The Infirmary Hall.
For reasons beyond his ken, it seemed as though some demonic curse had taken a particular interest in Seraph of late; he found himself plagued by a streak of peculiar misfortune. Most notably, he was frequently the target of feminine ire—or perhaps, in his relentless eradication of the goblin horde, he had inadvertently invited a lingering hex to shadow his steps.
Not only were young women prone to fits of inexplicable rage toward him, but he found himself perpetually bound to offer contrite apologies without hope of excuse. It left the young man feeling as though he were squandering his apologies with reckless abandon.
"Forgive me..." Seraph pleaded, casting a beseeching look toward Marina, as if pinning his hopes upon her mercy.
"…"
Her sky-blue tresses billowed, veiling her features and cascading across her back like a silken shroud, as though she intended to use the watery depths of her hair to bar him from her presence. She remained resolutely mute as they sat in proximity. A soft, azure radiance of restorative mageia shimmered within the vaulted silence of the Infirmary Hall. Her eyes were rimmed with scarlet and swollen, as if she had endured a fit of heavy weeping.
Her countenance remained etched with a smouldering resentment, as though she were poised to unleash a torrent of water mageia upon anyone who dared provoke her further. Her rounded, cherubic cheeks were puffed out in a desperate attempt to affect a stern mask, yet her goddess-like beauty betrayed her; her trembling gaze inspired more pity than dread.
"Might you grant me your pardon, just this once?" Seraph asked, his voice hushed and wretched.
Amidst the desperate entreaty of his heterochromatic eyes, he was met only with a sullen, unyielding silence. The golden morning light and the melodic trill of a nightingale seemed to urge the young man to persevere in his penance.
"…"
Marina continued to weave her restorative rites as though she intended to remain cloaked in an eternal silence. The azure luminescence of her mageia shimmered like a spectral river, carving a vast chasm between them, as if partitioning the heavens from the mortal realm.
Beside the desk within Marina's private sanctum stood an examination plinth. Seraph lay supine upon it, submitting to the girl's healing touch.
Her left hand, pale and soft, traced the contours of his bare chest with a clinical precision, seeking out the fractured ribs and the lingering echoes of internal trauma. Her right hand hoisted a cerulean crystal orb, which surrendered a radiant fusion of white and sapphire light, cascading over the young man's frame to facilitate the mending.
"I have erred... pray, grant me your absolution," Seraph persisted.
A solitary tear escaped the corner of Marina's eye, glistening like a rare aquamarine dredged from the sunless depths. It vanished as swiftly as a phantom, yet for one such as Seraph, who possessed no kin to call his own, that single bead of grief struck him with a violence more piercing than any wound dealt by a demon.
At last, her silence fractured. Her voice, brittle and wavering, bore a weight that hovered between profound agony and sharp reproach.
"You haven't the slightest inkling of how closely you danced with death, do you? Though your skin bears nothing but livid bruising... that is merely because your shield held firm at the precipice. Within, you are a ruin of lethal trauma! Critical organs are lacerated; bone is shattered in multiple locales! Your internal musculature is ravaged, succumbing to decay! It is a miracle of the highest order that you endured a two-week journey in such a wretched state!" Marina bit her lip, her voice trembling with suppressed emotion.
"It was never my intention... I had no idea a Kogoblin was lurking in those shadows. Their counter-attack was so sudden, so jagged—I was backed into a corner; there was no way out," Seraph tried to justify the night's events.
"In years past, you'd always come back to me to be patched up... but those were the scrapes of boys at play. The worst the Kambion Group ever gave you was a broken arm or a split brow. You've been bruised in duels with the Sanctus magis, yes, but no one has ever truly tried to end you—" Marina spoke as if her very soul were being flayed.
"But not this time!" Marina's eyes overflowed, tears finally spilling down her cheeks. "What you've brought back is of a different order entirely. These gashes are nothing; you don't even realise your body is riddled with the residue of demonic fel. If you hadn't reached me in time... this miasma would have sunk into your marrow, rotting you from the inside out. It would have bled your mana dry first. Then, every full moon would have been an agony you couldn't bear. You'd have been dead within the year! This wasn't a fight, Seraph—it was an execution, laced with the malice of a demon. This is the price of your ambition to be a Warlock. This is what comes of chasing missions you have no business touching!"
"But... it was urgent. And it was only a low-rank contract..." Seraph averted his eyes, his voice thin and hollow.
"A low-rank mission!" Marina sobbed, her voice fracturing as if any further defiance from him would shatter her completely. "A mission I couldn't hope to finish! One that even Sadir couldn't survive! Most magis can't handle goblins at five-to-one odds, yet you have the cheek to tell me it wasn't dangerous!"
Though the young man's voice vibrated with a steeled confidence, his penchant for courting increasingly lethal perils offered her no solace. Not a single night passed where she could find the reprieve of slumber, knowing he remained beyond the safety of Sanctus, treading the precipice of death.
[Whirr!]
A sharp resonance cut through the air as a paper aeroplane glided through the window of Marina's sanctum. It darted before them, unfolding itself into a mageia missive of vibrant scarlet.
Seraph retrieved the letter, his eyes scanning the parchment only to find it was a summons from Eldra.
"Who is it from?" Marina asked, her gaze fixed on the scarlet wax.
"Eldra... she wants a full report on the mission. And she's mentioned a new mandate—"
"Refuse it!" Marina snapped, her voice uncharacteristically sharp.
Seraph looked up, caught in a fit of genuine astonishment. Throughout their ten years within the walls of Sanctus, Marina had never addressed him with such forceful volume. Even on those rare occasions she raised her voice, it was strictly reserved for the disciplined oversight of the Infirmary Hall during a medical crisis.
"Grandmaster Eldra likely has something vital—" Seraph began, his brow furrowed.
"But you've only just come back! I've only just finished patching you up!" Marina blurted out, her tone frantic, any trace of clinical calm gone. "You... you need days of rest before you're truly recovered!"
"…?!"
Seraph stared at the girl, his confusion deepening. He had submitted to Marina's restorative mageia on countless occasions; her prowess was so formidable that few patients ever required an overnight stay within the Infirmary Hall.
At this very moment, he could feel that her spells had already seen to his total restoration. He could not fathom why she would offer such a blatant falsehood, yet as it was a medical diagnosis, it bore a weight far superior to his own intuition. At the very least, he was bound to heed her counsel.
"What's on your mind?" Seraph asked, his suspicion piqued.
"I..." The girl tried to hide behind the silken curtain of her hair, shielding herself from the magnetic pull of his mismatched gaze.
She took a steadying breath. "I only want you to stay a while... I miss the days when you were here more often. I just want us to be together, like we used to be," Marina confessed, her face etched with the quiet ache of neglect.
"Back then, I was always here because I was weak," Seraph said, rising to his feet and looking out at the horizon beyond the window.
He turned back to her, his voice anchored in resolve. "You've made me stronger. You've dragged me back from the brink of death for ten years; my gratitude is a debt I will never forsake." He reached out, tracing the curve of her cheek with profound gentleness.
"But the war against the Demon Legion comes before everything. If this weren't urgent, I'd turn Eldra down. But if lives are at stake..."
"I have to go," Seraph declared, before striding from the room.
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