Chapter 1220. I Watched Him Fall, and All I Could Do Was Survive

Chapter 1220: 1220. I Watched Him Fall, and All I Could Do Was Survive

Rex emerged from the shadows of the Grand Academy, but he was no longer the untouchable god who had commanded the plaza.

He had carefully crafted a new persona: the survivor. He moved with a deliberate, pained stagger, his boots scraping unevenly against the cobblestones.

The shallow cuts he had allowed to mar his skin burned with genuine irritation, and he allowed his breathing to come in shallow, ragged gasps, as if every lungful of air was a hard-won victory.

He made his way toward the makeshift medical encampment strung up along the plaza’s edge, a cluster of white canvas tents stained with blood and dust.

His timing was precise. He waited until the initial shock of Xerollion’s speech had begun to settle into a numb, hollow silence, ensuring his reappearance would feel less like a political event and more like a miraculous reprieve.

The first soldier to spot him froze mid-stride, his spear lowering. "Rex? Rex Rexilion?"

The question was disbelief incarnate.

The word spread like wildfire through the traumatized crowd. "Rex is alive!"

"Rex Rexilion’s alive!" the cry echoed, gaining momentum as it tore through the gathered survivors.

The effect was instantaneous. Among the desperate masses, there was a specific group of women whose souls had become intertwined with his through the deep, metaphysical bonds he had forged who felt the shift in the air before they even heard the shout.

The psychic tether that connected them to him thrummed with his genuine exhaustion, sending waves of panic through their hearts.

Lily was the first to break through.

She didn’t run; she sprinted, her boots pounding against the stone with desperate urgency. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with a terror that had been building since the first screams echoed from the corridor.

When she saw him, she actually saw him, bloodied and unsteady but alive. She let out a sound that was half sob, half gasp.

"Rex!"

She collided with him with such force that the air left his lungs. Her embrace was crushing, a desperate attempt to fuse her body to his as if she could physically prevent him from slipping away again.

She buried her face against his shoulder, her entire body shaking with violent, uncontrolled tremors.

"Rex! Oh gods, Rex!" Lily cried out, her voice cracking.

She pulled back just enough to frame his face with her hands, her thumbs brushing against his cheekbones. Her eyes darted frantically across his body, scanning the wounds, the bruises, and the way his shirt clung to his battered ribs.

"Are you alright?! What happened?!"

"We heard about Apollo; we heard the corridor fell. We thought you were—"

Her words became a frantic stream of consciousness, her hands moving over his arms and chest in a tactile interrogation. She needed to feel the heartbeat beneath his ribs; she needed to confirm that the man she loved wasn’t just another ghost haunting Aethelgard.

"Talk to me, please; just tell me you’re breathing, tell me you’re here," she whispered hoarsely, her tears hot against his skin. "I felt it... I felt the connection fraying; I thought I’d lost you forever."

Rex allowed himself to lean into her weight, playing the part of the exhausted soldier to perfection. He let his eyes grow heavy, letting his forehead rest against hers.

’Stay in character,’ his mind hissed through the fog of genuine fatigue. ’Let them feel your pain.’

’Let them see the cost of their survival.’

"I’m here, Lily," he managed to rasp, his voice rough and strained. "I’m here... But god... it was hell."

The crowd around the medical tent was a churning sea of grief and confusion, but the space around Rex became a focal point of desperate energy as more figures emerged from the chaos.

Diana arrived like a storm breaking over a calm sea. Her usual composure, that iron-willed stillness that made her such a lethal archer, had been shattered.

Her face was pale, her pupils dilated with a primal fear she could barely suppress. She didn’t rush into an embrace like Lily; instead, she moved with a focused, almost clinical urgency, her eyes scanning Rex with the terrifying precision of a predator assessing its wounded mate.

"Rex." Her voice was quiet, but it cut through Lily’s sobbing like a blade through silk.

Her hands, usually steady enough to split a hair at two hundred paces, trembled visibly as she reached for him. She didn’t touch his face first; she went straight for his wounds.

Her fingers pressed against the makeshift bandage wrapped around his forearm, checking for blood seeping through, testing the heat of his skin, and gauging the depth of the trauma.

"You’re actually here," she whispered, more to the universe than to him.

For one unguarded moment, the fortress of her discipline crumbled. Her grip tightened around his wrist, not gently, but with a fierce, desperate pressure, as if she were physically anchoring his soul to his body, terrified that if she let go, he would dissolve into smoke.

Then, she felt the eyes of the surrounding soldiers.

The frightened civilians.

The witnesses.

With a sharp, audible inhale, Diana forced herself upright. The transformation was instantaneous: the raw terror was pulled back behind a mask of martial discipline, though the faint tremor in her jaw betrayed her.

They both knew the stakes. They couldn’t afford to be broken, not when the city was already bleeding out from a thousand wounds.

"What happened down there?" Diana asked.

Her voice was steadier than Lily’s, but there was an edge to it—a dangerous, vibrating tension that suggested she was one word away from demanding answers from the gods themselves. "We saw you vanish with Apollo."

"We saw the sky tear open, and then... then nothing."

"Neither of you came back... We were waiting for a victory, Rex."

"We were waiting for you."

Rex let out a long, shuddering exhale. This was the moment.

The pivot point of his performance. He allowed his shoulders to slump, letting the weight of the ’defeat’ press down on him.

He let his eyes grow glassy and distant, as if he were still seeing the slaughter in his mind’s eye. He leaned into the exhaustion, letting his head hang slightly, playing the part of the man who had fought a war and lost everything but his life.

’Now,’ he thought grimly. ’Give them the villain they need to hate.’

’Give them the tragedy they can understand.’

"Xerollion," Rex rasped.

The name felt like broken glass in his throat. He forced a bitter, self-loathing laugh that ended in a wet cough.

"He was... he was something else entirely. A force of nature. An inevitability."

He looked up at Diana, his expression twisted with genuine-looking remorse. "I tried, Diana. I swear to every god that still listens, I tried to reach Apollo."

"I tried to bridge the gap, to stop the collapse." His voice cracked, the perfect sound of a man who had failed his duty. "But by the time I broke through into that domain, the corruption had already taken hold."

"By the time I entered the space where he stood, it was already too late... The Apostle was already gone."

He closed his eyes, letting a single tear, whether genuine from exhaustion or manufactured from skill, even though he couldn’t say, "Track through the dried blood on his cheek."

"I watched him fall," Rex whispered, the lie landing with the crushing weight of truth. "And all I could do was survive."