Joric didn't hesitate.
He had clearly anticipated Kiera's choice, as a second gurney, laden with strange, arcane-looking medical equipment, was already waiting.
"Lay down," he ordered her. "And pray to whatever ancestors you believe in. This is the point of no return."
Kiera lay on the gurney parallel to Ryu's.
Joric worked with a frenzied, desperate energy. He attached a series of crystalline nodes to their temples, their chests, and their wrists.
He then produced a device that looked like a cross between a futuristic medical tool and an ancient artifact: a network of fine, silver wires that culminated in two wicked-looking needles.
"The link must be direct," Joric explained, his face beaded with sweat.
"Vein to vein. Spirit to spirit. When I begin, you will feel... everything he is feeling. All his pain. All his chaos. Do not fight it. You are not his container; you are his guide. You must show his energy the way. Open your own pathways to him. Be the blueprint."
He plunged one needle into a vein in Kiera's arm, and the other into the corresponding vein in Ryu's.
He then activated the device. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, Kiera screamed. It was not a sound of pain, but of pure, undiluted shock.
It felt as if a star had exploded behind her eyes.
She was instantly, violently, plunged into the roaring inferno of Ryu's untethered ChainForce.
It was a maelstrom of raw, untamed power.
A hurricane of sensation and emotion. She felt his lifetime of fear, of shame, of quiet desperation.
She felt the burning agony of his body tearing itself apart. The energy was a wild, terrified animal, lashing out at the walls of its cage.
It was pure chaos, and it was utterly overwhelming.
Her first instinct was to recoil, to sever the connection, to shield herself.
But Joric's voice cut through the storm in her mind.
"Be the blueprint, Kiera! Show it the way!"
She remembered her training.
She remembered the 'center,' the eye of the storm.
With a monumental act of will, she forced herself to find her own inner calm, to become the anchor in the hurricane.
She stopped fighting the chaos and instead opened herself to it. She mentally projected the pathways of her own disciplined, controlled ChainForce—the intricate web of energy that flowed through every Azure Dragon warrior.
She offered it not as a cage, but as a riverbank, a guide for the raging flood.
For Ryu, floating in a black, painless void, it was as if a light had been switched on in the darkness.
He felt a new presence within him, something calm, strong, and incredibly disciplined. He felt the wild, screaming energy that was killing him being met not with force, but with a gentle, unyielding pressure.
He felt it being guided, soothed, shown a new path. The pain began to recede, replaced by a strange, warm resonance.
It was the feeling of two discordant notes slowly, painfully, finding a harmony.
On the outside, Joric watched in terrified awe.
The silver wires of the transfusion device glowed with a brilliant, blue light. A visible aura of the same blue light enveloped both Ryu and Kiera.
Ryu's convulsions ceased.
His vital signs, which had been flatlining, began to stabilize, then climb back towards normal. Kiera, however, was pale as death, her body trembling, a single tear of blood tracing a path from her eye down her temple.
She was giving a part of herself, a piece of her very soul, to the boy beside her.
The process lasted for what felt like an eternity.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the glowing light faded. The device powered down.
Joric quickly removed the needles. Ryu was breathing deeply, peacefully, his face calm for the first time in weeks.
Kiera lay on her gurney, conscious but utterly drained, as if she had just run a thousand miles. She felt...emptier. A part of her was gone, given away.
But she also felt a new, strange connection, a faint, resonant hum in her spirit that was not her own.
It was Ryu's.
They were linked.