SCT-Novel Book 2, Chapter 9.39: Forgive me, Kestovar
Book 2, Chapter 9.39: Forgive me, Kestovar
[FP: 18/45][Status: Body Bruises, Numbing Pain, No Critical Injury]
[SYSTEM WARNING: Stay down now, or stay down forever.]
His temple thumped. He felt like there was an echo of thunder trapped in his skull.
His body informed him, belatedly, that gravity still existed.
Fabrisse tried to breathe.
His chest answered with an immediate refusal. Then came the pain. First in a global wave, then the specifics began to load in.
Left shoulder: fire, localized, insistent.
Ribs: a spreading throb that spiked whenever he inhaled too deeply.
Right thigh: numbness, then pins, then a deep internal soreness that suggested impact rather than cut.
Hands: trembling, oversensitive, every grain of crystal screaming its existence.
He tried to push himself up. His arms shook violently and collapsed. So he only lied down.
He stayed there for several seconds, waiting for the pain to settle into something predictable.
It didn’t, but it stopped getting worse.
With a small, controlled exhale, Fabrisse tried to roll. His body resisted, but the motion was shallow enough that it didn’t send lightning through his ribs. A bed of crystal scraped under his shoulder as he shifted onto his side. Then he saw that where the chamber had once been enclosed, there was now a rupture, a slanted mouth. Wind breathed through it, carrying dust and the faint metallic tang of blood. Light leaked in weakly, diluted, just enough to sketch outlines and nothing more.
He followed the draft with his eyes and saw Severa Montreal.
Severa knelt near the edge of the broken stone, half-turned away from him. She wasn’t slumping nor tremoring. Her robe was intact; no blood, no visible wounds. Her hands dropped to her sides, as if she had simply chosen to stop there. She was staring out of the cavern mouth. There was nothing in her eyes.
“Montreal,” he tried. His voice barely made it past his throat.
She didn’t react.
A chill crept in that had nothing to do with the wind. Fabrisse swallowed and tried again, quieter this time, afraid of breaking whatever fragile state this was.
“Montreal?”
Still nothing.
The next questions were basically him talking to himself.
“Are you okay?”
“Did you bring us here?”
“How’s everyone?”
She stayed like that.
The wind lifted a loose fold of her robe and let it fall again. A full minute passed, measured by the slow, painful rhythm of Fabrisse’s breathing. His questions dried up, so he let his head fall back against the crystal. Fine.
He would triage himself first.
Inhale; hold; exhale.
[FP: 18/45] → [FP: 19/45]
He kept his eyes open, fixed on the rough stone near his face, counting breaths, counting heartbeats, counting anything that stayed consistent.
“Kestovar,” then he finally heard her voice. He turned to her once more, looking at the way her lips moved ever so little.
He waited for a few more seconds before she spoke again, “What did you feel when I took your position at the library?”
“The . . . archivist post?”
She didn’t answer.
“Why are you asking that now?” He tried again.
“You must have hated me,” Severa said. Her voice was flat, as if someone had sanded the inflection off it.
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His statement arrived late, out of sequence. “What?”
“For taking the archivist post. For the Skybrace game. For getting affronted with you about . . . things.”
“I . . .” He didn’t think she’d still archive those in her mind.
“I don’t like myself,” she added. “So I would understand if you did not either.”
He stayed silent.
“Forgive me, Kestovar,” she said. The words were perfectly enunciated. Perfectly empty. “For everything I have ever said to you.” A pause. “I don’t know what else I could do now.” Another pause, longer this time. “I’m sorry.”
He used Spectral Appraisal on her.
[Status: Purpose Severed]
Fabrisse stared at the overlay, then at her. He had seen breakdowns before. Panic. Rage. Desperation. This was none of those. This was what happened when a structure failed quietly and all at once.
“What happened?” Fabrisse asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Is Noctyn still down there?” He turned toward the rupture, toward the darkness yawning beneath them. He assumed . They had been flung upward.
“I don’t know.”
“Then—”
“It doesn’t matter, Kestovar.” She finally turned her head a little more, enough that he could see both eyes now. “That wasn’t the final boss. There’s still another one.”
He didn’t say anything.
She said, “We will die here. And there is nothing we can do about it.”
A sound rose from below. The cavern mouth carried it upward in distorted howls.
The fight wasn’t over. Someone was still down there. Zan? Or the Luminary?
He looked at Severa.
She didn’t react.
The growl came again, closer this time. Stone cracked somewhere far below, followed by a shrill, unmistakably human cry that cut off too abruptly to be reassuring.
Severa remained kneeling.
“You are the type to die trying, Montreal,” Fabrisse said. The growl below surged again.
She didn’t respond.
He swallowed and looked down at his hand. His fingers were shaking. The ring she’d given him sat against his palm, dull with dust and blood. He pulled it from his finger, lifted it slightly, letting the weak light catch its edge.
“Did something happen to your brother?” he asked.
Nothing.
He nodded to himself, as if confirming a hypothesis.
“You tried,” he continued, quieter now. “And you failed. And then you gave this to me.”
His thumb brushed the ring’s inner band, grounding himself in its weight. “If we die here,” he said, carefully, “you’ll lose the ring a second time.”
“Oh. Wait.” He frowned, recalibrating. “The first time. Technically. But—But you’ll fail again. Not operationally. Metaphorically. Which still counts. I think.” His voice shook. He didn’t try to stop it.“You are not finished. And if you stop here, it won’t be mercy. It’ll just be . . . unfinished work.”
He looked up at her at last. “You hate that.”
The reasoning sounded stupid even to him. Yet, she looked at him anyway.
Severa rose.
She stood, crossed the short distance between them, and lowered herself in front of him, knees touching crystal. She reached out. Her fingers closed gently around his hand, steadying it, and then settled against his ring finger—right where the band had been moments ago.
“Is there anything we can do?” Fabrisse asked.
She shook her head. “You’re not in the state to.”
“You are.”
Her eyes dropped to her hands. For a moment, her fingers flexed, as if testing whether they still belonged to her.
“There’s nothing can do,” she said.
He frowned as the pain and his thoughts collided. “Is this the worst challenge you’ve ever been in?”
“Possibly.”
He finally saw an angle. Maybe he could convince her after all.
“Then,” Fabrisse said slowly, “think of what you can tell people when you finally slay that bat.” He swallowed. “Think of what you can tell yourself.”
She looked up at him.
He met her gaze and held it, because he didn’t know what else to do. He had never been good at convincing people.
Silence stretched.
[Random Event Trigger: +1 EMO; +1 PER]
Then Severa exhaled.
Her grip tightened around the back of his hand. “You’re a good stealth operator, Kestovar,” she said. “I’ll redirect the swarm of bat minions here. This cavern runs deep. Evade them.”
“You’ve never seen my stealth in high-stake situations.”
“I’ve seen enough.” She stood and, after a moment’s hesitation, helped him to his feet. His body protested, but it held.
“Do you trust me?” she asked.
He shouldn’t overthink it.
“Yes.”
“Then I trust you’ll survive the bats.” Her voice softened, just a fraction. “When you get out of here, tell them I’ll have fought until the end.”
Something dark welled at the corners of her eyes.
Blood. Scarlet fissures raced across sclera and cheek, branching down her throat, flooding her collarbone, her arms. They splintered from her throat to her collarbone, slithered down her neck to her arms, until her entire body looked like parchment overlaid with a map of burning rivers.
[Skill Detected: Bloodform (Blood Thaumaturgy)—Tier IV, Rank I]
, Fabrisse thought. But he’d learned to appreciate that about her.
“Kill that ugly bat,” he said.
She smiled at him. “I’m sorry for everything. And thank you.”
In truth, he should probably apologize too. She had been terrible towards him, but it wasn’t like he’d treated her that well either.
“Save the talk for later,” he said.
She nodded. Then Severa Montreal turned, ran toward the cavern mouth, and without slowing, leapt into the darkness beyond.