Chapter 173: In One Another’s Company
"..."
The dark spirit blinked, staring at its target.
A strange, fleeting sensation rippled through its surface. It felt as though something important had happened, but the thought slipped away before it could grasp it, leaving a blank space in its mind.
Shrugging off the feeling, the spirit recalled its master’s orders. It had to watch over and secretly protect this human, and report back that everything was proceeding accordingly.
Nodding to itself, the spirit floated down and merged into the shadows, disappearing from view, not noticing a pair of scarlet eyes watching everything hidden within the void.
───────
Hours slipped by.
The dim light filtering through the window pane shifted from amber to a dark violet until the night fully claimed the room. As the shadows deepened, a sudden tremor broke the stillness.
Ethea’s eyelids started twitching, and after some effort, her eyes opened slowly.
"..."
She stared straight up at the ceiling, her gaze hollow as she lay there motionless. For several long minutes, her mind remained trapped in a thick fog, drifting somewhere between sleep and waking while she struggled to remember where she was or what had happened.
Then, as if sensing something, her eyes brightened, and her head quickly turned to the side, feeling stiff against the pillow.
Soren was lying on the other bed.
She looked closely at his pale face, at the rising and falling of his chest.
"...A...Alive..."
Tears slowly started falling from her eyes, welling up and blurring her vision as a familiar warmth flooded her chest.
"He’s... alive."
A wave of relief flooded her, sweeping away the remnants of the nightmares that had plagued her mind after she fell unconscious. Watching him breathe shattered any remaining illusions, letting the tension leave her body. With her mind finally at peace, the sheer exhaustion finally took over. Her eyes closed as she drifted into sleep again, this time with a gentle, peaceful smile.
The time continued to slip away into the dark.
Soren’s eyelids twitched before he finally managed to open them. He blinked several times at the unfamiliar ceiling, his vision gradually clearing as he took in the walls and the medical equipment surrounding him. It did not take him long to piece together where he was.
Then, noticing a familiar presence close by, he turned his head to the right, his eyes growing wide in surprise.
Ethea was lying on the neighboring bed, facing him directly. She was asleep, yet a smile still lingered on her face. As he observed her more closely, his keen senses caught a detail that made his chest tighten: faint, dried tear tracks subtly shimmering in the light, tracing her cheeks.
’...She must have awoken before me.’
The thought formed instantly. He could easily picture her waking up in the silence, terrified and looking over at him in desperation. The mental image of her weeping right there in her bed immediately overlapped with the memory of her crying in the back of the car.
His heart clenched painfully, making him swallow hard against the tightness in his throat. He wanted nothing more than to reach out, to brush away those lingering marks and reassure her that he was right there, but his muscles refused to cooperate, anchoring him to the mattress.
All he could do was watch her sleep, letting the sight ground him back to reality.
’...’
Then, a profound sense of gratitude gradually settled over him, for despite everything they had been dragged through, they had both made it out alive.
However, that also made him recall how close they had come to the edge.
It felt impossible, looking back. The sheer danger of the ordeal rushed over him, a terrifying wave of memories that made him doubt, for a split second, whether they were actually lying here in safety. How had they even survived? By all accounts, the odds had been entirely against them. He had even blacked out at the absolute worst time, despite fighting with everything he had to stay awake. Then...
’Did someone save us?’
Yeah, that was the only logical explanation. But... What happened after that? Was the gate break successfully contained? Did everything turn out fine?
He fell silent, the comforting thoughts vanishing as reality set in. Deep down, he knew the answer. Why would everything be okay when a literal 7th circle gate had opened?
Almost immediately, dozens of dark thoughts started flooding his mind.
’...Did people die? How many? How many were injured, and how many places were destroyed?...’
He then wondered about Clara, Drake, and his companion.
’...Did they survive too? Were they the ones who brought them to this room? They didn’t get injured, right? Where is Auntie now?’
The total lack of answers only made his helplessness feel more acute, feeding a heavy sense of guilt that threatened to swallow him whole.
However, after a few moments of rapid breathing, he forced himself to stop overthinking. There was no point in driving himself crazy over variables he couldn’t control right now.
Moreover, if one thought logically, he or Ethea weren’t the ones to blame. The ones truly responsible for this catastrophe were the people who had orchestrated it, and they were the ones who should and would pay the price.
’...’
Soren fell silent, his fists clenching slightly against the sheets.
’I’m too weak...’
The realization tasted like ash, a harsh reminder of his current limitations.
Worse still, the disaster turned his previous suspicions into undeniable reality. He had feared they were watching Ethea, and he had already suspected the sheer scale of their reach; now, the opening of a 7th circle gate definitively confirmed it. Whoever was targeting them wielded power at least at the peak of the 7th circle, or probably at the 8th circle and beyond.
But why go to such extreme lengths? What could they possibly want from them, no, from Ethea?
’...’
Soren let his gaze drift back to her. Speculation wouldn’t help him right now, but there was one thing he could actually check.
Pushing his lingering doubts aside, he focused his mind entirely on the sleeping girl to verify her condition and activated his newly evolved ability.
[Advanced Appraisal]
