Chapter 43: The Gentle Giant
They stood in front of the gravestones with flowers in their hands.
The checkpoint had gone quiet in the days after the battle. Captain Reinhardt and the surviving knights had prepared graves for the fallen soldiers near the edge of the clearing where the trees began again.
Fresh earth sat in neat rows, wooden markers stood above each one.Some names had already been carved properly. Others waited in rough, unfinished letters.
Jules had his own. Jules the Gentle Giant.
Misha stood there with a white flower in her hand and stared at his name for so long that the letters started to blur.
Beside her, Nyxie cried openly. It was not loudly, not like herself. Tears kept sliding down her face anyway, and she did not bother to wipe them all away.
Gerbaut stood with his hands at his sides and his face set into that same, hard, unreadable expression he always wore although it somehow looked different than usual. It was stiffer as if he had built a wall across his own face and refused to let even one crack show.
Elyes kept his head lowered. His bangs hid his eyes completely. He had not spoken much since the battle ended. Even now, with the wind moving through the graves and the knights murmuring prayers for the dead, he said nothing.
Yara stood in front of Jules’ gravestone with a flower resting loosely in her fingers. She did not cry, she did not move much at all. She only stared at his name with a.blank, cold look in her eyes.
They haven’t proceeded to the 10th floor so the portal was kept open near the outpost.
They stayed at the checkpoint for a few more days to bury the dead, and to recover their strength.
Misha laid her flower down in front of Jules’ grave then she stepped back.
One by one, people started to leave. Some returned to the outpost, some went back to the wall, and some simply could not stand there any longer.
Misha stayed until the clearing emptied. She stood there while the day slowly bled toward evening, until sunlight slanted low through the trees and painted long shadows over the fresh mounds of earth.
Wind stirred the grass around the markers and brushed cool fingers through her hair.
Her throat tightened once more. She kept thinking she would get used to it if she looked long enough. That at some point, seeing Jules’ name would stop hurting... They never did.
She may have not known Jules well. That was part of what made it worse.
She had not spoken to him much, she had not learned the small things about him. That regret sat heavier than it should have.
No, perhaps it didn’t. Perhaps it weighed exactly as much as it deserved.
He had stepped in front of death for her without hesitation. It was not because they had grown close, or not because she had earned some special place in his heart. He did it because she was part of Skyreach. Because somewhere in that gentle, stubborn heart of his, that alone had been enough.
Did she deserve that kind of kindness? Would she be able to do the same if it was her in his position?
Misha lowered her head, her fingers curled tighter at her sides.
The answer would not come. Or perhaps it had already come, and she simply hated it too much to say aloud.
It was her fault.
That thought had sunk its teeth into her long ago and refused to let go.
If she had been faster, if she had been stronger, if she had not missed, if her hand had moved a little sooner, a little better, then Jules would still be here, still smiling that shy, awkward smile of his.
Instead, he lay beneath the earth while she stood above it, breathing borrowed air and carrying grief that should have belonged to no one but somehow still felt like hers to bear.
What if he had a family?
The thought struck harder than the rest.
What if someone out there knew him as more than a shield, more than a party member, more than a gentle giant who threw himself between danger and everyone else?
Misha pressed her lips together hard enough to hurt.
The wind moved softly through the clearing. She could not stop staring at his name. It was as if looking away would mean abandoning him a second time.
Footsteps reached her from behind.
Gerbaut stopped beside her. For a while, he said nothing.
Misha liked that about him. Or maybe she didn’t like it. She could never tell.
The wind moved through the clearing again. Then he spoke, "People die every day."
Misha lowered her eyes. The words hurt more because they were true.
Gerbaut looked at the gravestones in front of them, not only Jules’, but all of them.
"Some die alone. Some die angry. Some die before they do anything worth remembering." His voice stayed flat, though something heavy sat under it. "That is why the living carry them."
Misha’s fingers curled against her sleeves.
Gerbaut went on. "We live." He looked at Jules’ name at last. "We remember. We carry what they leave behind.
"As long as someone remembers them," he said as he finally turned his gaze on her. "They do not disappear."
That broke her.
A sound escaped her throat before she could stop it. Tears rushed into her eyes again and her shoulders shook as she covered her mouth with one hand. The crying came harder now, like she had been holding it inside for days and her body had simply decided it could not do that anymore.
"I-I should’ve..." Her voice trembled. " I-I should’ve been stronger... I should’ve seen it... I-I should’ve–"
A large, rough hand settled on top of her head. The touch felt awkward and careful too.
Gerbaut was not good with softness. That much was obvious. Even so, his hand stayed there, resting against her hair like he wanted to hold her together without saying he was trying.
"Then become stronger."
Misha cried harder. If only it was that easy.
He did not pull his hand away. His fingers moved once through her hair in something clumsy enough to count as a pat.
"Get stronger, Misha," Gerbaut said once more. "Strong enough that no one else has to die while standing in front of you."
She lowered herself beside Jules’ grave and cried with her face turned toward the earth, toward the flowers they had left there, toward the name carved into the wood.
Gerbaut stayed beside her like someone who had already learned this lesson long ago and hated that she had to learn it too.
===
A pale screen hovered in the middle of a dark room.
It rippled now and then, the image bending at the edges as if someone had stretched a thin veil across black water. On it, a girl knelt in front of a grave and cried as though something inside her split open for good.
"Hm."
A woman sat in a high-backed chair with one leg crossed neatly over the other. She held a teacup in one hand, thin fingers curved around white porcelain painted with faint gold lines. Steam no longer rose from it. The tea had gone cool some time ago, though she did not seem to mind.
Her long black hair spilled over her shoulders in smooth, dark sheets. Full bangs shadowed her purple eyes. The straight lengths at either side of her face framed her cheeks. In the floating light from the screen, her lips looked far too red.
Her gaze stayed on the image of the crying girl. She lifted the teacup to her lips, then paused without drinking it. A faint curve touched her mouth as she watched the scene unfold.
The sound of the girl’s sobs never reached the room, and yet somehow, the silence around it felt shaped by that grief all the same.
A man stood a little behind her, closer to the edge of the darkness than to the light.
He leaned one shoulder against the wall, though it was hard to tell where the wall truly began since the wall kept swallowing its own corners. The line of a jaw, one gloved hand resting near his side, and the fall of his coat. Only fragments of him appeared whenever the screen’s light shifted.
Unlike the woman, he did not look amused.
"You enjoy this too much."
The woman smiled without turning. "That is an uncharitable interpretation."
She finally took a sip of the tea before she continued, "I am not enjoying her pain. I am simply admiring it."
The man’s gaze stayed fixed on the screen. "She’s grieving."
"Yes."
"That should not fascinate you."
"It doesn’t." A soft chuckle slipped from her. "It’s just... she is weaker than I thought."
"No." The answer came too quickly.
That made her glance at him. "Oh?"
"Weak people do not keep standing after the world teaches them how easily it can take things away." He spoke without hesitation, as though he had already reached that conclusion long ago.
The woman lowered the teacup and rested it on the desk beside her chair. "Is that what you think this is?" she asked. "Strength?"
He did not answer right away.
On the screen, the girl’s shoulders shook again.
"Well, she cries honestly," she murmured. "That will either ruin or sharpen her."
"She’ll survive."
This time, the certainty in his voice made her smile widen just a little. "How affectionate."
The side of his lips curled, though the expression never reached his eyes. "Not affectionate. I’m just being observant."
"Of course." She folded one hand beneath her chin and studied the floating screen with renewed interest. "And your observation tells you she will recover from this?"
"You underestimate her."
That made the woman pause.
The projected light shifted across her face, drawing silver along the edge of her cheek and the sharp line of her mouth. "Do I?"
"Yes."
On the screen, the girl bowed lower over the grave. Her hands trembled against the earth. The man beside her, broad-shouldered and silent, stayed there without trying to fill her grief with useless words.
The woman watched in silence for a few moments more. Then she said, "You sound very certain for someone merely observing from a distance."
"I’ve been watching her longer than you."
The woman turned her head a little more this time, enough for the light to catch one eye properly "Oh?"
"She has a reason to keep moving." His voice came lower now. "She has people to find her brothers."
The woman’s fingers tapped once against the arm of the chair. "A reason huh? How ordinary."
"Ordinary things keep people alive more often than grand ones do." He finally turned his gaze at her. "She’ll get stronger. She doesn’t have another choice if she wants to keep climbing."
"Well," she said softly, eyes returning to the crying girl. "I suppose we’ll see."
The man pushed himself away from the wall. He turned without another word and walked toward the doorway.
