BAAAM!

With that one devastating slam, Eliot realized with horrifying clarity that everything—every single bone in his body—had now been ground into bloody paste.

He couldn't even scream in pain anymore.

It was that strange sensation of feeling pain all at once, so overwhelming and absolute that it somehow transcended hurt entirely. It felt surreal, almost dreamlike in its intensity.

What struck him as even more bizarre was that even in this moment, teetering on the edge of death, he didn't feel the slightest flicker of fear.

"I'm dying," he realized with cold detachment.

It shouldn't have gone this way. He had everything planned out already—every step, every contingency, even how it was all supposed to end. But all of that went straight to hell the moment Annabelle somehow reversed the slave seal on herself and siphoned away all his mana, leaving him completely powerless and vulnerable. With no other choice, he had tried to run for his life, to escape the inevitable, but it seemed his fate had been sealed from the very moment he created that cursed link between them.

"E...liot!" A voice struggled to reach him through the haze, but it was too broken and distant to make out clearly.

And then….

Darkness.

…..

…

..

.

"ELIOT! ELIOT, WHERE ARE YOU?!"

With a cry of pure desperation, Nora screamed into the empty air after finally clawing her way back up to the top of the cliff from which Eliot had pushed her to safety. She was covered in bruises from the fall, bloodied on every visible part of her body. Blood drenched portions of her clothing, and even more trickled down from a gash on her forehead. But she didn't stop. She literally limped the entire way there, occasionally crawling when her injured leg couldn't support her weight anymore.

After everything—after all the agony and struggle—she made it to the top, only to find carnage spread before her. Blood was everywhere, splattered across rocks and pooling in the dirt, but there was no sign of Eliot anywhere.

"No… No… Not again! ELIOT! THIS IS ALL MY FAULT!" She clutched her head, crying profusely, her body wracked with sobs. "If he hadn't found me… If I hadn't been here… he wouldn't have had to protect me!"

She collapsed forward, crawling onto the battlefield on her hands and knees. There was so much blood—most of it green from whatever creatures had been slain here, but one trail distinctly, unmistakably red. Eliot's blood.

She kept crawling through the twisted branches and sharp splinters scattered across the ground, the debris cutting into her palms and knees, but she didn't care about the pain. Eventually she reached the spot—the place where she had been desperately trying to stop his bleeding before he'd pushed her over the edge. The last place she'd seen him alive.

She touched the blood with trembling hands, staring at the dark red stain soaking into the earth. Then she looked beyond it and, to her surprise, she noticed something.

"Wait… it's… a trail. MAYBE HE'S NOT DEAD!" Her eyes lit up with desperate hope.

She forced her bloodied body to stand, but there was no strength left in her legs anymore, even with mana enhancement coursing through them. After all, she had put her one good leg through far too much stress. Still, she began limping forward as fast as she could manage, pushing through the burning, grinding pain that made fresh tears stream down her face. Her desperation grew with every agonizing step—she had to find Eliot, no matter what it cost her.

After what felt like an eternity, she saw something glinting under the sunlight ahead. She carefully followed the gleam, crawling ever so slowly across the rough ground. When she finally reached for it, her eyes widened in shock.

"My ring… but how?"

She stared at the familiar piece of jewelry in disbelief. How could her ring possibly be here? That wasn't possible—unless this was the same place where she, her guards, and Liam had camped that night. But she knew it wasn't the same location.

She shook her head, forcing herself to focus.

"I have to find him first."

She slipped the ring onto her finger and immediately accessed its storage space. To her greatest relief, the contents were still there, untouched. She manifested the potion from within—a healing elixir, red in color and shimmering with concentrated mana.

She popped open the cork, infused her own mana into the liquid to activate its properties, then drank the entire thing in one desperate gulp.

The next moment brought pure, unfiltered agony.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Her destroyed leg was literally being reconstructed before her very eyes. The bones regrew first, knitting themselves together with audible cracks. Then tissues reformed around them, layer by painstaking layer. Finally, muscles coated the new bone structure, wrapping and weaving into functional form. She fell onto her back, screaming and crying as the pain became too much to bear, but the process continued relentlessly. The reconstruction was excruciatingly slow and torturous, each second feeling like an eternity, until eventually—finally—it stopped.

When it did, she couldn't even move anymore. She simply lay there on the cold ground, her face marked with dried tear tracks, her body completely spent.

About an hour later, the pain had dulled somewhat, though it was still present like a persistent burning. It was like sticking your entire leg into fire and pulling it out after two minutes—the leg might remain intact, but the searing pain of the burn would linger.

But she endured it.

"Eliot," she groaned through the pain, forcing herself back to her feet with sheer willpower. She looked around and found a trail of his blood leading deeper into the forest. With a deep, steadying exhale, she began limping as fast as she could, making her way into the dense trees.

With time and determination, she managed to start placing her reconstructed leg down in a staggered run. The pain was horrendous, but her will was overwhelming, driving her forward despite her body's protests.

Eventually, she was running properly, her body reinforced with mana helping her move even faster. She kept running, branches whipping past her face, until she reached a clearing where trees had been destroyed in a perfectly straight line, as if something—or someone—had been thrown through them with tremendous force.

She approached the first shattered tree and immediately spotted blood on the splintered trunk. "It's him," she realized, her heart clenching.

She followed the destructive path, and at some point found something lying on the bare ground ahead. "My sword."

At this point, there was no denying it anymore—Eliot had been the one holding her ring all this while. He must have found it and kept it safe. She picked up the weapon and kept moving forward with renewed urgency.

Eventually, she stood before the last tree in the line of destruction. It had huge cracks spider-webbing across its trunk, and blood was splattered across its surface. She could even see ragged pieces of his clothing embedded in the bark.

"Oh my god, Eliot!" She fell to her knees, reaching out to touch the blood on the tree with a shaking hand.

"No, he can't be dead… his body isn't here," she told herself, trying to find encouragement in that fact—or perhaps simply deluding herself into hope.

She stood up again, though her body was rejecting all this stress now. Her vision was becoming bleary, unfocused. The world swayed around her.

"I have to find… Eliot," she forced the words out, but her body couldn't take any more punishment.

While fighting against the encroaching dizziness, a voice suddenly reached her ears. "Nora?"

She spun around and froze in place, her breath catching in her throat.

Tears began trailing down her face.

"You're alive."

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