The Author's Extra: My SSS Skill Turns Souls into Anything!

Chapter 88: True Feelings

The dark smoke moved with him.

The energy did not just follow Alden like normal magic. It moved around him like a living creature, twisting and throbbing with every step, as if it had a mind of its own.

Alden didn’t notice. He was looking at Seris.

"Alden..." Augustus’s voice cut through the pass, mocking and bright. "What’s with that face?" He tilted his head with the theatricality of someone enjoying themselves.

"Are you thinking — ’oh no, my dear friend is hurt, I should have taken this seriously, I should have fought him properly instead of tricking him’ —"

Alden kept walking.

"Or did you finally understand what happens when you keep ignoring me?" Augustus’s voice darkened. His boot came down hard on the ice. "You humiliated me in front of the entire academy! You manipulated our duel to get me suspended! And now look at what your arrogance caused—"

Alden walked past him.

Just past him. Like walking past a post in the road. Not even glanced at him or gave a single fraction of his attention acknowledging that Augustus existed.

Augustus’s sentence stopped mid-word.

The battlefield went quiet in that particular way that happens when something unexpected has removed all the air from a moment.

"..."

Augustus’s left eye twitched.

"What...?"

Alden reached Seris. He dropped to one knee in the red-stained snow without slowing down, one arm going under her shoulders, the other finding her weight, and he lifted her against his chest with the careful focus of someone holding something precious.

"YOU RASCAL—" Augustus spun on his heel, his aura erupting, his face contorting into something that had moved past fury into something personal and ugly. "You dare turn your back on me?! That’s it! I’M KILLING YOU RIGHT NOW—"

BOOM.

Something enormous hit the earth between them.

Flamestone dropped from wherever it had been circling, all eight legs slamming into the frozen ground, the impact throwing up a wall of shattered bedrock and snow that hit Augustus directly in the face. The spider’s obsidian shell caught the morning light as it turned its multi-faceted eyes toward the crown prince, mandibles already snapping.

Augustus’s descending blade hit one of the armored limbs.

CLANG.

Before he could recover, Flamestone wrapped another leg around his sword arm and threw him backward. The creature did it effortlessly, tossing him aside like a annoying bug.

Augustus hit the ice, skidded, swore. He came back up immediately. The spider gave him no space — it lunged, mandibles leading, legs blurring into a storm of strikes that forced him into a desperate scrambling defense.

"This stupid pest—!" He got his blade up. "GET OUT OF MY WAY—"

Flamestone screeched and lunged again.

Alden eyes were still on Seris, never blinking.

He adjusted Seris carefully — back resting against his thigh, his left arm around her shoulders to keep her steady, his right hand moving to her throat. His fingertips pressed against the pulse point.

Thump... Thump... Thump...

Weak. But there.

The heavy fear that had been holding everything inside him since the moment he saw the pass from the air broke somewhere in his chest. He blew out slowly, the breath turning white in the cold air, and sat with the fact that she was alive for a moment before his hands started moving again.

He wiped the dried blood from her cheek, the frost, dirt. Working carefully, like cleaning something that should never have gotten this dirty.

"I’m sorry, Seris." His voice came out almost nothing. "I know I’m late."

She didn’t answer. Her eyes stayed closed, silver lashes resting against bruised skin.

He looked at her face.

He’d seen her smile so many times. The teasing one she deployed when she’d backed him into a corner. The quiet, real one she didn’t always know she was making. The careful, placed one she put on when her past caught up to her and she needed everyone around her to believe it hadn’t.

He let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. "You’re ridiculous," he said softly. His fingers moved through her silver hair. "Even when you’re breaking you make sure nobody can see it."

He thought about what she’d told him at the fountain. The jacket she’d bought her father with her own savings. The people who’d looked at her and said ’you shouldn’t have been born’. The years she’d learned to carry weight that should never have been put on her.

"You’ve fought through more than anyone should have to," he murmured. "And somehow through all of it you still became someone who could smile like that."

His hand settled against the side of her head.

"I spent so much time running away." He wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to himself anymore. "Running from this world. From the roles. From the things I kept almost understanding and then deciding not to." A quiet, self-deprecating sound. "All because I was afraid to admit something that should’ve been simple."

He looked at her face.

"I started caring about you," he said that. He said whatever came out of his mouth without even thinking about it first or about what it meant or what came next. "And somewhere in there, seeing you smile became something I wanted to protect."

The black smoke around him changed. It wasn’t aggressive anymore. It slowed down, grew thicker, and moved quietly, like a creature that had finally found its job and was content to wait.

He leaned down slightly.

"You’ve done enough," he said, quiet against her ear. "You don’t have to carry it alone anymore. You don’t have to pretend you’re fine."

He straightened.

"Rest. I’ll handle the rest."

When he stood up and looked back at the battlefield, the confusion that had lived behind his eyes since the first evening he’d woken up in this world was simply gone. What was left was something clear and cold and entirely decided.

He carried her in his arms and began walking in the opposite direction from Augustus.