The medical facility was quiet.
Outside the intensive care room, five members of Felix’s team stood together, and for once none of them were joking, complaining, or arguing.
Even Kael wasn’t looking for somewhere to sit down. They’d been there for hours, and none of them wanted to leave.
Aria stood closest to the door, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, though the composure she usually carried as the team’s leader was nowhere in sight.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the door. Beyond it was Felix: their healer, their teammate, their friend, and the person they had failed to protect.
Her jaw tightened. A healer was supposed to stay protected during a raid, it was one of the most basic rules of team combat.
The damage dealers opened space, the tanks held threats, the support kept everyone’s condition stable, and everyone protected the healer, because if the healer went down, the whole team’s survival dropped with him.
They’d all known that. They’d trained for it. They’d fought together for years. And still, when the spatial disturbance tore them apart, Felix had been left alone and somehow found himself facing a peak S-rank boss with no one beside him.
*I should have found him sooner,* Aria thought. She was the leader. The one responsible for bringing everyone home.
She had brought everyone home.
Except Felix.
Darius stood beside her, hands clenched. He was one of the two people on the team who could stand next to Felix against an S-rank boss and hold the line and he hadn’t been there.
He’d been clearing his own section, fighting his own battles, trying to regroup, while somewhere else Felix had been fighting for his life alone.
He looked toward the intensive care room.
"He’s an idiot." His voice came out low. He swallowed. "He should’ve run."
"He couldn’t," Kael said.
Everyone turned. Kael’s expression had gone unusually serious. "The Black Horn Panther has lightning affinity. If he’d run, it would’ve caught him." His fists tightened.
"And he knew that."
Silence settled back over the room. Kael looked down at the floor.
He’d spent years as the laziest member of the team, complaining about missions, complaining about early mornings, complaining about long raids, complaining every time Felix hauled him back onto his feet after he’d taken damage.
*Lazy bastard. You’re lucky I’m here. Try not to die before I heal you.* Felix always said something like that, and Kael always fired back some ridiculous comeback, and it had become so routine it had started to feel meaningless.
Except it wasn’t. Not really. Felix was one of his closest friends.
His eyes went red. "He always covers us."
His voice cracked. "He always does. He takes hits because he knows he can heal them. He runs into danger because he knows he’ll be able to keep us alive." He looked toward the door. "And this time—" He stopped, jaw trembling. "This time there was nobody there to heal him."
His eyes dropped. "I should’ve been there."
For once, Kael didn’t blame the mission, or the rift, or the spatial disturbance that had scattered them. He blamed himself.
Lena stood beside him, quiet since she’d arrived, her hands folded tightly together as she stared at the floor.
"He’s going to wake up." Her voice came out soft. No one answered. She looked up. "He has to." There was something almost desperate in her eyes. "He always wakes up."
Kael glanced at her, and she wiped quickly at her eyes but the tears came anyway, and she turned her face away. "He’s supposed to be the one yelling at us." A shaky laugh slipped out. "Especially you."
Kael managed a weak smile. "Yeah."
"He’ll wake up and complain about how terrible we are at protecting our healer." Another tear slid down her cheek. "And then he’ll make some stupid joke about it." Her voice broke on the last word.
Mira couldn’t hold herself together after that. She covered her face as a sob broke loose, she’d always been the most emotional one on the team, the loudest laugh, the loudest cheer, the one who worried hardest and cried first whenever someone got seriously hurt, and this time she couldn’t stop. "He almost died," she managed between her hands. "He almost died and we weren’t there."
Ryan stood off to the side, silent, his fingers clenched so tightly his nails had broken skin.
Blood ran slowly between his fingers, and he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes stayed on the floor.
"I should’ve reached him." His voice was barely audible. "I was closer than anyone."
No one argued with him. He had been moving toward the center when the team started regrouping, one of the first to reach the convergence point. If he’d been faster, maybe he would have found Felix in time. Maybe.
That single word had been quietly torturing all of them since the moment they’d found him.
Orion stood at the back and hadn’t spoken once. He was the fastest member of the team, lightning affinity his whole advantage, normally nobody on the battlefield could outrun him.
But the Black Horn Panther had been faster. Far faster. He stared down at his own hands, his face expressionless, though the self-blame underneath it wasn’t hard to see. *If I’d been there. If I’d sensed his mana. If I’d reached him in time.*
The same impossible scenarios kept looping through his head, and none of them changed what had actually happened. Felix had fought alone, and they had failed to protect him.
Hours passed before Aria finally looked at the others. "Go home."
Nobody moved.
"That’s an order."
Kael shook his head. "No."
She met his eyes, and he held them. "I’m staying."
"So am I," Darius said.
Lena wiped her face. "Me too."
"I’ll stay," Mira sniffed.
Ryan didn’t answer, but he didn’t move either. Neither did Orion.
Aria looked around at all of them, and for a moment she wanted to argue. Then she understood, they weren’t staying because they expected Felix to wake up that night.
They were staying because leaving felt like abandoning him twice.
She turned back toward the intensive care room. "Then we wait."
**Acheron Deep Detention Facility**
Thursday passed. Friday came.
She sat on her bed with the book open in her lap and tried to read. She couldn’t. She read the same paragraph seven times and none of it stayed with her.
Her eyes kept drifting to the door, and every sound from the corridor made her look up, and every time it wasn’t him, and she hated it: the anticipation, the not-knowing, and more than anything, the fact that there was nothing she could do about any of it.
For years she’d made peace with helplessness. She’d accepted the walls, the restraints, the silence, even the possibility of her own execution, none of it had ever frightened her enough to make her want to act.
But Felix, unconscious somewhere beyond her reach, was different. She wanted information. She wanted to know if he was breathing steadily, if his injuries were closing, if his heart was keeping a normal rhythm, if his eyes had opened yet.
She wanted to see him, plainly and simply, and the wanting itself made her uncomfortable enough that she tried to push it away.
It came back anyway. Again, and then again, until she finally stopped fighting it and just let herself sit there, waiting.
Saturday brought no change. Sunday brought none either. The doctors kept working on him, his mana reserves creeping back, his damaged organs stabilizing, but his consciousness stayed out of reach, and all the medical staff could do was monitor him and wait.
Monday morning arrived, the first light reaching over Valemont City. Inside the Association’s medical facility, the machines kept their quiet rhythm —
*beep, beep, beep*
While Felix lay motionless beneath the white sheets, his breathing steady, his face calm.
For four days he hadn’t moved.
Then his right hand twitched, a tiny motion, almost nothing.
His fingers curled slightly, then relaxed. A few seconds passed, and they twitched again, more clearly this time.
The nurse standing nearby froze, staring at his hand, her eyes widening before she reached for the communication device. "Doctor." Her voice trembled with something close to excitement. "Doctor, his fingers moved."