Soren's mind registered the proficiency, registered how smoothly the mage controlled it, how fast the spell settled, and there was a ridiculous, unwanted flicker of admiration.
Then he heard footsteps.
No, not footsteps, not the heavy approach of someone running openly, something lighter, faster, already inside their space.
Soren turned too late.
A boot slammed into his stomach.
The impact drove air out of him so hard his vision flashed white.
His body folded instinctively, pain lancing through his ribs, and for a second he thought he had be sick right there, bile rising with the shock.
He staggered back, choking, and his hands moved anyway, because [Concentration] didn't care that he couldn't breathe; it held the circle together through the jolt, through the stumble, through the way his body tried to collapse.
Soren forced sound out past the burn in his throat.
"「Ignition」."
Heat burst from his palm in a wide, violent flare, not elegant or controlled, but a desperate shove of flame meant to make space.
It washed over the man who had kicked him, catching cloth first, then skin, and the thug recoiled with a raw scream, arms snapping up to shield his face as the air filled with the stench of singed fabric and burnt hair.
"Shit, you little—!"
His curse broke into another howl when the flame licked under his sleeve, and Soren saw it, the skin blistering fast, the way it went red then pale, the way it tightened and split in ugly lines because fire didn't wound cleanly.
Soren didn't feel satisfaction.
He felt nothing warm at all, only the cold logic of space gained, time earned.
Felix didn't waste it.
"「Gaia」," Felix said again, and this time the ground didn't soften; it rose.
Stone and packed dirt surged up around the burned thug's legs, clamping him in place up to his knees, then higher, forcing him to fight the earth itself just to move.
He stumbled, trapped, arms flailing for balance, and his panic made him slower.
Soren's right hand was already drawing another circle, his body moving even as he cast, stepping sideways to keep the mage and the trapped man in view, keeping his weight loose so he didn't slip on the ice.
Yellow light gathered in his palm.
The enemy mage's circle flared again, pale-blue, fast.
Soren's casting was faster.
"「Shock」."
Electricity snapped out, not a neat line, but a jagged burst that hit the trapped thug full in the chest.
His body jerked, mouth opening in a silent, ugly gape, muscles seizing, and then he sagged, eyes rolling back as his nervous system simply stopped obeying him.
He didn't even get to hit the ground properly, held upright by the earth that had trapped him.
Soren's breath came in ragged pulls.
His stomach still ached from the kick, but it was manageable.
Then he remembered Felix's words.
— There are three behind
Soren's gaze flicked over the alley mouth, counted bodies again.
Two in front, the mage and the burned man, one… where was…
"Felix, where's the third—" Soren started, turning his head.
Pain bloomed in his abdomen, sharp and deep, so sudden his mind couldn't name it at first.
He looked down.
A dagger was buried in him.
Not a shallow cut, not a nick, not the kind of injury he had taken in up until now and shaken off, it was a blade driven in with intent, pushed past cloth and skin and muscle until the hilt met his body, and the shock of it stole his voice.
For a heartbeat, he couldn't feel anything except pressure.
Then the pain arrived properly, hot and sick, spreading out from the point like fire under his skin, and Soren's hands went numb.
'Fuck—!'
An assassin type.
The third had been close the entire time.
Soren tried to step back but his legs wobbled, not from weakness, not yet, but from the sheer betrayal of his body doing something it wasn't supposed to do, letting something inside him tear.
Felix's chant snapped through the air.
"「Bloom」."
Vines burst up between Soren and the shadow that had stabbed him, slamming into the assassin's chest and shoulder hard enough to shove him back, thorns scraping cloth, buying Soren a sliver of space.
But the action was already too late.
The dagger slid out.
Soren felt it leave him, felt the strange, horrific suction of flesh trying and failing to close around the empty space, and then the blood came, warm at first, then frighteningly fast, pouring down his stomach in thick streams that soaked his shirt and made his hands slick when he pressed instinctively to the wound.
His vision trembled at the edges.
His heartbeat thudded so hard he could feel it in his throat.
His brain threw thoughts at him in a frantic, useless rush.
'What do I do?'
'I should learned how to use divine power.'
'Should I cauterise it?'
'No, no, that'll hurt, I won't be able to move after, I'll fall, I'll—'
A pale-blue circle flared again.
The enemy mage had finished another spell.
"「Freeze」."
Cold surged toward them, a sheet of ice racing across the ground, and Felix reacted on instinct, hands lifting, circle snapping into place with the ease of practice.
"「Shield」."
A barrier caught the ice in front of them, and the freezing wave splashed against it, crawling up its surface in jagged patterns.
Cracks spread across Felix's barrier almost immediately, the mage's proficiency chewing through it, and Felix's jaw clenched as he held it, knuckles whitening.
Soren stood behind him, pressing both hands to his stomach, feeling blood slide between his fingers in sick, steady warmth, and the thought didn't arrive as something new, it arrived as something remembered, dragged up from the forest mud and desperation.
'Not again.'
Then, sharper, unavoidable, the same question he had already asked once in this world, now with enough evidence to make it worse.
'Am I going to die?'
His mouth went dry.
His skin went cold despite the blood pouring out of him.
His legs threatened to fold.
There was no timer ticking down this time.
No sudden saviour that would appear if he held out long enough.
"Soren! Snap out of it!" Felix barked, and the sound cut through the haze with startling force.
Soren blinked, and realised he had been staring at the ground.
Felix didn't look back, but Soren could hear it in his voice, the strain of holding a barrier that was already failing.
"It's going to break. Do something. Now."
The cracks in the shield widened, spiderwebbing faster with each second, and the ice pressing against it made the whole barrier creak, a sound that felt wrong, like glass under too much weight.
Soren's hands shook so hard he could barely keep pressure on his wound.
His breath came short, shallow.
He couldn't get enough air.
His stomach rolled, nausea rising because his body was realising it had lost too much blood.
But he had lived through Rena Forest.
He had lived through the moment where his legs had tried to buckle and he'd forced them to move anyway, because stopping meant dying, because panic didn't keep you alive.
He continued crawling even when his insides felt as if they had been torn apart.
And he had lived.
Soren dragged in a deeper breath, slow and deliberate, and forced his focus down into his palm.
A circle formed, wobbling at the edges.
Pain threatened to break it.
[Concentration] held.
He pressed his palm against his own abdomen, right over the wound, ignoring how wrong it felt to touch it, ignoring how his fingers sank into wet fabric.
He spoke through clenched teeth.
"「Freeze」."
Cold bit into his skin immediately.
It wasn't the gentle chill of winter air; it was sharp and invasive, a brutal numbness that sank into the flesh around the wound and made his muscles seize.
The blood slowed, then stopped, not because he had healed anything, but because he had forced the torn tissue to stiffen and constrict, ice forming under his skin in a way that made his whole stomach feel like it was burning from the inside out.
Soren sucked in a broken breath, eyes going wide.
It hurt.
It hurt so much it made his vision flicker, because freezing living flesh wasn't a clean fix, it was an emergency cruelty, the kind of thing you did when the alternative was watching yourself bleed out in the dirt.
But it worked.
The wet warmth stopped spreading.
He could still feel blood, sticky and thick, but the steady gush had turned into a slow seep.
'Divine power… I'm learning it. The moment I get back,' he thought again, and this time it wasn't regret, it was a promise sharpened by fear.
He lifted his head, forcing his eyes to focus past the pain, past the ice-burn gnawing at his skin.
The close-range thug was unconscious, held upright by Felix's earth trap.
The mage was still casting, still confident.
The assassin had been pushed back by vines, revealed now, and that mattered, because hiding was half their strength.
Felix's voice came again, lower now, controlled.
"I can stop the assassin for a moment, but you need to finish one of them fast."
Soren stared at him, disbelief cutting through the haze.
"What?"
The barrier shattered.
Not with a neat sound, not with some dramatic crash, but with the ugly sensation of pressure suddenly vanishing, the cracks exploding outward as the ice surged forward again, and Felix stepped into it without flinching, hands already moving into another spell as if he had planned for the break from the start.
Soren's mind lurched into calculation, grasping for anything that wasn't what Felix had just asked of him.
His spells weren't strong enough, not for a finishing blow, not cleanly, not quickly, and that was the logical truth of it.
He could burn, he could stun, he could trap and stall and buy seconds, but none of those guaranteed an end, none of those promised the kind of finality Felix was demanding.
And even if he could…
His stomach turned at the shape of the act itself.
There was a hard, instinctive recoil in him, mental and physical, a refusal that came from somewhere deeper than fear, something that hated the idea of pushing a living person over that edge and being the one to make it stay that way.
His fingers pressed into his palm anyway, because his body didn't care about principles when it was bleeding, but his mind kept flinching, searching for another answer, a safer answer, an answer where he didn't have to become that kind of person.
Then the numb cold at his abdomen pulsed, and the weakness in his legs threatened to fold into the ground.
The choice wasn't moral; it was mechanical.
If he hesitated, he would bleed out.
If he failed, Felix would be next.
The thought narrowed until there was only one line left to follow.
If he didn't, he died.
————「❤︎」————