"Mr. Gideon," Falira said firmly. "Are you absolutely certain he used magic? You saw him?"
The old mercenary pushed himself off the wall, eyes narrowing. "No doubt about it," he growled. "The boy cooked a crab the size of a barrel in its own shell. It didn't feel like a beginner's trick or some fluke."
His gaze flicked to Projo. "But something definitely feels off about the boy." The merc's voice was almost dripping with venom.
Falira turned her analytical gaze back to Projo, her mind clearly racing. "How... how long does it normally take to recharge your Mana, Projo?" she spoke slowly and deliberately, as if she were addressing a strange, unpredictable animal. "After you practice?"
Projo swallowed a lump in his throat. "I've been a blacksmith's apprentice for the past fifteen years. I've never used magic before…" he glanced quickly at Gideon, aware of how tense and hostile the old merc seemed.
"At least… until a couple days ago," Projo continued. "Something happened that seemed, um, not normal."
Falira's gaze sharpened, zeroing in on the new piece of information. "A few days back?" she repeated, her mind clearly connecting the timeline. "Before the crab incident."
She took a half-step closer, her voice dropping to a more clinical tone. "You said you're a blacksmith, not a mage. So this 'not normal' event... was it another uncontrolled manifestation of power? Something else you can't explain?"
From the corner of his eye, Projo saw Gideon's hand shift to the hilt of his dagger.
Falira leaned in, her eyes boring into him, oblivious to the rising tension from the corner. "Projo, this is important. One magical event can be a fluke. Two, in the span of a few days, is a pattern. And an empty Mana system that isn't recharging suggests a cause. What happened?"
Projo shifted uncomfortably where he stood. "I'll tell you. But first, can you tell me what you know of healing magic?"
Falira seemed to recognize the deflection, but instead of getting frustrated, she seemed intrigued by the new variable.
"Healing magic," she mused, her voice taking on a professorial tone. "A strange question from a lightning-wielder. They are practically opposite arts."
She stepped back and began to pace slowly in front of a bookshelf, her eyes unfocused as she gathered her thoughts. "True healing isn't like throwing a lightning bolt. A bolt is a release of raw power—crude and forceful. Healing is the opposite. It is control. It's the art of taking your own Mana and gently weaving it into life-force, encouraging torn flesh to knit and broken bones to mend. It's an art based in Water and Earth. It's slow, difficult, and requires immense focus."
She stopped pacing and turned to face him, her expression serious. "As for Mana... think of it like your stamina. When you swing a hammer all day at the forge, your muscles ache. You rest, you eat, and the next day, your strength returns. Mana is the same. The body and soul are a vessel, and they slowly draw in ambient energy from the world to refill what was spent. It happens naturally. You sleep, you eat, you rest... and your Mana returns."
She stepped closer again, her sharp eyes zeroing in on him. "A powerful mage might take a day or two to recover fully from a truly taxing battle. That's why your case is so strange. A single blast, even a powerful one, shouldn't have left you this... empty. And it certainly shouldn't have stopped you from recharging at all."
From the corner of the room, Gideon remained a silent, imposing statue, his hand still resting on his dagger.
Projo took a deep, steadying breath. There was no avoiding or dodging the truth.
So he told them. The kidnapping. The bandits. How he was stabbed and then healed at Mira's touch.
Falira's eyes widened, her mind racing to process the new, impossible data. But Gideon's voice cut through the air first.
"The girl," the old mercenary rasped. "She used a healing spell on you?"
It was the simplest, most logical explanation.
"No, that's just it!" Projo blurted earnestly, suddenly forgetting how suspicious Gideon was. "Her own injuries healed too. She was just as confused as I was, but she said it felt like the energy was coming from me!"
He just wanted to understand what was happening to him.
Falira's expression softened, her scientific curiosity now tinged with empathy.
"Symbiotic healing," Falira murmured. "And spontaneous elemental manifestation... both triggered by extreme duress." She began to pace again, her blue hair gently swaying with each step. "These are not the signs of a latent talent awakening. This is something... foundational. Something inherent to your nature."
She stopped and turned, her gaze now deeply personal. "Projo, this might be the most important question I ask you. Your magic, your healing... it feels like a bloodline trait, a deep and powerful one. Who are your parents?"
The question knocked the breath out of him. Projo's desperate energy deflated, replaced by a familiar, hollow ache.
"I don't know," he said quietly. "I was orphaned. Found wandering outside Greatbridge when I was six."
He looked down at his own hands. "I have... dreams, sometimes. Of a woman. I think she might be my mother, but I can't ever see her face clearly." He looked back up, meeting Falira's intense gaze. "And sometimes... I dream of magic."
Falira's expression was one of sympathetic fascination. "You said the wound didn't heal completely. The residual energy would be fascinating. It might tell us something about the nature of your magic."
She took a half-step forward, her scholarly curiosity overriding any sense of personal boundaries. "May I see it? The spot where you were stabbed?"
Projo hesitated, but knew he had to answer. "There's... there's nothing to inspect," he finally mumbled, looking down at his own tunic.
Falira's brow furrowed. "But you said—"
"I know what I said," Projo cut her off, his voice gaining a note of frustrated desperation. He looked up, meeting her confused gaze. "It wasn't completely healed. Not after the first touch."
He took a deep breath, knowing there was no turning back now.
"The wound is completely gone now," he said, his voice quiet but firm. "But that... that's where the story gets even weirder."
The air in the tower felt suffocatingly thick with tension.
"It... it happened once before. A long time ago, when I was a boy." The words tasted like ash in his mouth, and his gaze sought solace in the floor, unable to look either of them in the eye. "I was maybe eleven. I grabbed another kid's hand to help her up, and... something happened. A jolt. It wasn't like what happened with the woman I rescued, it was just... I don't know. It scared the hell out of her and she ran away."
He looked up, a decade of shame hardening his voice. "I thought I was cursed. So for ten years, I made sure I never touched anyone again."
Falira's analytical expression softened with another flicker of empathy, but Gideon's only hardened.
"But the woman I saved... she wasn't scared," Projo continued. "She's the one who figured it out. She said the power seemed to get stronger the more… intimate… the touch was."
He felt a hot flush of embarrassment crawl up his neck. "The dagger wound in my chest... it wouldn't fully close. No matter what we tried. The first touch at least stopped the bleeding, but a deep part of it just... wouldn't. It even ripped back open at one point."
He finally forced himself to look at Falira, his expression a plea for understanding. "The only thing that worked... the only way it healed completely... was when we had sex." The last two words came out in a rushed, quiet mumble. "It was... my first time."
The bubbling of the cauldron was the only sound in the room.
Gideon made a soft, guttural sound of pure disgust. His hand gripped the hilt of his dagger. The look on his face was no longer just suspicion; it was revulsion. He saw something foul and unnatural.
Falira, however, was frozen in place.
Her face went from pale to a deep, crimson blush and then back to pale again. Her scientific curiosity was at war with shock. She stared at Projo, her mouth slightly agape.
Then something like recognition flashed across her face.
"Gods," she breathed, taking an involuntary step back. Her professional demeanor was gone, replaced by fear.
"What?" Projo asked, his voice cracking with desperation. "What is it? You know something."
Falira shook her head, her eyes still wide with terror. She wouldn't look at him directly, her gaze fixed on a point on the floor just in front of him. "I... I read something years ago that could explain it. What you're describing… it sounds like an old, dark magic," her voice was trembling. "A parasitic power, one that draws its strength from the life force of others... channeled through acts of physical intimacy."
Her terrified eyes finally met his.
"That sounds like... like an incubus." She barely breathed the final words. "A sex demon."
"What?!" Projo's eyes went wide, flabbergasted. "Incubus? A demon?" He shook his head, a frantic, desperate motion. "No! That's not what it is!"
He took a half-step forward, his hands held out in a placating gesture. "The woman I was with... Mira... she wasn't drained! She wasn't hurt!"
His voice was raw, pleading. "She had cuts, bruises from the bandits... they healed. All of them. She said she felt... alive. More awake than ever before! Like she could run a marathon!"
He turned his gaze from Falira's terrified face to Gideon's mask of cold disgust. "How can it be a curse if it heals? How can I be a parasite if I'm giving something back?"
Falira flinched, but whether it was from fear or the desperate logic in his voice, Projo had no way of knowing.
"Healed... both of you..." she whispered, more to herself than anyone else. She seemed to be wrestling with the conflicting facts. "The texts... they speak only of a draining, a siphoning..."
She looked from Projo's earnest, pleading face back to the dusty, leather-bound tomes on her shelves. "I... I don't know what to think."
The tense quiet of the room was broken by the sound of metal on leather.
"Lies," Gideon spat. "The twisted words of a demon, trying to save its own skin."
Falira gasped.
"It heals them to fatten them up," Gideon snarled. He moved away from the wall, sinking into a low, predatory crouch. "To make the meal sweeter before the slaughter."
"Wait—" Falira started.
Gideon lunged.
The dagger flashed, aimed at the soft, less-protected weak spot inside Projo's thigh.
Projo barely had time to react.
The scrape of his longsword leaving its scabbard was a desperate, clumsy sound compared to the whisper of Gideon's dagger.
He dodged the first swing and brought the blade down just in time to catch the second with the flat of his sword.
"I've killed your kind before," Gideon roared, already pressing the attack again. "I'll send you back to whatever hell you crawled out of."
The fight was a blur of mismatched styles. Gideon was a wasp, weaving and stabbing, his dagger a flickering point of light that darted in, seeking any opening. Projo was a bear, using the longsword as a heavy shield, battering Gideon's attacks away with raw force.
He wasn't parrying; he was simply surviving.
A fiery line of pain seared across Projo's arm as the dagger slipped past a clumsy block. Another sharp sting on his cheek sent a warm trickle of blood down his face. He was being worn down, cut to pieces by a man who had forgotten more about killing than Projo would probably ever know.
Gideon pressed his advantage, stepping inside the longsword's reach.
As the dagger came for Projo's throat, he reacted on instinct, driving a foot forward into Gideon's chest.
The unfamiliar power flooded Projo's limbs, and the kick connected with a wet, sickening crack.
Gideon's eyes went wide with shock as he was launched backward. He crashed into a tall, cluttered bookshelf, which collapsed under the impact in an avalanche of scrolls, books, and shimmering crystals.
Gideon lay in the wreckage, snarling in pain and gasping for air. He looked at Projo with the deep hatred of a man fighting an abomination.
Ignoring the splintered bones in his chest, Gideon scrambled sideways, his hand reaching for the heavy crossbow still leaning against the wall.
Without thinking, Projo lifted his longsword overhead and hurled it in a desperate, two-handed swing.
The blade spun through the air, and just as Gideon had wrapped his fingers around the stock of the crossbow—
The longsword caught him high in the chest.
The mercenary let out a choked, wet gurgle.
He was pinned, the blade having punched clean through his body and into the stone wall behind him.
The crossbow clattered to the floor.
Gideon's hands clawed uselessly at the blade for a moment—then fell limp. His head slumped forward and his knees buckled. His weight sagged until it came to rest on the sword, holding him upright like a gruesome trophy.
Silence.
The violent, chaotic noise of the fight vanished, replaced only by a quiet so loud it made Projo's ears ring. The only sounds were Projo's own ragged, gasping breaths, the soft bubbling of the cauldron, and the gentle drip... drip... drip of blood onto the floor.
Projo stared at the man he had just killed, who had been his companion only an hour before.
His mind felt like a hollow, ringing void as his body trembled from the adrenaline crash.
A small, choked gasp came from the other side of the room.
Projo's head snapped toward the sound.
Falira stood frozen, her back pressed against a rack of potions, her face pale with shock. One hand was clamped over her mouth, her terrified eyes fixed on Projo.
She was staring at him as if he were the demon Gideon had claimed him to be.
"What?!" yelled without thinking.
The word came out more as a croak, torn from Projo's raw throat.
His shoulders slumped, the adrenaline leaving him weak and shaking. He saw her eyes, wide, petrified with fear, and the last of his composure shattered.
"Are you going to attack me too?!" Tears welled, blurring her face, and his voice broke, laced with a decade of self-loathing. "For just... existing?!"
Falira didn't move.
The silence seemed to stretch forever.
Then finally, as if forcing her limbs to obey, she lowered the hand from her mouth. Her breathing was shaky, but her voice, when it came, was surprisingly steady.
"No," she said. "No, I'm... I'm not going to attack you."
She took a hesitant step away from the wall, her eyes flicking from Projo's tear-streaked face to Gideon's body and back again. "Do you have any idea how rare it is to study your kind?"
Your kind.
The question was absurd—clinical in the face of the carnage. "The texts are all conjecture, third-hand accounts from terrified priests. Demons aren't exactly... cooperative subjects. They don't let you take notes."
"I'm not a demon!" he spat hotly.
The outburst startled her.
But she looked at him then, and her face didn't look like she was seeing a monster.
Just him.
"I won't tell anyone what happened here," she said, her voice gaining a sliver of its former confidence. "I'll… I'll help you understand what you are. On one condition."
She paused, letting the offer hang in the blood-soaked air.
"You let me study you."