Erza reached him in seconds.
What remained of Aelius barely qualified as a body. From the ribcage down, there was nothing—just a void where his torso had once been, torn open in a blast that had erased flesh and bone in equal measure. His right arm was gone entirely. The left twitched, barely clinging to his shoulder by strands of muscle and nerves that jerked without aim.
But his eye—his one remaining eye—was open.
Watching.
It tracked her movement as she dropped beside him, as her breath hitched at the sight. She didn't speak at first. Didn't move. Just stared, like the sheer impossibility of him still breathing needed time to register. His chest, what little of it remained, rose and fell with slow, rattling effort. Every breath sounded like it scraped along splintered bone.
And still, the eye watched. Calm. Unyielding.
She knelt closer. Her gauntlet hovered near his face but didn't touch. She didn't dare. Not yet.
"You shouldn't be alive," she murmured. No anger. No command. Just the raw, stunned truth of it.
There was no edge to her voice—no command, no accusation, no battle-hardened fury behind it. Only the raw, stunned breath of a warrior who had seen hundreds fall, and yet couldn't quite believe this one hadn't. The words barely rose above a whisper, as if speaking them louder might undo whatever fragile stitch of fate still held him together.
Aelius didn't reply.
He couldn't.
But his eye—the single eye left untouched by blood, ash, or ruin—shifted slowly toward her. His head remained limp, his mouth slack with the weight of his broken jaw and torn throat. But that eye… that eye moved. And then, like a man asked a question for the hundredth time, he rolled it.
A sharp, dry flick of irritation.
Not at her. At death. At the absurdity of it all.
Erza exhaled in something like disbelief—and almost, almost—smiled. It didn't last. Her hand hovered again, caught between the instinct to help and the reality that there was so little left of him to hold on to. His body was ruined beyond comprehension. The lower half of him had been erased—not burned, not shredded—removed, as if some divine blade had carved him from the ribs down. The torn flesh around his midsection pulsed faintly with each breath, like a bloodied engine running on fumes. The ground beneath him had long since turned black and slick with rot.
And yet—he lived.
Footsteps crunched behind her. A shift in the air. She turned her head just enough to see Gray approaching first, crouching beside the other side of Aelius's limp form. His eyes swept the carnage with trained detachment, but his mouth was set into a grim line.
"I've never seen anything like this," he muttered, voice tight. "This isn't just magic. Even for him, it's insane."
"But he's still here," Erza agreed.
Behind them, Lucy moved closer, her body trembling just enough to make the keys on her belt clink together. She saw the crater where Aelius's body should've been, the blood-mud mixture soaking through what remained of his coat, and her eyes flickered wide with horror. But she kept walking. Her hand gently found Wendy's, steadying her without a word.
Wendy—still small, still too young for this—edged forward on soft steps. Her wide, tear-brimmed eyes locked on Aelius's broken form, and something inside her trembled. She looked like a child walking into the aftermath of a nightmare, and every inch of her seemed to resist what she saw. But when she finally knelt beside Erza, she didn't cry.
She looked.
"His magic…" she whispered, touching the air just above Aelius's chest. "It's still active. Barely. Like it's holding him together. But it's not healing. It's… resisting something."
"Death," said Lyon as he stepped from the corrupted path behind her. "Or worse. You can feel it in the ground. The rot's alive. And it's hungry."
Sherry trailed behind him, her arms wrapped around herself, face pale. Her eyes darted across the battlefield, landing on every twisted chunk of metal and bone that surrounded the barely breathing man.
Ren and Eve came next, flanking behind Gray. Eve's mouth opened like he was about to speak, then closed again as he stared at Aelius's chest—what was left of it—rising and falling in sickening, uneven intervals.
Even Jura came closer now, his presence massive and grounding, as if his very steps dared the ground to collapse beneath them. He studied Aelius silently, the deep grooves of concern carving across his face more than words ever could.
Happy hovered behind Natsu, whose clenched fists trembled with fury not born of battle, but of helplessness. He couldn't fight this. He couldn't punch this away. He could only stare, the fire around his hands guttering low.
Lucy dropped beside Wendy now, watching the girl work—her hands glowing faintly as she tried to direct her healing magic, as gently as if placing thread through glass.
"It's not working," Wendy said quietly. "I can't… there's too much. His body's…"
"Gone," Gray finished.
But the eye opened again—wider this time. As if annoyed they were saying it in front of him.
He blinked once. Slowly. Meaningfully.
And then glared.
Even that tiny motion was absurd. Defiant. Alive.
Erza leaned close again, lowering her voice so only he could hear.
"You're too stubborn to die, aren't you?"
His eye twitched. If his jaw hadn't been dislocated, he might've tried to smirk.
"Then hang on," she whispered. "Because we're not done yet."
Then, slowly, that gaze turned. To Erza. Then Lucy. Then across the dirt and rot-blackened grass—frantic.
Gray noticed. "He's looking for something."
"No," Erza said. "He's missing something."
Aelius's eye whipped toward her—yes. Fast. Repeating the motion. Back and forth. Look. Look. Look.
"What is it?" Lucy whispered, still unable to look too long at what had become of him.
"He kept it with him," Erza said, voice low, eyes scanning Aelius's broken form. "Always. Even if it wasn't on his belt."
She knelt beside him. The stench of charred metal and rotting flesh hung thick around his body. His coat was half-burned, stiff with dried blood, the cloth slashed open in three places. Aelius lay still—too still—what remained of his lower body half-sunken into the churned soil, as if the rot had swallowed him halfway whole.
"Where is it?" Erza muttered, not to anyone in particular. "He always kept it close."
Gray knelt down opposite her, frowning. "Check his belt?"
She already had. It was just a belt—ordinary leather, scorched at the buckle. Not enchanted. Not dimensional. Just something to hold up his coat, or maybe a memory he didn't care to part with. The pouches were empty. A few broken clasps, a singed fragment of cloth still clinging to the lining. Nothing useful.
"He stored everything in his Requip space," Erza said quietly. "Weapons, gear, rations. He never carried anything unless he had to. But that flask…"
They all looked down.
Aelius's eye—the only one left—was watching them.
Half-lidded. Dimming. But alive. He shifted it, just barely. A flicker toward the battlefield. Toward the crater. Then back to them. It was subtle, nearly lost in the gore and smoke, but Erza saw it.
"Out there," Erza breathed, straightening slowly. Her voice was low but urgent, her eyes narrowing as she stared across the churned, corrupted plain. "It's not on him. It's not in his Requip. He dropped it—or lost it—out there."
Gray followed her gaze. "In that mess?"
Wendy swallowed. "Are you sure?"
Erza didn't answer immediately. She stepped forward, just enough to feel the air where the field began to change—where magic and rot had merged into something wrong. The light was different there. It bent strangely. The shadows rippled even when nothing moved.
"I saw it," she said. "He was trying to tell us. It's out there—probably near where he fell before that man hit him with that final burst." She paused, scanning the terrain. "The impact must have scattered his gear before he could recover."
Gray grimaced. "Great. So now we're digging through a war crime looking for a poison flask."
They weren't alone. Members of the allied guilds were already approaching the edge of the ravaged plain. Hibiki, Ren, and Eve moved first, drawn not by duty but sheer disbelief. Lyon followed not far behind, cloak already stained with soot getting even dirtier. Sherry stayed close to him, her hands trembling slightly as she stared at the ground. Jura, ever composed, stepped through the scorched mist like a monolith, but even his jaw was set tight.
"What the hell happened here?" Hibiki muttered, eyes wide. His fingers skimmed across the air, conjuring glowing sigils as he tried to make sense of the distortion around them. "This isn't just a battlefield—this is like… like the world's bleeding."
"It stinks," Ren said, voice blunt and cracking. "Like metal and mold and magic gone bad. This isn't just rot. It's alive."
"No," Eve said quietly, shielding his mouth with a gloved hand. "It's not alive. It's angry."
Lyon scowled and gestured to the corrupted field. "I've seen monsters melt terrain before. Demons. But this? The land's… digesting itself. Like it remembers what hit it."
Sherry stepped forward and recoiled instantly, her boot squelching in something half-liquid. "It's like walking on meat," she said, face pale. "I'm not even being dramatic—it moves."
Jura let out a low, controlled breath, but even he couldn't keep the edge from his voice. "The ground here carries a memory of….something. Not just magic—hate. Something ancient."
Erza turned to face them all, her voice sharp and commanding. "It doesn't matter what did this. What matters is that Aelius's flask is still out there. He needs it to live. Spread out. Find it. Do not step on anything that looks like it's pulsing, breathing, or watching you."
"What, so all of it?" Ren muttered.
"Don't touch anything unless you're sure," Erza snapped.
Back at the edge of the devastation, Wendy stayed by Aelius's side. Her healing spells danced across his mangled body, but the magic wasn't mending—only slowing the inevitable. His chest rose unevenly, eye fluttering, face waxy and bloodless. The air around him shimmered, toxic to even her lightest spells. She kept going anyway, fingers shaking.
"Please," she whispered. "Hold on. Just hold on."
The others moved in squads. Jura laid seismic pulses ahead of him to stabilize the terrain. Hibiki filtered the battlefield's magical residue through layered code, his voice muttering rapid fire as he tried to pinpoint magical spikes. Ren and Eve spread out across the flank, while Lyon and Sherry pushed toward the center, careful with every step.
Sherry's voice rang out, louder now. "This whole place is humming. It's like it knows we're here."
Ren paused near a mass of half-buried rubble. "Does anyone else feel that? Like we're walking over something's back?"
Eve crouched near a collapsed tree, clearing away blackened vines. "I've got a shimmer. Something silver. Small. Looks like metal."
"Then grab it, and hurry!" Erza shouted back, her voice sharp, strained. She was still kneeling beside what remained of Aelius, one gauntlet bracing his shattered frame. "I'm not sure how much time he has left!"
Her tone snapped through the haze of the battlefield, cutting through the muttered voices of the others. Eve didn't hesitate. He plunged his hand into the dirt and hauled it free.
The flask.
Charred at the edges. Crushed slightly at the bottom. Blood and soot streaked along the seams, and the metal felt far colder than it should've—like it hadn't just been buried in sun-baked soil, but dredged from some frozen abyss.
He ran.
Behind him, the others fanned out—Ren scanning broken stone with narrowed eyes, Lyon flicking away a melted bit of something unidentifiable with visible disgust, Sherry muttering curses under her breath as she skirted a patch of scorched moss that hissed faintly. Jura remained where he stood, one hand on his hip, the other tracing the grooves of the crater with a deepening frown.
Eve skid to a halt near Erza, flask in hand. "Got it. Tell me he's still breathing."
Wendy shook her head, her small hands hovering over Aelius's ruined torso, still glowing with the soft light of her healing magic. Her eyes were wide, wet, straining to focus. "I—I don't know how. He doesn't have most of his lungs. His organs—" her voice hitched, "—they're gone. Torn through. Melted. Collapsed in on themselves. I can hear air coming out of his nose, but… I don't know how he's intaking anything. There's nothing left to draw with."
Erza took the flask from Eve without a word, uncorking it with a single twist. The smell hit like a slap—metallic, bitter, and searingly chemical, like rusted copper left to boil in acid and blood. Not the scent of healing or mercy, but death.
Erza didn't hesitate. She raised Aelius's head with one armored hand, tilting it slightly, and poured the thick, oily liquid into his mouth.
Wendy flinched as the liquid hit the ruined remnants of his throat. "Careful—he doesn't have a full esophagus, the liquid might just spill into—"
Aelius twitched.
It wasn't a convulsion or a spasm—it was too deliberate, too alive. His ruined fingers curled slightly, the smallest flicker of will still burning behind a veil of pain. Air escaped his mangled nose in a thin, uneven breath. The unnatural hue behind his eye dimmed to something duller. The bleeding slowed.
"He's stabilizing," Wendy breathed, hands trembling. "I think he's actually responding."
Erza let out a slow breath, her eyes locked on the twisted form below her. His torso had been hollowed out by the blast—much of it reduced to exposed bone and shredded flesh—but some spark had held on. Some thread of stubbornness that refused to snap.
"Good work," she said softly.
Eve arrived at her side, holding out the flask with two fingers, as if it might bite. "This was the only thing out there that looked useful. Whatever was inside, I think it's what stopped whatever was spreading through him."
Erza took it with a quick nod and tucked it away. The flask would be examined later—what mattered now was the man it had saved.
She knelt low, sliding her arms beneath him, cradling what was left. Aelius didn't resist. He couldn't. His weight was almost nothing now—too much had been burned, broken, or blown away. His coat was shredded, armor pieces fused to skin, and yet the belt around his waist remained somehow intact. A simple thing, worn and scarred from countless fights.
"We need to move," Erza said, rising slowly, mindful of every jolt. "The army will be here soon. The battle's over. Nirvana's destroyed. And this area…" Her eyes swept over the shattered forest, the craters, the scorched stones and warped trees. "They'll want this entire site secured."
Lyon stepped closer, brushing snow-dusted ash from his shoulder. "And they'll want answers. Fast."
Jura gave a slow nod, his face calm despite the wreckage. "We'll need to submit statements to the Council. Especially concerning the Oración Seis. Whatever Nirvana did to them, it wasn't just power. It… changed them."
"Then we make that clear," Erza said. "When the Council gets here, they'll want justification for how this happened. We tell them everything. The magic of Nirvana. The way the Seis changed sides. The way it affected the mission. They deserve justice—not blind punishment."
"Will the Council listen?" Eve asked quietly, walking beside Wendy.
"They will," Jura answered firmly. "Because we will be the ones telling it. And they trust us."
Erza adjusted her grip, careful not to jostle the remains of his left shoulder. His head rested against her armored collar, one eye open. Not speaking. Not moving. But breathing. Somehow conveying great annoyance.
But the eye still moved.
Breathing shallow, spine twisted, organs barely functioning—yet somehow, still, that single eye slid sideways and glared up at her with a wearied, scalding look of exasperation.
The kind of look that didn't need a voice to translate.
It was there in the slight furrow of his brow. The almost imperceptible twitch of his fingers against her vambrace. The sheer gall of still being annoyed, despite having most of his torso atomized and half the guild thinking he was moments from death.
Erza blinked, and the corner of her mouth almost—almost—twitched. "Oh? You're fine?" she muttered under her breath, keeping her tone even. "Is that why I'm carrying you in pieces like luggage?"
Wendy made a strangled sound between a sob and a laugh, crouched at her side with her hands still glowing faintly. "He's glaring. He's literally glaring at you. I think he's angry that you're helping him."
"He would be," Lyon muttered from a few steps behind. "I've seen men with open wounds insult healers but this… this is another level."
Jura turned toward them briefly, his expression caught somewhere between reverence and incredulity. "It is said that some warriors, even when their bodies fail, let their willpower burn so brightly it refuses death itself. I believe we are witnessing such a case."
"No," Eve replied drily, "we're witnessing pure spite keep a man alive out of principle."
Erza shook her head and kept walking, stepping over cracked roots and scorched stone, cradling what should have been an unmovable corpse with the ease of long habit. "Let him be annoyed. He'll need that fire when we get back to the guild."
A soft, hissed breath came from Aelius—a strained wheeze that might have been a laugh, or maybe a failed insult. Or both.
Behind them, smoke curled upward from the battlefield in slow, fading plumes. The eerie hum of shattered magic pulsed faintly in the distance, the last death-rattle of Nirvana's broken curse. But the light on the horizon had changed. The ground no longer trembled. The silence was one of conclusion, not suspense.
—
The wind on the return trail was gentler than it had any right to be.
The scorched air and blood-iron tang of the battlefield had been left behind, the smoke far in the distance now—reduced to little more than a grey smudge on the southern horizon. Wheels creaked along a dirt path as the carriage bounced through winding foothills,
Inside the carriage, Erza sat quietly beside Aelius. His body, once mangled beyond recognition, was still little more than a torso—bandaged and braced, but stabilized. The healing had done what it could: stopped the bleeding, regrown strips of flesh, restructured some of the exposed bone. But there was only one partial arm, and No legs. Just a chest that rose and fell in stubborn defiance of death. His breathing was steady now, and the worst of the internal damage had been sealed, but he was far from whole. Closer to a wreck held together by magic, gauze, and sheer fury than a man in recovery.
Across from him, Wendy leaned forward with a bright, focused expression, chatting animatedly about something to do with magical tissue resilience—only pausing when Aelius grunted or rolled his eyes. She didn't seem deterred. If anything, she seemed lighter now, freer.
Understandable.
Cait Shelter had been a lie. An ancient projection created by a long-dead wizard to shelter Wendy for reasons none of them entirely understood. After Nirvana fell, the illusion had unraveled, disappearing like mist beneath sunlight. No buildings. No guild. No people. Just Wendy, alone.
But not for long.
Fairy Tail had taken her in instantly. There had been no ceremony, no debate. When Master Makarov asked her if she'd like to join them, she cried so hard she couldn't speak. Aelius, half-awake at the time, had made some unintelligible grunt, and Erza claimed that was his formal agreement as well.
The road continued beneath them—stone giving way to soil, then to the softened press of grass as the wheels found the more worn, familiar trails heading north. The smell of pine returned to the air, cool and steadying, mixed with the distant scent of river water and moss. Somewhere far ahead, a hawk called once before going silent again.
Inside the carriage, the mood had shifted—slowly, cautiously—away from the tension of the battlefield. No one was smiling, not really. But the sheer exhaustion had settled into something quieter. Something human.
Erza tilted her head back against the wooden frame, her armor scraping softly against the paneled wall. She hadn't slept. None of them really had, save for the brief stretches when Wendy's magic drained her to the edge of fainting. Even now, she sat alert, hands folded in her lap, eyes half-lidded but ever-watchful. A thread of magical tension still hummed faintly beneath her skin, like a string pulled taut but not yet released.
Aelius stirred. Just barely. A twitch at the base of his throat. His skin was pale, bandaged thick across the chest and stomach, his remaining arm braced to his side. No legs. Nothing from the waist down but wrapped cloth and the shimmer of preservation runes.
He turned his head the barest inch toward Erza. His gaze ticked up and met hers, bleary but aware.
"You're glaring at me again," she said without looking directly at him. "Save your breath. I'm not going to carry you if you try something stupid."
A breath—half a snort, half a wheeze—pushed out between his teeth. His mouth curved for a fraction of a second before falling still again.
Across from them, Wendy fidgeted with the edge of a scroll she'd been pretending to study. Her legs were tucked under her, her fingers absently worrying at the frayed hem of her cloak. "Um," she said after a long pause, "are... we sure the others at the guild are going to take it well? I mean, when they see him like this?"
Erza didn't answer immediately. She reached up and unfastened one of her gauntlets, setting it aside with a low clink. Her eyes shifted toward the crack of light beneath the door, the trees flickering past.
"Some of them won't," she said at last. "But that won't stop them from doing what needs to be done."
Wendy nodded, hesitantly. "I just... I don't know anyone yet. But they all seem close. Really close."
"They are," Erza murmured. Then her gaze sharpened, just a little. "Which is why Aelius should be scared."
Wendy blinked. "Scared? Of...?"
"Levy," Erza said, and the name came with a half-smile, as if it amused her more than it should. "He likes her. He'll deny it to his grave, but she's the only one he's ever admitted to "tolerating" openly. And she's going to kill him."
Wendy sat up straighter, clearly confused. "What? Why?"
"For scaring us," Erza said, as if it were obvious. "For disappearing. For nearly dying.
"Oh." Wendy looked down at her knees. "I guess that makes sense."
"It does," Erza said. Then she tilted her head, slightly. "She's the one you should be afraid of, not me."
Aelius made a soft noise that might have been a groan. Whether in agreement or protest, it was impossible to tell. His lips parted slightly, drawing a slow, uneven breath that caught in his chest like a coal refusing to go out. The carriage jolted again, this time more gently—wheels skimming over a root-veined patch of earth as the road narrowed through a hollow of trees.
The noise came again. Not quite a word. Not yet. But longer this time. A broken murmur from deep in the throat, like the echo of someone trying to rise from underwater. Erza's head turned toward him instantly, all languor gone. Her hand hovered close—not to stop him, not to interrupt, but simply ready. Watching.
Wendy leaned forward again, less animated now, the movement slow and reverent, like she was afraid of scaring something fragile back into silence. "Are you—" she started, voice soft, too cautious for her own nerves. "Is he…?"
Another sound.
More insistent now. A low croaking rasp, like a stone dragged across slate. Aelius's brow furrowed, the skin tight over one side of his face, the eye still intact narrowing with deliberate effort. His remaining arm twitched against the brace, fingers curling slightly—barely perceptible, but enough to draw Erza's full attention.
"Don't push yourself," she warned gently, though her voice carried the brittle tension of someone who already knew the warning would be ignored.
He groaned again. Longer. This time unmistakably layered with frustration.
Then—at last—his chest rose, air dragging through his throat like torn cloth, and with it came his first word since Nirvana's fall.
"…You're all… idiots."
The syllables came out mangled, thin, and cracked—like rust flaking from a sword that had long since been forgotten in a scabbard. But the tone, the slow, deliberate venom of it, was intact. Coated in the same dry derision they all knew far too well.
Erza let out a breath—sharp, quiet, but unmistakably edged with something that might have been relief. Her head tilted slowly, the corners of her mouth twitching in a way that didn't quite become a smile. It didn't have to. The expression was enough. Familiar.
"I'd say it's good to have you back," she said dryly, "but you never really left. You were just too stubborn to bleed out properly."
A flicker of movement—too quick, too slight—tightened the lines around Aelius's eyes. His breath hitched once, as though the effort of speaking had cracked open something raw behind his sternum. He didn't answer.
Wendy looked between them, confusion pinching her brow. "You know, most people say 'thank you' after being dragged out of a crater."
Erza didn't answer right away. She just reached forward, adjusted the fold of fabric near Aelius's collar—unnecessarily, really—and said without looking up, "You'll learn fast. He doesn't thank people. He complains until you start regretting helping him."
"I heard that," Aelius rasped, not even opening his eye.
"You were meant to."
Silence fell again, but it wasn't heavy this time. It had edges, yes, but it was edged with something living—frayed threads of camaraderie that couldn't be spoken aloud. Not yet. Not here.
Outside, the forest grew more familiar. Pines thickened. The dirt path coiled inward like a memory returning home. The wind slipped through the gaps in the carriage walls, cool and sharp, brushing against the bandages at Aelius's jaw like a whisper.
Wendy blinked, startled. Across from her, Erza didn't even move.
"You…" Aelius rasped, drawing breath like it cost him blood. "You, especially."
His eye locked on Erza's, and for a heartbeat there was nothing between them but the groaning creak of wheels and the wind outside. Then—
"You should've known better than to set foot on my battlefield."
Wendy frowned, confused, but didn't speak. Erza just met his gaze without flinching.
Aelius coughed once, then continued, words scraping through his throat like broken glass. "That wasn't some warzone you could waltz into and wave your damn swords around. It was saturated. Tainted. Every inch of that ground was soaked in my magic. My plague."
He hissed a breath through his teeth—short, bitter. "The only reason you're alive is because I ran out of magic to fuel it."
The carriage fell silent again. A different kind of silence now. Not expectant, not uncertain. Heavy.
Erza's eyes never left his. "I knew the risks."
Aelius didn't answer.
"We came to stand with you," she said, quieter. "Even if it killed us."
A twitch of his mouth. Not a smile. Something thinner. Darker. "Then you're all even bigger fools than I thought."
Erza shrugged slightly. "You've said that before."
"And you've still never listened."
"No," she agreed. "But I am still here."
Aelius's gaze drifted away from her. Not in surrender. Not in dismissal. But like the effort to glare had passed its moment. He exhaled softly, his one arm twitching faintly beneath the blanket.
Outside, the woods thickened. The scent of pine and smoke teased the air.
Aelius closed his eye again. "Idiots," he muttered. "All of you."
Erza shifted slightly, easing her armored shoulder back against the carriage wall with the faintest clink of metal. Her gaze softened—not in pity, but in familiarity—as she looked from Aelius to the wide-eyed girl across from him.
Wendy still sat frozen in place, half-curled as if afraid even breathing might disturb the balance of things. She wasn't afraid of Aelius, not exactly—but there was a weight to him, even in this broken, half-dead state. A pressure. Like a thunderhead forming just out of sight, promising something you couldn't name but instinctively knew to dread.
Erza smiled—not fond, not quite—but with the weary patience of someone who'd had this conversation before.
"Allow me to officially introduce you, Wendy," she said calmly, her tone gaining the slightly formal cadence she used whenever she was trying to bring structure to something uncomfortably chaotic. "This is Aelius. Our resident God Slayer."
Wendy's eyes flicked back to the ruined man, now barely more than bandages and curses in human shape.
"He's… rather unique," Erza added delicately, her tone dry as old parchment, "as you can see."
Aelius didn't open his eye, but the faintest curl of his lip hinted at something—approval, disdain, amusement—it was impossible to say.
"He eats poison," Erza continued, like she was explaining a particularly dangerous species of rare beast. "Though unlike natsu or you we aren't sure how he got his magic, he doesn't like to share"
Aelius's chest hitched once in what might've been a laugh—or a seizure—but the corners of his mouth twitched again, a sharp flicker of teeth showing through cracked lips. Not a smile. Something older, more bitter.
Another cough rasped out, this one with more shape. It curved, like it was trying to form a word but didn't quite care enough to finish the thought.
Then his eye opened. Narrow. Dull with exhaustion but not empty.
"Funny," he croaked, voice still sandpaper rough, "how bold you get when I'm nailed to a godsdamn plank."
Erza raised one brow. "Oh, come now. I'm not taunting you."
"You called me a wild animal," he rasped, "and then introduced me like I'm some kind of cursed exhibit. Forgive me if I don't clap."
Erza didn't blink. Her expression hovered between amused and unimpressed, like someone trying to decide if the feral dog growling under the porch was still too injured to bite.
"You're being dramatic."
"You're being smug."
She smiled—only slightly.
"Not smug," she said, voice light. "Just enjoying a rare moment where you're too mangled to hex anyone."
Aelius's fingers twitched against the brace. "You think I need hands to curse you?"
Erza leaned her elbow on the carriage wall, resting her chin in her palm. "No. I think if you had even a spark of mana left, we'd be bleeding from the ears by now."
"I could still try," he muttered.
"You're welcome to," she replied sweetly. "Wendy's very good at cleaning up magical hemorrhaging. Aren't you, dear?"
The younger girl jumped slightly, clearly unsure if she was being asked to agree or apologize.
"U-um, I—I guess? I mean, I could…" she trailed off as Aelius groaned again, not in pain, but deep, theatrical exasperation.
"You see?" he said hoarsely, his voice little more than a tired growl. "You're training her to mock me."
"I'm training her to survive you," Erza corrected, now without the smile. "There's a difference."
Aelius let that hang in the air. He didn't argue it.
Instead, he shifted minutely—less a movement than a settling, like a tree cracking deeper into a half-collapsed stump. His eye closed again. His face smoothed out.
But before either woman could assume the conversation was over, his voice crawled back out from under the silence.
"…One day, Scarlet," he murmured, "you're going to forget I'm broken, and when that happens…"
Erza tilted her head. "Yes?"
His lip twitched, just barely.
"…You're going to die doing something very stupid."
Erza leaned back into her seat with a shrug that looked almost relaxed. "Maybe. But not today."
And for a heartbeat, even Aelius didn't have anything left to say.
A faint snort escaped him. Short. Dry. It rattled in his throat and became a cough, but he swallowed it down before Wendy could lurch forward with concern. His eye stayed closed, but the edge in his voice hadn't dulled.
"…I've been spending too much time around you," Aelius muttered.
Erza quirked a brow. "Oh?"
He shifted slightly, the motion barely perceptible beneath the bandages. "It's not natural."
Wendy blinked. "Protecting people?"
"Yes," Aelius snapped, though the fire in it was guttering. "Wanting to."
Erza smiled again, faint but genuine. "And yet you did."
"I didn't say it was smart," he rasped. "I said i wanted to. Probably a concussion. Or blood loss. Or my soul trying to escape."
Wendy leaned forward a little, brows knitting. "You think… Fairy Tail's changing you?"
He didn't answer right away. The silence stretched out long enough that the wheels of the carriage and the rustle of pine branches filled the space where his voice should have been.
Finally, his good eye cracked open, glinting with something unreadable.
"…I think the guild is a disease," he said, very quietly. "It spreads. Gets into the bones. Changes how the world smells."
Then, after a pause, more to himself than to them:
"I didn't use to notice the sky."
Erza's smile faded just slightly—not gone, only quieter.
Wendy looked from one to the other, uncertain. "But… that's a good thing. Isn't it?"
Aelius shut his eye again. "That's the problem."