The Transmigrated Author

Chapter 310: Over

[Rel’s POV]

Morwen didn’t wait for a reply.

The shadows at his feet rose up around him like a curtain being drawn, and for a moment his eyes swept across all of us one last time. They lingered on the Orb’s glow spilling out from the library doors, then on me, and I felt that look the way you feel cold air slip under a door.

"Until next time."

The shadows folded inward, and he was gone.

No flash. No sound. The space where he’d been standing was just empty, as if the courtyard had already forgotten him.

For a few seconds, nobody moved. The wind pushed through the broken pillars and carried the smell of scorched stone across the courtyard, and I finally let my shoulders drop.

It was over.

"Okay!"

Lan clapped his hands together, and the leftover lightning around his arms fizzled out like a dying sparkler.

"Roll call. Who’s dying, who’s injured, and who’s just being dramatic?"

"That’s not funny," Louise muttered.

"It’s a little funny."

He walked over to us with that same easy stride, but I noticed his eyes doing the actual work, moving from person to person, checking for wounds, checking who was leaning on who.

Jae had her arm around Lyra’s shoulder. Bazz sat down right there on the cracked stone like his legs had clocked out for the day.

Camila and Alice were still catching their breath.

"How long were we in there?" Jan asked.

"You tell me. We’ve been out here holding the front door for what felt like a year." Lan rolled his shoulder with a wince he didn’t bother hiding.

"You all look terrible, by the way."

"You should see the other guy," Bazz said from the floor.

I glanced back at Christian and Anouz. Richard’s unconscious body was still slung between them, his head hanging forward, and looking at him now it was hard to believe this was the same man who’d nearly turned that entire phantasmal world into his own kingdom.

The woman standing beside Lan stepped forward. Her clothes were torn at the shoulder and there were thin crystal fragments still dissolving in the air around her, the remains of her thorns breaking down now that the fight was done.

"Yang Vienna," she said. "Vice Commander of the Mercenary Corps."

The introduction was for everyone else’s benefit.

Not mine.

Because I already knew her, and she already knew me. My squad leader. The one who handed me my briefings, and the one who’d told me on the day we met that she already knew exactly who I was and what I was capable of.

Her gaze moved across the group like we were all strangers to her, but when it passed over me it stayed half a second longer than it needed to.

Right. Christian and Vanessa still can’t find out. Neither can anyone else here.

So I kept my mouth shut and wore the face of a student meeting the Vice Commander for the first time.

"My ally is inside with the Montclair family. They’re safe." She looked at Anouz as she said it, and something in his posture loosened just slightly.

"Which is more than I can say for this courtyard."

That would be Vanessa.

"The mansion had it coming," Lan said.

Yang ignored him. She turned toward the library, toward the pale glow still pulsing through the open doors, and her expression went serious in a way that made everyone else go quiet with it.

"I’ll be blunt. That orb is why they came." She let that sit for a moment.

"The Darkworld doesn’t send a commander like Morwen for a smash and grab. And the Devil’s Cult had their own people moving tonight as well. Two separate powers reaching for the same artifact on the same night is not a coincidence."

"The Devil’s Cult too?" Jan’s voice sharpened.

"We intercepted three of their cells on the outer grounds while you were all inside. Whatever that orb is, both sides have decided it’s worth bleeding for." Yang crossed her arms.

"Which means it needs to be evaluated, contained, and moved somewhere they can’t reach it. The Corps has secure vaults for exactly this."

There it is.

It was the reasonable move. The correct move, even.

If I were still just the author, sitting behind a keyboard, I probably would’ve written the scene exactly the way she wanted it to go.

"That won’t be possible."

Anouz’s voice cut across the courtyard, calm and flat.

He passed Richard’s weight fully over to Christian, stepped forward, and looked at Yang the way only someone born into a Great Family could look at a Vice Commander of the Mercenary Corps.

"The orb belongs to the Montclair estate. It was found on our land, kept in our library, and defended with our blood tonight." He tilted his head slightly.

"I’ll be taking it myself."

"That artifact nearly got everyone here killed," Yang said.

"And yet here we are. Alive. On Montclair ground." Anouz didn’t raise his voice at all, which somehow made it worse.

"Unless the Corps has decided it now confiscates property from the families it’s paid to protect?"

Yang’s jaw tightened. "This isn’t about property rights, boy. If the Darkworld comes back—"

"Then they’ll be coming back regardless of where you hide it. The only question is whether my family faces that day with the orb in our hands or in someone else’s."

The two of them stared at each other, and I could feel everyone around me holding their breath.

And me?

I was watching Anouz, and my mind was somewhere else entirely.

He’s actually doing it.

He’s keeping it.

That night came back to me on its own. The two of us, long before any of this, and the words he’d said with that same flat calm he was using right now.

A promise I hadn’t taken seriously at the time, because back then I had no reason to.

’If it ever comes down to it, Rel, I’ll make sure to keep that promise. No matter who asks. You have my word.’

He hadn’t looked at me once during this whole exchange. He didn’t need to. That was the thing about Anouz Montclair, the promise wasn’t for show, and it wasn’t for an audience.

He made it once, quietly, and then simply carried it out like it was a law of nature.

Which means everything connected to those shards is still in reach.

Yang exhaled slowly through her nose.

"Looks like the hero’s organization will hear about this."

"I’d be disappointed if they didn’t."

"At minimum, the Corps posts a guard detail on this estate. That’s not a request."

Anouz considered it, then gave a small nod, the kind a king gives when he’s decided to be generous.

"The Montclair family welcomes the protection."

Lan let out a low whistle.

"Well. Glad that’s settled. Anyway, who wants to help me carry the war criminal?"

He jabbed a thumb at Richard.

"The Corps will take him," Yang said, sounding tired in a way that had nothing to do with the fight.

"There are people who will want to ask him questions when he wakes up. A lot of questions."

Christian handed Richard over to her without ceremony, and watching them drag his limp body across the courtyard, I felt exactly nothing.

Whatever pity I had for Aubin Henri Richard, I’d left it inside that orb.

Before she turned to leave, Yang’s eyes found mine one last time. To everyone else it probably looked like nothing at all.

To me, it was as clear as a written order.

_I’d be getting summoned soon. Debriefed. Probably lectured, too._

The group slowly started to break apart after that. Lan herded the others toward the mansion, going on about food and hot water like a camp counselor, and their voices faded across the courtyard until it was quieter than it had been all night.

I didn’t follow them right away.

I sat down on a piece of what used to be a pillar, and let myself feel how heavy my body actually was. Now that no one was swinging a hammer at me, everything hurt at once, my legs, my ribs, the deep exhaustion sitting behind my eyes.

I died today.

The thought arrived plainly, without any drama attached to it.

I died, and the story is drifting further from anything Prime remembers, and in my pocket there’s a compass pointing to a Tower that hasn’t opened yet.

"You’re not going in?"

I looked up.

Valencia stood a few steps away, her arms crossed loosely, the Orb’s faint glow from the library catching one side of her face. She’d cleaned the dust off her cheek at some point, but her sleeve was still torn from the fighting.

"In a minute," I said. "Just... sitting."

"You’re terrible at resting. You know that, right?"

"I’ve been told."

She came over and sat down on the broken pillar beside me, leaving a careful gap between us, and for a while neither of us said anything. The courtyard was a mess of shattered stone and burnt earth, and somehow it was the most peaceful place I’d been in weeks.

"Back there," she said finally. "When I touched the shard."

"Yeah."

"I saw something." Her fingers curled slightly against her knee.

"I don’t know how to explain it yet. But you were in it."

I know, I almost said.

I saw your face when we came back. I’ve been waiting for this conversation and dreading it at the same time.

"Then we’ll figure out what it means," I said instead.

"Together. Just... not tonight."

Valencia was quiet for a moment. Then she nodded, and the smallest hint of a smile passed over her face, there and gone like the flicker of the Orb’s light.

"Not tonight," she agreed.

Above us, past the broken silhouette of the mansion, the sky was finally starting to lighten.