Elizabeth did not ask Auther how he felt when she stood across from him in the quiet chamber lined with sigils and cold stone, she simply raised her hand and told him to pull mana the way she did, slow and deliberate, not forcing it outward but letting it rise like breath, and the moment he obeyed he felt it, the vastness coiled inside him responding eagerly, flooding toward his core so fast it made his vision blur.
He staggered.
Not from lack, never from lack, but from too much.
Elizabeth caught nothing, offered nothing, only watched as the air around him trembled and the first fireball bloomed into existence with frightening ease, followed by a second and a third so quickly it almost felt natural, like this was what his body had been waiting to do all along, until the fourth came out ragged and the fifth tore free wrong, collapsing mid-air with a hiss that left his chest burning and his limbs shaking as if something inside him had been scraped raw.
He dropped to one knee, breath shallow, fingers trembling.
Elizabeth lowered her hand.
"You have more mana than you should," she said flatly, as if discussing the weather, as if this were not the thing he had feared and hoped for in equal measure. "But your body cannot carry it."
Auther looked up, sweat cooling on his skin, hope already tightening into something brittle. "So I train harder."
"No," she replied, unkind but not cruel. "You wait."
The word hit harder than any blow.
She stepped closer, close enough that he could feel the pressure of her presence, the density of her mana held perfectly in check, and she gestured to his chest as if she could see straight through flesh and bone. "Your mana veins are thin. Not damaged. Not blocked. Simply immature. You are trying to pour an ocean through channels meant for a raindrop."
"How long," he asked, already knowing the answer would hurt.
"Millenia" Elizabeth said. "If you are careful. Less if you are reckless. Or you die."
There was no warning in her voice, no softness, only certainty, and Auther felt something ugly twist in his stomach as the truth settled in, because strength was not something he could seize or steal or force into being, not this time, not without breaking himself in the process.
He left the chamber restless and tight with thoughts he couldn't slow down, the memory of the needle in his neck flashing unbidden through his mind, the way death had arrived smiling and quiet and ordinary, and the idea of waiting, of trusting time, felt unbearable in a way he couldn't explain.
There had to be another way.
There was always another way.
By the time he reached the alchemy wing his thoughts had narrowed into something sharp and focused, the way they always did when fear dressed itself up as logic, because if his veins were too thin then they needed to be reinforced, expanded, supported, and if magic obeyed rules then rules could be bent, measured, compensated for, and Lana would understand that, Lana would see the problem for what it was instead of what it looked like.
But Lana wasn't there.
Her station was empty, her tools gone, her presence replaced by a hollow stillness that made his chest tighten as unease crept in, slow and insistent, and the answers he got from the others were vague and careful and wrong in all the ways that mattered.
Gone.
Dismissed.
No longer under Gold.
Auther felt the worry hit him full force then, sharp and immediate, because he trusted very few people and fewer still with something that could kill him if miscalculated, and the thought of handing his life over to an alchemist who saw only his title made his skin crawl.
He didn't notice Viola at first, not until she spoke his name and he realized she'd been watching him pace like a caged animal, arms crossed, expression tight in a way that told him she already knew something was wrong.
He explained, too quickly, words tumbling over each other as he talked about mana veins and limits and waiting and how unbearable that felt, and when she suggested patience, suggested time, suggested that he grow into his strength the way everyone else did, something in him snapped before he could stop it.
"You wouldn't understand," he said, frustration leaking into his voice, "you've never been weak."
The silence that followed was instant and absolute.
Viola stared at him, disbelief flashing first, then something colder and deeper, and without raising her voice she told him she would find his friend herself, turned on her heel, and walked out before he could apologize or take the words back or explain that he hadn't meant them the way they sounded.
The door slammed.
Auther stood there staring at the empty space she'd left behind, anger already draining into regret, because he knew better than that, knew strength came with its own cages, knew he'd spoken from fear not truth, and for a long moment he did nothing but breathe and let the feeling pass instead of drowning in it.
He couldn't always be right.
He couldn't always be kind.
And beating himself bloody over it wouldn't fix what he'd broken.
So he went to the kitchens instead, quiet and deliberate, and asked the chef for something simple, something warm, something sweet she liked, and when it was done he held the small box like an apology he didn't yet have the courage to give.
Viola found Lana in a shed that barely deserved the name, hunched over a borrowed desk with notes spread everywhere and her satchel at her feet, and she didn't waste time with pleasantries when she asked why Auther hadn't been told, why he'd been left to worry.
Lana didn't look up at first when she answered, voice even and controlled. "Because I didn't want to use him. I don't use my friends to survive."
The words landed harder than accusation.
Viola frowned, then stilled, something in her expression shifting as she explained what Auther intended, the way his mind had already turned toward solutions that skirted the edge of disaster, and Lana finally looked up then, alarm flashing across her face as the implications settled in.
"That kind of reinforcement," Lana said slowly, already calculating, already seeing the paths and pitfalls, "requires precision beyond most master alchemists. Fifty decimal places, minimum. Any error and his veins rupture."
Viola felt something cold settle in her chest.
"And you can do it?" she asked.
Lana exhaled sharply, annoyed and worried and very clearly invested despite herself. "If the god of alchemy were standing over my shoulder, I'd still trust my numbers more."
They shared a look then, brief and unspoken, forged not out of affection but out of mutual concern, mutual irritation, mutual care for the same reckless boy who didn't know when to stop pushing.
Lana grabbed her coat. "I'm doing this so he doesn't kill himself," she said flatly. "Not because he asked."
Viola nodded.
Somewhere between them, something like trust took root.
And far away, Auther waited, unaware that the thing he feared most — being weak — was already pulling the people around him closer, not because he was powerful, but because he was human enough to be afraid.