Chapter 20

  Sleep wouldn't come.

  I lay there staring at the wooden ceiling, my mind racing despite the exhaustion weighing down my limbs. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw flashes of that night.

  And the others. The healer's words kept echoing in my head.

  What the hell did that even mean?

  My body ached like I'd been thrown down a flight of stairs, but lying here doing nothing was driving me crazy. I needed answers. I needed to do something.

  I needed to see Emil and Jorik with my own eyes, needed to know what had happened to the rest of our group.

  Henrik. Marta. Senna. All of them.

  The questions gnawed at me until I couldn't stand it anymore.

  Gritting my teeth against the pain, I slowly pushed myself up to sitting. The room spun for a moment, and I had to grip the edge of the cot to keep from toppling over.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed, my bare feet touching the cold wooden floor. Every muscle in my body screamed in protest, but I forced myself to stand.

  The world tilted dangerously, and I had to grab the wall to keep from falling flat on my face.

  I took a shaky step forward, then another. My legs felt like they were made of jelly, and every movement sent fresh waves of pain through my battered body. But I kept going, one hand pressed against the wall for support.

  The hallway stretched out in front of me, longer than it had any right to be. Simple wooden doors lined both sides, and I could hear soft voices coming from behind some of them. Other patients, probably.

  Just keep moving, I told myself, fighting off another wave of dizziness.

  My bare feet made soft padding sounds on the wooden floor.

  I pushed myself away from the wall and took a few unsteady steps toward the sound. My vision blurred at the edges, but I blinked hard and kept going.

  The door was slightly ajar. Through the gap, I could see movement inside—small figures sitting on what looked like another cot.

  I reached for the door handle, my hand trembling.

  Still, I pushed the door open slowly.

  The first person I saw was Jorik. He was sitting on the edge of a bed, his shoulders hunched forward like he was carrying the weight of the world. When our eyes met, all I could see was sadness and fear and that made my chest tighten.

  "Vera?"

  I leaned against the doorframe, my legs still shaking from the effort of walking. "Hey, Jorik. You okay?"

  He let out a bitter laugh that sounded more like a sob.

  "I don't think I'll ever be okay again…Senna..." He pressed his palms against his eyes, his whole body shaking. "My sister is dead, Vera. She's dead, and I couldn't... I couldn't do anything to save her."

  “I’m sorry…” I whispered, my own eyes filling with tears. "Jorik, I'm so sorry."

  "It's not your fault," he said quickly, though his voice was hollow. " "You tried to save us. You did everything you could. You couldn't have—"

  "What happened?" I asked, dreading the answer but needing to know.

  Jorik winced, like the memory was a physical wound. He was quiet for a long moment, staring at his hands.

  "At first, we thought we were safe," he said finally. "The bandits were running, screaming about some monster. Then this... this thing appeared out of nowhere." His voice dropped to a whisper.

  "A basilisk.”

  My blood turned to ice.

  "It went after the bandits first, but then..." He swallowed hard. "It didn't stop. It just kept attacking. Everything. Everyone. Senna was trying to help Henrik and the rest, and it just... it just..."

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  He couldn't finish the sentence.

  Guilt crashed over me like a tidal wave. The basilisk—my basilisk. Born from my rage, my grief, my complete loss of control. I'd created it to kill those bastards, but it hadn't stopped there.

  It had killed Senna and the others too.

  It was my fault.

  I'd killed them.

  Oh god….Oh god, what did I do?

  The horrible truth hit me like a sledgehammer. When I'd created the basilisk in that moment of pure rage, I hadn't been thinking clearly. I hadn't planned it out like my other monsters. I'd just... unleashed it.

  And I hadn't spent any wild power on loyalty.

  The basilisk had been neutral toward me by default—just like the skill description had warned. But…it would attack anything it saw as a threat or prey, including the very people I'd been trying to protect.

  "Vera?" Jorik was looking at me with concern. "What's wrong?”

  "I..." My voice came out as barely a whisper. What could I say? That it was my monster who killed her sister? And the others too…

  My hands were shaking so badly I had to clench them into fists. This was my fault. All of it. I'd lost control, created something without thinking about the consequences, and now they were dead because of me.

  "I'm so sorry," I whispered, tears streaming down my face. "I'm so, so sorry, Jorik."

  "It's not your fault," he said firmly, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder. "You were unconscious when it happened. There was nothing you could have done."

  If only he knew the truth. If only he knew that the monster that killed his sister had come from me.

  The guilt was eating me alive from the inside out. How could I tell him? How could I look at him in the eye and say that I was the one responsible for his sister's death?

  I couldn't. I was a coward. A monster.

  That's when I noticed the small figure sitting by the window.

  Emil.

  The little boy was so still he might have been a statue, his small frame silhouetted against the afternoon light filtering through the glass.

  "Emil?" I called softly.

  He didn't turn around. Didn't even acknowledge that I'd spoken. He just kept staring out that window, his bright blonde hair catching the sunlight, his four-year-old shoulders rigid with something no child should ever have to carry.

  "He hasn't spoken since we got here," Jorik said quietly, following my gaze. "Won't eat much either. Just... sits there."

  The guilt twisted deeper into my chest like a knife.

  Emil…sweet, innocent Emil who used to laugh when he rode on Nox's back, who'd clapped his hands and called me pretty all the time.

  Now he was just... empty. Broken.

  Because of me.

  Then black spots started dancing at the edges of my vision, and the room began to tilt sideways.

  "Vera?" Jorik's voice sounded like it was coming from underwater. "Vera, are you—"

  But I was already falling backward, the world spinning away from me as darkness swallowed everything whole.

  The last thing I heard was Jorik shouting for help, his panicked voice echoing through the hallway as consciousness slipped through my fingers like water.

  Then nothing.

  =====

  Jorik’s POV

  Jorik watched Vera collapse, her body crumpling like a broken doll as consciousness fled from her. He'd seen the guilt eating her alive—the way her hands shook, the tears streaming down her face, the horror in her eyes when he'd mentioned the basilisk.

  He knew.

  Somehow, he'd pieced it together during those long, sleepless nights in this room. He saw how the Basilisk materialized out in thin air in front of Vera.

  She'd created it. In her grief and in her rage, she had unleashed something she couldn't control.

  And it had killed Senna, her sister.

  But as much as the truth burned in his chest, Jorik couldn't bring himself to hate her for it. How could he? Vera had risked everything to save them. She'd fought desperately to protect people she barely knew, and it wasn’t her fault that she lost control.

  The real fault was his. He was supposed to protect Senna. He was her big brother, the one who should have kept her safe from the knights, from the bandits, from the basilisk. Instead, he'd been useless—too weak, too scared, too pathetic to save the one person who mattered most.

  His gaze drifted to Emil, still sitting motionless by the window. The poor kid. At his age, he'd already seen more horror than most adults would in a lifetime and now he was just... empty. A hollow shell where a bright, laughing child used to be.

  Jorik felt his chest tighten with pity. He wanted to help Emil somehow, to bring back even a spark of that joy the boy used to have. But what could he do? He couldn't even save his own sister. What comfort could he offer a traumatized child when he was drowning in his own guilt?

  He hated himself more than any of the bastards who'd killed their parents, more than the bandits who'd attacked their camp, more than the monster that had torn his sister apart.

  Ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs, Jorik forced himself to stand. Vera was kind—kinder than she probably realized.

  She didn't deserve to suffer more than this, not when she was already carrying so much guilt that wasn't even hers to bear.

  "Help me get her up," he called out, just as Leah the healer rushed through the door.

  "That stubborn girl," Leah muttered, shaking her head as she knelt beside Vera's unconscious form. "I told her to rest, but does she listen? Of course not."

  Together, they carefully lifted Vera and carried her back to the other room, Leah tsking under her breath the entire way.

  "Some people just can't help themselves," Leah said softly, pulling a blanket over Vera's still form. "Always trying to take care of everyone else, even when they can barely stand."

  Jorik said nothing. He just watched Vera's pale face, hoping that maybe she could find some peace in her dreams.