"Argh... Ah... Ugh."
As Azalea woke up, all she felt was pain—radiating through every fiber of her body. She couldn't even move.
"Nice," she gasped, laughing bitterly through the agony.
What else could she do? Cry? She'd done that so much it felt meaningless now. Crying at unfair fate was... laughable.
"Argh..." she groaned. "They roughed me up pretty hard." The words came out as a pained mutter before she forced what she hoped resembled a smile.
Then came the sobs.
No, she was still one big, stupid softie.
She tried to hold it in, tried to be strong, tried to pretend she was above this. But she couldn't. The dam burst, and she cried. Oh, how she cried.
It hurt so much it felt like she'd swallowed a knife whole. The pain was so overwhelming she wished she could just erase herself—not just the physical agony, but everything.
Damn. Damn it all.
How had it come to this point? No one had listened to her. Would anyone even believe her now? Hell, she didn't even understand how it had happened herself.
It was as though the system had controlled her completely. All she remembered was seeing a sword—one she had no idea where it had come from—piercing straight through Austin's gut. She'd been horrified, so terrified that she'd trembled with fear as she stumbled back from the deed.
Her first instinct had been to escape. She'd begged the system, pleaded with the goddess to fulfill her promise. After all, she'd known this was her cannon event, her scripted end.
But all she'd met was silence.
"Haa sobs haha sobs" The broken, husky voice belonged to a girl now isolated and left alone to die.
Used. Again. Used once fucking again!
Was this all she amounted to? A pathetic end? Was this it?
In that moment, all those carefully stacked emotions poured out like water through a broken dam. She cried for an hour. Two hours. Three. She couldn't even tell when darkness fell. She just lay there, barely able to move, tears streaming down her battered face.
They say when someone cries like that, it's rarely about the physical injury—it's about how deeply, mentally hurt they are. Azalea was living proof of that.
She was done.
She looked up at the sky. It was dark now.
Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.
Rain. It was starting to rain, as if the heavens themselves were joining her pity party.
But she didn't move. She couldn't, so she didn't even bother trying. She just let it all fall on her, hoping foolishly that it might wash away the pain, the memories, the crushing weight of betrayal.
She had tried her best.
Even when the system repeatedly tried to cast her as the villain, she'd still helped those she'd called friends. Always in the background, always in shadows. She couldn't reveal her knowledge of this world, so she'd kept it all to herself—a lonely secret that had cost her everything.
She'd saved them too many times to count, even Isabella. She'd taken a sword or two for her without her ever knowing. The only person who'd actually started suspecting anything was Carmella. She'd saved her so many times, most often in disguise, that Carmella had begun piecing things together.
Not that Azalea had known, of course. But Carmella had grown protective of her over time—a development completely outside her awareness. Only people who weren't as absent-minded as she constantly was had noticed. She'd always been on some mission from the system or a personal quest to save a "friend."
Now, lying there with no more tears left to shed, she could only wonder: Had it been worth it?
Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.
The downpour was heavy, but eventually it came to a stop. She gazed at the sky for a while, then stiffly shifted her weight. Every movement sent fresh waves of agony through her body.
All said and done, since she wasn't dead yet, she might as well do something with her pathetic life.
Revenge. The thought felt tempting, almost seductive in its simplicity. To make every single one of them feel what hopelessness really was.
But she didn't have that kind of power. Revenge was a luxury for the strong—a luxury she'd been deprived of from the moment she awakened in this world, weak and unable to unlock proper abilities.
Scripted. This had been her destiny from the very beginning. She'd known it, but in the end, she'd done nothing to change it.
"Sigh." The sound escaped her after the painstaking effort of getting to her feet. She looked around, hand pressed to her left shoulder where the pain was even worse.
"Outside," she muttered, the realization hitting her like another blow. "They threw me out."
She was actually outside the academy gates, though by default this was still academy grounds. The only way to truly be outside was to go through the transport that led to Elflame—the city beyond the academy walls.
She looked once more at the towering academy structures. Roll call. All students would be in their dorms at this point, which explained the eerie quiet that surrounded her.
With one final glance at the place that had been both her salvation and her destruction, she began limping away. Every step was agony, but she gritted her teeth and forced herself forward.
After what felt like an eternity—probably an hour or so—she finally made it to the transport location. She surrendered the last thing signifying she was a student: her badge. The symbol of everything she'd lost.
With that sacrifice, she was given a one-time pass through the portal. She stepped through, and the next moment she opened her eyes to another scene entirely.
It was already nighttime in Elflame. The city lights twinkled like distant stars, mocking her misery.
She sighed deeply. She didn't even know where to go from here. But somehow, her feet kept moving. She limped forward with no destination, no plan—just the stubborn refusal to stop existing.
But then—
"Stop." A voice cut through the night air.
"Huh?" Azalea frowned. She knew that voice. But before she could turn around, something eclipsed her vision completely.
It was hot. It was red. It was fire—like another sun from her point of view, beautiful and terrifying in its intensity.
"Fuck," was her eloquent response to what was definitely not going to be a pleasant conversation.