The dawn light continued its patient work, revealing details he’d rather not see. A child’s toy abandoned in the dirt. A cooking pot overturned beside a collapsed wall. A woman’s apron torn and bloodstained, caught on splintered wood.

He’d failed - utterly and completely.

The Reckoning had given him one task. One clear directive when Veyron assigned him to the Academy. Watch the students. Protect them. Keep them safe.

Ten students were dead now.

Ten people he’d been specifically tasked with protecting had died while he’d been occupied fighting a single creature.

Ten Chosen who'd been blessed by the gods. Who'd spent months training beside him at the Academy. Gone. Reduced to lifeless shells.

His chest tightened. Not with grief exactly. Something colder. More pragmatic.

What would the Reckoning do now that he'd failed them?

…Killing seemed likely.

Esrin had shown him kindness, Silas had become something like a friend, but kindness and friendship existed separately from competence. The organization hadn’t recruited him for companionship. They’d recruited him because they thought he could do the job.

Except he couldn’t.

But even as the thought formed, something else followed. Doubt. Not about whether he’d failed - that was undeniable. Doubt about whether the mission had been achievable in the first place.

They’d sent a newly awakened Chosen. Someone who’d received his first blessing months ago. Someone with no combat experience beyond desperate survival. And they’d expected him to protect forty students spread across an entire village during a creature attack of unknown scale?

Maybe they'd simply expected too much. They'd seen the Heir to the Moon title, seen the Divine Oracle guiding him, and assumed capabilities that didn't actually existed yet.

Or maybe this was the test itself. Not whether he succeeded. Whether he survived. Whether the failure would break him or forge him into something harder.

The speculation felt pointless. He would know when the time came.

Movement caught his attention. The scouting groups returned through the village’s destroyed gate. Instructor Saren led one formation, her posture carrying exhaustion that went bone-deep. Instructor Calder brought up the rear of the second group, his scarred face grim but no longer holding combat readiness.

They converged near the defensive circle. Saren’s voice carried across the assembled students and villagers with clipped precision.

“The surrounding area is clear. They’ve withdrawn completely.”

Relief rippled through the survivors. Not celebration - nobody had energy left for that. Just the easing of shoulders that had been locked rigid for hours

Saren continued without pause. “We need to gather the dead. All of them. Villagers and students both.” Her gaze swept across the group. “I know this is difficult. But it’s necessary.”

The order landed with the weight of something everyone had known was coming but hoped to avoid. Students began moving, abandoning their defensive positions to spread through the village. Their feet dragged, movements carrying the particular heaviness of people confronting tasks they’d never trained for.

They moved through the village in pairs, searching collapsed homes and blood-stained streets. The process was methodical. Grim. Each body located was carried carefully toward a clear space near the village center where others laid them in neat rows.

The villagers couldn’t help. Couldn’t bear to touch the corpses of people they’d known. Wives who’d lost husbands. Parents who’d lost children. Friends who’d watched friends die. They stood at a distance, watching strangers handle their dead with the particular helplessness of people whose grief had stripped away the capacity for practical action.

Cel joined the grim procession. Found a middle-aged man half-buried beneath a collapsed roof. A fallen beam lay across his chest. His face was twisted in agony, fingers torn and bloody where he'd clawed at the debris.

Lior helped him lift the body. They carried it in silence toward the growing collection. Laid it among the others with care that felt simultaneously insufficient and the only thing they could offer.

The pile grew.

Cel made three more trips. A young woman clutching a kitchen knife. An elderly man who’d died in his bed, probably before he even noticed the danger. A boy perhaps eight years old, weighing almost nothing in Cel's arms.

Wood was gathered from collapsed structures. Arranged carefully around and beneath the corpses. The process took time, each pyre constructed with attention that bordered on reverence.

Fire came next.

Students with flame-based authorities manifested their power. Orange light bloomed in multiple locations at once. Smoke rose in thick columns that stained the morning sky.

The villagers who could still stand moved closer. Formed a loose circle around the burning dead.

Cel stood at the circle’s edge. The heat from the flames reached him even at this distance, uncomfortable against his face. The smoke carried scents he tried not to identify.

He’d learned about this during Academy lectures. The necessity of burning corpses so they wouldn't draw creatures.

Yet knowing the reason didn’t make watching easier.

A woman’s wail cut across the morning air, raw and breaking. Others joined her. Crying. Weeping. Some collapsing entirely, their legs giving out as accumulated trauma finally overwhelmed whatever strength had kept them upright through the night.

Within moments the space had transformed into a chorus of grief.

Cel remained motionless, watching them break. His chest felt tight again. Not with his own emotion. With the weight of witnessing others’. With the understanding that this scene was playing out across the Empire constantly. Villages destroyed. Families shattered. People reduced to wailing shapes that couldn’t process what they’d survived.

His thoughts drifted sideways, settling on a different question entirely.

How did Hestia feel right now?

She had told him once that the scent of death clinging to him was pleasant, something she found comforting rather than repelling.

Death Clan doctrine said the same. Death wasn't something to fear or mourn, just a natural transition, the final grace everyone received. Their whole philosophy centered on accepting mortality as beautiful rather than tragic, on finding peace in the inevitable.

Was that what she felt now? The scent of death hung over this village, thicker than anything he'd ever carried. Did she still find it pleasant here?

He scanned the crowd until he found her.

She stood perhaps thirty steps away, apart from the other students. Her ribcage armor no longer glowed, the wine-red light extinguished. Her posture held the perfect rigidity of someone maintaining composure through sheer will.

But her face told him everything he needed to know.

Pale. Drawn. Her crimson eyes fixed on the flames with an expression that carried nothing resembling peace or acceptance.

Cel looked away.

The flames continued their work. Time passed without measurement, marked only by the gradual consumption of bodies that had been people hours ago.

Movement near the merchant’s carriage drew his eyes away. Several students had begun loading creature corpses onto the vehicle - Rakemouths mostly, their burnt-leather skin making them easier to handle than the massive Skullcharger that lay too heavy for the carriage to bear.

The merchant stood nearby, watching his carriage being filled with dead creatures. His fine clothes still carried blood from the night before, torn in places where he’d fought or fled.

“I’ll sell them when I reach Stella,” he said to Instructor Saren. His voice carried the particular steadiness of someone who’d processed shock into pragmatic action. “Whatever price they fetch, I’ll arrange for materials to be sent back. Lumber. Tools. Whatever the village needs for rebuilding.”

Saren nodded once. “And you’ll inform the authorities about the attack.”

“Of course.” The merchant’s expression tightened. “They need to know creatures reached this far into settled territory.”

He climbed onto his seat and took up the reins. The horses shifted, adjusting to the new weight behind them. The merchant glanced back once at the village - at the destruction, the grieving survivors, the students who’d saved his life.

Then he urged the horses forward.

The carriage rolled through the village gate. Disappeared down the road that would carry him toward Stella. Toward safety, civilization and a world that continued functioning despite what had happened here.

The remaining creature corpses were dragged toward a different location. Away from the human dead. Stacked in a separate pile that would receive the same treatment but without ceremony.

Eventually the fire began to die. Reduced to embers and ash that would cool through the day. The crowd dispersed gradually. Residents moved back toward their damaged homes with the particular exhaustion of people who’d used everything they had just to remain upright. Students followed whoever needed help shoring up walls, patching roofs, clearing debris.

Cel started to turn toward the nearest collapsed structure when he noticed two figures.

Lior’s parents. Walking directly toward him.

His body tensed instinctively. Uncertain what this approach meant. Whether they blamed him for not protecting their neighbors. Whether they'd seen how little he'd actually done. Whether—

They stopped perhaps three steps away.

Then bowed.

Deep and formal, spines bent until they were nearly folded in half.

“Thank you.” Lior’s father’s voice came thick with emotion that threatened to choke the words entirely. “Thank you for saving us.”

His mother’s head lifted slightly, tears streaming freely down her face. “We owe you everything. Our lives. Our son. Everything.”

Cel froze.

His mind blanked completely, thoughts scattering like startled birds. He didn’t know what to do with this. Didn’t know how to respond to gratitude delivered with such raw sincerity, such complete vulnerability.

His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again without producing sound.

They stayed bowed. Waiting for acknowledgment, for permission to straighten, for some response that would release them from the formal position.

Heat crept up Cel’s neck.

“It was nothing,” he managed finally. The words came out rough, inadequate. “I just—”

“It was everything.” Lior’s father straightened slowly, his weathered face fierce with conviction. “You risked your life to save ours.That’s not nothing.”

His mother nodded, wiping at her face with the back of her hand. “We’ll never forget this. Never.”

The weight of their gratitude pressed down harder than any physical burden Cel had carried. Heavier than the Skullcharger’s mass, heavier than exhaustion, heavier than his own failures.

Because this - this genuine, uncomplicated thankfulness for being alive - was something he'd never been taught how to receive. Didn’t know how to hold it without it burning through whatever defenses he’d built.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Cel said. His hands had started shaking, so he clenched them into fists at his sides where the motion wouldn’t be visible. “That’s… that’s what matters.”

Lior’s mother smiled through tears. Reached out like she might touch his arm, then thought better of it and withdrew.

“You’re a good person, Celvian. Whatever else happens, remember that you’re good.”