"I-It's..." Kian stammered.

  Riko slowly stood up, her emerald eyes widening in absolute disbelief. "Master Orlon..."

  A single tear slipped down her ash-covered cheek, falling to the wooden floorboards and shattering in the dead silence.

  Kian and Kaito rushed the Grand Mage inside, gently easing his frail, hollow frame into a wooden chair. Riko immediately pressed a glass of water into his trembling lips.

  Imara didn't hesitate. She dropped to her knees beside the old man, raising both hands toward his deep, infected cuts.

  "AQUA MYTH: RENASCI."

  Her magical circles flared to life, hovering in the damp air as threads of soothing, luminescent water meticulously knitted his torn flesh back together.

  "His mana circuits are completely drained. We need concentrated mana," Imara stated, already scrambling toward the kitchen cabinets. "I have a few stones in here..."

  She returned a second later, pressing a raw, glowing mana stone directly past Orlon’s chapped lips.

  "Crush it, don’t swallow," she instructed firmly, her hands frantically checking his remaining wounds. "Your circuits aren't strong enough to digest it whole."

  "You're holding him together better than a high priest," Riko murmured, her voice stripped of its usual cheer. Her own hands were stained red as she pressed fresh bandages against Eila's mangled, blistering chest on the sofa.

  Imara didn't look up, she didn't smile. She couldn't.

  If she let her eyes linger on her husband's dying, purple veins for even a second, she knew she would completely shatter. She forced every ounce of her focus onto the frail old man beneath her hands.

  "He needs solid food to digest the mana," Imara rasped, her glowing hands trembling over Orlon's chest. "Riko—"

  "I-I'll do it..." Lucio stammered, stepping back from the blood, desperate to be useful. "I-I know how to cook. Just tell me where the pantry is."

  Imara jerked her chin toward the storeroom, her eyes squeezing shut in absolute concentration as she desperately tried to stabilize the Grand Mage's internal network.

  Suddenly, her breath hitched. The glow of her AQUA MYTH flickered.

  "What in the world have you survived, Grand Mage Orlon?" she whispered, genuine horror bleeding into her exhaustion. "Your mana circuits...It's like they've completely vanished."

  The rich sizzle of Lucio searing meat filled the tense silence of the room. He plated the food quickly, placing it gently on the table before the frail Grand Mage.

  Riko immediately took the knife and fork, meticulously cutting the tender meat into the smallest possible shreds. She carefully fed them to Orlon. He struggled immensely, his jaw trembling as he chewed, but he forced himself to swallow most of it to digest the raw mana.

  Imara let out a long, shuddering sigh, her glowing hands finally dropping to her sides.

  "He will stabilize by morning," she whispered, her voice tinged with lingering horror. "The Gods only know what he survived... it’s as if half of his mana circuits were erased." She pointed toward the hallway. "Carry him to the guest bed. Light the fire; his body desperately needs warmth."

  With Orlon handled, the adrenaline finally left her.

  Imara turned, her eyes locking onto Eila. She truly looked at him, the mangled flesh, the blistering purple veins of the Paradox Debt, the shallow, rattling breaths. Her knees buckled slightly, fresh tears instantly welling in her eyes.

  Riko stepped to her side, wrapping a firm, grounding arm around Imara's trembling shoulders.

  "I can’t promise much," Riko said softly. "But Master Orlon is here now. He will make sure Eila wakes up. So please... don't lose hope."

  Behind them, the rest of the Cinders stood in awkward, suffocating guilt.

  "W-We are so sorry..." Kian choked out, his head dropping as he stared at the wooden floorboards. "It was our fault Eila ended up like this. If we hadn’t dragged him into this—"

  "It would be so easy to hate you," Imara interrupted, her voice trembling but surprisingly firm.

  Kian flinched.

  "It would be easy to blame you for pulling him back into this war," Imara continued, wiping a tear from her cheek as she stared at her bleeding husband. "But I know him. If you hadn't asked for his help... he would have marched into that castle entirely alone."

  She finally looked back at Kian, her eyes filled with a hollow, devastating gratitude.

  "Perhaps due to you, he was able to return to me."

  Imara practically collapsed against the kitchen counter, tossing a raw mana-stone into her mouth and forcefully crushing it between her teeth.

  "I will heal him as much as my circuits allow... try to stabilize his core," she rasped, marching back to the sofa and raising her trembling hands over Eila's shattered chest. "Please, get a bowl of warm water and clean cloth. We need to wash the blood away to see the full extent of the damage."

  She closed her eyes, forcing the raw, jagged mana through her system.

  "AQUA MYTH: RENASCI."

  The soft blue light of the circle cascaded over his body. The sheer scale of his injuries was horrifying. Massive internal hemorrhaging, deep shrapnel lacerations from the blast, and worst of all, the absolute devastation of the Paradox Debt.

  She maintained the circle until her nose began to bleed. The smaller, physical wounds slowly stitched themselves shut, but the massive shrapnel craters stubbornly resisted.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Panting heavily, Imara let the spell drop. She took the bowl of warm water from Kian and gently began scrubbing away the layers of ash, debris, and dried blood.

  That was when the true horror of the Paradox Debt was laid bare.

  It wasn't just a scar. It was a massive, angry network of blistering purple necrosis radiating across his chest. The veins pulsed with a dark, unnatural sickness, the edges of his flesh looking almost charred. Imara quickly looked down, violently scrubbing the cloth in the water just to hide the sudden, terrified sob rising in her throat. She dabbed away the rest of the grime and gently wrapped his freezing body in clean, dry robes.

  "He needs food..." Imara whispered, swaying slightly on her feet. "Something incredibly soft... high-energy."

  Lucio was already there. He had quickly mashed a bowl of boiled potatoes, mixing in a thick trickle of raw honey. Eila didn't need flavor right now; he desperately needed the raw, easily digestible calories just to keep his heart beating.

  "I... I—" Imara reached out to take the plate, but her hands were trembling so violently she nearly dropped it.

  "I'll do it," Riko intervened, her voice uncharacteristically firm as she gently intercepted the bowl. "You go and get some rest, Imara. We will get the food in him and put him in bed."

  "But—"

  "I promise, we’ll take care of him," Riko said, offering a soft, grounding smile.

  "Thank you... truly," Imara choked out.

  She turned away, tears finally spilling over her eyelashes. As much as she wanted to be the stoic healer, her mind had reached its absolute limit. She simply could not endure the psychological torture of sitting there, spoon-feeding the dying, mangled Eila like a broken doll.

  By daybreak, the suffocating tension in the safehouse had marginally lifted. In the bedroom, Eila remained unconscious, but his breathing had finally lost its ragged, brittleness, settling into a steady rhythm.

  In the back room, Master Orlon was awake.

  He sat propped against the pillows, looking impossibly frail. Riko sat beside him on a wooden stool, carefully feeding him spoonfuls of a bland, nutrient-heavy broth. Solid food was still too much of a risk for his circuits. Once the bowl was empty, the rest of the Cinders quietly filed into the cramped room, the heavy door clicking shut behind them.

  Riko set the bowl aside, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

  "Master Orlon," she began, her voice quiet but piercing. "What actually happened that night at the Ivory Tower? Where did this 'King' come from?"

  Orlon let out a raspy exhale, his sunken eyes locking onto the flickering embers in the hearth.

  "Eila's CONCEPT magic... it was not merely power. It was an absolute, terrifying decree against reality itself," Orlon whispered, the phantom weight of the memory pressing down on his chest. "Twenty of my finest disciples and I formed a Counter Circle. We were desperately trying to shield the Great Scrolls and the ancient grimoires in the library from the blast."

  His trembling hands gripped the bedsheets.

  "But his magic defied the very laws of our understanding. It violently interfered with our circle, twisting the mana until the light itself screamed." Orlon closed his eyes. "The circle broke. And from the residual chaos... a man emerged. Pristine black clothes, hair slicked back, with a sly face and eyes that held absolutely no warmth."

  He slowly turned his gaze toward Kaito's twin blades resting against the wall.

  "I assume this anomaly has crowned himself the ruler of these lands?"

  "Yes," Riko confirmed, a cold dread pooling in her stomach. "He calls himself Kaelen. Our intuition was right. He isn't a normal mage... he's a literal Anomaly birthed from CONCEPT magic. He isn't even human."

  Orlon let out a dry, rattling chuckle that quickly devolved into a painful cough.

  "Riko, my child," he wheezed softly, raising an age-spotted hand. "Simply being born of unconventional means does not disqualify one from humanity."

  "But Master, he is a monster—"

  "He is cruel, and he is treacherous," Orlon interrupted, his gaze turning infinitely sorrowful. "But do not comfort yourself by calling him a monster. The most cruel, calculating, and treacherous beings I have met in my two hundred years of life... were entirely, undeniably human."

  "How did you actually come back?" Kaito asked, sitting on the sofa. "You were dead, old man. I saw your body in the Ivory Tower myself. It was completely mangled... fused into the stone."

  Riko shot Kaito a venomous glare, her protective instincts as Orlon’s disciple flaring instantly. But the frail Grand Mage just raised a trembling hand to stop her.

  "I cannot answer with absolute certainty, for even I don’t know," Orlon rasped, his hollow eyes staring blankly at the floorboards. "But... I believe I was cast into the Apocrypha."

  Kaito just raised a skeptical eyebrow. Kian scratched the back of his neck.

  But Riko’s and Lucio’s breath hitched. All the color rapidly drained from their face.

  "T-The Apocrypha, Master?" she stammered, her voice trembling in genuine terror.

  “I-Its...rea-real?” Lucio said, fascinated and disturbed.

  "I believe so, my child," Orlon said quietly. He slowly lifted his frail arms, staring at his age-spotted skin. "To pull my consciousness out of that void... to forcefully reconstruct this physical body... I had to permanently sever fifty of my Chronos-Links. I shattered fifty Orlons to return to this one."

  Kaito frowned, his blunt edge cutting right through the heavy, mystical atmosphere. "Wait. Are you saying you just... killed fifty other versions of yourself?"

  "Like... fifty actual Orlons?" Kian muttered, looking slightly ill.

  "My missing mana circuits did not simply vanish," Orlon continued, a heavy, suffocating grief bleeding into his tone as he ignored the boys' crude understanding. "They were burned as fuel. I am alive... but a vast fraction of my soul is permanently gone."

  "I do not understand the true nature of the Apocrypha," Orlon murmured, staring at his frail, trembling hands. "But in that place, I saw fifty mirrors floating. Each held a reflection of me, my life... a deep, glowing echo of my spirit. I could feel that they were the hidden wells of my power."

  He let out a long, heavy sigh as the horrific weight of his survival settled over the room.

  "I knew that to pull my physical body back from the dead, a toll had to be paid," Orlon whispered. "So, I shattered them. I burned fifty fragments of my own soul just to return to this world. That is why my mana circuits have vanished. The wells are permanently dry."

  The heavy wooden door creaked open. Imara stood in the frame. She looked like a ghost, her skin pale, dark circles carved under her eyes, her posture entirely supported by the wood. She hadn't slept a single second.

  "Grand Mage Orlon," she whispered, her voice hoarse and fragile. "Can you... please take a look at him?"

  Kaito and Kian immediately moved. They wrapped the old man's arms over their shoulders, carefully supporting his frail weight as they guided him down the hall and into the guest room.

  Eila lay terrifyingly still on the bed. His breathing was shallow, but the brittle, rattling sound in his chest had finally stopped.

  Orlon gently pulled away from the boys, leaning over the mattress. He reached out a trembling hand, placing it flat against the angry, blistering purple necrosis of Eila’s chest.

  No incantation was needed. A dim, pulsating red glow seeped directly from Orlon’s palm, a testament to his sheer mastery, forcing the ambient mana of the room to obey him without a chant. He closed his eyes, feeling the spiritual damage within the boy.

  After a suffocating minute, the red glow faded. Orlon slowly opened his eyes and turned back to Imara.

  "His physical vessel is stabilized," Orlon said carefully. "But his spirit is drowning in the deep currents. The magic he wielded has fractured his mind. If he wakes naturally in this state, he will be an empty husk. He needs a highly specialized draught to tether his consciousness, to force him to confront his own fractured soul."

  Imara gripped the bedpost, her knuckles turning white. "When?”

  Orlon closed his eyes again, calculating the faint trickle of worldly mana returning to his broken body.

  "Gather the ingredients," Orlon commanded quietly. "Give his physical body time to rest. In exactly three days, my spirit will have recovered just enough strength to brew it."