[Realm: Álfheimr]

[Location: The Deathless Fortress]

There were moments—quiet ones, usually uninvited—when a person's thoughts slipped backward and began circling those small, dangerous questions people liked to pretend they didn't dwell on.

What if?

There was no crime in it. No moral failing in wondering how different things might have been if one choice had bent a fraction to the left, or if hesitation had won instead of resolve. People pretended certainty was strength, but imagination was merely persistence. To wonder was to survive long enough to reflect.

And Gretchen had survived long enough to reflect far more than she would have liked.

She wondered often about those what ifs, not because she believed they could be changed, but because they framed the absurdity of where she now stood. Sometimes it was idle. Other times it clawed at her when sleep refused to come. And sometimes—like now—it pressed itself forward because the present was too unreal to accept without comparison.

There was nothing inherently wrong with it. No sin in imagining alternate paths, no crime in wondering how easily everything might have changed if a single choice had been made differently—or not made at all. Sometimes those thoughts were idle. Sometimes they were a way to cope. Sometimes they were simply the mind's attempt to make sense of a world that rarely offered explanations.

And so she wondered, not for the first time, what would have happened if she had never escaped the mines.

If she had remained buried beneath the earth, shackled to that suffocating routine of darkness and imprisonment. It would have been cruel, yes—monotonous, exhausting and degrading—but compared to what she had seen since, it would have been almost merciful. Predictable, at least.

But tame.

She would have known what tomorrow looked like.

She would not have seen the sky split by impossible forces. She would not have felt the earth scream beneath her feet. And she most certainly would not have watched an actual, mountain-sized Hydra—launched into the air as if the laws of the world had been temporarily misplaced. She wouldn't have watched it plummet back down seconds later, faster than gravity alone should have allowed, as though something had punched it out of the sky.

The impact rattled the fortress as though an earthquake rang out.

Stone screamed. Already fractured walls gave way entirely, collapsing inward as once sturdy supports failed. Dust and debris fell through the corridors, the air thickening with grit. Gretchen braced herself on instinct, boots digging in as the tremor rolled through the structure and faded into a loud but distant noise.

She exhaled slowly through her nose.

"So that's where we're at now," she murmured. "Things the size of mountains getting thrown constantly." Her gaze dragged forward, not out of fascination but resignation. ("Dante again, I surmise. Something tells me that won't be the most absurd thing I'll see today,") she thought, her mind already adjusting its expectations downward.

And there he was.

Koschei.

Or rather—what most people would have confidently assumed was the corpse of him.

He knelt amid shattered stone, his posture slack, head bowed forward. Blood soaked his robes, dark and thick, staining the ground beneath him. Sharp chunks of masonry pierced clean through his torso and limbs, pinning him in place at grotesque angles. His staff lay discarded nearby, half-buried in rubble.

To anyone else, it would have been obvious.

No one survived that.

Gretchen didn't move despite that.

She folded her arms loosely and stayed exactly where she was, watching with a detachment that bordered on indifference. She did not approach. But she did not relax either.

Seconds passed.

The wind whistled through broken arches, threading itself through the destruction. Somewhere far off, something massive occurred once more—each distant tremor reminding her that this chaos was far from over.

("Most of the Deseruit Beasts are gone…") she noted absently, her eyes turning across the open space. No prowling shadows. No slavering maws. Just silence where beast had once lingered. She snorted softly. ("Guess those fools actually pulled it off.")

Ivan and Alexander surfaced in her thoughts despite her best efforts. She didn't know if either of them were alive. Didn't know if they'd escaped or been crushed beneath the consequences of their own choices.

If she were forced to guess, she'd lean toward the latter.

What they'd done was reckless and down right desperate. The kind of thing people did when they convinced themselves their lives were worth less than whatever cause they'd latched onto. And their stunt reeked of idealism.

And that irritated her more than it should have.

("All that… just to save others?")

Ivan's face rose unbidden in her mind. That stubborn look. The resolve that didn't waver even when fear should have overridden it. He hadn't looked brave. He'd looked certain. He was the kind of person this world chewed up early if it didn't break them outright. Yet still he had that drive to move forward despite that.

She did not understand that kind of certainty.

She could understand wanting to protect yourself. Wanting to live. Wanting to claw out another day in a world that rarely offered mercy. She could even understand sacrificing others if it meant survival—she didn't agree with it, but she understood the logic.

What she couldn't grasp was sacrificing yourself.

("I don't get it,") she admitted internally. ("I really don't.")

Gretchen was no saint. She never pretended to be. She'd killed, and she didn't flinch from that truth. But every life she'd taken had been nothing but a cornered decision. Never indulgent and certainly never pointless.

Preserving your own life wasn't cruelty—it was instinct. To act otherwise felt unnatural.

And yet Ivan's expression lingered.

Not smug or even self-righteous.

Just resolved.

("Does he enjoy playing hero?") she wondered. ("Or is it some kind of hero complex?")

Neither answer satisfied her.

Her gut told her it was simpler—and more troubling—than that. A strong sense of conviction. An unyielding belief that some things mattered more than survival.

Belief.

She clicked her tongue softly.

("What do I care?")

The thought came with finality. This was not her concern. Curiosity was a distraction, and distractions got people killed.

A sound cut through the silence suddenly.

A low, gravelly laugh.

Gretchen's gaze snapped back to Koschei.

Stone moved.

Chunks of masonry slid free from his body and clattered to the ground as his wounds began to close before her eyes. Flesh knitted itself together disturbingly, blood retreating as though time had been nudged backward. There was no flash of magic, no dramatic surge of mana—just efficient restoration.

Koschei inhaled deeply and straightened, reaching down to retrieve his fallen staff. He leaned on it briefly, then looked up at her with a grin that suggested satisfaction rather than exhaustion.

"I was hoping you'd fall for that," he said, voice light.

She scoffed.

"Fall for you playing dead?" Gretchen replied flatly. "What are you, senile? Only an ape would buy that."

Her arms crossed tighter, though her eyes narrowed despite herself.

("At first I thought it was healing magic,") she analyzed. ("But his mana pool didn't dip. Not even a fraction. Regenerating from those kinds of wounds should have cost him something.") Her gaze sharpened. ("So it's not conventional magic. A separate mechanism. And he's not a Nil…")

It was as interesting as it was disturbing.

"You can not fault an old man for trying," Koschei said, rolling his shoulders. "You are quite the pesky opponent."

"Pesky?" Gretchen tilted her head slightly. "Bold words from a man who'd be dead ten times over if not for that 'pesky' regeneration."

He chuckled, stroking his beard. "Perhaps. But I use what I have. And that particular tool taught me something interesting about your alchemy."

Her brow lifted a fraction. "Oh?"

"I initially believed you could transmute matter at range," he continued, clearly enjoying himself. "But you don't. You attach your mana to objects, then alter the mana instead."

Her expression darkened.

("Already? That didn't take him long.")

"The reason you haven't transmuted my body from afar," Koschei went on, "is because my mana purges yours on contact. Passively."

She clicked her tongue in annoyance.

"So?" she said coolly. "You think that saves you? I only need to touch you once. Turn you inorganic and your healing won't matter."

His grin widened.

"True," he admitted. "If you manage it." He lifted his staff slightly. "But that makes this a battle of attrition. You need proximity. You need mana." He paused, eyes glinting. "And mana—no matter how efficiently spent—is finite."

Gretchen's lips curled into a thin smile.

"Careful," she said. "You're assuming you're the only one with tricks left."

"Perhaps," he replied. "But tell me—how long can you keep this up?"

For a heartbeat, neither moved.

Then the air shifted.

A dozen circular black glyphs burst into existence above Koschei, humming with powerful mana.

"So," he said softly, anticipation bleeding into his voice, "let's see who's right."

The question was no longer if one of them would fall.

It was how much they were willing to lose before that answer arrived.

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