The word hung in the air between us, a shard of broken glass. "You." Cain's voice was a raw scrape against the sudden, ringing silence of the hallway. The bustling flow of students toward the cafeteria had frozen, forming a wide, awkward circle around our confrontation. All morning chatter had died, replaced by a watchful, uncomfortable hush.
"You were the cause of her death." Cain's voice escalated, trembling with a volatile cocktail of grief, exhaustion, and a fury that seemed to be the only thing holding him upright. His bloodshot eyes were wide, unblinking, fixed on me with an intensity that felt like a physical push. "If you had attacked the beast in the first place... if you had killed it when you had the chance instead of holding back, assessing, calculating your perfect moment... Zara wouldn't have died. Her blood is on your hands!"
The memory of Heartwood crashed over me, vivid and suffocating. The oppressive silence of the ancient forest, the shifting, eerie blue patterns cast by luminous ferns on moss-slick stone, the primal, bone-chilling snarl that had torn through the tranquility. I saw it all again—the monstrous Frostclaw Ravager, a fifteen-foot nightmare of jet-black stripes on snow-white fur, its molten gold eyes burning with predatory intelligence. I saw Zara's courageous, desperate lunge, a silver streak of motion, her triumphant snarl as she closed in on what we thought was a fatal opening. And then, the impossible, horrifying speed of the beast's counter. The wet, sickening crunch of the impact. The dreadful way the light had fled her eyes, her body falling limp.
But his central accusation was founded on a terrible misunderstanding. He believed I had held back a power I controlled, a weapon in my arsenal I had chosen not to deploy. He didn't understand that what had happened was not some technique I had mastered or withheld. The power that had finally felled the beast… it wasn't mine to command. It had been a cataclysm. The system's sudden, violent awakening, the so-called Dragon's Blessing—it had been a torrent of raw, ancient energy that had ripped through the core of my being, a seismic surge of power so vast and alien it had felt like being torn apart from the inside. It was pure, undiluted adrenaline and base instinct and something profoundly *other* all screaming through my veins at once, overwhelming every sense, every thought. I hadn't been coldly calculating in that final, devastating moment; I had been drowning, and the foreign power had used my body as a conduit to vent its immense, destructive fury. I had not wielded it; I had been wielded by it. I had survived its passage, and in the weeks since, I had not been able to summon even a whisper of those black-streaked violet flames. The well was dry.
Tears began to stream down Cain's face, cutting clean tracks through the grime and sweat on his pale cheeks. His hands, clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides, shook with a violent, unmistakable tremor that he seemed powerless to stop. He was a portrait of grief stripped bare, of profound sleep deprivation and a guilt that was eating him alive.
"I couldn't do anything because I'm a ranged user!" he continued, his voice breaking into ragged sobs that tore from his chest. The admission seemed to cost him everything, a raw confession of perceived failure and inadequacy. "I was on the ridge... I had the shot, but the angle was wrong, the mist was too thick, it moved too fast... But you... you were right there! Since that power was in you, why didn't it come out earlier? Why did it wait until it was too late for her? Why did it let her die?!"
His knees finally buckled, all strength deserting him, and he collapsed to the cold stone floor, his body wracked with sobs that shook his entire frame. The sight was so raw, so utterly broken and private, that several students turned away, unable to bear witness to such devastation.
I stood rooted to the spot, Cain's words landing like hammer blows. He wasn't entirely wrong about my actions before the Blessing had overwhelmed me. My combat style was, by necessity and nature, built on precision. In the chaos of the ambush, with Darain's squad attacking and the Ravager appearing like a force of nature, I *had* been processing, calculating the beast's movements, its weaknesses, looking for an opening that wouldn't get us all killed. I had seen Brian's shot strike the core. I had been trying to find the right moment. But in the heart of that frantic calculation, as the beast turned on Zara, I had been as helpless as Cain on his ridge. My precision had failed. My timing had been fatally slow. And the power that had finally answered was not an extension of my will or a product of my skill, but a chaotic, external force of nature that had left me shattered and unconscious in its wake.
Kael stepped slightly in front of me, his posture forming a protective barrier, not aggressive but solid and immovable. "Cain, look at him," he said, his voice low, steady, and firm, carrying the grim authority of someone who had been in the thick of the fight, who had seen the aftermath. "That power wasn't a trick he had up his sleeve. It wasn't some technique he chose to hold back. It *broke* him. It came from somewhere else and it used him up. He was out cold for an hour after. No one controls that. No one could have called it on command, sooner or later. It just... happened."
"Don't!" Cain looked up from the floor, his eyes blazing through the tears, focusing a white-hot, desperate fury on Kael. "Don't you defend him! You didn't see what I saw from the ridge! You were down in the mist, in the fight! He was moving, fighting, he was *right there* while she was... he was there and it wasn't enough!" His voice rose to a shattered, piercing scream on the last words, the sound echoing in the vaulted hallway.
The truth of his perspective, however painful and incomplete, was inescapable. From his distant vantage point, watching the tragedy unfold through the mist, it must have looked exactly like that. A presence. A potential. A failure to act in time.
I finally found my voice, though it felt thin and alien in my tight throat. "Cain, I... I couldn't have called it if I tried. It wasn't mine to call. It was like... being struck by lightning. You don't decide when it hits." The explanation sounded feeble, pathetic, utterly inadequate in the face of his loss.
He laughed then, a bitter, hollow, broken sound that held no trace of humor, only a bottomless abyss of pain. "Lightning... that strikes only once it's too late? What use is that? She's dead because your lightning was slow."
Professor Alchemius pushed through the gathered students, his expression grim, the usual kindly light in his eyes completely extinguished. "That is quite enough," he stated, his voice deep and brooking no argument. He knelt, his movements careful, and helped Cain's trembling, limp form to his feet. "This is not the time or place for this discussion." He looked past Cain, his gaze finding me, and in his eyes, I saw a complex mix of professional pity and a deep, weary understanding of pain that could not be easily resolved. "Adam, you will go to the Headmaster's office. Now. Kael, please help Cain to the infirmary. He is unwell and needs rest."
As the professor supported a now silent, shaking Cain and began to lead him away, the spell holding the hallway broke. Students began to slowly disperse, moving toward the cafeteria with hushed steps and subdued voices. The glances they cast back at me wove a complex tapestry of emotion—some filled with sympathy and shared distress, others with sharp, unspoken accusation, and many with a newfound, wary uncertainty.
Kael turned to me, his face a carefully neutral mask, though I could see the tension around his eyes. "He's grieving. He's looking for a reason, a target for the pain. It's easier than accepting that sometimes... terrible things just happen."
But as I met the eyes of the lingering students, I saw that Cain's words, born of pure, unadulterated grief and exhaustion, had found fertile ground. The weight of his accusation settled on my shoulders, heavy and cold as polished granite. However intellectually unfair it might be, however much I knew the rational explanation, the stark, simple, brutal truth remained: Zara was dead, and I had survived. And in the cruel, illogical economy of grief, that proximity to tragedy was enough to brand me.
The hallway finally emptied, leaving me alone with the echo of Cain's devastation. The smell of breakfast—of bacon and fresh bread—seemed to mock the hollow feeling in my chest. Turning mechanically, I began the long, solitary walk to the Headmaster's office, each step on the cold flagstones echoing the heavy, hollow feeling within. I had no answers for Cain, no defense that could ever be adequate. And I deeply doubted I would have any for the Headmaster. I had only the memory of a power that had abandoned me as quickly and violently as it had arrived, and the devastating, permanent cost of its catastrophic delay. The walk felt endless, a march toward a judgment I feared I already understood.