Chapter 175: A chess piece

Saraya finished typing a comment. Read it again. Then deleted it.

For the fifth time that afternoon.

She sat curled up on the gray sofa, her phone pressed against her knees. Erik’s post already had more than ten thousand comments.

One more comment from her would not draw anyone’s attention. Yet her finger kept hovering over the send button before pulling back again.

’Eat a proper meal with the person you love.’

She had read that sentence so many times that she had memorized even the line break.

The old apartment was still exactly as it had been on the day he returned the keys. The small kitchen where he had stood cooking dinner every night. The chipped mug he often used was still in the cabinet.

For three months living here, every night she came home late, a bowl of soup would be kept warm on the table, and she had never said thank you even once. She had thought those things were natural, like water from the tap, like sunlight outside the window.

Yesterday, in that hospital room, everyone had gathered around him, everyone had smiled. Meanwhile, she had stood at the door holding an empty container. Only a few steps from the bedside, yet as far away as the other bank of a river.

The bedroom door opened. Vylana stepped out, her hair still wet. She had been about to say something cheerful, but the moment she saw Saraya’s expression, she fell silent. She quietly sat beside Saraya, glanced at the phone screen, then let out a long breath.

"If I had not interfered back then..." Vylana looked down at her hands. "If I had not deliberately pushed you away, then maybe you would be the one sitting beside his bed right now. It is my fault."

Saraya shook her head. "I do not blame you anymore. Really."

"Then why do you look like you are about to cry?"

Saraya stayed silent for a long time. Her burned finger unconsciously rubbed along the edge of the phone.

"I just do not understand." Her voice was so soft that it nearly dissolved into the sound of traffic below. "Yesterday, when I stood at the door, I saw him smile. Smile at other people, not at me. It should have hurt, right? I should have been jealous, angry, wanted to take him back like before."

She pressed her palm to her chest. "But instead, I felt happy. Happy that he could still smile. Do you think that is strange?"

Vylana did not answer. She only leaned over and rested her head against Saraya’s shoulder, her wet red hair leaving a cold patch on Saraya’s sleeve.

"It is not strange," Vylana said after a while. "You only understood it a little too late."

Saraya smiled, a tearful smile, her eyes stinging. She looked down at her finger. The burn had become less red thanks to the ointment Meira had quietly placed atop the container. And his voice still echoed in her ears, calm as though it were the most trivial thing in the world: And your finger. Put medicine on it.

He had noticed. Amid an entire room full of people, he had still noticed the tiny burn on her finger.

Somewhere deep in her chest, a faint warmth flickered to life, like summer sunlight slipping through the crack of a half-closed door. Saraya did not know where it came from. She only knew that she did not want it to go out.

She stood up, walked into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator.

"Chicken again?" Vylana called from the sofa, her voice returning to its usual teasing tone. "This whole neighborhood is going to run out of chicken because of you."

"Be quiet." Saraya placed a pot on the stove. This time, she remembered to turn the heat down low.

A tiny blue flame flickered beneath the pot, slow and patient, as though learning how to burn warmly enough without scorching anything.

...

The Silver Moon mansion’s dining room had never been this crowded.

The long table that had once had too many empty seats was now packed full. Carmilla’s chicken soup steamed in the middle of the table, fragrant with ginger and green onions, perfectly neither too salty nor burnt.

Erik sat at the head of the table in his wheelchair. His right arm was in a brace. His left hand was held tightly beneath the table by Elowen, making it equally useless.

"Open your mouth." Elowen blew on a spoonful of soup and held it before his lips.

"I can eat with my left hand."

"Your left hand is busy." She squeezed his hand beneath the table.

"...Busy holding yours."

"That is right." Her pointed ears rose triumphantly. "Open your mouth."

To his left, Meira was cutting the chicken into tiny cubes, as carefully as if performing surgery. "Bite-sized for Master. He will not need to chew much, so his ribs will hurt less."

Laviana poured herself a glass of red wine, then pushed a glass of warm milk in front of Erik, smiling sweetly. "Patients drink milk, darling."

Carmilla said nothing. She only quietly placed a small plate of pickles beside his bowl, the exact dish he had praised once a very long time ago, so long ago that even he had forgotten.

Sitting opposite him, Felyn could not see anything, but she missed not a single sound. She covered her mouth and giggled. "It sounds like four people are feeding you at once."

"Three," Erik corrected. "Carmilla is only watching."

"I am waiting for my turn," Carmilla answered without changing her expression.

The entire table froze for a second before bursting into laughter.

Leaning against the wall beside the dish cabinet, "Runi" held a soup ladle and watched. Three people feeding one person.

The person being fed was not too weak to eat by himself, he had just said so. Yet he still opened his mouth. And those three women looked as though they had just been rewarded.

She did not understand. She remembered.

Clink.

The glasses on the table lightly struck one another. The soup in Erik’s bowl rippled in small circles. The chandelier overhead swayed once, twice.

That was all. Three seconds, perhaps not even that.

But it was enough for Meira’s chair to shoot backward, a dome of pale green wind covering Erik completely.

Elowen dropped the spoon and lunged forward, pressing his head tightly against her chest. Carmilla had somehow seized the meat knife and positioned herself between him and the window.

Above them, one of Laviana’s snake eyes lazily opened and swept the room. Felyn shot to her feet, felt her way around the edge of the table, bumped into two chairs, until she found his sleeve.

"Erik! Are you alright?"

The chandelier stopped. The glasses stopped trembling. The dining room became utterly silent.

"...It was only a small tremor." Erik’s voice came out muffled from somewhere between Elowen’s breasts. "My arm is broken, not my neck."

No one let go.

Only "Runi" did not move. She remained beside the cabinet, the ladle in her hand, watching five women surround a man in a wheelchair merely because several glasses had touched. Then, a beat too late, she set the ladle down, stepped in front of Erik, and spread her arms protectively.

The exact same position the small girl had taken in the alley that morning.

Meira glanced at her. Only once.

Laviana closed her snake eye, sighed, and raised her wine glass for a sip.

"That is the third time this month. And every time is stronger than the last." She lowered her glass, her smile fading. "The protective dome is growing weaker."

Erik pulled his head out of Elowen’s embrace, his hair a complete mess. Felyn’s fingers still gripped his sleeve tightly, cold as ice. And beneath the bandages on the left side of his chest, the fresh green petal suddenly pulsed at the exact moment the ground shook, as though responding.

He looked at Felyn for a moment before turning to Meira.

"How much time is left?"

Meira pulled her fallen chair upright and slowly sat down. The dome of wind around Erik gradually dispersed into thin threads of light. She gazed at the ceiling for a while, as though looking through it and up into the sky itself.

"With tremors like these..." she said softly. "Two years. Perhaps sooner."

No one spoke. Elowen sat at the edge of her chair, her hand still on Erik’s shoulder. Carmilla lowered the knife, but did not put it down.

"I saw Dark Mist at the guard station," Erik said. "But farther out there, what is there really?"

Meira let out a breath. Without planning it, her eyes glanced toward Felyn.

Felyn pressed her lips together slightly. Then she nodded, very gently.

As though it were permission. Soft sighs rose around the dining table, one after another. Finally, Laviana spoke.

"What you saw at the guard station was only the edge of it." She swirled her glass, watching the dark red liquid ripple. "Beyond that lies Dark Mist. Thicker, denser, stretching as far as the eye can see."

"And monsters."

"And monsters." Laviana nodded and took a sip. "But the monsters are not the most frightening part."

Erik frowned. "What could be more frightening than that?"

Laviana did not answer at once. She set her glass down, her finger tapping lightly against the tabletop, once, twice, as though considering how much to say.

"Do you know why the light atop the lighthouse, even though it is barely flickering now, has never been allowed to go out?"

Erik shook his head. He remembered the lighthouse in his dream, the top of the tower pulsing like a giant heart, and the whispered words of the woman of the Four Seasons: ’When the Lighthouse shines again.’

The faint light now, as it turned out, was only what remained.

"Because if Dark Mist ever reaches the top of the lighthouse..." Laviana placed her glass down, and there was no trace of playfulness left in her voice. "Then every resident inside this dome, Succubi, men, children, everyone, will turn into the things outside."

The chandelier above them gave a faint creak, though there was no longer any tremor.

Erik tilted his head. "How can everyone be certain?"

"Because that is how Golden Moon City ended."

Felyn had spoken. Her voice was very quiet, yet everyone in the dining room heard it clearly.

No one added anything else. Carmilla finally set the knife down on the table. Elowen’s pointed ears drooped completely.

Meira looked into her bowl of soup, now cold, as though there was something at the bottom she did not want to see.

In the corner of the room, "Runi’s" finger twitched slightly. A small drop of ink fell onto the wooden floor. She quietly placed the tip of her shoe over it to hide it.

On Erik’s chest, the fresh green petal remained warm. Steady and gentle, in rhythm with the breathing of the girl gripping his sleeve. He remembered the words of the woman of the Four Seasons in his dream: ’When you are near a season, that season’s petal will grow warm.’

"Felyn." He called her name very softly. "Your eyes. Your power. What happened back then?"

Felyn remained silent for a while. Then she let out a breath, the corners of her lips rising into a smile. A very beautiful smile. And a very sad one.

"This is not really a secret. Meira knows, Laviana knows, Elowen knows too. It is just that no one has told you yet. And you never asked. I knew you were waiting for me to tell you myself."

She raised a hand and lightly touched the bandage over her eyes. "You know that this city’s Sentinel once divided its power into four seasons, right?"

"Someone told me."

"Then it will be easier to explain." Felyn nodded faintly. "Spring was one of those four seasons. On the day she was about to fade away, she no longer had enough strength to hold onto her power. So she searched for someone whose magic could resonate with hers, someone to entrust with the last remnants she had left."

She placed a hand over her chest. "That person was me."

Erik said nothing. He only listened.

"But I am not Spring. Nor am I a Sentinel. You can call me a disciple, or a descendant." Her smile grew slightly thinner. "But honestly, I was only a chess piece placed in the empty space."

"Felyn..." Elowen called softly.

"It is alright." Felyn shook her head, her voice still light. "Back then, a huge section of the protective dome cracked in the east. I poured all the power Spring had left into it. I really did patch it. But my body was not compatible with that power, so it turned against me."

She touched the bandage again. "My eyes went first. Then my magic. Little by little, like petals falling."

"And Spring?"

"She is gone," Felyn said, as simply as if saying that night had fallen. "The protective dome now is only the energy she left behind. Like the warmth lingering on a blanket after the person lying beneath it has risen and gone away."

Erik’s right hand moved.

The wooden brace scraped against the edge of the table with a dry sound. Pain shot from his broken arm up to his shoulder, leaving a sheen of sweat across his forehead. Meira rose halfway from her chair. "Master, your arm..."

Then she stopped, pressed her lips together tightly, and sat back down.

His bandaged fingers slowly stretched across the table, found Felyn’s hand, and took it.

Felyn startled. She felt the hard brace, felt his fingers trembling with pain, then laughed quietly. "Your hand still hurts, idiot." She held that hand with both of hers, cradling it as though it were a small bird. "And stop making that face."

"What face am I making?"

"I cannot see, but I can hear it. Your breathing is heavy as though you are angry at someone."

"I am angry at whoever called Felyn a chess piece."

"I called myself that." She giggled, then her laughter slowly faded. She pressed his bandaged hand to her cheek. "But I have never regretted it, Erik. I wanted to protect this place. The neighbor who always gave me cakes lives here. The flower shop at the end of the street is always fragrant. There is Carmilla’s toasted bread every morning."

She tilted her head, the bandage over her eyes slightly damp. "Besides, even if I am blind, even if I lose everything, I still have a man who loves me. That is already more than enough."