novelraw Chapter 123: WHY?
Chapter 123: WHY?
Cael looked at the body in Alex’s arms.
"The bearer of Fragment 4?"
"He’s no longer a bearer."
A second of visible processing in Cael’s expression.
"Good." He said it without particular emphasis.
"That’s one less problem to deal with." A pause.
"Even so, my mission is to capture you and take you to the Temple."
Cael’s hand went up.
The squad tensed — twelve hunters responding to their Inquisitor’s gesture, preparing to move.
Then Seraph appeared.
---
Not from the sides of Carter’s team.
From the space between the two groups — emerging from among the fragmented rocks that were part of the north entrance and the squad’s position, Fragment 2’s spectral scythe floating visibly behind her shoulder, her dark cloak waving slightly.
She stood exactly at the point where any movement from Cael’s squad toward Carter’s team would require passing through her.
She smiled.
"Do you mind if I join in?" She said to Cael directly.
Without hostility in her voice.
With the specific tone of someone who genuinely enjoys what she’s offering.
"After all, it’s been a while since I’ve had a decent fight."
"It’s been a while, hasn’t it?"
Cael looked at her.
One second.
Less than one second.
A microsecond where something in the Inquisitor’s posture changed — not fear, nothing that simple.
Recognition.
*Looks like these two have history,*
thought Alex, watching how Cael seemed to be having an internal battle with himself.
*Were they an ex-couple? No... I don’t think so, he looks much older than Seraph... wait, who am I to talk about age differences.* His face briefly turned toward Raven, who seemed to have had the same thought as him, and both turned away in embarrassment.
*Although it’s more likely they have history from her past, after all... Seraph Nox is a former Paladin, bearer of Fragment 2, expelled from the Temple if I remember correctly for bearing Fragment 2.*
Cael turned toward his squad.
Davan was watching him, waiting for the signal.
"Not today." Cael lowered his hand.
"But this doesn’t end here, Carter."
"Nobody said it ends here."
The squad parted — the twelve elite hunters moving to the sides, creating a corridor between them and Carter’s team.
The team passed.
Seraph followed them without saying anything else.
No one spoke until they were a hundred meters from the entrance.
Seraph gave one last look at Cael and, with a mocking wave goodbye, followed the team.
---
Emily was the first to speak.
"Was that real?"
"Apparently," said Raven.
"Why didn’t they attack?" asked Emily. "We were... we weren’t hard to capture in that state."
"Because she protected us, apparently," said Maya.
Looking toward where Seraph walked at a distance behind the group. "Or at least she created enough doubt for Cael to recalculate."
"Seraph protected us? Yeah, right." Raven scoffed at that comment.
"Seraph only protects her own interests." Raven kept walking.
"This time they coincided with ours."
---
[POV CAEL — same moment]
The squad regrouping. Davan to his right.
Cael watching Carter’s group walk away.
*They interrupted the Heralds’ ritual. They evolved the companion — an evolution that no Temple record described correctly because no one who had witnessed it had survived to write it down.* Mental pause.
*They came out alive from Level Four with Fragment 4’s bearer alive in Carter’s arms.*
*Is that boy still the bearer of Fragment 4, or was Carter not lying about him no longer being the bearer?*
The question that the report was going to have to answer, and that Cael didn’t have enough data to answer yet.
Davan: "Why didn’t we arrest them? Even with that girl, we were more than enough in numbers."
Cael looked at him.
"How many times have you fought against an active Fragment bearer?"
"None."
"Fourteen." A pause.
"Number isn’t the variable that matters." He looked toward where Carter’s team’s silhouette disappeared among the trees.
"Carter has Fragment 1 at an integration level that the Temple has no precedent to calculate. His companion just evolved into a form that no record describes."
He hesitated for a second before continuing, as if what he was about to say he didn’t want to say.
"And between them and us there was a former Paladin with fifteen years of exposure to Fragment 2 who has survived everything the Temple has sent her way."
Davan processed that.
"And the report to the High Inquisitor?"
Cael took out his device.
He began to write.
*"I recommend continuous surveillance. Not immediate capture. Fragment 1’s bearer may be the only one capable of interrupting the remaining rituals before the seals fail from other causes. Requires monitoring, not elimination."*
He sent it.
"Besides," he said without looking up from the device, "don’t underestimate the bearer of Fragment 2’s power."
Davan didn’t respond to that.
He had no response for that.
---
[Veltharr — The Broken Rock — Night]
The team arrived as the outer market was closing.
The owner saw them enter, the state they were in, the body that Alex was carrying — and asked no questions.
She gave them the rooms. Hot water. Food without asking for explanations.
---
Later.
The team sleeping.
Kira finally without the seal’s pain in her side — with the ritual fractured, the resonance had diminished until it disappeared during the last hours of the journey.
Emily with her hands finally still, without the active purification, sleeping with the depth of someone who has spent more MP than she should be able to recover in one night.
Raven in the chair by the window — eyes closed, the breathing of someone truly tired, the cut on her arm bandaged with what the Veltharr herbalist had left for them.
Maya with Akari in her lap. The nine tails retracted for the first time since the Catacombs. The map of the next routes open on the table, but Maya sleeping on top of it.
The young former bearer of Fragment 4 sleeping in the bed belonging to Alex... It seemed that after years, he was finally resting.
Alex outside the inn.
The Anchor Stone in his hand.
The crimson veins almost extinguished.
Not the pulsing lines from the Ishi hot springs.
Just traces that were more absence than presence.
Two days. Maybe less.
Grim beside him.
Form 2 contracted to eighty centimeters for the inn’s space.
His crimson flames still in the Veltharr night.
"And then what," said Grim.
It wasn’t a question.
"And then the corruption returns to 80%." Alex looked at the stone. "More, now. With Fragment 4, I don’t know what will happen, nor how it works."
**"Are you ready for that?"**
Alex looked through the inn’s window.
Kira sleeping.
Emily with her hands still.
Raven pretending to sleep.
Maya on top of the map.
"No." A pause.
"But they are."
Grim looked at the stone in Alex’s hand.
Then looked inside — at the memories that Fragment 4 now shared with him just like those of Fragment 1.
Two sources.
Two perspectives of the same original being.
**"Maybe there’s a way to control it."**
Alex looked at him.
"Fragment 4?"
**"The corruption."** His crimson flames looking at the stone as it faded.
**"The Harvester’s memories now include what Fragment 4 saw. And there’s something in that that Fragment 1 alone didn’t have."**
"What?"
Grim didn’t answer immediately.
His flames looking at the Veltharr night.
The mountain where the Catacombs were located visible on the dark horizon.
**"I don’t know yet."** A pause.
**"But there is something."**
Alex looked at the Anchor Stone.
The last crimson veins flickering.
Two days.
"Will it be enough time to get where I need to go?"
It had to be.