"No." She turned one of the vials over in her fingers without looking at it. "That sequence activates a curse embedded in the bracelet. It would have killed her within fifteen days."
I set the remaining vials down carefully, one at a time. "How did Joseph find out that Maren knew the real location of the book?"
"She freed people he had been using for experiments. All of them were wearing bracelets." A pause. "He traced it back to her."
The candle between us had burned down to a stub. I watched the wax pool at its base for a moment. "He is locked up now. He will face what he deserves. What will you do after this?"
"Whatever Eivara decides. I follow her."
"Can she hear this conversation?"
Her eyes didn't move from mine. "Not right now. I control what she can and cannot hear when she is like this." The faintest shift in her expression — something between protection and grief. "She is asleep."
I leaned back. "That night. Who was it I was with?"
"Me." She set the vial down between us. "But she has a say in what I do with her body. She agreed. That night she agreed."
The room held that for a moment.
"I have been thinking about drawing up a contract with her," I said. "Something to keep her from doing anything rash once this all settles."
"She will not." Her voice was quiet but certain. "But she will need a reason to keep moving forward. Something to reach toward."
"The pastor maintained an intelligence network across the city." I turned my cup slowly in my hand"I want Eivara to take it over. Absorb it into something we can actually use."
Silence. Then she straightened slightly, almost imperceptibly. "I will agree to that. But there are two things I want in return." She held up a finger. "First — I want to know who gave you the real method for breaking the bracelet." A second finger. "Second — she wants her childhood home returned to her."
"The second will take time. I won't promise a date." I met her eyes. "As for the first, there was no external method. I have a spiritual presence that deflects harm directed at me. The bracelet stopped working the moment it touched my wrist." I let that settle before adding, "The aphrodisiac that night was the same."
Something moved behind her expression. Not surprising exactly. More like a piece of a puzzle finding its place.
I poured out the last of the bottle, splitting it evenly between us. "One last question for tonight."
She waited.
"What is your name? And what is her real name."
She looked at the cup in front of her. "I am Seivyn." A breath. "Her real name is Eivara."
I nodded slowly. "Can I speak with her now?"
She didn't answer with words. Just a small nod. Then something shifted — the set of her shoulders, the angle of her chin, the quality of the silence around her. A moment passed like a door opening in a quiet room.
The color of her eyes returned to normal.
I pulled her close on the bed, her warmth settling against mine. For a while neither of us said anything. Then I asked her about her life, her childhood, what she had wanted before everything went wrong.
We both needed warmth. She had just been freed from years under her brother's control and was beginning a life she had not planned for. I had been pulled into a mess I had not asked for. But if I was being honest with myself, I did not hate the mess. The people around me, both the good ones and the calculating ones, made this world feel real in a way I had not expected. What I was genuinely afraid of was the mental toll. The slow accumulation of stress and anxiety that came with being this involved in things that could go very wrong.
I held her a little tighter and waited for sleep to find me.
–-_—
Veyra was trusting me with her body and with her future, even if she would never say it plainly. I understood her resistance. I had read enough about mana core treatment to know exactly what she was risking.
Very few people in this world could even claim to attempt a mana core restoration. The methods that existed placed enormous strain on the patient, and if anything went wrong mid-procedure, the mana would tear through the body from the inside. There was no recovery from that.
Knowing that actually eased some of my anxiety. My method was safer. Whether it would be successful was a different question, and that part rested entirely on me. The procedure demanded continuous precision. Every skill I had would simplify the process, but my mana capacity under sustained use had a hard limit of roughly two hours.
"Breathe steadily," I said. "Do not resist my mana. Let it move through you on its own, and draw slowly from the environment outside your body."
"Understood."
I placed my hand on her bare back, directly above the heart, and eased my mana into her. Her residual mana pushed back immediately, creating friction wherever mine tried to move. I reduced my input, giving her body time to adjust rather than forcing it.
After several careful attempts the resistance softened. I guided her mana along the channels where it had been sitting stagnant, coaxing it back into movement and directing it toward the core. Then came the hardest part. I drew all of the gathered mana through my left hand, cycled it through my own body, and returned it through my right, activating both Vital Resonance and Anatomical Insight simultaneously. The mana had to be fed into the broken core with exact control, enough to trigger absorption without overwhelming it.
The core was drinking it in. Slowly, steadily, but with a hunger that had to be regulated carefully or it would spiral.
After an hour I pulled back.
"That is enough for today. Do not try to channel mana on your own."
"I do not feel any different."
"You will tomorrow."
"Good. Get ready. We have somewhere to be."
"Give me a minute."
We made our way to the adventurer district and stopped at the entrance of a narrow alley. The shop at the end of it was old and unremarkable from the outside. The sign above the door read Cinder and Relic. We stepped inside and an old man appeared from behind a cluttered shelf, took one look at Veyra, and led us deeper into the building without a word.
The back room was dense with stacked papers, open ledgers, and instruments that looked like magical machinery built by someone who had never stopped tinkering. An old woman sat at the center of it. She looked me over from head to foot with the slow thoroughness of someone who had seen every kind of person pass through that door.
She turned to the old man. He turned to me.
"What name do you want?"
I thought about it for a moment. My own name, or something new entirely.
"Christopher Nolan Reeves."
"Age?"
"Twenty-three."
"Which country do you want listed as your country of origin?"
"Whichever one makes it impossible for anyone to go back and verify anything about me."