Chapter 145 – Towers (5)
(Erynd POV)
"I'm sorry," she said again, like the words were a rope she'd been chewing through for days. "But I really need it."
Goldwynn's tears weren't theatrical.
They weren't weaponized, or pretty, or meant to soften me for the crowd.
They were the kind of tears that arrived when someone's heart had already been split open and the body simply hadn't been informed yet.
Pain. Grief. Exhaustion. The dull, heavy sadness that didn't ask for pity because it was too busy trying to stay standing.
My first instinct, always, was to solve.
And my second instinct, always, was to assume that anything in a Tower came with a knife hidden behind it.
So I did what I did best.
I took her sentence and tried to map every possible path that could have led to it.
Power?
No.
If she wanted power, she'd be calculating. Her breath would be even. Her eyes would be hungry, not hollow. This wasn't ambition. This was someone walking into a fight like she'd already lost something and decided losing her body was acceptable collateral.
Greed?
Possible in theory.
I'd watched her brush against illegal decisions before. Yue didn't exist because the world was kind. Yue existed because someone tried to bend identity like metal, and the Tower had paid in rot and coma and consequences it hadn't written into the report.
Goldwynn had been involved in that orbit. That meant she could make ugly choices when cornered.
But greed had a particular smell.
This didn't.
This was too raw. Too personal. Too… human.
Fear?
Not of me. Not of the Tower. Not of punishment.
This was fear of time. Fear of being too late.
The kind of fear that made people run red lights and pray to gods they didn't believe in.
Family.
I didn't have proof. I didn't have a name. I didn't have a corpse or a letter to anchor the conclusion.
But the shape fit.
When people said I need it like that, they weren't talking about trophies.
They were talking about someone they couldn't bear to bury.
Someone they couldn't bear to forget.
Someone they loved.
My mind flicked through the relevant details like a blade sliding across whetstone.
Goldwynn had been in a coma.
Goldwynn had been tied to continuity fracture.
Goldwynn had woken too soon.
Goldwynn was now in a tournament built on green wards that felt like a harvest.
And she needed the Crystal Heart of Zotal.
An artifact that boosted magical ability, modestly but cleanly… at least in the old stories.
Why would someone with her eyes need a modest boost?
Unless the boost wasn't for her.
Unless it was for someone else.
Unless it was meant to stabilize something, strengthen something, save something that was slipping.
I stared at her across the ward line, and the crowd noise blurred into background static.
This wasn't a normal duel.
This was a confession delivered through clenched teeth.
So I did something cruel.
Not because I wanted to hurt her.
Because I wanted the truth.
I let my voice stay neutral.
"I don't know what you need it for," I said. "But I need it too."
It was a half-lie.
I did want the artifact. I wanted it because it was leverage, because denying it to someone else mattered, because in a world where gods bled and wards lied, every advantage was a brick.
But I didn't need it the way she did.
I watched her face carefully as I spoke, searching for the one reaction that would separate motivations.
If this was greed, she'd harden.
If this was pride, she'd flare.
If this was politics, she'd bargain.
If this was an heirloom, something tied to blood and memory… then anger would be immediate, irrational, protective.
She inhaled sharply.
And it was as if a switch inside her flipped from sorrow to violence.
Her tears didn't stop. They simply stopped being soft.
"So you're like the rest of them," she whispered.
Her voice didn't rise, but the air around her did.
"I didn't say that," I replied, keeping my tone steady because the ward rings loved drama and the crowd loved blood.
"You don't have to," she said. "You're standing between me and it."
The green lines on the floor pulsed once, brighter.
I felt the audience lean in.
Natharion stood near the officials' table, face tight with the expression of a man watching his Tower become something he didn't approve and couldn't stop.
Nyxa watched from the edge of the ring, still as a shadow that refused to behave.
Goldwynn stepped fully into the circle.
I followed.
The bell rang.
The ward flared green.
And then the world became simple in the way violence always did.
***
She moved first.
Not with the careful shaping I'd seen from most Tower duelists. Not with the boosted arrogance of someone leaning on the ward like a drunk leaning on a wall.
This was… her.
Raw output, precise intention.
Fire didn't blossom from her hands so much as tear itself into existence, a thin lance of white-orange heat that snapped toward me fast enough to singe the air.
I dodged, feeling the heat lick my cheek.
A second spell followed immediately, then a third, layered so tightly most mages would have stumbled over the cadence. She didn't.
She was casting like someone who'd been doing this in private until her throat tasted like blood and her fingers trembled.
She wasn't using the green ward.
Not actively. Not greedily. Not the way the others had, letting the ring feed them power and slipping that unseen residue into their cores like a paid bribe.
She was pushing from inside.
Hard enough that I could feel it in the air.
Hard enough that my earlier question returned, colder now.
When I first pulled her out of coma, she'd been near Tier 4.
She'd been fragile. Re-learning her own breath. Re-learning her own name.
Now her spells came like rain turned into knives.
My thoughts tried to form a neat chain.
Tier progression required time. Training. Stable cadence. Consolidation of core structure.
A jump to Tier 5 in this short a span didn't make sense.
Unless she'd done something desperate.
Unless she'd been burning through herself.
Unless she'd been forcing growth with the same mentality that made people hold knives to children in alleys and call it play.
The thought line didn't end because I couldn't think.
It ended because the answer was ugly.
How is she Tier 5 already?
The only solutions were suffering, sacrifice, or corruption.
And Goldwynn looked like the kind of girl who would choose suffering if it meant she could keep someone else breathing one more day.
She advanced again, eyes bright with wet fury, and her next spell hit like a hammer.
A condensed blast of force that cracked the air, not flashy, just brutal.
It slammed into my shield and drove me backward two steps.
The crowd roared.
I planted my feet and cast Vector, not full. Just enough to disturb her lattice.
Her next spell wavered, the shape buckling, the output dropping.
For a heartbeat, relief flickered through me.
Then she simply… pushed harder.
Not around the disturbance.
Through it.
Like pain was an inconvenience she'd already accepted.
Her core flared. Her casting cadence accelerated. Her spells began to stack without rest.
Her sadness turned into motion.
And motion turned into self-harm.
I felt my arm sting where the burn had been healed. Felt my lungs tighten as heat and force and pressure filled the ring.
I was Tier 3.
And I was being pushed back by Tier 5 output.
Not because I was weaker in skill.
Because raw power, when someone didn't care what it did to them, could become a battering ram.
I slid sideways under a sweeping arc of flame and felt it singe my cloak. My boots scraped against the stone as I absorbed another blast, another shove.
My mind flicked to Vera Flamma.
Full complexity would end this.
Full complexity would eat the oxygen, eat the space, eat her.
Even if she blocked, it would strip layers off her defense and keep going until there was nothing left to defend.
It would leave nothing but a smell and a memory and an official report written with polite ink.
I could win.
I could also kill her.
And I didn't think she would mind.
That was the problem.
She was fighting like someone who had already decided survival was optional.
I clenched my jaw and forced that option away from her.
Not because she'd asked me to.
Because I refused to let grief turn her into a corpse for entertainment.
"Goldwynn!" I shouted, letting my voice cut across the ring hard enough to reach her through the noise. "Look at me."
She didn't.
She fired another spell, a tight spiral of heat and force that came straight for my chest.
I ducked under it and felt it skim my shoulder.
Pain flashed. Real this time.
I exhaled and felt my Qi respond, the second engine inside me tightening like a drawn bow.
No Melody. No Gungnir.
No spirit blade laughter in my mind.
Just my body and my choices.
I surged forward.
Qi wasn't "magic" in the way Tower mages liked to pretend magic was. It wasn't elegant. It didn't glow for applause.
It simply made muscle obey harder.
My sprint speed snapped upward. My legs hit the stone like pistons. I crossed the distance while she was still shaping her next cast, and I saw her eyes widen for the first time, surprise punching through grief.
"Melee?" she gasped, like she hadn't expected anyone to step into her storm.
"Yes," I said through my teeth. "Because your grief doesn't get to kill you."
I slammed my forearm into her casting arm, disrupting the motion, then pivoted and struck her shoulder with a controlled blow.
Not a bone-breaker.
A reminder.
A jolt.
She staggered back, tried to form another spell anyway, lips trembling as she forced breath into shape.
I hit her again, low this time, a strike to the ribs that knocked air out of her and broke the cadence.
Her eyes flashed, furious.
"How dare you," she whispered, voice cracking. "How dare you stop me."
"I'm not stopping you from the artifact," I said, keeping my voice steady even as we moved. "I'm stopping you from turning yourself into a funeral."
She tried to step away, tried to create distance, tried to regain the space where she could drown me in power.
I didn't let her.
I stayed close, inside her optimal range, where spells were harder to form and easier to interrupt.
Vector pulsed in short bursts to disturb any lattice she tried to build.
Qi drove my body through the gaps.
She fought like a wounded animal, reckless and brilliant, throwing raw mana like it could fill the hole in her chest.
It couldn't.
Nothing could.
That was why she was here.
I caught her wrist as she tried to cast again, twisted just enough to force her fingers open, then shoved her back and struck her sternum with the heel of my palm.
The impact didn't break bone.
It broke momentum.
She stumbled, eyes unfocused for a heartbeat.
And in that heartbeat, I saw it.
Not the power.
Not the Tier.
The reason.
A flicker of memory behind her eyes, something held so tight it was cutting her from the inside.
Someone she loved.
Someone she couldn't save the normal way.
Someone she was trying to drag back into the world with an artifact and sheer refusal.
She tried to speak.
No words came.
Her body swayed.
Then she lunged again, more out of habit than strength.
I stepped in, caught her, and struck once more, a clean, controlled hit to the side of her neck, the kind designed to shut the lights off without permanent damage.
Goldwynn's eyes widened.
Then her knees gave.
She collapsed forward, and I caught her before she hit the stone.
The crowd noise became distant again, like I'd submerged my head underwater.
The ward chimed cheerfully:
WINNER: ERYND MILTON
I didn't look up.
I looked down at Goldwynn's face, pale and wet with tears even in unconsciousness, lashes stuck together, mouth parted as if she'd been trying to say something right until the last second.
Nyxa was suddenly there at the edge of the ring, gaze sharp, scenting the air like she could taste sadness.
"She's breaking," Nyxa said quietly.
"I know," I replied.
Natharion pushed through the officials, expression strained. "Bring her to the infirmary. Now. The patrons will demand she be… assessed."
"Assess her all you want," I said, standing with Goldwynn in my arms. "Just don't let them treat her like a failed demonstration."
Natharion hesitated, then nodded once, tight.
As I carried her out, her head rolled slightly against my shoulder.
And her lips moved, barely.
A whisper shaped itself against my collar, fragile as ash.
"I'm sorry," she breathed again.
This time it wasn't apology to me.
It was apology to someone who wasn't here.
Someone she couldn't afford to lose.
I tightened my grip and kept walking.
Because whatever she needed the Crystal Heart for… I was almost certain it wasn't a prize.
It was a desperate attempt to keep love from becoming a gravestone.