighting. But the truth is that your fascination with that creature is leading us to imminent destruction.”

  Luna did not answer. She could not. Because deep down, in the depths where she kept truths she dared not confess, she knew he was right.

  “So—” she forced the words out “—are we really being judged here? Alfredo will survive. We will trust that. And now we must discuss Empty’s trial. Isn’t that right?”

  She looked at Leonas. At the commanders. The army is behind them.

  She knew the fight was inevitable. Not the fight of swords—that would come later, if they weren’t careful. But the fight of words, of wills, of different visions about what to do with the creature chained in the basement.

  “I…” she began, and the pause was too long, too revealing. “The councilors may enter.”

  The doors opened.

  Ver?nica entered first, violet eyes scanning the room with the distant curiosity of someone seeing people as equations to be solved. Luka Graymon followed, face a mask of barely disguised professional concern. Aldert Fingard closed the procession, expression hardened by the conviction that he already knew what the verdict should be.

  All offered condolences to Luna and the light. Words were spoken, gestures made. Then they sat around the table.

  Empty’s trial was set for the next day.

  The discussion began.

  In the hospital, hours dragged like wounded on an endless march.

  Surgery ended. Doctors emerged with expressions that dared not meet anyone’s eyes. Alfredo was taken to a private room, his body covered in white sheets, machines beeping beside him, monitoring functions that stubbornly persisted.

  Chances were high—high of not waking, high of not recovering, high that this would be the last time anyone saw him breathe.

  One doctor, an old man with eyes that had seen too much death, approached Raphadun.

  “There is someone…” he began, hesitant. “Someone who asked to see him. Hidden.”

  Raphadun raised his eyes. His face was pale, dried tear tracks still marking his cheeks.

  “Who?”

  The doctor did not answer. Just gestured for him to follow.

  Fencer Nohnra entered the room like someone invading a sanctuary.

  The machine’s sound was the first thing heard—a constant, regular, stubborn beep saying: still here, still fighting, hasn’t given up yet.

  The second was Alfredo’s breathing, assisted by equipment, each intake of air a small mechanical miracle.

  Fencer sat in the chair beside the bed.

  He stayed silent.

  The beeps filled the space, marking that time in a way no clock could. Fencer looked at Alfredo’s face—so different from the man who smiled in that house so many years ago, so the same in features time couldn’t erase.

  “Before I met Flávio—” Fencer’s voice came out lower than he expected, almost a whisper “—when it was just him and me… I only had you.”

  Pause.

  The beeps continued.

  “I’m sad we… You know.”

  Another pause. Longer.

  Fencer looked at his own hands. One, the left, was his skin, bones, flesh. The other, the right, was metal and engineering, a gift from a scientist Alfredo knew, paid for with favors Fencer never knew.

  “You know—” he continued, “—I’m not very good with words. I don’t even know what to do in this situation.”

  The machine beeped. Alfredo’s breathing remained steady.

  Fencer felt something hot run down his face. He touched the spot, surprised, as if he didn’t recognize the sensation.

  Tears.

  When was the last time he cried?

  “Please…” his voice broke, and he didn’t try to fix it. “Don’t die.”

  The air in the room grew too heavy. Fencer struggled to breathe, to form the next words, the hardest.

  “I’m sorry for being a…”

  The pause was an abyss. The crying came—not as a controlled sob, but as a wave breaking all barriers. His shoulders shook, his face contorted in an expression he never let anyone see.

  “…an ingrate.”

  The word hung in the air, mixed with the beeps, the machine hum, and Alfredo’s artificial breathing.

  Outside, Flávio pressed his ear to the cold door. A light soldier escorted him, but didn’t stop him from hearing. Perhaps because the soldier also had a brother. Perhaps because some things are bigger than orders.

  Flávio closed his eyes.

  His brother’s words pierced his chest like spears.

  An ingrate.

  He never knew Fencer carried that. Never imagined that behind the coldness, the clinical analysis, the surgical precision, there was a boy who blamed himself for not saying thank you.

  In the council chamber, hands rose one by one.

  Each vote was a sentence.

  Ver?nica raised her hand first—knowledge demanded they study the creature, but politics demanded they appear to be doing something.

  Luka Graymon hesitated. His eyes met Luna’s for an instant—an eternity in a second. Then his hand rose.

  Aldert Fingard already had his hand up before the question finished.

  Leonas voted for darkness. The other commanders followed.

  Empty’s trial would be the next day.

  And it would be decided by all nobles, all houses, all voices that had never seen his face, never heard his story, never felt the weight of his existence.

  They would vote for the life or death of a creature that didn’t know what either was.

  Down below, in the prison, Empty remained with head bowed.

  Perhaps he knew what was happening above. Perhaps he felt, through stone and distance, the weight of decisions being made.

  Perhaps not.

  Perhaps he just waited.

  As he always waited.

  From the abandoned house, from the empty cradle, from the first monster that dragged him down the hill—Empty waited.

  For the smile he saw in books.

  For the gratitude he never received.

  For someone to look at him and say, without words: Thank you for having existed.

  Up above, hands kept rising.

  And tomorrow arrived.