The stone beneath him stayed cold, no matter how long he sat.
Merlin leaned forward a little, elbows braced on his knees, fingers laced loosely together. His head hung low, gaze blank.
The air smelled faintly of morning fog and the metallic edge of mana drift from distant practice fields. He didn't move. Not even when a pair of birds kicked up from a tree nearby, wings snapping sharp through the stillness.
'Maybe I should be grateful.'
The thought scraped along the inside of his mind.
'Alive. Breathing. Whole.'
But it did not feel like living.
It felt like something else. Like standing in the ruins of a burned house, knowing the fire was gone but smelling the smoke anyway.
He shifted his weight, testing the strength in his legs again. Still weak. Still unreliable. The walk from the dorm to here had felt like dragging iron chains behind his heels. His body remembered how to move but not how to thrive.
A soft clatter echoed from the far end of the path.
Merlin's head rose slightly.
Just a few loose stones knocked by the breeze.
Still, his hand dropped instinctively to Keryx's hilt. The familiar leather grip met his palm, even if the strength to use it properly was nothing but a memory.
He stayed like that a while. Listening. Watching.
No threats. No monsters. No portals bleeding corruption across the sky.
The sun edged higher. Its light caught on the academy towers, turning the windows to sheets of burning gold. Somewhere deeper inside the grounds, bells rang. A soft, chiming sound calling students to their first lessons.
He wasn't a student anymore. Not fully. Not like them.
Not with the way he was now.
He turned his head slightly, studying the side gardens through half-lidded eyes. No movement there either. No Nathan sneaking snacks from the greenhouse. No Adrian waving an axe too close to terrified bystanders. No Liliana lecturing anyone within earshot on water spell efficiency.
And the emptiness he carried with him now.
He shifted his hand away from the blade and rested it against his thigh.
The ache in his bones flared again. A deep pulse that wasn't quite physical. Not quite spiritual either. Like his body itself was rejecting its own memory.
The word sat bitter on his tongue.
He inhaled once through his nose. The breath scraped. Thin. Unsatisfying.
The ground wobbled slightly beneath him, but he found his balance before it could topple him.
Toward the main training fields.
Toward the part of himself that still remembered what it meant to fight.
He did not have a destination.
And right now, that was enough.
The training fields stretched open under a pale, overcast sky.
Merlin's boots crunched lightly over the gravel, his steps slow, measured. The air smelled faintly of dust and mana residue, the remnants of yesterday's sparring sessions clinging to the ground like smoke that had forgotten how to rise.
He did not have a destination. Only the vague impulse to move. To keep his body going, even if the rest of him felt hollow.
The morning classes had ended a while ago. Most of the students had already retreated to the shade of the main halls or their dorms. Only a few lingered near the weapon racks.
And among them, trouble.
Merlin noticed the group without looking directly at them. First-years. Loud. Restless. A cluster of three boys and a girl, their uniforms wrinkled and their mana signatures raw and undisciplined.
That was his first mistake.
The voice snapped across the empty field, cutting through the quiet.
Merlin's steps slowed.
He turned his head slightly, enough to catch the speaker in the corner of his vision.
A tall boy, broad-shouldered, standing just apart from his group like he thought it made him important. His hair was cut too short, his mouth twisted into a grin too wide to be real.
"You're the cripple, right?" the boy said, voice carrying. "The one who jumped into the rift like an idiot."
Merlin stared at him.
'Who the fuck is this guy?'
The boy mistook silence for weakness.
"I heard you lost your mana." He laughed, a short, ugly sound. "Bet you wish you stayed dead, huh?"
Behind him, his friends chuckled, nudging each other.
'News really do travel fast in this place.'
Merlin adjusted his grip on the cloth-wrapped bread still tucked in his hand.
He thought, briefly, about walking away.
It would have been smarter.
Instead, he changed direction.
Each step deliberate. Unhurried.
The space between them shrank.
The boy's grin faltered slightly. Only a little.
Merlin stopped two paces away.
The boy squared his shoulders, puffing up like a crow trying to scare a wolf.
"You gonna cry?" he sneered. "Or maybe beg for some pity points?"
He dropped the half-eaten bread onto the gravel.
The boy opened his mouth to say something else.
He never got the chance.
His right hand shot out, grabbed the front of the boy's collar, and yanked.
Momentum did the rest.
The boy stumbled forward, off-balance, arms flailing.
Merlin stepped into him, pivoted smoothly, and threw him into the dirt with a clean, practiced motion.
The ground shook slightly with the impact.
The boy gasped, breath knocked out of him.
Merlin did not hesitate.
He knelt beside the boy, grabbed a fistful of the jacket again, and drove his fist into the boy's stomach. Once. Short. Brutal.
The boy choked, curling instinctively, body shuddering with the effort to breathe.
The boy hit the dirt again, coughing.
The others stared. Wide-eyed. Frozen.
He adjusted the cuff of his sleeve, slow, casual.
"If you have something to say," Merlin said, voice flat, "say it while you still have teeth."
The boy whimpered. No words. Only pain.
Merlin's gaze swept across the others.
None of them met his eyes.
Picked up the crumpled piece of bread from the ground.
Brushed the dust from it with careful fingers.
The field returned to silence, broken only by the boy's shallow, ragged breathing against the dirt.
Merlin did not look back.
Because it was not worth it.
Not when he had bigger wars to fight.
The gravel gave way to worn flagstones as he crossed the threshold back toward the inner courtyard.
Merlin's fingers itched faintly where they had touched the boy's jacket. Not from injury. From memory. His body still remembered the rhythm of violence, even if his mana did not.
Each step felt heavier than it should have. Not from exhaustion. Not even from the lingering weight of the fight.
It was the silence inside him.
The silence where there should have been mana roaring in his veins.
He pulled the courtyard door open with his good arm, shoulder stiff from the strain. The breeze that met him was thin and dry, carrying the faint metallic tang of the academy wards overhead.
The Academy was beginning to stir properly now. More students moving between classes. More conversations spilling from the dorm halls and lecture towers.
Everywhere he turned, faces. Half-recognized, half-avoided. Whispers following him in slow ripples that caught the edge of his hearing.
"He survived the breach, right?"
"Did you hear? His magic's gone."
Not faster. Not slower.
He refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing a reaction.
The east corridor opened ahead, framed by high marble arches and shaded with creeping ivy.
Quieter there. Less crowded.
A place to breathe without being dissected by a hundred curious stares.
The stone walls closed in around him, cool and solid. His boots clicked faintly against the floor. Every sound magnified here, tucked beneath the weight of the building.
Merlin reached an alcove halfway down the hall. A small bench tucked beneath a narrow window that barely let in the gray light.
Leaning forward. Elbows on knees. Head bowed.
A long, slow breath. In. Out.
His hands curled loosely between his knees, knuckles bruised faintly from the earlier impact.
He stared at them for a long time.
'This body is still mine. Even if the power inside it isn't.'
Another breath. Shakier this time.
He let his back press against the cold stone wall behind him.
The ache in his ribs pulsed with each beat of his heart.
It was not pain he feared. Pain was simple. Pain was familiar.
It was the emptiness that gnawed at him.
The gnawing question of what he was supposed to be now.
A swordsman without mana.
A mage without spells.
A survivor without a future.
And for just a moment, he let the weight settle fully onto his shoulders.
No more running. No more pretending. No more lies to Elara, to Nathan, to anyone else.
Crushing and absolute.
And no one could fix it.
The air shifted faintly.
A distant door opened somewhere deeper in the hallways. Footsteps echoed down the stone passage, light and unhurried.
Merlin opened his eyes.
The walls were still gray. The world still cold.
He pushed himself to his feet, slowly, feeling every inch of the movement in his bones.
His hand brushed Keryx's hilt automatically.
The sword remained silent at his side.
He did not know which yet.
Straightening his shoulders, Merlin started walking again.
The same way he always had.
Even if the path ahead was darker than anything he had faced before.
Especially because of that.