Chapter 308: Before the Rain Touches the Dead

The soft sound of knocking broke the quiet of the top-floor suite.

My eyes snapped open. My mind just shifted from deep sleep to sharp awareness in an instant. I lay still on the big bed in my Primus suite, staring up at the ceiling. Through the tall windows, the morning sky was heavy and gray.

I sat up slowly, resting my hands on my knees. My body felt fine, healed, and balanced. The small cracks that had threatened to tear my mana channels apart two days ago were completely gone, fixed by healing magic and my bloodline help.

Another knock came from the front door. I swung my legs over the edge of the frame, my bare feet hitting the cold floor, and walked across the living area. I didn’t bother checking a mirror or fixing my hair. I just pulled the heavy door open.

Roan and Alice stood in the hallway. Both wore stark black formal coats. Roan stood straight, his silver hair combed back neatly. Alice stood half a step behind him, her usual sharp energy gone, her collar buttoned tight.

"Ah... you guys," I said, the sound quiet in the empty corridor.

"Morning, Leo," Roan said. His voice was rough, missing its usual light, teasing edge. He gave a small, tired nod. "Mind if we come in?"

"Go ahead." I stepped aside, letting them walk into the quiet suite. Alice didn’t jump onto the couch or wander around like she usually did. She just stood near the center table, quiet and still.

"We came to get you," Roan said, turning back toward me as I closed the door. "Its about time. The collective memorial starts in an hour at the Academy’s central plaza."

"Right. The memorial." I rubbed the back of my neck, letting out a slow breath. "Give me ten minutes to change."

"Take your time," Alice said quietly, her eyes meeting mine for a brief second before drifting toward the balcony window. "Everyone’s waiting downstairs in the main lobby anyway. Riven, Lyssaria, Caster... they’re all ready."

I nodded, pausing for a moment as a slight hesitation caught in my throat before I spoke. "...How is Cordelia holding up?"

The room fell completely silent. The silence stretched for so long that I almost thought Roan hadn’t heard me.

"..."

I heard Roan let out a long, heavy exhale through his nose. When I turned my head slightly, he was staring down at his boots, his jaw set in a tight, rigid line.

"...She hasn’t stepped out of her room once," Roan said softly. "The imperial guards tried to get her to eat yesterday, but she refused to open the door for anyone. The only time she unlocked it was when Julia went up to drop off her black coat."

"I see..." I sighed quietly, the breath heavy in my chest.

She isn’t taking it well, huh?

It made complete sense. Neither Roan, Alice, nor I had lost someone truly close to our lives in this disaster... not like this.

But Cordelia was different. Marius wasn’t just another student to her. He was her childhood friend. The loud, arrogant noble boy who had grown up with her in the palace gardens.

The one who had chased her across the empire, always trying to prove he was good enough to be her knight. Losing someone who had been a constant presence in your life since childhood... that was a different kind of pain.

My eyes drifted over to Roan, then settled on Alice. A sudden, sharp thought crossed my mind cold, and uncomfortable.

What if it had been them?

What if I had walked out of that gate crisis to find Roan’s corpse lying broken in a side street? What if it was Alice whose core had been shattered beyond repair, trapped in a silent, endless coma like Vance?

My chest tightened. A strange, bitter taste settled in my mouth. I shook my head, cutting the thought off before it could dig deeper.

I hadn’t even realized when these two idiots, this arrogant elf prince and this stubborn girl, had carved such a big space in my head. I didn’t want to think about them dying. I refused to let that happen.

I stood up from the couch, turning to look at them directly. "Give me ten minutes. Go wait outside. I’ll change and head down."

Roan nodded quietly. "Don’t take too long."

Without another word, Roan and Alice turned and walked out, the heavy front door clicking shut behind them. I stood alone in the quiet room for a moment, taking a slow, steady breath, before turning toward the bathroom.

_

I walked into the bathroom, closed the door, and turned the shower handle all the way to cold.

I stepped under the spray. The icy water hit my face and shoulders, waking up my body and washing away the last bits of sleep. I stood still under the water, one hand against the tile wall, letting the cold keep my mind clear.

Over the last two days, while I was unconscious in the medical wing, the world had kept moving.

When I opened my eyes yesterday, I found my mother, Mia, Lyra, and even Sylvia around me. They told me what happened. They said Headmaster Vega and my grandfather had arrived at the ridge. Zephyr had destroyed the Gate Boss monster himself.

And Vega had opened a mass portal to pull the surviving students out of the slaughterhouse. They also told me about the casualties. Forty-three students dead in the residential sector alone. Dozens of teachers and support staff slaughtered. Vance’s core ruined. Marius dead in a dark alley.

Forty-three...

I ran a hand over my face, pushing my wet hair back.

What unsettled me most wasn’t just the destruction at Aegis Academy, it was what my mother had quietly mentioned about the rest of the world. T

The Grade 8 Gate over the Sealed Valley wasn’t an isolated attack. The Fallen had struck everywhere at once. Rifts had torn open over the Elf Domain’s Great Tree, the Vampire Domain’s Crimson Citadel, the Beastkin fortresses, and even the Arcane Spire.

This wasn’t just a local disaster. It was a global declaration of war. It mirrored the bloody events of the original game’s late-game plot, but seeing it happen in real life, feeling the cold ash in the air made it painfully real.

And the Astra Union?

The twelve High Seats who claimed to rule? They had been caught completely off guard, outmaneuvered, and forced onto the defensive in their own territories. Right now, they were scrambling to cover up their failure, planning to call it an "unforeseen rift anomaly" to save face while parents buried their children.

I let out a silent, bitter breath under the water.

I had been forced to rely on my grandfather again. I had used the Celestial pendant to call in a Sovereign-level fighter because my own strength wasn’t enough to control the battlefield. I can’t keep doing this.

I couldn’t count on Zephyr every time the world fell apart. Next time, the enemy wouldn’t leave a gap for help to arrive. Next time, the threats would be stranger, stronger, and more relentless. If I wanted to survive what was coming, I needed to get stronger, much faster.

...And then there was Seris.

I remembered the fragments from right before I lost consciousness, the cold rush of air, the shock of her knocking me out to stop me from burning my own soul. And the vivid memory of her pressing her lips over mine, desperately forcing air and a spark of her mana into my lungs when my chest refused to rise.

I raised a hand beneath the falling water, my fingers brushing lightly against my bottom lip. My face suddenly felt uncomfortably warm beneath the cold shower stream.

Damn it. I pressed two fingers against my temples, forcing the memory away. Focus, Leo. Clear your head.

She had saved my life, first by restarting my core with her own breath, and then by knocking me out to stop my reckless push before fighting off that Abomination alone until Vega arrived. I owed her a massive debt, and an awkward conversation, that I would have to settle once this memorial was over.

I shut the water off.

I stepped out, dried off, and pulled on the black dress clothes waiting on the rack. The fabric was dark, and clean, fitting me perfectly. I buttoned the silver-trimmed collar, put on my black boots, and checked my reflection in the glass one last time.

The white hair, the sharp intensity in my eyes.

I opened the front door and stepped out into the hallway. Roan and Alice were standing near the elevator, leaning quietly against the wall. When the door clicked shut behind me, both of them turned their heads.

"Let’s go," I said, walking up to join them.

_

The structure was built on a hierarchical system. The higher your rank, the higher your floor. As the Primus, I occupied the top floor. Roan was on the second, Arthur on the third, Elisabeth on the fourth, Alice on the fifth, Riven on the sixth, Amelia on the seventh... and Cordelia on the eighth.

I pressed the elevator button. When the doors slid open, I didn’t step inside right away.

"You guys go down to the lobby first," I said, my voice quiet. "Tell Riven and the others I’ll be down in five minutes."

Roan looked at me, then glanced down the hall toward the stairwell leading to the lower rank floors. He understood immediately.

"...Don’t take too long," Roan said softly, stepping into the elevator with Alice.

"I won’t."

The elevator doors slid shut, leaving me standing alone in the quiet corridor. I took the stairs down to the eighth floor. The hallway looked the same as mine, but the air felt colder and heavier. I walked down the corridor until I reached the big door with the number 8.

I raised my hand and knocked three times.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Silence.

I waited three seconds. Ordinarily, breaking into another student’s suite, especially a girl’s room, without permission was crossing a line, and the security wards on the doors were designed to keep anyone without a keycard out.

Fortunately, door locks didn’t mean much to someone with a space affinity user.

I focused my affinity, folding space around me for a second, and appeared directly inside her room. The room was dark. The curtains were pulled tight over the windows, blocking out the pale morning light and leaving the big living room in deep shadow.

Cordelia wasn’t lying in bed, nor was she crying in a corner.

She stood near the edge of the dark room, dressed in her black formal uniform, her back straight, her head bowed slightly as she stared at her hands resting on the back of a wooden chair. Her long hair was messy, falling over her shoulders, and her skin looked pale in the dim room, dark circles under her eyes.

She didn’t turn around when I walked in.

"I told the guards to leave," she said. Her voice was flat, dry, and completely devoid of emotion, like a hollow echo. "I don’t need anyone pitying me, Leo."

I didn’t answer right away. I pulled a chair out from the side wall, placed it near the center of the dark room, and sat down quietly, resting my elbows on my knees.

"I’m not a guard," I said softly. "...And I’m not here to offer you cheap pity."

"Then why are you here?" She turned her head slowly, her eyes hitting mine. They were bloodshot, glassy, and filled with a dangerous, unstable mixture of grief, exhaustion, and raw, suppressed rage. "To tell me it’s going to be okay? To give me a speech about honor and duty? Like the Union officers outside?"

"No..." I replied calmly. "I came to walk with you to the memorial. That’s all."

Cordelia let out a quiet, raspy sound that was supposed to be a laugh, but came out as a broken gasp. "Walk with me? Why? So everyone can see the Princess of the Imperial Household looking pathetic? So you can play the good classmate?"

She took a sharp step toward me, her posture trembling, her fists clenched so tightly at her sides that her knuckles were white.

"You don’t know anything," she whispered, her voice shaking as the wall of cold emotion began to crack. "You stand there looking so calm... so unaffected. You always have everything under control, don’t you? You fight, you win, you survive. But Marius... Marius is dead, Leo! He died alone in a narrow residential alley while I ran away like a coward!"

I stayed completely still, sitting in the chair, watching her without flinching.

"I don’t know the boy who grew up with you..." I said, my voice low and steady. "And you’re right. I beat him in that duel, stripped away his pride, and looked at him with cold indifference every day after. He wanted my acknowledgment, and I never gave it to him. That’s a debt I can never clear now."

A sharp shudder ran through Cordelia at my words. Her breath hitched violently.

"But they told me how he fell," I continued, looking directly into her eyes. "They said he held that residential alley alone until every last civilian made it out. They said there wasn’t a single wound on his back. I wasn’t there, Cordelia... but I know he died holding the line."

I felt a faint, cold knot tighten in my stomach. The memory of Marius bowing to me after our duel, his eyes desperate for redemption, flashed through my mind. I had ignored it then. I had walked away with cold indifference, treating him like an afterthought.

Now, he was dead. And that silence between us was permanent. I would carry that unpayable debt to my grave.

"Shut up!" Cordelia snapped, her voice cracking loudly in the dark room. She closed the distance between us, grabbing the lapels of my coat. "Don’t talk like you can just sum it up from a report! He didn’t care about some official report, he wanted to prove to you that he changed! He wanted you to see him as a real knight! He want everyone to see him as a knight!"

Her hands trembled against my chest, tears finally spilling over her lashes.

"He told me he was sorry..." Cordelia sobbed, her voice breaking completely as tears streamed down her cheeks.

"Right before the horde hit that alley... he told me he was sorry for becoming the arrogant fool he was. He told me he finally remembered his promise... to protect my right side... and he forced me to run! He died holding that line alone, facing the street, waiting for help that never came! I left him, Leo! I left him in the mud!"

She raised a fist and slammed it hard against my chest.

Thump!

It wasn’t a mana-infused strike. It had no aura, no lethal force behind it, just the raw, desperate physical impact of a girl drowning in her own guilt.

I just sat there and took it.

"Why weren’t you there?!" she sobbed, slamming her fist against my chest a second time. "You’re the strongest! You’re the Primus! Why weren’t you in the residential district to save him?! Why did he have to die alone?!"

Thump!

She hit me again, and again, her strikes growing weaker, her body shaking so violently that she could barely maintain her balance. I knew why she was doing this. She didn’t actually hate me, and deep down, she knew I couldn’t have saved everyone in every place at once.

She just needed a way to let it out.

She needed someone strong enough to take the weight of her guilt, someone who wouldn’t break or feel sorry for her while she fell apart. She was blaming herself most of all, drowning in the thought that if she had stayed in that alley with him, he might still be alive.

So I let her hit me.

I sat quietly in the dark room, letting her pour out every bit of her raw, ugly pain against my chest until her fists slowed down and her strength gave out.

And beneath her tears, I carried my own quiet burden, the silent guilt of a guy who hadn’t been there, and a rival who had never granted a dying boy the one thing he wanted most: to be recognized as a true knight.

Finally, her hands slipped from my coat. Her knees buckled, and she sank toward the floor, her shoulders heaving with deep, silent, agonizing sobs. I reached out, catching her by her arm to keep her from falling onto the carpet, holding her steady.

She slumped against my knees, her hands burying themselves tightly into the fabric of my trousers as she wept. I didn’t push her away, nor did I offer hollow words of comfort. I simply rested one hand lightly on the top of her head, holding her anchored while the storm ran its course.

"He didn’t need my acknowledgment in the end," I whispered quietly into the dark room. "He didn’t need me to validate him or grant him forgiveness. He became a real knight on that street all on his own. I was the last person who had any right to look down on him, I couldn’t even save my own skin without relying on others."

Cordelia’s frame trembled, her head buried against my knee as her ragged breathing slowly began to decelerate.

"You carry the memory of the knight he became," I added softly. "Not the boy who lost his way, and not the fool who chased approval. If you stay locked in this room, then everything he died holding that alley for was in vain."

The room fell into a long, heavy quiet, broken only by her ragged, slow breathing as the raw hysteria gradually receded.

She stayed like that for a long time, slowly gathering the shattered pieces of her composure. She didn’t suddenly snap back to normal, nor did her pain magically disappear, but the suffocating paralysis holding her hostage finally broke.

Slowly, painfully, she pulled herself up, wiping her face with the back of her sleeve. Her eyes were still red and swollen, her breath catching in her throat as she straightened her posture, but the wild, dangerous despair was gone, replaced by a fragile, quiet stillness.

"Give me... two minutes," she murmured, her voice raspy as she turned her face away to adjust the collar of her black dress. "I need to wash my face."

"Take your time," I replied, standing up from the chair. "I’ll wait outside."

I turned and walked out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind me. Leaning my back against the wall, I took a long, deep breath of the cool corridor air, resting my hands in my pockets. I stood there in silence for several minutes, letting the quiet of the hallway settle over me.

Every choice I made in this world, every action I took, and every indifference I showed had a ripple effect. Every cause had its consequence, and whether those choices were good or bad, the bill always came due.

Facing Cordelia in that dark room was just part of the price I had to pay. Pushing someone through grief wasn’t about fixing them, it was just about giving them enough ground under their feet so they wouldn’t collapse when they took the next step.

A minute later, the door handle clicked.

Cordelia stepped out into the hallway. I turned my head to look at her, and my breath caught in my throat.

I froze. "Cordelia... your hair..."

She didn’t let me finish. She just met my gaze with quiet, distant eyes, her expression guarded, solemn, and cold. "Let’s go."