『 🜁 』━━━⋆✶⋆━━━『 ⚶ 』
Fardin-day
The morning of Fardin came not as the beginning of a new day, but as a continuation of yesterday's endless night. The air in the room was still and heavy, saturated with the smell of cooled fear. As soon as we had completed the morning rituals, which now seemed meaningless and mechanical, Catherine broke the silence. She did not just bring up the topic of yesterday's incident—she voiced what had been hanging between us like an invisible weight.
"Arta, we need to go see Lilian," her voice was quiet, but it held the hardness of steel tempered in tears. Her gaze was serious, without a single shadow of yesterday's bewilderment. In it was not a request, but a statement of necessity, dictated by her inner turmoil. "I won't be able to go about my business peacefully, knowing that she's there alone… after all this…"
I noted how her own, lived-through pain resonated with another's, creating a complex pattern of empathy. Yesterday's incident had become for her not just a memory, but a tool of understanding. A visit to the hospital was not in my direct plans for the day, but a refusal of such a "trip" would be perceived by her as a deviation from my standard image of a friend involved in her affairs.
"Alright, Catherine," I replied. "After breakfast, we will visit the hospital."
Her shoulders visibly relaxed, and a semblance of relief appeared on her face.
"Thank you, Arta."
The rest of breakfast passed in a tense and silent atmosphere, after which we hurried to go to Lilian.
The academic hospital met us with a sterile, almost ringing silence that seemed only to emphasize the scale of the catastrophe that had occurred. The air was heavy, saturated with the sharp smell of antiseptic herbs, which clung to the fabric of our clothes and seemed to settle on the tongue with a bitter aftertaste. Every step on the cold stone slabs echoed in the deserted corridors, disturbing this lifeless calm.
Lilian Grace lay on a narrow cot in a private room. Her face, pale and drawn, was partially hidden by a fresh bandage covering her left eye socket. Beside her, on a low wooden chair, sat one of the nurses on duty—a middle-aged woman in a simple gray dress. Her movements were measured and professional as she checked the IV with a stabilizing potion, and the quiet creak of her chair on the stone floor was the only sound in this room.
Catherine entered the room first. I remained at the doorway, taking in the situation. Her shoulders were tense, her hands clenched into fists. She went to Lilian's bed, and her gaze was full of a mixture of sympathy and something else—perhaps a reflection of her own experiences, projected onto another's pain.
"Lilian…" Catherine's voice was quiet, almost a whisper, as if she were afraid to disturb the fragile equilibrium of this place. "How are you?"
Lilian slowly turned her head. Her one healthy eye, brown and now filled with tears, focused on Catherine. Her lips trembled. "I… I don't know…" she whispered. "Everything… so fast… I didn't mean to…"
"Hush," Catherine gently touched her hand. "You must not worry now. The main thing is that you are alive."
"Alive…" Lilian smiled bitterly, and a tear rolled down her cheek. "But at what cost? I… I'm a monster now… I'll never be able to…"
These words—"monster," "never be able to"—worked like a precise, calibrated blow. I registered for myself the moment when Catherine's body trembled almost imperceptibly, and her gaze unfocused for a fraction of a second. Her current state was instantly erased, throwing her consciousness back ten years, into the deafening silence of her own hospital room, which smelled of the same hopelessness. She remembered this feeling—the sticky, all-consuming ugliness that she saw in every mirror.
"Don't say that!" Catherine's voice gained an unexpected firmness. She straightened up, her gaze becoming more focused. "Listen to me, Lilian. Losing an eye is terrible, I won't deny that. But it is not the end. It does not make you… incomplete." She paused, her hand instinctively touching her own prosthesis under her clothes. "Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. My brother, Heinrich… he specializes in such injuries, in the consequences of magical accidents. He will help. And I will help. And Arta…" she cast a quick, almost pleading glance at me, "…Arta saved you. She did not let the worst happen."
I noted this glance. Catherine was looking to me not just for support—she was looking for confirmation of her own belief that there is a way out even from such a situation. Her emotions were on the verge of collapse, but she held them back, transforming them into words of comfort for Lilian. It was an interesting dynamic: her own trauma, her own path to self-acceptance, now became a tool to help another. And my action, dictated solely by logic, was colored in her perception in heroic tones.
Lilian sobbed, her shoulders trembling. "But… I'll never be able to cast spells like before… I… I'm afraid… Arta was right…"
"You will," Catherine said confidently. "Perhaps not in the same way as before. Perhaps differently. But you will. The main thing is not to give up. And not to let fear control you. You are strong, Lilian. Much stronger than you think."
I just commented dryly, so as not to lead them both into even more delusion, "Lilian, give up either chaos or order magic. This is not the last incident that could happen if you continue to combine them."
The nurse, who had been silently observing the scene until now, delicately cleared her throat.
"Excuse me, ladies, but the patient really needs rest. Emotional stress is not advisable right now. Please do not disturb her for the next couple of days without urgent need."
Catherine nodded, her face expressing deep sympathy. She squeezed Lilian's hand once more. "We will come back later, alright? Rest. And remember that you are not alone."
Lilian nodded weakly, her gaze still full of tears, but in it, a tiny spark of hope had appeared.
We left the room. Catherine walked silently beside me for some time down the hospital corridor, her shoulders slumped, her gaze fixed on the floor. I did not break her silence, giving her the opportunity to process what she had seen.
As soon as we left the hospital, she stopped.
"Do you know what the worst part is, Arta?" she said quietly, without raising her head. "Lilian will be left with this injury forever. With this emptiness where her eye was. And Leticia… she'll just get off with a fright and maybe a couple of weeks of extra etiquette classes. Sometimes it seems to me that there is no justice in this world."
"Justice is not a given, Catherine. It is a privilege of the strong," I said in an even, colorless tone. "Leticia will escape the consequences not because the world is unjust, but because her chaotic impulse collided with Lilian's weakness. Power always dictates the consequences. That is why control is the only thing that matters."
My words did not bring her comfort. They only confirmed the cruel truth from which she was trying to escape. She slowly looked up at me, and in her eyes were no longer tears—only a cold, desperate hope that there exists a power capable of breaking these rules.
"Arta…" she began quietly, her voice full of not a demand, but a timid, desperate hope. "After what you did… that magic… Is there anything you can do for her eye? Any possibility at all?"
Her voice held an almost childlike certainty that nothing was impossible for me. She looked at me, expecting a miracle.
I looked at her seriously, knowing that I was about to shatter this faith. It was necessary.
"I stopped an uncontrolled release of energy, Catherine. That is not the same as regenerating complex biological tissues. My abilities, like any others, have their limits."
The hope in her eyes slowly faded, replaced by bewilderment and deep disappointment. She did not step back, did not create a distance. She just froze, and the tears that she had been holding back all day—for Lilian, for her broken life, for the cruelty of this world—finally streamed from her eyes. She was crying not because of me, but because of her powerlessness in the face of the fact.
Her grief was irrational. She was mourning an eye, not understanding that a whole life had been saved. I could have healed Lilian. One impulse, one mental command—and the tissues would have regenerated. But I did not have the right. The creation of a technology that does not exist in this world would have left a trace that everyone would have noticed. It was simple, cruel mathematics: the life of one pawn against the entire chessboard. I had made the only correct choice. But seeing her quiet tears, I was faced with an unsolvable systemic contradiction. My logically correct action had led to the suffering of a key variable, giving rise to that very "itch"—a persistent feeling of a fundamental "wrongness" that I could neither ignore nor correct.
I took a step toward her.
"Catherine, tears will not help here. The loss of an eye is a serious injury, but one can live with it, with almost no loss of functionality."
She slowly wiped her tears with the back of her hand and looked up at me. In her eyes was no longer despair, only a quiet, serious thoughtfulness.
"I understand…" she said, and her voice was firm. "I just… I saw your power and thought that nothing was impossible for you. And when you spoke of limits… I did not understand. It was so… wrong."
She stepped toward me and gently embraced me. It was not a desperate hug, but a quiet, grateful touch, full of a new understanding.
"You still intervened," she whispered into my shoulder. "You risked yourself for her, although you could have just walked by. Even if there are things you cannot do… you still do what you can. That is what I meant, Arta. You… you are very brave."
I said nothing, just looked into the distance at the overcast sky and the academy buildings, waiting for her to release me from her embrace.
『 🜁 』━━━⋆✶⋆━━━『 ⚶ 』
The evening of Fardin fell quickly on the academy, bringing with it a cold and a silence broken only by the rare crunch of snow under the feet of late-night students. Catherine and I returned to our room. The weight of the past day was felt almost physically. I noted that Catherine's emotional state was still unstable, although externally she tried to maintain her composure.
She sat silently on her bed for a long time, picking at the edges of the blanket, her gaze fixed on one point on the wall. I did not disturb her internal thought process, continuing with my usual evening activities, feigning to read useless books and analyzing issues that went far beyond this world.
Finally, she looked up at me. Her eyes were still filled with tears, but mixed with them was a new, complex emotion—a mixture of admiration, bewilderment, and something else that I could not yet accurately classify.
"Arta…" she began quietly, her voice slightly hoarse. "What you did today… for Lilian… and for Leticia… It was…" she faltered, searching for words. "I have never seen anything like it. Such power… and such precision."
I continued to sit at my desk, allowing my gaze to rest on Catherine.
"It was a necessary sequence of actions. I could not watch as Chaos brought such destruction," I said, my voice even. "An emotional assessment here, I believe, is superfluous."
Catherine slowly shook her head.
"No, Arta. It was not just… an action. You saved them. Risking yourself. I saw how you… how you were on the edge."
Her interpretation was too emotional; she was operating with human categories of risk and self-sacrifice in assessing my actions. However, my actions were dictated solely by the results of calculations and an assessment of probabilities, which showed a minimal risk on my part.
"Risk is a variable that can and should be controlled," I replied. "I understood that I could handle this task, and I did."
She stood up and approached me, stopping at arm's length. Her gaze was fixed on my face. "But you could have… you could have been too late. Or something could have gone wrong. you do understand that, don't you?"
"There is always a probability of deviation from the predicted trajectory," I agreed. "However, I can assure you that I was confident in my actions."
Catherine took another small step, closing the distance. I felt a barely perceptible change in her aura—an excitement mixed with other, equally bright emotions that seemed to have been seeping from her for the second day.
"Arta…" her voice became even quieter, almost intimate. "I… I just wanted to say… that I don't want… I don't want you to die." She paused. "And I sincerely admire you. I don't know… how you manage to surprise me more and more each time, but… every time I see your determination, it seems to me that something inside me changes, becomes stronger." She took a deep breath.
Her sincerity was a predictable but dangerous vector. She was looking for a human response in me that I could not give her. Any imitation of an emotional reaction would have been a lie to her. Any silence—a confirmation of her fears.
I held a long pause, looking her directly in the eye, allowing the silence to stretch to its limit. My voice, when I finally spoke, was even and devoid of any warmth.
"You are fixated on the price, Catherine," I said, and my tone was not comforting but didactic, as if I were explaining the last, most important lesson of the day to her. "Her eye, your fear, my risk. It is all—a price. But you do not see what the alternative was."
I paused, letting the words sink in.
"The alternative was her death. It was chaos, allowed to win. It was defeat. And the price we paid is insignificant compared to the price of defeat. This is the most important lesson you must learn."
I paused, letting the words sink in.
"Do not admire me. Admire the result. Do not fear me. Fear the chaos that demands such sacrifices. And the fact that you do not know what to do with your feelings…" I tilted my head slightly. "That means the lesson has not yet been learned."
On her face flashed not disappointment, but something deeper—a mixture of shock and an almost painful epiphany. She had been expecting a revelation, and instead, she received an icy scalpel of analysis that dissected her soul. She slowly, almost unconsciously, nodded.
"I… I understand," she whispered and took a step back, as if restoring a safe distance. "Good night, Arta."
"Good night, Catherine. We rise at five in the morning tomorrow. Be ready."
She silently went to her bed. Only when she sat on it did she ask another short, almost businesslike question.
"We will not discuss this with Nova and Ren. It will spoil the trip."
It was not a question, but a statement. She was already learning the lesson—control over information.
"A correct decision, Catherine," I replied and, rising from my chair, went to the window. The overcast sky created an almost primordial gloom behind the glass, broken only by the rare, oily lights of the lanterns. They seemed like lonely points of order in a formless, all-consuming darkness. I looked at them, and my mind, free from the need to maintain a mask, processed the day's events with a cold, absolute precision.
Catherine is right. The events of today will leave an imprint on her heart. The trauma will leave a scar on Lilian's soul. But neither of them knows the true price and the true scale of what happened. They do not understand that today I intervened not just in a conflict between two students.
I intervened in the very fabric of predestination. In the algorithm of this world.
Because in all previous cycles, in every iteration of this reality known to me, Lilian Grace had always died from a failure in her own magic. Her instability, the mixing of Order and Chaos, had always led to the same result—self-destruction. Her death was a constant. A predictable variable that triggered a chain of other events.
But not this time.
Perhaps because of Catherine, whose own maimed but unyielding structure had become an anomaly affecting my perception. Perhaps it was just an experiment—to see what would happen if one of the doomed pawns were removed from the board and a new, unexpected variable were introduced into the system.
The result is recorded. A line of fate that had always been cut short was forcibly extended today. At the cost of an eye, but not a life.
This was not the end of the path, but its beginning. The beginning of a new, unpredictable cycle. One that has now begun.