"Fuck," Jacob muttered under his breath as he pushed himself up from the cold marble floor, his limbs shaking slightly under the strain. His body, healed by Olivia's spell, no longer ached or bled, but exhaustion clung to him like a second skin. Every part of him wanted to lie back down and do nothing, but how could he afford to rest when the entire hall had erupted into chaos?

They were under attack. Not by chance, not some random ambush but something deliberate, precise, and worst of all, premeditated. The poisoning had come first, subtle and insidious, sapping the strength and awareness of nearly everyone who had drunk anything. It wasn't the kind of poison that killed immediately, but something far more dangerous, it left people helpless, dulled their minds, slowed their movements, stole their clarity. In this state, even those who wanted to fight couldn't have held a sword, let alone cast a proper rune.

He scanned the hall through bleary eyes, noting how the atmosphere had shifted. Some of the guests, those untouched by the poison, had begun to gather themselves, swords drawn, staves raised, expressions grim with the understanding that survival now depended on swift retaliation. Others, the majority, stood dazed, frozen in place, or else slumped against tables and walls, groaning or unconscious. There was no unity, no structure, just the early scrambling chaos of a battle no one had prepared for.

Then, just ahead, he spotted one of the enemy mages tracing a rune into the air with fluid, practiced movements, too fast for most to react.

A sharp crack of lightning tore through the hall.

BOOM.

The bolt slammed into the hastily raised shield of a knight, sending both it and its bearer flying backward. The knight crashed into a stone pillar with a sickening crunch and crumpled to the floor, unmoving.

And that single exchange was all it took to trigger the next phase. As the sound of the lightning echoed and faded, enemy warriors surged forward in unison, swords flashing, spells igniting, footsteps pounding against tile.

The defenders of Eterna responded with grit and desperation. The knights braced themselves, weapons clashing against the first wave of attackers, while the mages sketched their runes into the air with fierce concentration, launching bolts of flame, shards of ice, and arcs of wind to intercept the invaders. The air was thick with magic and steel, the clanging of swords, the whirling of energy, the screams of the injured, it all became a single, overwhelming noise that filled every corner of the grand hall.

'It has to be Whisper,' Jacob thought as he ducked behind a broken table, his eyes scanning for any exit or cover. The coordination was too precise to be anything else. Just minutes ago, Whisper had assaulted a major research facility, according to Castor, it was a key location and now this, an attack on the banquet with poisoned drinks and a full-scale invasion. It couldn't be coincidence. This had been planned down to the second.

He needed to move.

He wasn't a soldier. He didn't have the strength to contribute to a fight like this. He didn't even have his emotions. And right now, he wasn't interested in glory or duty he wanted to live. Olivia was still here, and even though she'd been sent flying, she wasn't dead. She was one of the eight pillars, and unlike the rest who had left to defend the facility, she had stayed behind.

That meant there was still hope. Whisper might have believed the banquet was unguarded, but they'd miscalculated. And if Olivia managed to regroup and push back, there was a chance the tide could turn.

All he had to do was stay alive until then.

Jacob sprinted.

He ran past bodies, some injured, others just unconscious, past overturned tables, shattered glass, and the crackling remnants of spells. He didn't look back. The only goal in his mind was to find somewhere, anywhere to hide until the fighting was over. A supply room, a servant corridor, one of the private chambers connected to the banquet hall. Somewhere Whisper's soldiers wouldn't think to check. Somewhere quiet, somewhere dark, somewhere safe.

He ignored the screams, the panic, the heat of spells bursting too close to his back. He ignored the instinct to turn and help the others, the guilt of retreating. He couldn't help them, he just needed to survive.

As Jacob darted across the chaos of the hall, weaving past spells and scattered furniture, something in his peripheral vision made him falter for a brief moment, Princess Leah, locked in combat with a flame-wielding mage, her right hand gripping a sword and her left braced behind a shimmering blue shield that hovered close to her body like a second skin. The barrier surrounding her pulsed faintly, catching the glow of the nearby flames with each flicker, and though the heat warped the air between them, she held her ground with admirable poise, her expression calm and concentrated.

But it wasn't just Leah that caught his eye.

Just beside her, uncomfortably close to the bursts of fire, stood Jessica, sword clutched in both hands, shield still strapped to her back, her stance stiff but determined. Her jaw was clenched, her eyes set, and though her movements lacked the practiced grace of a trained knight, there was no fear in them. She was trying to help, trying to fight back against the mage alongside Leah, raising her weapon and shifting on her feet as flames surged toward them in crashing waves.

Jacob's heart lurched.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck—" he whispered under his breath, his steps slowing as instinct warred with logic. Should he help? Could he help? The rational part of him insisted it was unnecessary, Leah was far stronger than him, trained in both swordsmanship and magical defence, and a single low-ranking mage shouldn't pose much of a threat. Even Jessica could probably hold out long enough, especially with Leah beside her.

But just as he began to move again, something made his eyes widen in alarm.

"Jessica, dodge!" he shouted across the hall, his voice sharp and urgent, cutting through the noise like a blade. And to his immense relief, she heard him.

She rolled to the side an instant before a massive axe swept through the space she'd been standing in. The weapon carved a deep groove into the stone floor, a low whoosh trailing behind it as a towering man stepped into view, an enemy knight cloaked in a faint green aura, his presence radiating raw killing intent. His face twisted into something like amusement as he glanced between the two girls.

"Well, what do we have here?" he sneered, tightening his grip on the axe as the light caught its edge. "The youngest of the Skydrid and the royal family, standing side by side. Seems we've lucked out tonight."

Without waiting for a reply, the knight lunged forward, and the air around him shimmered with the force of his movement. Jessica brought her sword up just in time to meet his swing, her blade catching the axe in a shower of sparks. For a moment, a single heartbeat, she held her ground, her legs locked in place and her face contorted in effort.

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Then the power difference asserted itself.

The impact sent her flying backward, her boots scraping along the marble as she was flung several meters across the hall. A wet cough followed as blood spattered from her mouth and her body crumpled to the floor in a heap.

Jacob's pulse spiked, his eyes darting frantically around the battlefield. 'Where are the others? Where the hell are they?' He scanned the room, hoping to catch sight of his siblings, Isaac, Alex, Henry, but none of them were there. Like the pillars, they must have rushed off toward the research facility the moment the attack was reported.

Jessica was alone. And now she was facing a knight.

She could manage a fight against a mage with Leah's support, but this, this was entirely different. Against a knight, someone who had mastered the use of aura, she stood no chance. It didn't matter how brave she was, how determined or skilled, because she had not mastered aura yet, without aura, her blade wouldn't have the weight to penetrate defences, and she wouldn't be able to protect herself against those kinds of blows.

The same was true for him.

He didn't know aura, didn't have the strength or speed to contend with fighters like that. Running over there wouldn't help. It would just mean dying beside her. No matter how much his instincts screamed at him to move, no matter how tightly his fists clenched or how loud the voice in him roared in the back of his mind, he knew that charging in would accomplish nothing.

They would both be cut down in seconds.

And so, gritting his teeth and swallowing back the impulse, Jacob forced himself to stay put.

He couldn't save her.

Jacob didn't feel guilt for the choice he'd made. He didn't feel sorrow at seeing Jessica injured, didn't feel anger toward the man who had struck her down, and not even the faintest twinge of panic at the knowledge that she might die. For a while, there was only emptiness, a cold, clinical void where emotion should have been, and in that stillness, Jacob might have continued standing there, doing nothing at all.

But then something happened.

It wasn't subtle. It wasn't creeping or gradual. It came like a wave crashing into him uninvited and overwhelming and in an instant, a shudder rolled down his spine and his body began to tremble. He blinked. He swallowed. And he realized, with a kind of growing dread, that he had just considered letting his sister die. Not by accident. Not by inability. But by choice.

And worse, he had been fine with it.

A thought, cold and merciless, slipped through his mind: 'What kind of person thinks like that?'

And then came the answer, or the beginning of one, in the form of a single emotion, fear. But it wasn't the fear of dying, or the fear of losing Jessica, or even the fear of failure. No, it was something far deeper, far more intimate. He was afraid of himself. Afraid of how easily he'd accepted her death as the logical outcome. Afraid that whatever was left of him beneath this suppression was something hollow and inhuman.

And if that was true, if the rune had erased his emotions yet he could still feel this fear, then what had just broken through wasn't just fear. It was a warning.

'This is what you're becoming.'

He took a step forward. His muscles tightened, his heart beating just a little faster, but then, without even thinking he stepped back twice as far, his heels scraping against the floor. Logic returned, steady and cold: 'You'll die if you go over there. She'll die anyway. It's better if only one of you does. Think. Survive.'

That should have been the end of it.

But another voice rose up, not a sound but a feeling, less rational, less clean. 'What kind of person are you becoming?' it asked. 'You may not be yourself right now but what will you feel when the rune fades? What will you remember about this moment? Will you still be human tomorrow?'

And with that, he stepped forward again. This time, he didn't retreat.

"I have to save her," he whispered, not for her, not even out of love, but for himself. Because if he didn't, he wasn't sure he could be sane come tomorrow, when he realized he left his sister to die. He would probably kill himself, so in a way, this action was rational.

'I won't become a monster,' he thought, his legs already moving, the battle forgotten for a moment as he focused solely on that one truth. 'Even if this is the only emotion I can feel… even if it's just fear of who I'm becoming… it's something.'

Jessica was barely holding on.

Each swing of the enemy's axe shattered something, another splinter torn from her shield, another crack running along her blade, and each impact sent a painful jolt through her arms, her muscles screaming, her bones creaking with the effort. She knew she couldn't last much longer; she was cornered, overwhelmed, and dangerously close to collapse. One misstep, one delayed reaction, and it would all be over.

She cast a desperate glance to her side, searching the chaos of the hall for any sign of Mary, her loyal attendant, but found only confusion and flames. There was no trace of her, and that absence more than anything gnawed at her nerves. Could she be dead? Had she fallen somewhere in the crowd, alone and unprotected? And where was Jacob? Had something happened to him too?

Those two, Jacob and Mary, they were the only ones she was worried about, the rest of her family wasn't here. She dreaded the thought of either of them dying.

Just as that thought passed, she caught the downward arc of the axe and swung her sword upward with all the force she could muster. The weapons clashed with a screech of metal, and though she managed to deflect the blow, her stance left her exposed. She barely had time to breathe before a boot slammed into her stomach, the green hue of the man's aura flaring along his leg. The sheer power behind the kick turned her insides to fire, and she doubled over, coughing up blood.

But the enemy wasn't finished. He grabbed her by the wrist before she could stumble away, yanked her like a ragdoll, and slammed his fist into her side. The punch landed just beneath her ribs, a liver shot. Her body seized in pain, and she dropped to the ground in a heap, gasping for air as a blinding ache radiated through her abdomen.

She fumbled weakly at her side, her fingers searching the fabric of her pocket, desperate for the charm she knew should be there, a protective rune, the kind Leah was using now to shield herself. But it was gone. Whether it had fallen during the skirmish or been lost in the chaos, she had no idea.

Then came the unmistakable hiss of another axe swing, slicing through the air with lethal precision. Jessica forced herself to her feet. Her body screamed in protest, but the bloodline she carried, the Skydrid resilience bred into her bones, pushed her up. Even if her limbs trembled and her breaths came shallow, she could still move, and she darted sideways with the last burst of strength she could summon.

But she didn't make it far before the temperature in the room shifted. A wave of searing heat swept toward her, and her eyes locked on a glowing orb, a fireball, small but deadly hurtling directly at her chest.

There was no time to dodge.

No way to block it.

And strangely, she didn't panic.

There was no dramatic flash of memories, no visions of her past, no cinematic reel of all the things she had yet to do. Only a quiet, eerie sense of closure, like a door gently swinging shut.

'This is it,' she thought.

And then, a voice, rough, slurred, almost annoyed cut through the moment like a lifeline.

"…Shit."

Something flew into the fireball's path, no, someone, and the spell collided with them mid-air. The explosion that followed rocked the floor beneath her feet, sending a shockwave through the air. The figure was blasted backward, crashing hard against the ground, smoke curling from their body in wisps.

Jessica staggered to the side, her eyes wide with confusion, then fear, then something else entirely as the smoke began to clear.

Jacob.

He lay motionless for a second, shirt blackened and half-burnt, thin trails of flame licking the edges of a protective barrier that barely held together. His chest was marred by scorch marks, one prominent burn stretching across his collar, and a smaller one singeing his cheek. The ends of his hair were curled and brittle from the heat.

But then he moved.

He groaned quietly, slowly pushing himself up onto one elbow, then to his feet, his movements sluggish but steady. His expression was unreadable, but his voice, when it came, carried that dry, familiar cadence, spoken like someone waking from a long nap rather than having just taken a fireball to the chest.

"…That hurt a lot less than I thought it would."

Jessica didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Jacob stood now, eyes focused on the approaching knight and the mage still gathering energy behind him. The barrier around him flickered, his body was battered, and yet he stood as if none of that mattered.

He had come back. And this time, he wasn't going to run.

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