The Ledger of Nightmares manifested in Cel's hands with familiar weight. Leather-bound pages that shouldn't exist in physical space settled across his lap. Around him, the wounded area continued its rhythm - Sylvaine's quiet instructions to her assistant, the soft groans of the injured, the distant sounds of combat beyond the defensive circle. But Cel's attention had already turned inward, toward the book that catalogued every creature he encountered.
He opened it. The pages fell away beneath his fingers, revealing entries he'd seen before - the Ashlurker from the Ashlands, the crystal creatures from the maze, others whose names he'd already forgotten. He continued turning until new pages appeared.
The first image resolved itself with disturbing clarity. The creature stood rendered in precise detail - burnt-leather skin stretched over a frame that bent in wrong places, limbs too long and jointed where they shouldn't be. Its eyeless head tilted slightly in the illustration, mouth open to reveal those inward-curving teeth that had torn through villagers with savage efficiency.
Text materialized beneath the image:
Cel stared at the designation. His jaw worked, grinding teeth together as understanding settled over him with uncomfortable weight.
Cursed. The weakest rank a creature could carry.
Yet many people had died to these things this night. Not just one or two caught unaware. Multiple villagers. Students who'd trained at the Academy, who'd been blessed by gods and given divine powers to wield. And they'd died anyway, torn apart by creatures that barely registered on the scale of threats that existed in this world.
His hand moved to his side, where claws had torn through Cinderward during the earlier fight. The skin beneath had barely been marked, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was the armor itself.
Cinderward was blessed-grade. The lowest tier of divine artifact, equivalent in rank to the cursed blight creatures. He'd been grateful for it when the Moon Goddess granted him the armor. It had made him feel safer - protected.
But now that gratitude curdled into something more complicated.
If even a creature of the absolute lowest rank could pierce it, then what good was the armor at all? Any creature he faced could do the same.
Which meant he couldn't rely on Cinderward to keep him safe. The only real solution left was not getting hit at all, and that took a skill he didn't possess.
Cel's grip tightened on the Ledger's edge. He forced himself to turn the page, seeking the other entry he knew must be there.
The second image appeared with the same disturbing precision as the first. The bulky creature stood rendered in full detail - massive frame built for raw physical power, armored skull that had absorbed every impact without yielding, bare skin over muscle so dense that normal blades would never pierce deep.
Profaned. One step above cursed.
Cel's mood darkened as he read the designation. One rank higher than the Rakemouth. Just one. Yet the difference in capability had been staggering.
And it was the same rank as the Ashlurker - the creature he'd fought in the Ashlands. His first kill. The fight had nearly ended him, even though the creature had already been badly wounded.
Without these injuries…
He would have died. The Ashlurker would have torn him apart the same way the Skullcharger had nearly done tonight.
…Tonight.
Cel stared at the page. At the blight classification that marked the Skullcharger as equivalent to Ashlurker.
He'd barely won against it. It had taken Lior driving Silent Moon through its throat to finally end the fight.
If it wasn't for Lior…
The thought completed itself without his permission. He would have died. Again.
However, he hadn't fought for himself. Every dodge he'd refused, every blow he'd absorbed with his own body, had been for the three people standing behind him.
Maybe alone it would have gone differently.
But that didn't erase the fact that he'd been unable to end it himself.
So what had changed?
The question sat in his mind with uncomfortable weight. What was different between the Ashlands and tonight? Between the wounded Ashlurker he'd barely survived and the Skullcharger that had nearly killed him?
He'd spent months at the Academy learning to fight. Spent hours drilling techniques with instructors who knew their craft. Spent night after night at the Reckoning's manor, Silas correcting his footwork, his distance, his timing, until his reconstructed body understood.
But when it mattered - when actual combat arrived instead of controlled sparring - he'd struggled just as badly as before.
Maybe worse. Because at least in the Ashlands, desperation had carried him through on pure survival instinct. Tonight he'd had training to draw on, technique drilled into muscle memory, experience from previous fights.
And it hadn't been enough.
Cel's fingers curled slowly against his knee. He'd learned to control the body the Moon Goddess had given him, yes. Had mastered the enhanced strength and speed that divine reconstruction provided.
But beyond that?
Nothing.
He was still the same person who'd fumbled through the Ashlands on borrowed time and divine favor. Still someone who survived through luck and the intervention of others rather than genuine competence.
Hestia had been right in her assessment - raw capability without technique to direct it. A strong body moving through space with force but no finesse, no understanding of how to actually use what he'd been given.
He was stuck.
Not in the sense of lacking opportunity or resources. The opposite. He had everything - divine blessings, enhanced body, artifacts, training, even a Divine Oracle guiding him. More advantages than most Chosen could dream of possessing.
But none of it translated into actual growth. Into becoming someone who could face a profaned-rank creature and win rather than barely survive.
The thought felt like standing at the base of a mountain, staring up at a peak that never seemed to grow closer no matter how long you climbed.
And the worst part - the thing that made his chest tighten with something beyond simple frustration - was not knowing what to do about it.
Selina had told him to discover who he was before worrying about fighting styles. But how was that supposed to help? How did knowing yourself translate into not dying when creatures attacked?
Maybe it didn't. Maybe this was just who he was - someone with tremendous gifts and no ability to use them properly. Someone who'd always need others to save him at the critical moment.
Cel let out a short, humorless breath and stared down at his empty hands.
Footsteps approached. Cel's attention snapped upward, the Ledger dissolving from his lap before conscious thought registered the decision.
Sylvaine knelt before him.
Her armor still carried blood spatters from earlier fighting - dark stains across the shield-shaped breastplate, streaks along the ivory leather of her legs. But what drew Cel's attention was her face.
She looked pale. Too pale. Her skin had taken on an ashen quality that made the blood on her skin stand out in sharp contrast. Dark circles shadowed her light green eyes, and her posture - normally perfect even in combat - carried the particular exhaustion of someone operating on nothing but will.
Though he couldn't find any wounds on her. No visible injuries. No cuts or bruises that would explain why she looked like she'd been drained of something essential.
Was this what spending too much divine energy looked like? The cost of using authorities beyond safe limits?
Cel wouldn't know. Couldn't know. Because he had no divine energy to spend in the first place, no baseline to judge what normal depletion felt like versus dangerous overextension.
Green light bloomed in Sylvaine's palm. Soft and warm, like spring growth after a long winter. She raised her hand, positioned it over his chest with careful precision.
Then her palm touched him.
The sensation hit immediately. Pleasant warmth spread from his chest outward, following channels he couldn't name but somehow felt anyway. Like liquid light was being poured into him, filling spaces he hadn't realized were empty.
It felt different from before.
In the Reckoning's manor, when Iris - the blond woman they called Veiled Crag - had healed him at his arrival, the power had felt like it came from within. Like something dormant inside him was being activated, called forth and directed toward repair.
This was external. Foreign. Energy that didn't belong to him entering his body to become his, transforming as it spread until the distinction between Sylvaine's power and his own blurred into irrelevance.
The pain receded. Gradual but undeniable, the throbbing in his skull easing degree by degree. The dizziness that had plagued him since headbutting the Skullcharger faded like fog burning off under morning light. His thoughts sharpened, vision stabilizing until the world held still instead of tilting at unpredictable angles.
The green light faded. Sylvaine withdrew her hand, the connection severing cleanly.
"Thank you." Cel's voice came out clear.
Sylvaine's expression tightened. "I apologize that I couldn't heal you completely."
"It's fine." Cel shifted slightly, testing his body's response. No pain. No dizziness. Just the familiar weight of exhaustion that came after extended combat. "I feel as good as new."
And he did. Whatever lingering damage remained, it didn't bother him.
Sylvaine studied him for a moment longer, something uncertain flickering through her exhausted features. Then she turned her attention to Lior, still unconscious beside them, lost in whatever his soul-space contained.
The green light bloomed again. Sylvaine positioned her hands over Lior's torso, where bruises had darkened his skin in patterns that mapped the Skullcharger's strikes. The light intensified, and wounds began to close.
Not instantly. The process took time - flesh knitting together in visible stages, bruises fading from deep purple to yellow to nothing, cuts sealing themselves with new skin that looked pink and fresh. Lior's breathing deepened, the shallow careful pulls giving way to something more natural as whatever internal damage he'd sustained repaired itself.
Sylvaine finished and the light faded again. She pushed herself upright with visible effort, swaying slightly before her balance caught. Then she moved toward the next wounded person, her assistant rising to follow.
Cel remained where he was, watching them go.
Suddenly, light erupted beside him.
Bright. Impossibly bright. White moonlight that had no business existing with such intensity, flooding the wounded area with radiance that painted everything in silver tones.
Heads turned. Conversations died. Even the sounds of combat beyond the defensive circle seemed to pause as every eye fixed on the source.
On Lior.
Or more precisely, on the space above Lior's unconscious form, where moonlight had begun to coalesce into something solid.
Cel recognized the glow immediately. He had seen this exact phenomenon twice before - once when Silent Moon first manifested in his own hands, once when Cinderward had formed around his body.
It was the first manifestation of an artifact granted by the Moon Goddess.