Chapter 29: The Weight That Stayed

  That night came quietly.

  Laurent lay on his side, facing the wall, listening to the academy settle around him. The stone held the day’s warmth a little longer. Somewhere down the corridor, someone turned in their sleep. The world narrowed to breath and shadow.

  His body didn’t hurt the way it used to.

  That was what let everything else in.

  His mind drifted home first.

  Familiar rooms. A place where footsteps sounded different depending on who was walking. Where meals happened at roughly the same time every day, even when no one said so out loud.

  He pictured his father sitting where he always did. His mother moving through the house with quiet purpose. John and Aly arguing over something small, the kind of argument that never actually mattered.

  Ordinary.

  Comfortable.

  The thought tightened his chest more than danger ever had.

  He didn’t linger on it. A part of him nudged the worry aside—whatever that rupture had been, it hadn’t swallowed the whole world. It couldn’t have. His mind insisted on that much, firm and unyielding.

  Still, the distance remained.

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  Then Leona surfaced in his thoughts.

  Not clearly. Not doing anything specific.

  Just… absent.

  She should have been at the university. Or her apartment. Somewhere far from where he’d been when everything broke apart. The logic was there, solid enough to stand on.

  It didn’t stop the quiet ache of not knowing.

  Laurent exhaled slowly.

  And then the memory shifted, uninvited.

  Not the chaos. After it.

  A cart half-splintered, its side torn open. People climbing down with movements too careful to be pain, limbs wrapped in cloth already darkened through. A man sitting against the wood, pale and still, staring down at empty space where an arm should have been, expression blank with exhaustion rather than shock.

  And then—

  The image that returned wasn’t the noise or the blood.

  It was how still she was.

  Perched where she shouldn’t have been, small enough that the damage around her felt oversized. One arm held close, too neatly, as if someone had already decided it didn’t belong to her anymore. Her leg bound in a way that suggested urgency rather than care.

  She didn’t ask for help.

  She didn’t look at anyone.

  Her gaze wasn’t empty. It was finished.

  That was what stayed with him. Not pain. Not fear.

  The quiet certainty of someone who had already learned there was nothing left to say.

  Laurent’s breath caught sharply, and this time he couldn’t stop it. Tears slid free, hot and sudden, soaking into the pillow beneath his cheek. His shoulders shook once, then again, a soundless break finally forcing its way through the control he’d clung to since arriving in this world.

  He didn’t wipe his face.

  Didn’t turn away.

  He let it happen.

  For the girl.

  For the man who kept staring.

  For the simple fact that he had been there—and had been useless.

  When the tears finally slowed, his eyes burned and his chest ached in a way training had never reached.

  Laurent stared at the wall until the shadows lost their meaning.

  He didn’t want strength to feel important.

  He wanted it so that next time—if there ever was a next time—he wouldn’t be standing still while someone else broke in front of him.

  So he could move. So he could carry someone away.

  So he wouldn’t have to remember another face that didn’t cry.