{ Past }
"Father."
Sylas looked up. Rose stood in the doorway with the expression of someone who had already decided and was simply here to inform him.
"I want to be with Arven."
The room was very still.
"Rose." His voice was measured. Heavy, the way large things are heavy. "Do you understand what you're saying?"
"Yes."
"He is a commoner. A knight of another nation. He has no standing, no estate—"
"Then I'll stand with him without those things."
From the doorway, Arven stepped forward. He had been listening. His posture had the stillness of a man who had finished negotiating with himself.
"If my standing is the obstacle," he said, "I'll resign my commission."
Sylas looked at him steadily. "And then?"
A pause. Honest rather than performed. Rose's hand found his. She squeezed once. Arven met Sylas's gaze.
"I'll do adventuring work. Fight, earn, save. It won't be easy — but it's not what hurts. Seeing her cry hurts more than working under the hottest sun." He held Sylas's eyes. "I'll save until I can buy a mansion here in Leveran.
Then merchant work. Then I step into aristocracy the way you want — earned, not given. And when everything is in order, I'll give her the happiest life I can.
I won't force her toward anything she doesn't want. If she wants children, we'll have them. If she wants to teach them magic, I won't argue. I'll be there."
He reached into his coat. Went down on one knee.
The ring was simple. The kind that said I thought about this rather than I can afford more.
He said three words.
Rose's hand was already reaching. The ring slipped on. She nodded — and then immediately started crying, which rather undermined the composure she'd been maintaining, but neither of them seemed to notice.
Sylas exhaled slowly through his nose.
"Fine," he said. "But Roswal will not provide financial support. What you build, you build yourselves."
"Agreed," Arven said, standing.
"One more condition."
Sylas rose. His staff formed in his hand — the air in the room adjusting to acknowledge it.
"You duel me. Magic against your sword. Win, and take her. Lose—"
"Don't," Rose started.
"I accept," Arven said.
The duel lasted seven days. Sylas did not hold back. He was a Magic Sovereign — restraint was not the point. Ice sealed around Arven's left leg on day three and didn't fully release until day five. Earth magic cracked two ribs on day four. Wind cuts opened along his right side in patterns that would scar.
And Arven stood. Every morning. Still there.
By the seventh day, Arven was barely standing. His right side was burned black from fire magic. His left leg was frozen solid with ice. Several ribs were broken. Wind cuts covered his body.
Sylas didn't carry a single visible injury.
Rose cried helplessly from the sidelines. "Arven… please stop…"
He kept standing.
Sylas stared at him. This man should have collapsed long ago.
Then — Arven threw his sword.
Sylas moved instantly to dodge.
A feint. A hidden dagger flashed forward and pierced Sylas's shoulder. The moment it struck, his body froze.
Paralysis poison.
Arven dragged his frozen leg across the arena toward his fallen sword. Every step looked painful. Finally, he picked it up and pointed it at Sylas.
Then quietly said: "I won."
For a long moment, Sylas said nothing.
The man was barely conscious. He was standing through something that wasn't physical force — the stubbornness of someone who had meant what he said.
He said he would find a way. He found one.
Sylas looked past him. To Rose, in the stands, who had been crying since day three.
He had promised her, the day she was born, every happiness he could reach. He had said those words holding a small, red-faced, furious infant who had no idea what a promise was yet.
Today he had broken them.
"You win," he said quietly. "Take her. And don't let me see that face of yours more than necessary."
Rose came down the stands at a speed that was not composed or dignified or anything except desperate. She hit Arven full force.
"You idiot—" Her voice was wrecked. "What if you'd died—"
"I didn't," he said.
"You could have—"
"I said I wouldn't." His arm came around her, careful of the ribs. "I meant it."
She pulled back just far enough to look at his face. Then she kissed him. Not gently. The kiss of someone who had watched someone she loved nearly die for seven days and had run completely out of measured responses.
He kissed her back.
After a while — a throat cleared.
From across the arena, Sylas stood exactly where Arven had left him. Watching. The expression of a man who had accepted his defeat completely and was simply noting, for the record, that he had not yet left.
Rose pulled back. Buried her face against Arven's shoulder. Her shoulders shook — and the sound that escaped was, unmistakably, a laugh.
{ Present }
"So that's how it happened," my grandmother said.
I sat with it for a moment. The whole shape of it — the lake, the gifts, the duel, the paralysis dagger, I won.
"Dad beat a Magic Sovereign," I said.
"Technically he used a trick."
"He won," I said.
She smiled. "He won."
I was quiet for a moment. "It shouldn't have required a seven-day duel," I said. "Just to earn the right to be with someone."
She didn't argue. Didn't qualify it. Just looked at me with the expression of someone who had arrived at the same conclusion a long time ago.
"No," she said simply. "It shouldn't."
The room was quiet. Outside the window, the afternoon light was going gold. Somewhere in the garden, I could hear Kelly talking to Atlas — a one-sided conversation that Atlas was apparently participating in through a series of chirps she was interpreting as answers.
I thought about Keltherion. About Elly walking out into a sunrise she couldn't survive. About the curtain that never got fixed. About the world I wanted to build — the one where that story ended differently.
That's why, I thought. That's what I'm working toward. Not power for its own sake. Not strength because strength was expected.
For this. For the world where Keltherion and Elly grow old together in a room with a crooked curtain and nobody has anything to say about it.
I stood. "Thank you," I said. "For telling me."
My grandmother smiled — warm, genuine, the smile of someone who understood exactly what I'd taken from the story.
"Anytime, Felix," she said.