Silence returned wrong.
Not peaceful.
Not calming.
Just… empty.
As though sound itself wasn't sure whether it was allowed back yet.
Bodies didn't litter the plaza.
There was no battlefield carnage.
No slaughter.
Just people sitting,
kneeling,
shaking,
weeping.
It was somehow worse.
Because this wasn't destruction.
This was truth left behind like exposed bone.
Liora collapsed first.
Not dramatically.
No heroic fall.
No scream.
Her body simply decided it had fulfilled its quota of surviving and quietly let go.
Aiden dove forward, catching her before she hit stone.
"Hey—hey— Liora—!"
He pressed his hand to the wound.
Warm.
Wet.
Too much.
She twitched faintly, eyes barely opening.
"…still here," she whispered.
The kind of whisper people make when they aren't certain yet.
"Idiot," Aiden breathed, laugh cracked straight through terror. "Stop practicing death speeches."
She managed a weak, snorted breath that might've once been a laugh.
Seris was already kneeling beside him, hands on Liora's face, checking breath, pulse, everything.
"She's alive," Seris said, voice iron-stable out of sheer training. "Badly hurt. Internal tearing. Blood loss. We need stabilization now or she—"
She didn't finish.
Aiden didn't need the word.
Ardent moved.
For the first time since everything began, he did so slowly.
No grandeur.
No spectacle.
He knelt beside Liora like a priest kneeling at an altar.
He placed his hand just above her wound—not touching, hovering.
Golden light didn't flare.
It pulsed.
Muted.
Controlled.
Measured.
Wishcraft resisted.
The universe whispered:
"Balance."
He answered it quietly.
"Take it from me."
His expression didn't change.
The light sank into Liora.
Her bleeding slowed.
Her breathing evened.
Her pain lessened.
It didn't fix her.
It anchored her.
Kept her here.
Alive.
At a cost.
Ardent exhaled.
The world flickered.
Just for a second.
His shoulders sagged.
Color drained from his lips.
Lines aged his expression that had never belonged there.
A fatigue deeper than exhaustion scraped across his bones.
Seris saw it.
So did Aiden.
Liora didn't.
Her world softened.
Pain drifted.
Warmth replaced fear.
She blinked up at him.
"Y… you said you don't… heal," she whispered.
He smiled faintly.
"I don't," he murmured. "I… negotiate."
She frowned weakly.
"With who…?"
His eyes flickered with gold and something wounded.
"With… everything."
She tried to reach for him.
Her fingers barely brushed his.
"Thank… you…"
He shook his head very slightly.
"Don't," he said gently. "You paid your part already."
And she slept.
Not death sleep.
Living sleep.
Healing sleep.
Aiden held her like she was made of glass.
He didn't cry.
He couldn't.
Not yet.
The city began to remember itself.
Officials whispered.
Clerics clutched relics.
Mages stared at hands that weren't obeying.
Soldiers sat down and didn't trust their legs.
No one cheered.
There was nothing to cheer.
Seris finally looked at Ardent.
Really looked.
Not as the terrifying myth.
Not as the unkillable fae.
But as someone who had paid something real.
"What did it cost?" she asked quietly.
Ardent smiled pleasantly.
Too pleasantly.
"A great deal of being fine," he said lightly.
Which meant:
More than she wanted to know.
Aiden found his voice.
"What now?" he whispered.
The city was fractured.
Authority shaken.
People hurt.
Truth raw.
They had no plan.
They had no victory.
They had survival.
Ardent stood.
Graceful still.
But slower.
Like the world was heavier.
He looked over the plaza.
"Now?" he said softly.
"We endure the part no one writes songs about."
He turned his gaze skyward,
to politics,
to consequences,
to repercussions.
"And we wait for the bill to finish arriving."
Because nothing that happened here was free.
Not the protection.
Not the truth.
Not Liora's life.
Not the line Ardent stepped toward.
Not the one he barely stopped crossing.
Tomorrow would hurt.
In different ways.
But for now?
For this one moment?
They were alive.
And that,
unfortunately,
already had a price.