(Yuuta's POV)
The footsteps grew closer.
Not the delicate patter of rain on leaves. Not the tentative scrape of hooves against stone. These were deliberate. Heavy. The kind of footsteps that belonged to something that had already decided its course and would not be swayed by anything as trivial as circumstance.
I lay frozen in the mud, my broken leg throbbing in rhythm with my heartbeat, and listened to my death approach.
This has to be a monster, I thought. A real one. Not a reindeer playing tricks in the fog. Not my imagination conjuring shapes from shadow. Something from the legends, something that has been eating lost travelers on this mountain for centuries.
I was going to die.
Not with a sword in my hand or a clever quip on my lips. Just me, alone, bleeding into the earth, about to become a footnote in someone else's cautionary tale.
Please, I prayed to no god in particular. Anyone. I'll be good. I'll stop leaving my socks on the floor. I'll stop using Erza's expensive shampoo. I'll—
"Yuuta."
The voice cut through the rain like a blade through silk.
I knew that voice.
I had heard it scold me a thousand times. Had heard it whisper to me in the dark. Had heard it laugh, rarely, beautifully, on the few occasions I managed to say something genuinely clever.
My heart, which had been hammering with fear, now stuttered with something else entirely.
Relief.
I turned my head slowly, mud squelching beneath my cheek, and looked up.
She stood on the cliff above me, a silhouette against the gray sky, her silver hair plastered to her face by the rain, her posture rigid with something I couldn't quite read. The wind tugged at her clothes, but she didn't move. She simply stood there, looking down at me, and for a moment, the storm itself seemed to hold its breath.
"Erza," I said.
My voice came out smaller than I wanted. Trembling. The word cracked in the middle like a piece of old pottery, and I hated myself for it.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
She didn't know. From up there, I probably just looked like an idiot taking a nap in the mud. She couldn't see the blood. Couldn't see the way my leg bent at an angle that made my stomach turn every time I looked at it.
"Erza, help," I called out. "Pull me out. I can't move."
She tilted her head, a small, curious gesture that was so her it made my chest ache, and then, without a moment's hesitation, she jumped.
I watched in horror as she launched herself off the cliff, her body cutting through the rain like an arrow. Any normal human would have shattered their legs on the rocks below. Would have impaled themselves on the sharp stones that jutted from the slope like teeth. Would have died instantly, painlessly, before they even understood what had happened.
But Erza was not normal.
She landed perfectly, feet first, knees bent, arms out for balance. The mud splashed up around her in a dark wave, and she wobbled once, just once, before catching herself with a grace that seemed almost casual.
She straightened slowly, brushed a strand of wet hair from her face, and looked at me.
"You mortal," she said.
"Well," I replied, "I didn't tell you to jump."
She sighed. That familiar sigh. The one she had been sighing since the day we met, the one that said I have bound myself to an idiot, and I have made peace with this truth.
She walked toward me slowly, her boots sinking into the mud with each step. Her expression was unreadable, a carefully constructed mask that I had learned, over years of marriage, to see through.
She had been searching for a while. I could tell.
The way her shoulders sagged, just slightly, beneath the weight of relief she wouldn't admit to feeling. The way her breath came a little too fast, a little too uneven, as though she had been running. The way her eyes, those silver eyes that saw everything, kept scanning the trees behind me, making sure nothing else was out there.
She stopped a few feet away and looked down at me.
Then her gaze traveled downward.
To my leg.
Her expression shifted so quickly that I almost missed it. One moment, she was annoyed, fondly annoyed, the way she always was with me. The next moment, something else flickered across her face.
Something I had never seen before.
Fear.
Not the controlled, calculated fear of a warrior assessing odds. Not the sharp, momentary fear of danger.
This was visceral. Primal. The fear of someone who had just realized that the world could take something from her, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
"What is that?" she said, pointing.
I looked down at my leg. The angle was still wrong. The blood was still there, diluted by rain but still unmistakably red, still unmistakably mine. The bone pressed against the skin from the inside, creating a contour that made my stomach lurch.
"It's just broken," I said.
I smiled.
"Erza, don't worry about it."
She ran.
The mask shattered. The composure crumbled. She dropped to her knees in the mud beside me, heedless of the cold, heedless of the filth, and her hands hovered over my leg like she was afraid to touch it.
"How can you be smiling right now?" she demanded.
Her voice was high. Tight. The voice of someone holding back a scream.
"Oh god," she breathed. "Oh god. It's broken."
She touched it, gently, so gently, her fingers barely brushing the skin, and her face went pale. The color drained from her cheeks like water from a cracked vessel, leaving her looking younger than I had ever seen her. More fragile.
More human.
"We have to hurry," she said. "We have to, where's your shirt?"
"I don't know. It fell off when I was sliding."
She spotted it a few feet away, hooked on a gnarled root that jutted from the slope like a crooked finger. She scrambled over, snatched it from the branch, and returned to my side in seconds.
Her hands moved with desperate efficiency, folding the fabric, pressing it against the wound, tying a knot so tight that I felt the pressure even through the haze of pain.
"We have to hurry," she said again, and her voice cracked on the last word.
I had never seen her panic like this.
Not once.
In all the years I had known her, through battles and arguments, through quiet mornings and stormy nights, I had never seen Erza panic. She was the calm one. The steady one. The one who held everything together while everyone else fell apart.
But here, kneeling in the mud with my blood on her hands, she was terrified.
And it broke my heart.
"Don't worry," I said softly. "I'm okay. Remember? I can heal myself."
Her head snapped up.
Her eyes, those silver eyes that had seen centuries pass, that had watched empires rise and fall, were bright with unshed tears.
"Are you stupid?" she whispered.
The word hung in the air between us, heavy with something that wasn't anger.
"How can you think I wouldn't panic?" Her voice rose, cracking at the edges. "I'm your wife, you idiot!"
The rain fell around us, indifferent to human drama.
"You and me—" She pressed a hand to her chest, then reached out and pressed the other against mine. "—one body. One soul. And you're torturing me like this. Lying in the mud with your leg broken, smiling at me like it's nothing, while I, while I—"
She couldn't finish the sentence.
The tears spilled over.
"I'm sorry," I said.
The words came out before I could stop them. No deflection. No joke to lighten the mood. Just the truth, raw and unguarded, laid out between us like an offering.
"I'm sorry, Erza."
She stared at me for a long moment. The rain traced paths down her cheeks, mingling with tears she would never admit to shedding. Her lips parted, closed, parted again.
Then she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, fiercely, like she was angry at them for betraying her, and stood up.
"Fine," she said, her voice steadier now. Forced into calmness through sheer will. "We're leaving."
She bent down and lifted me in her arms like I weighed nothing. My head fell against her shoulder, and despite everything, the pain, the cold, the terror that still lingered at the edges of my consciousness, I felt safe.
She looked up at the sky. Late evening now. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, as though the storm itself was losing interest in my suffering.
She closed her eyes.
I felt her concentrate, felt the familiar tingle of her magic stirring in the air around us. It was like the static before a lightning strike, the tension before a chord resolves.
She reached for her wings.
And found nothing.
Her eyes snapped open.
"Huh?" she said.
"What happened?"
She tried again. I felt her magic surge, felt it push against something invisible, something blocking it.
Her back tensed. Her jaw tightened.
"I can't take out my wings," she said quietly.
The words settled between us like stones dropped into deep water.
"What? You're serious?"
"Yes." Her voice was clipped now. Taut. The voice of someone who had just discovered a fatal flaw in their plan and was already calculating alternatives. "I'm serious. I can't. I've tried everything."
I stared at her.
The rain dripped off her nose.
And then, slowly, horribly, I remembered.
Before the race. The condition I had made her agree to. The one she had accepted with a roll of her eyes and a muttered complaint about mortal fragility.
"No wings," I had said. "It's not fair to the others."
"Fine," she had replied. "But you owe me."
"I always owe you."
"Yes. You do."
I had made her use Zani to block her wings.
I had done this.
"Oh no," I whispered.
"What?" she demanded.
"I'm sorry." The words tasted like ash in my mouth. "This is my fault. Erza, I—"
"What are you talking about?" Her brow furrowed, confusion cutting through the fear. "Can't you see we're in—"
She stopped.
Her eyes widened.
I watched the realization hit her, watched it travel across her face like a shadow moving over the land. First confusion, then disbelief, then a dawning horror that was almost comical in its intensity.
Her head turned toward me.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Like a predator who had just identified its prey.
"You idiot," she said.
Her voice was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that precedes an explosion.
"You mortal idiot."
I swallowed.
"You only know how to cause problems," she continued, each word enunciated with painful clarity. "You, lying in the mud, bleeding, broken, and you thought it would be funny to block my wings?"
"Technically," I said, because I had never learned when to keep my mouth shut, "you agreed to it."
The look she gave me could have curdled milk.
"I hate you."
"No, you don't."
"I really hate you right now."
"We should probably find a way down the mountain before something eats us."
She glared at me. Her silver eyes burned with a fury that was almost beautiful in its intensity. Her arms tightened around me, whether to keep me from falling or to keep herself from dropping me, I couldn't tell.
"I'm going to kill you myself when we get home," she said.
"At least wait until my leg heals?"
She didn't answer.
She just started walking.
The mud sucked at her boots with each step, trying to pull her back, trying to keep us both on this mountain. But Erza pushed forward, her jaw set, her eyes fixed on some point in the distance that I couldn't see.
Behind us, somewhere in the forest, something growled.
Not a reindeer this time.
Not my imagination.
Something real.
Something that had been watching.
And it was hungry.
I pressed my face against Erza's shoulder and closed my eyes.
To be continued.