The next day arrived quietly, as if even the sun wasn't sure it should rise after what had happened.
Classes came and went in a blur. Kieran stared at his notes, reading the same line over and over without processing a single word. Roy sat next to him as always, but this time he didn't lean on his hand or stare at the sky.
He just… sat.
Still.
Present.
It wasn't the unsettling calm he usually carried; it was heavier. Like a man walking beside a truth he didn't quite know how to apologise for.
When the final bell echoed off the classroom walls, Roy stood and waited beside Kieran's desk instead of leaving first.
"…I was out of line yesterday," he said. His voice held no defensiveness, no empty softness. Just a simple admission.
Kieran closed his notebook and exhaled.
"Then prove it."
He didn't wait for an answer and just walked out, knowing Roy would follow.
They moved through side streets, the city slowly thinning around them. At the edge of the warehouse district, Kieran traced a circle in the air with his finger. A sigil responded, bending light and space.
The world flickered.
And then the two of them appeared inside the pristine, cold interior of the Celestial Watch medical bay.
Fluorescent sigil lights hummed overhead. The walls were seamless white stone reinforced with barrier glyphs. Enchanters in white uniforms moved calmly down the halls, checking on injured agents suspended in pale-blue recovery fields.
Roy and Kieran walked unnoticed, their disguises shifting like shadows over their faces.
Kieran led him down a narrow corridor, pausing outside a door marked with a golden emblem.
He didn't speak as he pushed it open and stepped aside.
Inside, two beds.
Two Judicator subordinates—the halberd wielder and the spellcaster—both hooked to sigil arrays and stabilised with enchanted braces. Their bodies trembled involuntarily even though they lay completely still. Eyes half-open. Breathing shallowly. Alive… but only just.
Kieran remained in the doorway.
He didn't need to explain.
The sight alone said everything he felt:
This is what "letting them live" looks like.
They were broken.
Not dead, but shattered.
A punishment beyond punishment.
Roy walked in slowly.
Both soldiers stiffened with instinctive terror. The halberd user's hands twitched toward a weapon that wasn't there. The spellcaster tried to speak, but his throat tightened with fear.
Roy stopped at the foot of their beds. He stayed there for a long, silent moment.
Then spoke softly.
"…I'm sorry."
The words barely carried, but in the silence of the room, they might as well have been shouted.
"I should have held back more. I let it go too far."
He looked down at his gloved hand as though weighing something unseen. "I won't ask for forgiveness. But I won't let you carry that pain just to prove a point."
He stepped forward and placed two fingers gently on the halberd user's arm.
A warm pulse of prana radiated outward, soft and controlled. Bones shifted back into alignment. Torn flesh reknitted. The trembling stopped.
Colour returned to the man's face. He stared at his own hands in disbelief as the pain drained away like water.
Roy moved to the second bed.
The caster tried to recoil but couldn't move more than an inch. Roy placed a hand to his chest — another controlled pulse. Internal fractures vanished. The cursed backlash in his lungs cleared. Tears slipped from the man's eyes, though he made no sound.
Roy stepped back and spoke, still quiet but firm.
"Don't tell your commander. Please don't tell anyone about this.
And don't ever draw your weapons again unless you're ready to lose everything for it."
The two Judicators didn't answer; they simply stared. Not afraid. Not furious. Just stunned.
Roy turned and walked past Kieran.
The sigil shimmered, and both of them vanished.
They reappeared in a quiet alley far from the medical wing. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows over broken stone and rusted fences.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Kieran finally inhaled through his nose, shoulders relaxing. "That… actually felt good, didn't it?"
Roy looked away, hands sliding casually back into his pockets. "…Maybe."
Kieran shook his head with a small laugh. "Amazing. You saved two enemies' lives and still can't admit it did anything for you inside."
Roy's voice was low. "It didn't really change anything."
Kieran glanced at him. "For them? It did."
Roy was quiet for a long moment. Then—
"I don't do it for me. I do it for you… and for the people around me. If it keeps you from leaving, I'll do it again. Even if it means nothing to me."
Kieran stared at him, eyes softening. Then he crossed his arms and looked away, hiding a faint smile. "Idiot."
The two of them started walking again, side by side. The city buzzed distantly, as if unaware that something small—but important—had shifted in the shadows.
And for the first time in a while, the silence between them wasn't heavy.
It was peaceful.