Logan walked through the silence of the night with a torch in his hand, its white glow spreading outward into the dark.
In a few minutes, he was out of the city, worry etched deep onto his face as he rushed toward the forest.
For a woman who had been stripped of the majority of her origin abilities, Evelyn wasn't strong enough to withstand the dangers of the forest. That thought alone was enough to quicken his pace.
As time passed, Logan grew increasingly alarmed.
"Where could she have gone!" he muttered in anger, a frustrated hand dragging lightly through his hair as his eyes swept the treeline.
'Astra, do you have a way to find her?' Logan asked.
[Would you be willing to purchase a one-time-use tracking device which can locate anyone within a few kilometers?]
'What's the catch?' Logan asked, already feeling a headache settle in.
[50 System points.]
He stared at nothing for a moment.
'So much for a one-time-use item.' Logan grumbled internally.
Astra remained silent, waiting for his reply.
After a few moments of deliberation, Logan gritted his teeth and nodded.
'Take the goddamn points. And if I don't find her…' his words trailed off into something he didn't bother finishing.
Astra acknowledged his words quietly.
[Don't worry, master. I'm certain you'll find her.]
'I hope so…' Logan said to himself, and somehow the words carried more weight than he intended.
Although 50 system points was a huge sum and some might hesitate to spend it, Logan didn't care much.
System points could be replaced.
The woman who had claimed his heart couldn't.
A blue object flashed to life in his hand.
It was round, like a compass, with a single short static needle pointing in no direction in particular.
'How do I use this?'
[Master, just think of the person you want to find and the compass will immediately track her.]
Logan thought for a bit before nodding and doing as she said.
He let his thoughts drift, and the image of Evelyn appeared without effort.
The warmth of her. The proudness and quiet conviction she carried in her gaze like something no one had ever managed to shake loose. Recalling her flawless figure, unlike anything he had ever seen in his life, a smile couldn't help but appear on his face.
Shing! Shing!
The compass jolted in his grip, the needle spinning rapidly before snapping toward a fixed direction with certainty.
Logan's eyes lit up.
'Found her.' he muttered and immediately dashed toward the location.
As he moved, he navigated through the trees with agile steps, careful not to draw the attention of origin beasts that roamed these woods after dark, yet fast enough to close the distance between them.
Before long, Logan arrived at a clearing that had taken him just over ten minutes to reach.
'Evelyn…'
He would have known her anywhere.
The moon hung full above the clearing, its light settling over her figure like it had chosen her specifically. Her silvery robes shimmered faintly beneath it, the fabric catching the glow and making her look suspended somewhere between the world he knew and somewhere far out of reach.
She was walking slowly. Aimlessly.
And she was crying.
Not loudly, not the kind that demanded to be heard. It was quieter than that. Smaller. She sniffled and murmured something under her breath that never quite made it into words, her arms folded against herself like a shield she'd long stopped believing in.
A desolate expression sat on her face, as though she had lost all will to live.
Logan stilled.
Even if she had woken up regretting what had happened between them, this wasn't the reaction of someone who was simply conflicted or embarrassed. This was something deeper. Something wounded in a way he hadn't expected and couldn't immediately place.
He was still trying to make sense of it when, as though sensing the presence of another person, Evelyn turned around.
She found him standing at the treeline, and the two of them froze.
The moonlight poured down between them, and for one long suspended moment the clearing felt like somewhere outside of time, the tension between them raw and heavy, saying far more than either of them had opened their mouths to speak.
Then Evelyn's expression shifted.
"You bastard…"
The words slipped out before she could stop them, barely above a whisper, rough at the edges, like they'd been sitting in her throat for hours waiting for a reason to leave.
She reached into her origin space and drew out a long sword. The blade caught the moonlight and held it, cold and silver and steady.
"Evelyn… What's wrong?" Logan asked, the confusion in his voice genuine.
He had braced for a dozen different reactions. Coldness. Distance. Even embarrassment. But not this.
"You, you dare call my name after what you did?" Evelyn trembled, and in the half second before the fury fully sealed over her face, something else flickered there. Something that looked almost like grief. Then it was gone, and she was already moving.
She crossed the distance fast, sword swinging toward his neck with brutal efficiency, no hesitation, no warning.
She's actually trying to kill me!
Logan twisted sharply to the side, using his space affinity to distort the air around her blade just enough to redirect it.
Ten percent of his origin energy drained in an instant. The sword tilted, grazed him, and missed anything vital by a hair's breadth.
"Did I do something wrong?!" Logan demanded, snapping back into his stance.
Evelyn answered by swinging again.
He dodged. Circled. Bought himself a breath.
And in that small gap between attacks, a hesitant voice slipped into his mind, carrying the specific energy of someone who absolutely did not want to say what they were about to say.
[Master… I have a confession.]
'Not now, Astra.' Logan deflected, sidestepping her third strike and creating distance.
[Actually… it concerns why she's—]
'I said not now.'
[…The potion I gave you also contained an aphrodisiac, master.]
Logan nearly stopped moving entirely.
[To help you complete the mission faster, I added it without telling you. While you were applying it across her entire body, it would have overwhelmed her and amplified everything she was feeling drastically. She would have had no real way to suppress it.]
The words landed like cold water dropped from a great height.
And in the single second that his mind went completely blank, Evelyn's sword found his shoulder.
Logan staggered back, pain registering a beat late. Blood welled immediately, tracing a slow path down his arm before dripping onto the grass beneath him.
The clearing was quiet except for Evelyn's breathing.
'You did what, Astra?' His voice came out low. Not loud. The kind of quiet that had weight behind it. "Are you mad?"
[I'm sorry, master. I truly am.]
Astra sounded genuinely apologetic, and Logan, pressing his hand against the gash on his arm, understood on some level that she had only been trying to help him complete the mission.
But understanding it and being fine with it were two very different things.
Because now he understood everything else too.
Why it had felt so easy. Why he'd been surprised by how quickly things had progressed between them when he'd fully expected it to take months. The Evelyn he knew, composed, guarded, deliberate, she wouldn't have let things unfold that way. Not without that compound working silently against her.
And the woman he'd found walking alone in this clearing, crying quietly into the dark, holding herself like something had been taken from her?
That was the real consequence.
"Now I have to deal with a woman who's rightfully after my life…" Logan thought grimly, eyes lifting to meet Evelyn's across the clearing, sword still raised, chest still heaving, every line of her radiating a fury he now had absolutely no argument against.
'How do I fix this?'