Chapter 129: Helpless Retreat
I am not, by nature, a brave man. I am many things—clever, insufferable, devastatingly handsome in the right candlelight, occasionally useful in a pinch—but brave? Gods no.
Brave is for lunatics like Salem, who think the word "suicidal charge" is just another way of saying "fun cardio." Brave is for Rodrick, who insists on holding the line even after his jaw has been relocated to somewhere in the vicinity of his collarbone.
Brave is not for me. Which is precisely why, the second the words "King-Class spell" left Salem’s lips, my soul decided to pack its bags, leave a note pinned to my ribs that simply said good luck, and begin hitchhiking to the afterlife.
The effect was immediate. My body did not politely pause to think, "Hmm, Cecil, perhaps we should discuss this," or, "Let’s weigh the pros and cons of moving Rodrick’s soon-to-be corpse off the floor."
No. My body performed a coup against my brain and hurled me forward, Rodrick’s body draped across my arms, in the direction of the nearest viable escape route while my mind screamed something along the lines of we don’t even have an escape plan! Which, frankly, is just how most of my life has been going so far.
Behind me, the sound of Salem’s boots scraping against the broken cobblestones drew closer. He was limping, bleeding, but still very much upright in that way only a man too furious to stay dead could be.
"Cecil!" he barked, staggering up beside me, twin swords still clutched in his hands, his eyes wild with adrenaline. "We need to move—now!"
"Oh, splendid idea, Salem, thank you for clarifying!" I shouted back, hauling Rodrick with all the grace of a drunkard hauling a rug through a market square. "Because my plan was to stand here and politely watch us all be incinerated by the gravitational equivalent of divine judgment! What would I do without your tactical genius?"
"Complain louder!" he snapped, shouldering against me to help shift Rodrick’s weight. "Which you’re doing anyway, so shut up and run!"
I would’ve argued—really, I had a spectacular quip brewing about Salem’s relationship with self-preservation—but I made the mistake of glancing over my shoulder. And that was when I saw it.
The mage was standing again. Slowly, inexorably, his obsidian armor shedding dust and sparks like a god crawling up from the underworld.
His body crackled with violet light, not wounded, not weary, but waking up. As though all of our screaming, bleeding efforts had been nothing more than a mild inconvenience, a warmup before the real performance began.
His eyes locked onto us across the plaza, twin orbs of silent promise.
I screamed. Not aloud—well, actually, possibly aloud, I can never tell at these moments—but certainly inwardly, at volumes that could have shattered glass.
And then I ran harder.
We made it three feet before two more bodies collided with us, nearly toppling me over in a graceless heap.
"Saints above, watch where you’re—oh."
Dunny, pale and panting, one hand clutching at the naked knight’s arm, came staggering into view. The knight himself was a mess of blood, bruises, and entirely unearned enthusiasm, his sword dragging limply behind him like a child’s forgotten toy.
Nara was there too, his cloak torn, his face streaked with soot, eyes darting nervously as he conjured another trembling rabbit that instantly collapsed from sheer exhaustion.
"Don’t stop!" Dunny wheezed, sweat pouring down his face as he half-carried, half-shoved the knight forward. "If we stop, we’ll die!"
"Oh splendid, I was beginning to think this was just my morning jog," I spat back, trying to keep Rodrick from slumping fully unconscious in my arms. "Lovely of you to clarify the stakes, Dunny. Really keeping morale alive."
The knight gave a wet chuckle, blood leaking down his chin. "This... this is the best battle I’ve ever had."
I didn’t bother responding to that.
In fact, I considered letting him collapse right then and there, but the sight of the mage’s hulking figure encouraged me to reconsider. Funny how inevitability makes you charitable.
And so, together, we ran.
That’s when I noticed them—the others competitors.
They weren’t fighting anymore. They weren’t stabbing, clawing, or even snarling. They stood scattered across the plaza, their weapons hanging loose in their hands, eyes wide and hollow.
Every last one of them had gone still, as though the weight of the sigil blooming at our feet had pressed the will to fight right out of them. They knew. We all knew. A King-Class spell was not survival. It was not spectacle. It was the end of everything in reach.
"Move!" I screamed at them, barreling past, shoving one man aside so hard he toppled into the dust. "If you’re going to die, at least have the decency to die elsewhere!"
None of them moved. Not really. They parted like water around me, but their eyes remained locked on the mage, as if transfixed by the horror of watching their own funerals being written in real time.
A few, though—ah, saints bless their empty heads—a few broke from the spell. My little collection of prettied-up disasters, my mini army, stumbled after me like ducklings behind a very panicked, very sarcastic mother goose.
The far end of the plaza loomed. And there stood the Man in White.
He remained untouched, pristine as snowfall, his cloak fluttering in immaculate folds, his hands still tucked in his pockets as if he’d been casually waiting for us to finish our jog of doom.
Beside him stood Fitch, bloody knuckles dripping, grin wiped clean into something approaching grim focus.
"Oh, wonderful, the peanut gallery," I panted as we stumbled up to them. "Tell me, are you enjoying the show from this angle, or would you like me to get you a cushion?"
"Cecil," Salem hissed sharply, shoving against my shoulder before I could unleash the full measure of my sarcasm. "No time."
He was right. Of course he was right. The mage was already moving again, his massive frame slowly cutting toward us. Each step was a tolling bell, a countdown to annihilation.
The Man in White tilted his head slightly, eyes flicking between our battered group and the obsidian titan striding closer. Then he spoke, calm and precise, as though ordering tea. "We fall back to base. Now."
There were a thousand things I wanted to say to him—half of them inventive insults, the other half desperate questions—but I bit them back, teeth grinding. I just nodded. Because this was not the time for cleverness.
We ran again, past the edge of the plaza, toward the looming market-district gates. Hope flickered, foolish and fragile, until I saw it again: the barrier.
That translucent sheet stretched across the archway, faintly rippling like heat haze, sealing us in. My stomach dropped so hard I thought it might punch its way through my boots.
But before I could properly wallow in despair, Salem surged ahead of me.
"Out of the way," he snarled, twin blades vanishing into their sheaths as he lowered his shoulder and charged.
"Salem, you idiot!" I shouted, half expecting him to be incinerated, flayed alive, or transformed into soup. "That barrier will tear you apart!"
Except it didn’t.
He hit it—then simply...passed through. No noise, no resistance, not even a shimmer. One second he was there, the next he was beyond the gate, staggering into the street with his eyes wide in shock.
"What the hell," I croaked.
No time for questions. Dunny shoved me from behind, Rodrick groaning in my arms as we stumbled forward, and then—thank the gods—I passed through too. Like walking through mist. Like nothing at all.
One by one, the rest followed, spilling into the street beyond. I collapsed against the wall, breath tearing from my throat, clutching Rodrick tighter to my chest as the rest gathered around.
And then I looked back.
The mage had stopped. Dead center of the plaza, his form silhouetted against the burning sigil etched into the stone. Slowly, deliberately, he raised one hand toward the sky.
The sigil ignited brighter, lines burning hot, runes flaring like stars.
I turned away immediately, heart hammering. "Nope. Absolutely not. I don’t want to know. We are leaving."
And so we bolted down the street, away from the plaza, away from that terrible light, headed back toward the base.
The sheer act of it was a blur of pain, sweat, and terror, every step dragging me further from the borrowed storm still flickering in my veins.
I could feel it draining—like sand through an hourglass, slipping away no matter how tightly I tried to hold on. That forgiveness, the raw force, the impossible strength—it ebbed, leaving me once again the same sarcastic, fragile idiot I’d always been.
By the time the rooftops of the market blurred past us, my body was trembling, my breath shallow. Salem limped beside me, his eyes darting between me and the path ahead.
"Cecil," he rasped, voice ragged but steady. "What the hell was that? Back there. You—your arms, your body—you shouldn’t have been able to do that."
I swallowed, my throat raw, words sticking like thorns. "I... don’t entirely know."
"Don’t know?" He barked a humorless laugh. "You shattered a King-Class mage’s blade with your barehand, Cecil."
"I don’t know" I remarked, shaking my head. "I don’t, Salem. I prayed. And something answered. Something, someone... forgave me."
He gave me a look that could have withered stone. "Forgave you?"
"Yes, I know how it sounds," I said, because saints forbid I ever be taken seriously. "But I swear—I don’t understand it either."
Rodrick groaned in my arms then, his face swollen and twitching as he muttered something beneath his breath. I leaned closer, struggling to catch the words.
"...knew you’d... find a way."
I blinked, my lips curling upward despite myself. Of course he’d say that. Even half-dead, he still believed in me more than I did. Saints bless his broken, idiotic heart.
But as we stumbled down those ruined streets, as the glow of the plaza dimmed behind us, I couldn’t shake the feeling gnawing at the edges of my mind.
The feeling that something was wrong.
The barricade came into view at last, a jagged wall of scavenged timber and bent steel. Behind it, carved straight into the ribs of the mountain, sat the library—our base, our shelter, the one place where we’d pretended survival was possible.
To the others, it was salvation. To me, it was a mirage, and my gut twisted harder the closer we came.
Around me, I heard the noises of exhausted relief. Salem’s breath came out in harsh, rattling gusts, the kind of exhale you make after holding up a collapsing roof all by yourself.
Dunny let out a babble of thanks to saints I was pretty sure he’d just been cursing ten minutes earlier. Even Fitch, pale, bloodied, and somehow clinging to his smirk again, let the edges of that grin twitch wider, as if the sight of planks nailed together was enough to restore his smug faith in the universe.
But me? I slowed.
It wasn’t intentional at first. A falter, a hesitation, a stone catching my boot. But then the thought crept in like a worm finding a crack in the wood, and once it was there, it spread, and suddenly my feet were too heavy to lift.
My body betrayed me, pulling me to a stop in the middle of the street.
Rodrick groaned in my arms as I staggered under his weight. His blood seeped down my sleeve, warm, sticky, a reminder that my hands were full of someone else’s life, that I couldn’t afford hesitation. And yet I froze anyway.
The others noticed instantly.
They all turned as one, like I’d just dropped trousers and declared I intended to sunbathe in the middle of the sun. Their eyes were wide, frightened, expectant. And of course, I had no idea how to explain that the one thing worse than running straight into a King-Class spell was the gnawing certainty that we’d just walked right into a trap.
"Cecil?" Nara’s ears flicked nervously, his voice pitched high with worry. His little dagger flashed pale in the dark as he adjusted his grip. "Why are you stopping? The barricade’s right there—we’re almost back to safety."
My tongue felt like sand, but I forced the words out anyway, low and hoarse. "No, we’re heading in the wrong direction."
A silence spread over them, thick and ugly, as though I’d just announced the barricade was actually an illusion painted by a drunken child.
Nara blinked. "What are you talking about? That’s the base! Look—it’s right there!"
I shook my head, slow and deliberate, my chest tight as the dread finally crystallized. "No. Think about it. The barrier back there—didn’t it strike you as strange? We braced for it to rip us apart, to disintegrate us, to turn us into paste—and instead, nothing happened. Not even a hint of resistance. We passed through like it wasn’t there at all."
Still blank stares, except for Dunny, whose mouth was already beginning to twitch in horror.
I pressed harder, my voice sharpening. "What if that was the point? What if it wasn’t meant to trap us inside the plaza at all? What if it was meant to funnel us out of it?"
The words struck like a hammer blow.
Dunny collapsed almost instantly, knees slamming into the cobblestones, his wand clattering from his trembling fingers.
He began pounding his forehead against the ground, over and over, muttering curses, tears streaking the grime on his cheeks. "Stupid. Stupid. Stupid! I should have seen it, I should have seen it—"
Salem growled, taking a step forward despite the blood matting his face. "Dunny?"
The boy’s voice cracked. His eyes were wide, feverish. "I’ve read about it—once, years ago, in archives I never should have had access to. High-level barriers meant to be one-way veils." He slammed his palms against the stones again, his voice breaking. "Saints damn me, I should have known!"
My stomach twisted into knots. The realization crawled cold through my veins.
Salem spat blood to the side, his eyes narrowing. "Then what’s the point? Why drive us out here in the first place? What’s the purpose of the barrier?"
That was when the Man in White laughed.
Not a warm laugh. Not even cruel. It was soft, sharp, almost delighted, the sound of a man who’d just been handed the punchline to a joke no one else understood.
We turned, all of us, to see him standing at the edge of the group, his white coat immaculate, his hood tilted toward us with that maddening calm.
"To protect the mage," he said simply, his tone conversational, as though he were explaining the weather. "To protect him from whatever comes next."
The air dropped several degrees around me. My skin prickled.
"Protect him... from what?" Nara began to ask.
Before anybody could say anything more, Dunny let out a high, strangled yelp. His hand shot upward, his whole arm trembling like it was caught in an unseen current. "The sky—look at the sky!"
And gods help me, I did.
At first, my brain refused to process it. Just a streak of light, far away, threading across the coming night.
But no—it was bigger. Closer. Too fast. A blazing trail, like the heavens had been torn open and something was plummeting through, dragging fire behind its mass.
The stars bent around it, distorted by its passage, as though the very air was being peeled apart in protest.
Oh gods, we’ve really fucked up, haven’t we?