Getting Kaelid out of the clearing turned out to be no trouble at all. Between [Lightweight] keeping Cocytus Plate weighing next to nothing and Kaelid himself barely tipping past a hundred and thirty pounds, Ana lifted him without help, insisting on it before anyone else could offer.
"I've got him," she said, already moving. "The rest of you can barely stand on your own."
Nobody argued. Tatsuya fell in beside her anyway, sword still unclean, watching Kaelid's still form with a tightness in his jaw he didn't bother hiding. Eric and Aria trailed behind, both leaning on each other more than either wanted to admit.
They didn't make it back to Avalon that night. Camp went up hasty and quiet a mile out from the clearing. Ana had him laid closest to the fire, and for a long moment nobody said anything — just watched the faint fog of his breath curl in the cold air, proof enough he was still with them.
"He's stable," Ana said eventually, more to herself than anyone. "But stable isn't the same as fine. He needs real rest."
Tatsuya sat with his back against a fallen log, staring at nothing. "His luck ran out. Three ogres. We were only ready for two."
Nobody argued.
Eric, wrapped in every dry blanket the party had, managed a tired, humorless laugh. "Guy's luckiest and unluckiest person I've ever met. Guess tonight it finally caught up with him."
It wasn't really funny. Nobody laughed, but nobody told him to stop either — small, worn attempts at normal were the only thing holding the mood together at all.
Tatsuya hadn't said much since the clearing. He sat apart from the rest of the fire's reach, sword still unclean across his knees, staring at the blood dried dark along the blade like he hadn't decided yet whether to clean it or just look at it a while longer.
"You alright?" Eric asked, quiet enough not to draw the others in.
"Finished it," Tatsuya said, like that answered something different than what he'd been asked. "Took its leg. Then its throat. Didn't feel like winning, though. Felt like just barely not losing."
"That's most fights, from what I've seen."
"Guess so." Tatsuya turned the blade over once, watching firelight catch the dried blood along the fuller. "First time I've actually been scared since I picked this thing up. Didn't expect that to feel worse than the fighting itself."
Eric didn't have anything clever to offer that, so he just sat with him instead, the two of them quiet under the same worn attempt at normal the whole camp was leaning on.
Ana didn't join in. She sat close to Kaelid's side, one hand resting light against his chest, feeling it rise and fall beneath her palm, counting each one like she didn't quite trust the last breath to promise a next one.
Stay stubborn a little longer. That's all I'm asking.
The mansion was different somehow. Bigger, grander — marble where there used to be red brick, a fountain where the front lawn had been. Kaelid didn't question it. Why would he? This was his home. It had always been his home.
He sat at the head of a long dining table, more gold on his fingers than he could remember earning, and across from him sat his wife.
My wife.
The thought settled over him warm and easy, the way true things do. She was beautiful — silver hair catching candlelight, an elegant dress the color of deep water. She said something to him, something fond, and he laughed at it, though later he wouldn't be able to recall what the joke even was.
I have everything. Money, a title, a home fit for royalty, a wife who loves me. Everything I ever wanted.
And yet.
Somewhere underneath the warmth of it, something sat wrong. A note played slightly flat in an otherwise perfect song. He couldn't place it. He looked at his wife again — really looked this time — and the unease sharpened without resolving.
That's not her laugh.
The thought arrived uninvited, and once it did, he couldn't unthink it. Her laugh was wrong. Her hands, resting delicate on the table, were wrong — too smooth, too unmarked, no calluses from training or the countless small burns of a kitchen. Her eyes, when she turned them toward him, were the same shade all the way through.
Where's the purple. Where's the green.
"Kaelid?"
Her voice again, and it didn't match either — soft, pleasant, entirely unfamiliar dressed up in a familiar shape.
This isn't her. This isn't Ana.
The gold table, the marble floors, the title, the wealth — all of it went thin and papery around the edges, a stage set he could suddenly see the seams of. None of it mattered. None of it had ever mattered, not really, not without—
"Kaelid. Wake up."
The voice shifted mid-sentence, the pleasant unfamiliar tone cracking into something rougher, more real, edged with worry that the dream-wife had never once shown him in all her borrowed warmth.
That's her. That's actually her.
His eyes shot open to firelight and cold air and the ache of every muscle in his body at once.
Ana's face hovered close above him, relief breaking visibly across it the instant his eyes found hers.
Gods? Ha, I'd rather die than owe those useless bastards a 'thank you.' But…
He let the thought trail off, because none of that mattered right now. What mattered was her — real, mismatched eyes, purple and green, exactly as they should be. Exactly as he'd apparently needed them to be.
He didn't say any of it out loud. His throat felt like sandpaper, and every attempt at words came out as little more than a rasp.
"Don't try to talk yet," Ana said quickly, one hand pressing gently against his chest as if to hold him still by touch alone. "You're safe. Everyone's safe. Just breathe."
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He did as he was told, for once, and let himself just look at her instead — solid, present, real in a way the version of her in his dream never quite managed to be.
It took a while before his voice came back to him properly. The others had drifted closer by then — Tatsuya still watching him like he half-expected Kaelid to stop breathing again if he looked away, Aria hovering at the edge of the firelight, and Eric slumped nearby, looking about as wrecked as Kaelid felt.
"...How long was I out?" Kaelid finally managed, voice still rough.
"Long enough to scare the hell out of all of us," Aria said, some of her usual sharpness creeping back now that the worst of the fear had passed.
Kaelid tried to piece together what he'd missed, but his memory just... stopped. He remembered the ogre catching his blade, remembered the sudden white-hot pain after being lifted off his feet — and then nothing.
"...What happened? Last thing I remember, that thing had just grabbed me."
Ana and Tatsuya exchanged a glance. Neither of them looked eager to be the one telling it.
"It slammed you into the ground hard enough to leave a crater," Tatsuya said finally. "You were out before you hit the snow, probably. I finished it off after that, once Ana caught up."
Kaelid absorbed that in silence for a moment. A crater. He didn't remember any crater.
"And Aria and Eric?" he asked. "Last I saw, she was running off to help you."
"Ask her," Tatsuya said, nodding toward Aria. "She's got the better half of the story anyway. The part with Eric."
Aria crossed her arms, something flickering behind her eyes that wasn't quite ready to be turned into words yet.
Kaelid looked at her, waiting.
"Well?" he said, managing something close to his usual smirk despite how wrecked his voice still sounded. "You gonna leave me hanging, or what?"
Aria let out a breath, half sigh, half something more tired than that.
"...You want the long story, or the short one?"
Something in the way she asked it — quiet, a little unsteady — told him this wasn't going to be a simple retelling.
"Long story," he said.
Aria was quiet for a moment, staring into the fire like she was looking for where to even begin. Then she told it — all of it, start to finish.
She hadn't wanted to leave.
Every instinct screamed to stay and fight, but Kaelid's logic had been sound, and sound logic was the one thing Aria never learned how to argue with, even when it hurt.
She went in the direction Eric's body had whipped through the air, and it opened onto the riverbank, and she saw him — face-down in the shallows, the current dragging weakly at his armor, not moving.
"Eric!"
She didn't remember crossing the distance. One second she was at the treeline, the next she was wading in past her knees, then her chest, hauling at his straps with hands already going numb.
Then the water came alive around them.
Small, fast, silver-white shapes, teeth packed too densely for their size — not just one, but three. One lunging straight for Eric's exposed throat where his collar had slipped loose. Two more converging on her.
Three of them. Of course it's three.
December was useless slung across her back — Absolute Zero already spent on the ogre, and no drawing a bow while holding Eric. She ripped Taxes free from her hip instead, slammed the flat of it into the one going for Eric's throat, deflecting rather than killing, buying him a half-second he badly needed.
Then something closed around her forearm and she screamed water instead of air.
Teeth, small but numerous, sawing rather than biting clean. Before she could process it, the second one hit her calf from below, dragging her lower into the water before she kicked free.
Move. Don't think. Just move.
She twisted, drove Taxes down into the one on her arm — it released, blood clouding instantly. The second came back around and she met it head-on this time, catching it mid-lunge and driving the blade up under its jaw the way Kaelid had shown her once, half-joking, over dinner. Find the soft part. Everything's got one.
It went still, drifting off into the dark instead of sinking.
The one that had gone for Eric circled back, and her lungs weren't giving her much more time. She hauled him bodily in front of her, putting her own body between the creature and his throat, and slashed wide rather than precise — caught it across the side, not clean, but enough to send it darting into deeper water instead of pressing the attack.
Her arm was on fire. Her calf wasn't much better. She kicked hard for the surface anyway, dragging Eric's dead weight up with her, and broke into open air gasping.
She dragged him up onto the bank and immediately regretted stopping — the water wasn't done being dangerous just because they were technically out of it. Something pale still flickered beneath the surface a few feet out, circling, patient in the way only something that had already tasted blood could be.
Don't linger. Not here.
"Eric. Eric, can you hear me?" She was already pulling him further up the bank, adrenaline doing what her body no longer had left to give.
His eyes cracked open, unfocused, then found her face. "...Aria? Guess I finally— found out what flying feels like."
"Don't joke right now." Her hands shook as she checked him over — a gash at his temple, one arm bent wrong. Blood from her own arm was already dripping onto his armor.
He noticed. His eyes went wide, focus sharpening fast despite everything. "You're bleeding — Aria, are you gonna be okay?"
"I'm fine." It came out clipped, faster than she meant it to. "Let's just quickly get back. This water isn't safe, and I don't want to find out what else is in there."
He didn't argue, which told her more than anything else how much that fight had actually taken out of him. She got him upright, one arm slung over her shoulder, and didn't look back at the river once as they staggered away from the bank.
They'd made it maybe fifty feet before Eric stopped her, weight still half against her shoulder, breathing hard.
"Aria."
"We need to keep moving—"
"Aria." He said it again, firmer this time, and she stopped despite herself. "You went in after me. Didn't even hesitate."
"Of course I did." It came out sharper than she meant, mostly to cover how much her hands were still shaking. "You'd have done the same."
"Yeah. I would've." He was looking at her differently than the adrenaline alone accounted for — something steadier underneath it, even half-drowned and barely upright. "Doesn't make it not matter, though. That I owe you my life right now. Figured that's worth saying out loud, not just letting it sit there unsaid."
She didn't have a quick answer for that, which was rare enough that it startled her more than the fight had.
"...You can thank me once we're somewhere that isn't actively trying to kill us," she said finally, voice rougher than intended, and got him moving again before he could see whatever her face was doing.
The walk back through the trees felt endless — slower than the run out had been, both of them soaked and shaking. Neither of them said much else. There wasn't much left to say that wouldn't have made either of them fall apart a little, and neither one had the luxury of falling apart yet.
She hadn't let go of him the whole way back.
Aria fell silent, staring into the fire, the last of the story still hanging heavy over the whole camp.
Nobody spoke for a moment. Then Kaelid, voice still a little rough, broke it.
"...Huh. Wasn't that long, actually."
Aria's head snapped toward him, somewhere between offended and startled into almost-laughing.
"That's what you took from all of that?"
"What? You said long story. I was bracing myself." He managed something close to his usual smirk, though it came out a little softer than intended. "Glad you're both okay."
Aria held his gaze for a second, then let out a short breath that was almost a laugh despite everything.
"...Yeah. Me too."