Maggie's POV

The flap of the tent snapped like a gunshot. Then, nothing. Silence returned, but it was no longer the same. Before, it had been heavy with presence, with watchfulness. Now, it was vast, empty, and glacial.

Maggie was alone.

The echo of Élisa's words broke against the canvas walls, shattering into sharp fragments that pierced her mind.

"Selfish. Hollowed out. Broken."

Her body was a prison of pain and immobility. She couldn't turn her head to escape the vacant stare of the candle flame. Couldn't clench her fists to contain the storm raging within. She was nailed to that straw mat, served up to her own demons.

A first sob escaped her, a dry, brutal hiccup that tore through her chest, awakening a sharp pain in her fractured ribs. The tears came hot, running down her temples, lost in the tangle of her hair. They weren't tears of regret. Not yet. They were impotent rage, wild frustration. How dare she? How could Élisa not understand? She had given everything. Everything. Her soul, literally. And now it was being hurled back at her like a crime.

"For your own code. Your own salvation. Never for others."

Élisa's voice rang in her head, implacable. Maggie wanted to scream, to argue, to defend herself. But her voice was nothing but a thread, and her mind, a wasteland. She stared at the worn canvas above, searching its shapeless patterns for a crack, an escape.

Then, slowly, through the haze of anger and fever, another thought emerged, insidious.

What if Élisa was right?

No, she rebelled inwardly. It was for her. For her alone. To keep from losing her.

But the memory of a fleeting instant during the explosion of her core returned. It wasn't just the image of Élisa dead that had crushed her. It was a mixture. The fear of losing her, yes, visceral. But also… something else. A pure, wild, almost divine exhilaration. The intoxicating sensation of being, for once, greater than everything. Stronger than fate. The intoxication of absolute power, even if it was to be the last.

"As if I was larger than my own body."

She had told Élisa those words with a kind of wonder. Now she heard them as a confession.

Had she really done it all only for Élisa? Or had she seized the noble pretext to grant herself permission to cross the ultimate line, to taste forbidden power even if it consumed her? Was the idea of not being a burden truly selfless—or was it the pride of a warrior who refused to end paralyzed, dependent?

The cold inside her, that black void she had described, seemed to deepen, seized by a new kind of frost. The frost of doubt.

"You've carved a void in yourself… but it's me who has to carry it."

The tears kept flowing, but the rage had fallen away. What remained now was a dull anguish, an abyssal solitude. Élisa was gone. She had left her. Judged her. Condemned her. Maggie was alone with the monster of her sacrifice—a monster that maybe had never been as noble as she believed.

She tried to move a finger, desperately, as if to reach toward the spot where Élisa had sat, to grasp the irretrievable. Nothing. Only a surge of pain reminded her of the limits of her broken flesh.

"So rest. Enjoy your selfishness."

The words dripped into her heart like poison. She closed her eyes, not to sleep, but to escape the shrinking world around her—the suffocating walls of the tent, the four corners of her own guilt and helplessness.

She was alive. But she had lost her core, her strength, her essence. And now, she might have lost the only thing that had made life worth fighting for.

The chaos inside her, which she had never been able to name, took on a new shape. No longer the chaos of destruction, but the chaos of collapse. The collapse of her certainties, her motivations, the image she had of herself.

And in the middle of that chaos, one certainty remained, relentless and terrible:

She was alone. Truly alone. And the void inside her was no longer just the absence of her spiritual core.

It was the absence of Élisa.

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Élisa's POV

The flap of the tent snapped like a slap in the silence of the camp. Élisa walked away, fists clenched, each step a challenge thrown at the earth. Anger was liquid fire in her veins, burning everything in its path, trying to consume the image of Maggie, pale and broken, lying on her mat.

But beneath the anger, colder, more insidious, ran a river of shame.

She stopped dead, a dozen paces from the tent. Her back stiff, her neck tense. She turned her head, just a little, just enough to cast one look back at the dark, motionless shape of the tent. Her heart hammered against her ribs, beating a rhythm of remorse. She had seen the despair in Maggie's eyes. Heard the crack in her own voice, the cruelty of her last words. Broken. She had said they were broken.

A shiver ran through her, despite the heat of the night. She wanted to turn back. To push through the flap, fall to her knees, grab Maggie's clammy hand, and whisper "forgive me." Forgive me for telling the truth? Forgive me for hurting you? She no longer knew.

Her fingers curled tighter, nails biting into her palms. No. No, she wouldn't go back. The words were out. They were true. Every bit of it was true. Maggie's sacrifice had been an act of poisoned love, a burden she hadn't asked for. A gift of flesh and soul torn apart, imposed on her as a chain forever binding them.

She forced herself to keep walking, her steps heavy, nearly stumbling over a root. The camp was a painting of shadows and orange flickers, silent except for the groans of the wounded and the whispers of the watchers. They looked at her as she passed. Some with hope. Others with fear. Like they looked at Tonar, Maggie had whispered.

The thought steeled her. She couldn't afford doubt. Not now. Not after all this. She needed to act. To move. To find a new anchor, far from the suffocating tent and the void it contained.

Her steps led her almost unconsciously to where Zirel was stationed. He was near a dying fire, adjusting the straps of his gear. His sword, long and plain, rested against a rock. He grabbed it by the sheath as she approached. His gaze was calm, watchful, as if he had been waiting for her.

Without preamble, her face hardened by the emotions she was choking down, her voice colder than she felt, Élisa asked the question that had burned her lips since their first meeting.

"What are the advantages of joining your guild?"

Zirel stopped tightening the strap. Slowly, he straightened, turning to her, shadow and firelight playing across his features. A silence stretched, as if he were weighing every spark of determination, every trace of rage and despair in her eyes.

Then, a smile cut across his face. Not a smile of triumph, nor of condescension. A smile of almost cruel lucidity—the smile of one who recognizes a peer, a will equal to his own.

He spun the sword in his hand, still sheathed, with unsettling familiarity.

"For you, Élisa?" he said, his voice low but carrying in the night. "The advantages are such that no other clan or guild could ever give you."

He took a step closer, the smile fading into gravity.

"We won't give you a roof or gold. We'll give you a reason to push beyond yourself. A reason to channel the anger I see burning in your eyes. We'll give you enemies worthy of you, and the means to cut them down. Not for a cause. Not for a master. But for yourself. To make you the sharpest blade, the most feared shadow. The fear you inspire today by accident—we'll teach you to wield it. To master it. To make it a weapon."

He gestured around them—the camp, the forest, the world beyond.

"The advantage is power. Real power. The kind that doesn't ask whether it was right or wrong. The kind that acts, and imposes its will. You crave it. I've seen it. And yes—for you, the advantages will be unique. As long as you're ready to pay the price."

His gaze locked with hers, merciless.

"Are you ready?"

"Yes."

The word leapt from Élisa's lips without hesitation, like a blade unsheathed. No ceremony, no oath. Just that word, sharp and final, hurled between them like a challenge.

And the instant it hung in the night air, something inside her broke—not with pain, but with brutal relief.

It was as if all the weights she bore—Maggie's sacrifice, the survivors' expectations, her doubt, her guilt, her suffocating love—fell away at once. The anger boiling inside her suddenly had an outlet, a direction. She was no longer a living debt, no longer an exhausted caretaker. She was… a recruit. A blade. A tool. The thought was brutally simple. And freeing.

She drew a long breath, and the air felt lighter, as if the night itself had shifted aside.

Zirel studied her a moment longer, his gaze dissecting the sincerity of her vow in every fiber of her being. Then, a brief nod. Barely perceptible. It was done.

A feral smile pulled at his lips.

"Well then," he said, as if it had always been obvious. He slung his sword across his back with a fluid motion. "I'll make my report to my superiors."

His eyes swept across the ruined camp, the groaning wounded, the exhausted shadows on watch. The smile vanished, replaced by raw determination.

"And in the meantime, let's try to get the hell out of this war."

He didn't speak of noble causes or grand strategy. He spoke of survival. Pragmatism. A language Élisa, in that instant, understood perfectly. Act. Move. Escape the trap.

He started walking without another word, expecting her to follow. And she did. Her steps, once heavy with rage and indecision, were now firm.

She cast one last look behind her—not at Maggie's tent, but at the camp she was leaving behind.

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