The door had opened without command or sound, as if the entire place had been waiting for Leora's presence since a time that could not be measured.
She entered quietly, her footsteps echoing on a floor of polished wood and layered grey marble. The walls of the room were adorned with interwoven golden engravings, resembling nothing of this world. rather, they seemed like reflections of ancient symbols belonging to sacred texts of light. The lamps were unlit, yet a warm light seeped in from somewhere, not from fire, nor from any lamp, but as if it emanated from the walls themselves, or from the air saturated with pure mana.
At the end of the room, an open balcony with no railing looked out over the sleeping city of Nirvana, over a sky thick with ash and clouds… or beyond them. There, Saint Altheria Leoraine stood, silent, staring toward the far horizon, not looking at anything in particular, but as if speaking to something unseen, or listening to a music only she could hear.
She did not move.
Her long white robe, trimmed with delicate golden threads, flowed to the ground like a heavenly cloak, and her golden hair spilled down her back like dawn's light gliding over a still sea.
Then she turned.
Slowly, with an indescribable calm, as if her turning itself was a sacred rite.
And she smiled.
A faint smile, holding no words, yet lifting all the weariness from the heart.
"Leora," she said in a melodic tone, warm despite the cold that lived outside these walls.
Leora stepped forward slowly, then bowed in reverence before lifting her head and whispering, "My Lady…"
But the Saint gently raised her hand, motioning for her to sit on the white velvet-covered wooden chair beside the balcony.
"Sit… It's quiet here. Let us listen to the silence a little before we drown in words."
Leora sat down, unable to hide her tension, raising her eyes to the woman she had always seen as something out of legend, not a living being.
Altheria Leoraine was not merely beautiful… her beauty seemed beyond understanding. Her features were in harmony as if drawn by light itself, and her scent… was something else. It was not perfume, but sacred air, a fragrant breeze that filled the chest with a peace Leora had not known in months.
For a moment, she felt she wasn't sitting next to a human being, but beside a heartbeat from the higher realm.
Then, her heart began to beat again.
She swallowed and was about to speak… but the Saint of Light preceded her, her voice softer than the whisper of the wind.
"I was watching the sky, and still am. It seems dead tonight, doesn't it?"
Leora didn't answer immediately. She only looked into the darkness beyond the glass… and remembered the child wrapped in her shawl, and the blood still unwashed from her hands.
"The world… is cruel, My Lady."
Altheria shook her head slowly.
"It is as it has always been. Only we believe it has changed. It's alright, Leora. There are places darker than this shadow. But here… light still fights. Do not despair."
Then she looked directly at her, with eyes shining with an unspeakable sorrow and an unshakable serenity.
"Tonight is night… and tomorrow will come, no matter how late. And light… is never defeated,
it only retreats at times, to return purer."
Leora took a deep breath, but did not smile. She wanted to believe, but she had seen with her own eyes what denied life itself.
So Altheria said, her voice lowering:
"But that's not why you came, is it? You didn't come to complain, but to carry something… or someone."
Leora's eyes widened, as if the words had pierced right into her.
She asked, in a quiet voice: "How did you know?"
The Saint answered, with a tone that carried neither strangeness nor pride, only truth:
"I wasn't waiting for anyone. But the door didn't open by chance. And the wind, when it blew from the south, told me that the darkness passed through here… and something of it tried to hide beneath your cloak."
Leora looked down at her trembling hands, as if she no longer knew how to hold the truth between her fingers.
Then Altheria spoke again, her tone warmer:
"Tell me, who did you bring?"
Leora remained silent for a moment. Something in the Saint's eyes seemed to strip her of the ability to lie or to simplify.
She realized she wasn't merely standing before a woman… but before a vast mirror, reflecting the heart more than the face.
Finally, she whispered, her tone heavy: "He… a child, or what's left of one. We found him in an alley outside the central zone… among the beggars and the drunk."
Her voice was fragile. There was nothing more the words could say, but the air around her seemed to be listening.
"They were laughing… searching him as if rummaging through scrap. They stripped him of his clothes, spat on him, then abandoned him like spoiled meat."
The Saint did not interrupt, did not even move, she simply listened, as though listening itself was a sacred act.
Leora continued, her gaze lowered to the floor:
"His body was… deformed, torn apart, so thin he seemed not to have eaten in years. On his chest was a mark… sunken, like a hollow carved into his heart."
Then she looked up and added:
"But he wasn't dead. His pulse was weak, faint, but it was there. I carried him all the way here… I couldn't leave him. I don't know why, I just… couldn't."
The Saint slowly closed her eyes, then opened them again, and they shimmered with a quiet glow.
"That is how light is made, Leora… not from miracles, but from the small acts by which a heart refuses to surrender to ruin."
Then she rose, her step like stillness in motion.
"Is he in the healing wing now?"
Leora nodded.
"With the Laughing Elder. He was the one who received him… He was tired, but began treatment immediately."
The Saint fell silent for a moment, then moved toward the balcony. She stood there again, in her original place, and turned her gaze once more to the darkness.
She said, in a gentler tone:
"His blood… was there a lot of it?"
"Yes, frighteningly so. I don't know how he survived in that state… as if his body fought against itself and the world at the same time."
Altheria smiled a fleeting smile, one that did not last.
"Some souls, Leora, do not die even when the body abandons them. And some bodies do not leave life, even if every drop of them has been spilled."
She turned to her again, and in her eyes was something Leora had never seen before… a blend of worry, resolve, and stern tenderness.
"I want to see him."
Leora rose immediately, as if her chest had filled with a new pulse.
But the Saint raised her hand gently.
"Not now. I will see him when he's ready to see me. Until then… we must prepare the place, and ready the light to receive him."
Leora said, hesitantly:
"My Lady… his body cannot bear it. I don't understand how he's still alive, but… he doesn't look like a child anymore."
Altheria replied, her voice as steady as a mirror:
"Because those who survived the void… no longer resemble children."
Then she walked with calm steps toward the table at the edge of the room, picked up a piece of white cloth, folded it between her hands, then looked to Leora and said:
"Tomorrow, in the morning… I will be the first to touch his heart."
Leora sighed, looked to the floor, then to the door behind her, and finally returned her gaze to her Saint.
But she said nothing.
She simply… bowed.
Then stepped back toward the door, slowly.
She reached it, and breathed in, quietly.
Then knocked.
A moment of silence.
Nothing more.
Then… the door opened on its own.
Without a creak, without a command. It simply… opened.
...
Leora's steps on the stairs were slower than before, not because her legs were weak, but because her soul was heavy enough to crack the marble beneath her.
She descended from the second floor, passing through the silent corridors that carried the breath of the nighttime temple, where pure mana drifted like unseen dew.
The light flames fixed to the walls flickered from time to time, not extinguishing, but as if they were breathing.
When she entered the healing room again, the Laughing Elder was seated by Reis' head, covering his body with fresh medical cloths, having already changed the blood-soaked bandages.
He lifted his head toward her, his smile still present, but his eyes observing her carefully.
"Well then… did the sun catch you behind the doors?" he said, then leaned slightly and gave a one-eyed wink.
Leora answered softly as she approached:
"It will come… when the time is right."
The elder laughed quietly, a hoarse but warm laugh, as though it came from a chest that knew how much life remained but didn't fear it.
"That's how it always is… it knows when to intervene, and when to let things ripen in their own time. Light is never thrown into the eyes all at once, it seeps in."
He looked toward Reis, whose features appeared more peaceful despite the wounds.
"The strange thing… is that he doesn't want to leave. His body is falling apart, yet something inside him refuses to extinguish. As if pain itself… isn't enough to drive it out."
Leora said nothing. She looked at Reis, then sat on the wooden chair beside the bed, watching his chest barely rise and fall.
The elder continued, replacing a compress over a deep wound in the shoulder:
"I recycled some mana, slowed the internal bleeding, and nudged his core to stabilize… but it's weak, fluctuating, like it's searching for something that isn't here."
Then he sighed and said:
"But I'm not who I once was. My bones now know the night more than the day."
He turned to Leora, his voice softening a little:
"There may come a day when I'm no longer here… so remember this: light isn't only a cure. Sometimes, it's a weapon… and sometimes a curse. Learn when to touch it… and when to hide it."
Leora nodded lightly, her eyes fixed on Reis' body.
"Will he live?" she asked herself, but did not speak it aloud.
The answer… was not yet clear.
But what she knew with certainty was that the light, up there beyond the stairs… had begun to draw near, even if slowly.
...
In the early morning, when the grey sky still hesitated to grant the city its color, the temple was wrapped in a silence worthy of sacred chambers, as if the light itself had chosen to slow its steps out of reverence for what was happening inside.
In the healing room, the Laughing Elder sat facing the bed, his back hunched, his eyelids heavy, but his eyes had not closed yet.
His hand still reached out every now and then to feel the warmth of Reis' body, checking the bandages, observing the curve of his chest rising and falling with difficulty… as if he were watching the flame of a candle about to flicker out with every breath.
Leora, sitting on the same chair for hours, her head swaying slowly, her eyelids fighting off sleep heavier than her cloak, but her heart remained awake.
Her hands were clasped in her lap, eyes fixed on Reis as if afraid he would slip away the moment she blinked.
The elder spoke in a calm voice, without looking at her:
"You'll collapse if you don't sleep, little light."
She whispered, without fully parting her lips:
"If I sleep… he might not be here when I wake."
No reply was needed. He understood that feeling.
That soft clinging to something fragile, like laying your head upon a cloud that could vanish at any moment.
Then, without warning, the door to the room opened quietly.
No creak, no knock.
As if the place itself… sensed her arrival.
The Saint entered.
Her steps were neither heavy nor silent, but they seemed not to touch the ground at all.
The air changed the moment she crossed the threshold. A faint glow passed through the walls, through the lamps, through the old glass, as if the temple itself had drawn a breath for the first time in centuries.
The elder did not raise his head, but said with a quiet smile, as if he had expected this moment:
"There you are… I knew you'd been watching him since the moment he arrived."
She stepped forward with slow, steady steps, carrying the kind of presence that makes walls stand straighter, and shadows retreat without a sound.
She approached the bed and said nothing at first.
She stood there, looking at Reis in silence, as though reading lines written within his body, or perhaps lines that were still waiting to be written.
The elder whispered after a moment, as if explaining what needed no explanation:
"It's as if the temple has been waiting for him… for countless hidden centuries."
She didn't answer. Her golden eyes never left his body.
As if searching for that thin thread between life and death, studying its fragility, testing its endurance.
Then she leaned forward slightly. She did not touch him, did not whisper, she only looked.
Finally, she spoke, her voice soft but saturated with knowledge:
"The mana inside him isn't just bleeding… it's fighting. His core is bleeding within as his skin bleeds without."
The elder slowly nodded:
"And we don't have much time left."
The Saint fell silent for a moment, then extended her hand and gently closed Reis' eyes, without pressure.
Dawn was slipping quietly through the window, but the true light… was coming from her.
She said in a low voice:
"Let's give him a chance… even if it's the last."
Then she turned, her eyes on Leora, who remained silent, staring with quiet astonishment, laced with childlike fear.
"You've done well, Leora. You brought us something we didn't even know we were missing."
Then she looked to the elder and said softly:
"I'll need some time… and I may need… something of myself."
The elder nodded without hesitation.
"If anything is worth it, it's this."
And when silence returned… it was not the same.
Because the light, at last… had begun to choose.