The white light faded to gray.
Kairito's ears rang. Not a sound, a pressure, like being underwater too long and surfacing too fast. His teeth ached. His eyes wouldn't focus.
He was on his back. Mud under his neck. Cold.
The sky was normal again.
Stars. The right stars. The ones he'd grown up with, the Thief, the Well, the Broken Wheel. They hung there like nothing had happened. Like the sky hadn't just turned inside out.
He tried to sit up.
His body didn't cooperate. The new flesh in his chest pulled tight. He felt it, a seam now, like a scar, running from his sternum to his ribs. Raised. Pink.
He touched it.
Real. Solid. Human.
Sera was beside him. Unconscious. Her face was turned away, but he could see her breathing. Slow. Deep. Her hand was still wrapped around a root. The fingers were swollen. Blue at the tips.
He pried them loose. One by one. She didn't move.
The clearing was gone.
No stones. No crater. Just flat ground, churned to mud, stretching to the treeline. The trees themselves were different, bent, stripped of leaves, but standing. The thing was gone. The woman with the root-hair was gone. His sandals were gone.
He sat up.
The world tilted. He put a hand down to catch himself, hit mud, stayed there on all fours, breathing. His lungs worked. His heart worked. Everything worked.
He was just... small.
Smaller than he remembered. Without the mana, he wasn't just ten years old. He was ten. Bones too light. Muscles too soft. The scar on his forearm, the burn from the goblin fire three years ago, was just a scar now. Not a mark. Just healed skin.
He'd forgotten what it felt like to be fragile.
Sera made a sound. Low. Her eyes opened. The swollen one was purple now, almost black. The other found him. Blinked twice.
"You're alive."
"You too."
She stared at him for a long moment. Then her eyes moved to his chest, to the scar visible through the torn tunic.
"It's gone."
"Yeah."
"The mana."
"Yeah."
She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was crying. Not loud. Just wet tracks through the mud on her face.
"I thought you were going to drink the other one. The coal. I thought,"
"I know."
She sat up. Slow. Her body was stiff, moving like an old woman's. She looked at her hands. The nails were broken to the quick. Blood under them. Dirt.
"You saved me."
He didn't answer.
"You saved me and you lost it. All of it. The power. The," She stopped. Swallowed. "Why?"
He looked at the sky. The Thief was bright tonight. Stealing light from stars that didn't exist anymore.
"Because I was tired," he said.
She waited.
He didn't explain. He didn't know how. How do you explain ten years of being a furnace? Of people looking at you like you're a thing to be used? Of waking up every morning the same age, the same body, the same infinite well that never ran dry and never let you rest?
He'd been ten years old for a decade. He'd killed his first man at seven. He'd watched a village burn at eight. He'd learned to count the ways people could want you, greed, fear, lust for power, all before he was old enough to understand what any of it meant.
The mana had been a gift. The gods said so.
But gifts have hooks.
Sera was watching him. Her good eye was red. The other was swelling shut again.
"What happens now?" she asked.
He looked at his hands. Small. Dirty. The nails were bitten. They'd always been bitten. That was his. Not the mana. Not the power. Just a habit he'd picked up from a woman in a fishing village who'd let him sleep in her shed for three nights before the knights came looking.
He'd bitten his nails ever since.
"I don't know," he said.
The truth tasted strange in his mouth. He'd said it twice tonight. Maybe three times. More than he'd said in years. He'd always known. That was his thing. The overpowered outcast who had an answer for everything because power makes answers cheap.
Now he had no power.
And no answers.
He stood up. His legs shook. The ground was solid under his feet, but his body wasn't sure about it. He took a step. The step held.
He offered her his hand.
She looked at it. Small. Dirty. A child's hand.
She took it.
He pulled. She was heavier than him, taller, older, built different, but she used her legs, got under herself, stood. They stood together in the mud, both bleeding, both shaking, both alive.
The trees rustled. Normal wind. Normal sound.
"We should move," he said. "Before whatever's left comes back."
She nodded. Didn't let go of his hand.
He didn't let go either.
They walked toward the treeline. His feet were bare. The mud was cold between his toes. The scar on his chest pulled with every step. He could feel the shape of the missing mana, the absence of it, like a phantom limb. A furnace that wasn't there anymore.
At the edge of the clearing, he stopped.
Looked back.
The ground was flat. Empty. Nothing moved. The stars were the right stars. The air smelled like wet earth and broken wood.
The woman with the root-hair was standing at the far edge.
He saw her. Sera didn't. He could tell by the way she kept walking, pulling his hand, not looking back.
The woman didn't move. Her eyes, the holes, were fixed on him. Her mouth was closed. But she was holding something.
A coal. Red. Bright. Alive.
His.
She raised it to her lips. Kissed it. The coal flared once, a pulse of light that lit the clearing for a single second, and then she closed her fingers around it. When she opened them again, it was gone.
She smiled.
Then she wasn't there.
"Kairito."
Sera's voice. Behind him. He turned. She was looking at him with her one good eye, her face pale, her lips blue at the edges from cold.
"You coming?"
He looked at the clearing one more time.
Nothing there.
"Yeah," he said.
He walked into the trees.
The cold was worse under the canopy. No moonlight. Just dark and branches and the sound of their breathing. Sera's hand was still in his. Her fingers were cold. He could feel her pulse. Fast. She was scared.
He was scared too.
He didn't say anything.
They walked until they couldn't walk anymore. Found a hollow under a fallen tree. Crawled in. The space was tight. Their shoulders touched. Their breath fogged in the small space.
Sera fell asleep first. Her head dropped against his shoulder. Heavy. Warm.
He stayed awake.
Listened to the forest. The normal sounds, owls, wind, something small moving in the leaves. No songs. No colors. No pressure behind his eyes.
Just dark. Just cold. Just the weight of being a body that could die.
He put his hand on his chest. The scar was warm under his fingers. His heart beat against it. Slow. Steady.
He was ten years old.
For the first time, he felt like it.
Outside the hollow, something moved. He tensed. Sera shifted in her sleep, made a sound, settled.
The movement stopped.
Then a voice. Quiet. So quiet he almost didn't hear it.
Sleep, little furnace. You'll need it.
He waited.
Nothing else came.
He closed his eyes.
Sleep didn't come easy. But it came.