Chapter 520 - 520: Kidnapped

Silva stayed in the air for a while after Ragna's body turned to dust.

The wind pulled at his wings, and the sky above the ruined land slowly cleared of white light. The crisis was over, the angels had stopped, and he finally let himself breathe. Then his energy gave out. It had never really been his. He had been running on what Ophelia gave him, and now the last of it drained away all at once.

His wings dipped. He glided down in a loose spiral and landed heavily on the ground, then dropped onto a flat rock at the edge of the crater and sat there, elbows on his knees, his head hanging low. His whole body ached. Everything felt hollow.

"Phew," he muttered. "That was too close."

He did not have long to rest.

A shadow passed over him, and a great beating of wings rolled across the field. He looked up and saw a massive dragon descending, scales dark as night, and behind it, riding on its back, two familiar figures. The dragon landed, the earth shaking a little under its weight, and in the next moment its body shrank and shifted until Elsa stood there in her normal form. Drake and Lily slid down beside her.

Elsa's eyes found him.

"Daddy!"

She ran. Her boots kicked up dust as she crossed the ground and threw herself into his arms, burying her face in his chest. Silva caught her and wrapped both arms around her, holding on tight, his chin resting on top of her head.

He's never met her before, has he? Zion's voice drifted through his mind, with a cheeky smile in every word. So this is the daughter. Cute.

Silva ignored him completely.

He loosened his arms and looked down at her. She had grown a little. She was a bit taller than the last time he had seen her, and her face had lost some of its roundness. The time they had been apart had not been long, not really, but it felt substantial to him. Something he could measure.

He smiled. "It's good to see you, Elsa."

She sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

"How have you been?" he asked.

"I've been fine," she said, her voice weak and wet, the voice of someone who had missed him a great deal and was trying hard not to cry. "I'm okay, Daddy."

He nodded and brushed a strand of hair from her face. Then he looked up, past her, at the others.

"Where are the guardians?"

Nobody answered.

Drake's head dropped first. Lily followed, her eyes sliding to the ground. Elsa went quiet in his arms, and her fingers tightened on his sleeve. Silva looked from one face to the next, and the warmth in his chest turned cold.

He understood that something was wrong.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice low.

Drake stepped forward. He took a slow breath before he spoke.

"The guardians died protecting Elsa, Silva. When the weeping angels came, they stood in front of her. All of them."

Silva stared at him.

"What?"

"They fell, one by one, and…"

"That's not possible." Silva shook his head slowly. "The guardians are connected to me. That connection gives them ten times their normal strength. They can't just die like that. Not all of them. Not so easily."

He looked down at his hands. They were trembling a little. Rage began to boil in his stomach, a slow, ugly heat climbing up his chest. It did not make sense. None of it made sense.

He looked at Elsa. "Tell me what happened. Please."

She swallowed. "The fight started before the explosions in the throne room," she said quietly. "They fought the angels as they came down, and by the time we got there, most of the guardians were already badly hurt. They were still standing. They were the last line between the angels and me." Her lip trembled. "And somehow… they died."

Silva listened, and the more he listened, the less the story fit together. A fight like that should not have ended like that. The guardians should not have lost.

'Reject it all you want, he told himself. It's your mind refusing the truth. The truth is that they're gone. You lost all of them in a single fight, and it happened while you weren't there.'

It did not make sense. But it was reality.

And it was because of him.

He gritted his teeth until his jaw ached, and his hand curled into a fist against his knee. He had never really gotten to know each guardian one on one. But he remembered them. He remembered the minotaur and the way he had first fought bony. He remembered each of them, how they looked at him when he first came here, how they had welcomed him without hesitation, and everything they had done since. Now all of it was gone.

He might not have known them closely on a personal level, but they were connected to him. They were part of him.

Then another thought pushed through the grief.

He frowned. His fist slowly opened.

"Wait," he said. "I didn't feel it."

Drake and Lily looked up at him, confused.

"I didn't feel them die," Silva said. He stood, setting Elsa gently on her feet. "Each guardian is connected to me the same way you two are. If any of you were to die, I would feel it, no matter where I was. I would know the moment it happened." He looked at both of them. "I felt nothing."

Lily's eyes widened. Drake went still.

Elsa stepped back, one hand rising to her mouth. She looked from Silva to the others, and her face slowly changed as she understood that something was off.

Silva turned to Drake. "Where did you bury them?"

"In the throne room," Drake said. "Come."

They went back to the dungeon, down through the broken halls and into the vast chamber where Elsa had fought. The throne room was silent. Rows of freshly dug graves lay along the floor, each one marked, the earth still dark and loose.

Silva walked to the nearest one. He knelt, pushed his hand into the soil, and began to dig. He tore the dirt away, deeper and deeper, until he reached the bottom. He reached out with his senses and pulled at every thread around him, every connection and every trace of what should have been there.

There was no body.

He stared into the empty hole. At the bottom, there was only a faint residue of energy, a swirl of it, thin and pale, curling in the dirt. He touched it, and his eyes narrowed. It was divine energy. And it did not belong to a guardian.

It belonged to Ragna.

He stood and moved to the next grave, and dug it out. Nothing. He moved to the next, and the next, tearing the earth apart with his hands while the others watched in silence. Every grave was the same. Not one of them held a body.

Silva stood in the middle of the room with dirt up to his elbows.

Whatever they had buried here were not true corpses.

He did not know what that meant. His mind was already working, trying to assemble the pieces, but nothing would hold together. Then Zion's voice came through, quiet now, all the playfulness gone.

"It seems your guardians were kidnapped."

Silva froze.

"Kidnapped," he whispered. He turned to the others, and his voice grew firmer. "Drake. Lily. Elsa. The guardians were kidnapped. Either Ragna killed them and stole their real bodies, or he somehow captured every one of them."

Drake's jaw tightened. Lily covered her mouth. Elsa stood there, small and pale, staring at the empty holes in the ground.

But the question that mattered most was why.

Why take them? Why go through all of that, the fake bodies, the graves, the entire staged death? What would Ragna want with his guardians?

Silva's head was spinning. All eleven of his minds were working at full speed, running through every possibility and every angle, and still he could not put it together. It did not make sense.

What was Ragna trying to do?