Chapter 761: She Had Seen It All
Mabel had noticed the changes in Liam long before the announcement of the Nalim assessment had ever been made.
They had been subtle at first, small enough that anyone else might have dismissed them as ordinary shifts in temperament from a student who had already been difficult to read.
Liam had always been quiet. He had always carried himself with a detached calm that made him seem older than he was, or perhaps simply less affected by things that should have affected him.
But in the weeks before Nalim, something about that calm had changed. It had become less like control and more like absence. He responded to things with the same flat expression, the same measured tone, and the same sharp awareness, yet the spaces between his reactions had grown colder.
He did not seem angry in any obvious way. He did not lash out, complain, or withdraw in a manner most people would recognize. He simply became more silent in places where silence had already been expected from him, more distant in moments where distance had already been part of him, and more still in ways that only someone watching closely would notice.
At the time, Mabel had wondered if she was seeing too much.
She had been his protector for nearly a year now. She had observed him in training halls, academy corridors, political meetings, dangerous situations, and quiet rooms where he thought no one would read anything from his face.
She knew the way he moved when tired, the way his eyes changed when he was irritated, the difference between his silence when he was thinking and his silence when he was shutting something away.
Because of that, Mabel had wondered if her awareness of him was turning into assumption. Perhaps she was reading too deeply into minor changes. Perhaps the weight of guarding him had made her look for cracks that were not truly there.
Liam had always carried burdens in silence, after all, and silence alone did not mean he was breaking.
Then the Nalim assessment began.
When Mystica granted her access to a magical screen so she could watch Liamβs progress, Mabel realized almost immediately that she had not been imagining things.
She saw it in the way he handled his fall into the realm, not in his movements, because those remained sharp, but in the decisions beneath them. She saw it when he adapted to his lost supplies and punctured thigh without reacting outwardly, as though pain, danger, and inconvenience were simply numbers to calculate.
She saw it in the way he kept moving when rest would have been wiser, in the way he studied signs of danger and still chose to go deeper, and most clearly, she saw it when he followed the trail toward the Berserker.
There had been curiosity there, yes. There had been strategy, yes. But beneath both, something more personal had been pulling him forward.
Frustration.
A quiet, layered frustration that had been building in him long before Nalim offered him something violent enough to strike at.
Mabel had watched him fight the Berserker, watched the brutality of that battle, watched Liam get thrown through the forest, crushed, burned, battered, and still return with colder focus each time. She had watched him erase the demon and then collapse under the consequences of that victory.
Later, when he woke and began replaying his decisions with almost mechanical precision, she saw the same frustration turn inward. It was no longer seeking a target in the eastern forest.
It had become self-punishment disguised as correction.
Now, inside his room, Liam remained quiet as he tried to understand what Mabel meant by saying she had been aware of his frustration. The truth was that he understood perfectly. That was what made it difficult to answer.
He knew he had been frustrated before Nalim. He knew it had influenced him. He knew the fight with the Berserker had not been only about information. But knowing something and accepting someone else had seen it were two different things.
Mabel watched him carefully.
Liam stood near the bed with the towel still hanging loosely from one hand, loose dark pants sitting low on his waist while his damp hair fell messily around his face. His expression remained controlled, but his eyes had sharpened. Not with aggression exactly. More like guarded awareness. He had realized this conversation was not going to be as simple as brushing aside a question.
Mabel spoke again, her voice calm. "You may not want to talk," she said. "I understand that. But I would appreciate it if you listened to what I have to say."
Liam did not answer.
He only stared at her, his gaze guarded and unreadable.
Mabel accepted that as enough.
For a moment, she remained near the door, still composed in her Royal Corps attire, the half-mask covering part of her face as it usually did. Then she lifted one hand and removed it.
The motion was slow and deliberate, not dramatic, but it changed the room immediately. Without the mask, her face looked more open, though no less controlled. Her hazel-brown eyes remained steady on him, and for the first time in a while, Liam saw her fully without that familiar barrier between them.
Mabel held his gaze as she mentally chose her words.
Looking at Liam now, she saw what many people refused to see.
A teenager.
A sixteen-year-old boy.
Not the last dark mage. Not the asset Tempest wanted to protect. Not the threat Crescent feared. Not the anomaly the academy wanted to study. Not the son of Marcus and Serah, not the student who had erased a Berserker, not the walking problem surrounded by politics, fear, and expectation.
A boy.
A boy who had been forced through too much, too quickly, and had become so accustomed to surviving each new burden that he no longer knew how to properly register what it did to him. He could identify pain. He could identify weakness. He could identify mistakes, limits, strategies, and dangers.
But emotions, the deeper ones, the ones that did not present themselves as immediate threats or tactical problems, were harder for him. He felt them, but he often did not know how to name them properly, much less how to handle them in ways that did not involve training, fighting, silence, or distance.
Mabel understood that being sentimental would be a waste of time.
If she spoke to him as though he were fragile, he would close himself off. If she became overly expressive or emotional, he would tune out before her words reached the place they needed to reach. Liam did not respond well to pity. He tolerated care only when it came with clarity. He accepted concern only when it did not try to strip him of control.
So Mabel gave him neither pity nor softness without structure.
She gave him truth.
