For most people, Thursday was just another working day.
For Felix, it was supposed to be the start of his new assignment.
For one particular prisoner in Acheron Deep, it had become something else entirely, a day she’d been waiting for.
Seraphina Veyr sat on the edge of her bed.
Her cell hadn’t changed in seven years: four reinforced walls, a metal frame, a small table, a chair and silence.
She’d learned to live inside it, unbearable at first, then oddly comforting, then finally a wall she’d built brick by brick between herself and everyone else. That silence was how she’d survived.
Today it felt different.
Her eyes kept drifting to the door, had been for the better part of an hour. She didn’t know exactly when he’d arrive, or whether he’d come alone, or even whether he’d actually come back at all and yet some part of her had been expecting him since the moment she woke up.
Thursday. The day he’d promised.
She was waiting for something. The realization itself felt strange.
She’d waited for plenty in her life: food, sleep, an execution that never came, interrogations, silence from people who’d finally given up trying to reach her. She had never once waited for someone’s return.
Her fingers tightened around the edge of the mattress as she remembered him, the man who’d walked into her cell with an irritatingly casual smile, who’d spoken to her like she was simply another person in the room, who’d looked at her without fear or disgust or pity.
And, more than anything, the man whose presence had made the noise in her head go quiet.
She closed her eyes and let herself remember it, that strange warmth, not physical, not sunlight on skin, but something deeper.
The moment he’d stepped into her cell, something in her chest had loosened. Her breathing had steadied. Her thoughts had stopped colliding into each other. For one brief stretch of time there had been no memories, no anger, no old voices screaming from somewhere behind her ribs.
Just quiet. And she’d learned, for the first time in seven years, that there was a real difference between silence and peace.
She opened her eyes. Her face stayed carefully blank.
But somewhere underneath it, she wanted him to come back.
Several kilometers away, Felix sat in the back of an Association vehicle, watching the city slide by: buildings, traffic, people living their ordinary lives. He rested his cheek against his fist.
"So this is officially my first day as a therapist." He sighed. "Who would’ve thought."
The driver glanced at him in the mirror. "Sir?"
"Nothing."
He looked back out the window. Two days ago he’d been fighting monsters in a frozen dimension. Today, instead, he was about to fight a human mind and somehow that felt more dangerous.
He smiled faintly. "Well. Let’s see what kind of monster I’m actually dealing with."
Acheron Deep was as imposing as ever: two kilometers down, reinforced walls, mana suppressors, checkpoints stacked on checkpoints, enough defensive measures to give even an SSS-rank hero pause.
Felix cleared security and found Gideon waiting for him at the entrance to the rehabilitation wing, arms crossed.
"You came."
"You sound disappointed."
Gideon ignored that. "Everything’s prepared. Your schedule’s approved, two hours with her today."
"Two hours?"
"Yes."
"That’s a long time."
"You’re the one who wanted flexibility."
Gideon just stared at him, unmoved, and Felix sighed. "Fine."
They walked in silence for a moment before Gideon spoke again. "Remember what we discussed. She’s still extremely dangerous."
"I know."
"Don’t underestimate her. Don’t drop your safety precautions. Don’t let her manipulate you."
Felix stopped. "Yeah yeah, I understand."
The security door opened. Felix stepped inside, and Seraphina looked up immediately, their eyes meeting before either of them moved.
Felix caught it at once, her posture had shifted, subtly but unmistakably. Her shoulders weren’t as tight. Her breathing was steadier. And there was something in her eyes he hadn’t seen last time.
Expectation.
"Good morning, Seraphina." No response.
He pulled out the chair and sat. "I hope you had a good week." Nothing, as expected.
"Right. Stupid question." He smiled anyway.
"Okay, let’s start properly. My name is Felix Valerius."
Her eyes flicked to him at that, just briefly before dropping back to her hands.
It wasn’t much. But it was more than she’d given him last time.
Felix caught it. "Ah. Well, that’s progress."
She said nothing, but the corner of her mouth tightened, like she was resisting the urge to react further.
"I’ll take it," Felix said, and settled back into the chair.
He waited a moment, but nothing else came. That familiar silence again, except now he knew exactly what sat behind it. She wasn’t incapable of speaking. She was choosing not to.
The question was why, and more urgently, how he could get her to choose differently.
He tapped his fingers against his knee. "Let’s establish something first. I’m not here to make you confess, and I’m not going to demand you tell me about your past."
"Honestly, I don’t even need to know those things right now. What I need is a lot simpler." He leaned forward. "I need you to talk."
Silence stretched out: five seconds, ten, twenty. Nothing.
"As expected," he said, and stood. "I think we’ll end today’s session here."
Something shifted in her face, just a fractional contraction of her pupils. Felix stopped, and smiled to himself. *Got you.*
He sat down. "Interesting. You didn’t react at anything, but the second I said I was leaving —" he pointed at her — "you reacted."
Her expression smoothed back to nothing.
"Nice try," Felix said, leaning back. "Now we’re getting somewhere."
Seraphina hated that he noticed. She’d spent seven years learning to control her expressions, keep her breathing level, make herself unreadable to anyone watching and this man saw straight through it anyway.
Felix crossed one leg over the other. "You want me here. I know you don’t trust me and you definitely don’t like me."
Her fingers curled slightly against her knee, and he saw that too.
"You know why," he went on. "Because when I’m here, your mind goes quiet." He tapped his own chest. "My healing mana doesn’t just heal wounds."
He wasn’t entirely sure how to explain the passive effect even to himself, he’d always thought of it as a strange quirk of his ability, something that made people calmer just by being near him, softened their hostility, slowed their breathing. It didn’t touch their thoughts. It just made it a little easier to breathe.
With her, though, it ran stronger. Much stronger.
"You felt it last time. I know you did." He leaned closer. "And that’s why you’ve been waiting for today."
Her eyes widened, just slightly, but enough.
"There it is," Felix said, and her expression hardened instantly in response.
"Don’t worry, I’m not judging you." He rested his elbows on his knees. "I’m going to make you an offer, actually. If you want me to keep coming back —" he paused — "you have to talk to me. Not about anything you’re not ready for. You can talk about anything else. Your favorite food. The weather. Books —" her eyes flicked briefly to the stack on her table, and he caught that too — "your opinion of this prison. How terrible my hair looks today."
A small twitch pulled at the corner of her eyebrow.
"See?" Felix grinned. "You already have opinions."
She said nothing, but his smile faded into something more serious. "You don’t have to talk about any of that, though. Because there’s one problem I can’t get around." He stood. "I can’t help someone who refuses to talk to me at all."
Her gaze tracked him to the door. Her fingers tightened against the mattress.
"I’m going to tell the Association I’m withdrawing from the program," he said. "I don’t think I’m the right person for this."
Her breathing changed. He reached for the door.
Something in her chest went tight. That warmth, that quiet, already fading, just from the thought of him walking out.
"I’ll probably never come back here," Felix said, and opened the door.
For seven years she had wanted nothing. She’d rejected everything, built a fortress no one could reach into.
But there was one thing, now, that she couldn’t stand to lose. That strange clarity.
That brief, impossible freedom from the noise that never stopped otherwise.
"Goodbye, Seraphina."
"Wait."
The word left her before she could stop it. Felix froze in the doorway. The room went utterly still, and Seraphina herself looked stunned, her mouth slightly open, as if she couldn’t quite believe what had just come out of it.
For the first time in seven years, she had spoken.
Felix turned around slowly. Neither of them moved for a long moment. Then he smiled quietly.
"Well," he said, closing the door again. "Guess today’s session isn’t over after all."
Her face slid back into its usual blankness, but it was too late, he’d already seen it.
She hadn’t spoken because he’d pressured her into remembering something, or threatened her, or demanded an explanation.
She’d spoken because she didn’t want him to leave.
Felix crossed back to the chair and sat. "Let’s make a deal. I won’t ask about anything you don’t want to discuss. But from now on, you give me something. Words. One word’s enough."
Her lips parted. "...Stay."
His eyebrows went up, and he laughed under his breath. "That’s two."
She frowned. He raised both hands. "Sorry, sorry." Then, "I’ll stay."
The room went quiet again, but this time the silence felt entirely different. Seraphina could feel it: the warmth, the calm, the pressure in her chest finally easing, the thoughts that usually clawed at the edges of her mind drifting further away than they had in years.
Felix settled back in his chair. "So. You read a lot." He glanced at the books, then back at her. "Let’s start there."
Felix understood one thing clearly: the hard part of this work was never making a broken person speak.
It was convincing them that speaking didn’t mean surrendering.
And she had just taken her first step.