19. Rest for the Wicked

Kael flipped through the Codex.

It pulsed once in his hand, reacting to the last person who’d touched it. Her. The glyphs on the cover flared a faint silver before unraveling in front of him, page after page shifting without his command. For a second, he thought the damn thing was going to burn him.

Then her name appeared.

Elowen Aurelia.

Crow.

His eyes scanned the data. Once. Then again.

“The stars do not forget their own.”

> CLASS: Eclipsed Sentinel. SUBCLASS: Twilight Alchemist.

> Level 7. Attribute anomaly detected. Source: celestial interference + prolonged exposure to unknown relic magic.

Kael froze.

“What the hell is this…” he muttered, flipping to her attributes. Her Willpower was ranked S. S.

Her HP was lower than it should be.

Her MP… a fraction of its capacity.

> Status: Mana channel fatigue detected. Threads unstable. Full recovery advised.

He stared at that line for too long.

He’s seen her just collapse at her door sometimes, sleeping in random places, once he found her in a tree, and what he yelled up to her, she acted like he stabbed her with a hot poker.

And he’d thought—what? That she was skipping meals and sleep to be difficult? To mess around with alchemy like a goddamn hobbyist?

No. No, she was tearing herself apart from the inside, then trying to put herself back together.

The Signature Skills section didn’t help. Neither did the fact that she could apparently teleport through the void. She had something called Alchemical Scarweave enchantment on her Codex that left semi-permanent alchemical filaments in her hands and veins. Another called Corrupted Intake. She’d eaten corrupted monster flesh. Why the fuck would anyone do that?

His heart thudded heavier the deeper he read.

Until he hit the Titles.

> Ruinborne.

> Marked by the Maw.

> Starved for Clarity.

> Disciple of the Burning Thread.

> Ash-Streaked Prodigy.

His hands clenched around the Codex. She’d slept in ruins for 31 days. She’d trained past safe thresholds. Blown herself up over two hundred times. Starved herself just to thread mana better.

“What the fuck,” he breathed.

He tried to tap into the Alchemy tab—wanted to see what the hell she’d been making while tearing herself open.

The screen glitched. Then rejected outright.

Kael clenched his jaw.

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“Fine. Fuck you too, Codex.”

His voice came out hoarse. He wasn’t sure if it was from anger or from guilt.

She was an idiot.

A fucking idiot.

But this wasn’t quirky. This wasn’t her being some edgy, alchemical, reclusive freak.

This was a girl trying to survive something no one had trained her for—something no one else could even see. And doing it alone.

He shoved the Codex in a pocket and stormed out of the hallway, making a beeline for one person who’d know more than he did.

Rowan.

If anyone could tell him what the hell “Celestial Bastion” meant…

Why she looked like she was dying when she sat down…

Why she nothing about going into the labyrinth later—

It was him.

Kael didn’t knock when he found him.

He just shoved the Codex into Rowan’s chest and snapped, “Tell me what the hell she’s been doing to herself.”

He opened the Codex slowly, fingers tracing the fractured glyphs, like he already knew what he was about to see. The grimace told Kael that it was just as bad as he thought.

His chest twisted.

“I appraised her earlier,” Rowan said softly, thumbing through the device, “Talked about it with her. But this is not what I was expecting at all.”

“What did she tell you?” Kael growled.

“She doesn’t sleep because she has nightmares, or dreams that feel like warnings, not just dreams,”

His jaw set. She didn’t even talk to him outside of training so he had no idea why he felt so bad. He thought she just needed space.

“She hears everything,” Rowan continued. His voice was low, careful. Too careful. Like he was repeating something precious. “Every sound startles her awake. She said—she said it’s like her nerves don’t know how to rest.”

Rowan looked away. “…She said she’d rather die than be a burden.”

Kael’s hands curled into fists.

Tight.

Silent.

He knew he had put that thought in her head when he blew up that night.

“Then feel like one,” Rowan added. “That it’s ‘all she’s ever been.’ That if she just worked harder, maybe she could stop feeling that way.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

The Codex flickered again. Kael glared at it.

“What about the alchemy tab? Did you see what she’s been building?”

Rowan grimaced and tapped it. “She said she’s unlocked most of her base skills, then showed me something like I’ve never seen. She has sigils stored in her arm.”

The screen glitched.

Then rejected him, too.

He stared at the “ACCESS DENIED” glyph flashing red and silver.

“She must not want anyone to see it.” Rowan said softly, “I think it’s something to do with why she’s gotten this title, the ‘Ash Streaked Prodigy’. It takes a long time to do experiments, two hundred in what? Four months? That’s. A lot.”

Kael turned away sharply, pacing once across the room, trying to burn off the fury building in his ribs. “She’s got this… death wish, or something. All those enchantments, the threads, the meat—why would she eat that?”

Rowan didn’t look at him. “She told us. Months ago.”

Kael froze.

Rowan’s voice dropped, softer now. “During her Unveiling. She got trapped in those ruins for over a month. No help. No way out. She purified the monster meat with alchemy. It was the only thing she had.”

Kael’s mouth opened. Closed.

He remembered her saying it, now. When Duskbane told them all they were going to be training.

“She survived,” Rowan said. “Not because she didn’t want to die. Because she refused to.”

Kael ran both hands through his hair and let out a sound that was somewhere between a growl and a sigh. He finally sat, staring at the floor as if it would give him all the answers if it glared long enough.

Rowan watched him for a long moment, then added, “She thinks she’s a monster.”

That finally got Kael to look up. Wide-eyed. Speechless.

“She said it. Just like that. Not cursed, not broken. A monster.”

The room fell silent, thick with the weight of it all.

For the first time in a long while, Kael Ignis didn’t know what to say.