-----Narrator POV----
"... giving one who has lost their strength the strength to rise again."
Warm green light curled around the girl's trembling frame. The glow pressed against the scrapes along her arms and legs; each mark tightened, closed, and smoothed as the light sank into her skin. Color returned to her cheeks rising with every breath she draw.
When her legs steadied beneath her and she no longer leaned into his hand, Orsted released her and turned toward the battlefield.
He scanned the ground. Broken stone lay scattered in uneven patches. Shallow pools of water filled the deeper cracks, rippling with each distant drip from the shattered ceiling. Dust drifted in thin sheets across the floor, catching the faint green reflection still fading from the girl's skin.
Orsted stepped forward, boots pushing through the thin layer of water as he took in the wreckage left behind, following the thin trail of water across the floor as it slipped through the cracks.
The line led straight to the wall where he had blasted the beastfolk swordsman. A steady trickle pushed through the fracture now, each pulse widening the gap. As he listened, the stone around it gave off faint groans just like when a beaver listen closely to the cracking wood tree bound to fall.
"This place won't hold for long…" he muttered.
He crouched and picked up his cloak from the floor. The fabric clung to his fingers, damp from the rising water that now pooled around the deeper breaks in the stone. He shook it once, droplets scattering across the ground, then swung it over his shoulders as the wall behind him let out another low crack.
As Orsted turned to call out to Nanahoshi, something in the corner of his vision froze him. The spot where the beastfolk swordsman had fallen lay scattered with broken stone, but no body. He swept the debris with his eyes again for only dust, fractured rock, and the thin sheet of water sliding between the cracks were found.
A cold prickle crawled up his spine.
He pivoted toward the place where the priest had collapsed. The floor held nothing but a dark pool spreading across the stone, its edges thinning as the rising water pulled it apart. The red mixed with the clear surface until both became the same drifting smear.
Orsted's jaw tightened. He stepped back across the hall, boots pushing ripples through the shallow water as he moved to the last place he had dropped the dwarf. The stone there was cracked, the imprint of the impact still visible... But the body was gone.
He turned again, this time toward the frogfolk. What remained of it lay half‑submerged. The skin had begun to break apart, flaking into the water like wet ash. Each piece dissolved the moment it touched the surface, thinning into the shallow layer until the shape of the creature blurred and sank into the floor.
The water carried it away grain by grain, as if the bodies themselves were being pulled back into the stone.
Orsted stood still, watching the last fragments drift apart as his browns tightened.
"Viburnum's curse…" he muttered, voice low. "How could I forget…"
"Orsted…"
Her voice pulled him from the dissolving bodies. Nanahoshi stood a few steps behind him, arms wrapped around herself, eyes lowered but shining with the question she was afraid to repeat.
"Can we go… home?"
Orsted let out a slow breath and turned toward the platform of the teleportation circle.
"There is one more thing I need to do."
A small figure crouched on top of the sigil, scraping at the carved lines with frantic, shaking hands. Brown hair clung to his forehead, and tears streaked down his cheeks as he clawed at the runes. Beside him lay another child red‑haired child unconscious.
The boy looked up.
The moment his eyes met Orsted's, his breath hitched. The killing intent rolling off the silver‑haired man hit him like a wave. He threw his hands forward on instinct, palms pressed together.
A light shield burst into existence between them—hexagon patterns snapping into place with a sharp bam. But instead of forming a small barrier, the shield surged outward, expanding again and again until it towered over the boy, fifty times larger than anything his small frame should have been able to produce.
The boy stared at it, stunned.
Orsted didn't flinch. He opened and closed his hand once, feeling the strength coil through his fingers as he measured the force he would need to break it.
Orsted's concern twisted into something the boy could only read as killing intent. The water had already climbed to his ankles, swirling around his boots as he pushed forward toward the raised platform.
Stopping one meter before the barrier, he clenched his fist, drew in a breath, and drove his knuckles across the surface of the shield.
The impact detonated a gust that blasted outward, sending ripples racing across the water. A sharp crack split through the hexagon pattern. On the other side, Sebastian's eyes widened as he instinctively understood that the shield wouldn't survive a second hit.
But the chamber reacted first.
The shockwave rattled the walls. The fracture where the water had been leaking split wider with a wet snap, and a fresh surge poured through, doubling the flow in seconds. The water climbed from ankle‑deep to shin‑deep, then continuously higher.
Another strike would tear the wall open completely. And behind that wall… he knew what waited in the dark.
Orsted lowered his fist.
He stepped back from the shield, eyes tracking the widening crack and the water rushing through it. The chamber groaned again, a long, low sound that rolled through the stone as Orsted's jaw tightened and the power in his limbs settled.
"Sebastian Aiken. Drop the barrier... And I won't kill you."
Sebastian's fingers tightened as his throat locked from the enormous pressure from the silvered hair men.
And after witnessing the extreme violence that man had carved into the room, the boy's mind settled on one truth: this man was an enemy. His breath steadied, his feet planted, and the trembling in his hands hardened into resolve. Whatever strength he had left, he gathered to stop the silver‑haired monster from taking a single step closer.
"You… Leave me no choice."
The man pushed his left hand forward, palm down, and raised his right beneath it, palm up. The left hovered just slightly higher, the space between them tightening like a drawn string.
A shimmer flickered in that gap.
Light gathered into a thin cylinder stretching toward his right hand. The shape widened, flattening, curving at the far end as if something inside the glow were carving itself into form. The moment the outline solidified, Orsted's fingers closed around it.
The light burst apart.
A sword remained in his grip.
He lifted the blade and flicked it upright, the edge lining perfectly with the center of his face. His eyes traced the steel, calm, deliberate, as if measuring the exact moment it would cut.
Sebastian felt it before the blade even moved.
A weight pressed down on his shoulders, dragging them toward the water. Goosebumps crawled across his arms and neck. His shield brightened, hexagons pulsing as he poured every drop of mana he had into holding it together.
Orsted raised the katana above his head.
-----Reinheardt POV-----
This ridiculous amount of power… it can only be-!
Water rippled through my steps as I raced across the chamber. Ahead, a massive stone door loomed, its surface carved with long, winding serpent shapes that twisted through one another like living things.
I planted my foot, lowered my shoulder, and slammed into the door.
BAM!
The door shook still.
I grit my teeth, reached for the seam where the two doors met, and dug my fingers into the narrow gap. The stone bit into my skin as I pulled.
"—MHMMMM!"
The doors groaned. A sliver of space opened, then a jet of water blasted through the gap and struck me full in the face. The force shoved me backward, boots scraping across the floor as I fought to keep the opening from snapping shut. The stream hammered against my chest and shoulders, pushing harder with every heartbeat.
I braced my stance, leaning into the current.
And through the rushing water, a surge of power flared from inside the chamber.
My eyes snapped toward it.
Through the narrow gap, I caught sight of a raised platform with a massive hexagonal barrier surrounding it. It faced a tall man standing with his back to me, his presence alone pressing against the air like a storm front. Even from that sliver of an opening, the pressure rolling off him felt heavy enough to bend the space around him, as if the entire room strained under the weight of his power.
But what caught my attention was the two children inside of the shield.
My breath hitched as my grip on the stone tightened until my arms shook.
The silver haired man summoned a sword that pulsed with a terrifying amount of power gathering in one solo point of the blade.
The worst possibility slammed into my mind.
Anxiety thrashed inside my chest as I forced my fingers deeper into the stone seam. The door refused to move at first, the weight behind it pushing back with every heartbeat, but I dragged my arms wider anyway, feeling the strain burn through my shoulders. The gap opened just enough for part of my face to slip through, and in that sliver of space I saw the sword rising inside the chamber.
A surge of panic hit me so hard my breath caught. I pressed my cheek against the stone and pulled harder, the rough surface scraping across my skin as the water behind me slammed into my back. My boots slid across the floor, nearly losing their grip, but I planted my heel and called on my Heavenly Blessing. Strength flooded my limbs in a violent rush, and the stone finally gave way another inch.
The pressure of the water burst through the widening gap, striking me full in the face and chest. The force shoved me backward, but I leaned into it, dragging my shoulder through the opening even as the current tried to rip me out of it. The chamber groaned around me, the rising water swirling past my ribs as I fought to wedge myself inside before the moment slipped away.
As I pulled myself into the chamber, the light of the shield in the center of the room flickered.
A thin line split down the middle, widening as the sword's edge cut through it. One half of the barrier peeled away and dropped into the rising water, sending a wave across the floor. The other half trembled, cracks racing across its surface like lightning.
My eyes widened as the scene inside finally came into focus. Sebastian's small figure stood at the center of the platform, just long enough for my mind to register him, before the blade carved straight through him. His body split cleanly down the middle, the two halves sliding apart and collapsing onto the stone. Blood spilled across the platform, running in thin streams that dripped over the edge and blended into the rising water below.
For a moment, everything inside me went hollow.
The boy I had treated as my own son met my eyes in the instant before the blade finished its arc, and the terror in his face carved itself into me so sharply it felt like something tearing inside my chest.
My mind refused to understand what I was seeing. My breath locked somewhere between my ribs and throat, and the chamber around me blurred until only that moment remained. The world shrank to the sight of Sebastian's small frame splitting apart, the two halves sliding away from each other as if the ground itself were pulling him down.
And all I could do was stand there, breathless and hollow, watching the water swallow the child I had sacrificed in order to save my daughter.