CHAPTER 195: CHAPTER 196: CLAIRE’S WILL

Claire gripped Valora’s shaking wrist and yanked her back from the frontline. Dust-clouds boiled around them where Veil’s power roared. Scrolls floated, torn magics fizzling mid-air. Claire’s teeth clenched—not from fear this time, but from the keening ache of guilt. She had nearly sacrificed Valora. The thought cut her deeper than any blade.

She knew she was cold, but didn’t know she was cruel. No...it was something different....she was weak.

Not desperate. Not vile. Just... unprepared. Unworthy.

Veil—dark hunger manifest—drank the scroll and the two Imperial mages whole. Their screams were swallowed as though they’d never existed. Veil reformed in the crater. His eyes glowed in the twilight of arcane ruin.

Claire recognized him. Atlas’s nightmare. The shadow that nearly took her love’s life when Atlas stood at peak. Against what misalignment, what gods, what scale could her meager scrolls stand?

No... they couldn’t.

She knew it now. And her heart cracked.

"Lady..." Valora breathed, breath ragged, eyes wide. "Are you okay?"

Claire couldn’t meet her gaze. She shook her head. The wind carried the hum of pain—clashing steel, and the cries of the dying.

"I’m sorry, Valora," she whispered, voice heavy with self-loathing. "I just threw you... like a tool."

Valora blinked at her. Hurt. Fear. Loyalty. All mingled. She swallowed.

Claire glanced around. The fiercest battle she’d ever witnessed raged beyond their line of mages. Merlin, Loki, Veil, the Primes—all shaping the war with raw forces. And here she was, cloaked in scrolls and power she didn’t know how to use.

Her money, her political webs—worthless.

Claire pressed her palm to her chest. Hers was a house of strategy, not brute power. She tried to recall Kury’s words: ’Violence, relentless violence, dominates all.’ She’d never believed it fully. But now... she understood.

A roaring wind tore around them. Magic snapping in the breeze like frayed ropes. Claire’s arms shook.

Because she is weak.

It was enough.

She turned to Valora. "Find cover. Regroup." Her voice was steadier now—only a little. She needed Valora alive. Just... alive.

Valora nodded, bowing her head.

Claire backed away—toward the battered walls of the Phoenixia house’s forward camp, mages and knights gathered to shield her. She watched the devastation: cracked earth, broken shields, twisted steel. The battlefield reflected her heart: fractured, bleeding open.

A whisper navigated through the chaos:

{{{{{{{{{.....ohhh...I sense you ....}}}}}}}}}}

Claire’s spine stiffened.

They reached the makeshift medical tents, where mage-healers tended to those lucky enough to be alive. Claire sank onto a low crate. Valora knelt beside her, absorption spells flickering from fingertips.

Claire closed her eyes. Felt the hum of magic in bone and marrow. But—she was drained.

Her mana potions were spent. Her energy siphoned by every scroll, every anxious moment. Her mind floated toward sleep.

Another whisper:

{{{{{{{{{.....Claire.....}}}}}}}}}}

Not sound. A pull. A tug in her bones. A whisper that felt like twilight.

Claire opened her eyes.

’...What...’ she thought—confused, distant.

{{{{{{{{{....i can....make you strong....you can save him...you can save atlas.}}}}}}}}}

Claire stiffened. It wasn’t mercy. It wasn’t reason. It was a promise dressed in velvet.

’...I’m listening...’ she thought, accidentally.

{{{{{{{{{.....good. all I ask is....for you to sleep....slumber...come to the dreaming.....}}}}}}}}}

She blinked. Slumber? Now? On a battlefield?

But her bones shook. Her vision blurred. Exhaustion wrapped her like a shroud.

Valora’s voice near her ear: "My lady! Heal her... heal her faster!"

Claire heard but couldn’t register.

{{{{{{{...yessss....slumber....let us pass through you....we will not be stuck in the dreaming ....no longer....do you accept....Claire...you can save.....Atlas...avatar of the GUIDE.}}}}}}}}

Something deeper called. Something ancient. Something other.

If she closed her eyes... if she drifted—promises would come true.

Claire closed them.

And almost fell.

But the last second—steel at her side—they had prepared for this. She pulled out her hidden knife and stabbed it into her own arm.

Pain ripped through her nerves like volcanic glass.

"..My lady!!" Valora screamed.

Claire flinched. Regained clarity. "...Not today," she whispered. "....Not tomorrow... not ever."

Blood bloomed on her sleeve. She tasted copper on her tongue.

Valora’s hands shook as she pressed a healing ward to Claire’s wound.

Claire exhaled, chest heaving.

"I—forgot who I was for a minute," she said. Her voice a fractal of relief and horror. "Don’t worry...." She lowered her arm, looking straight ahead. Her eyes clear.

They would save Atlas. But not through promises from beings she didn’t know, didn’t understood...

A change of plans.

Claire rose, one hand on Valora’s shoulder. The Phoenixia knights parted as she passed. Wounds and rubble brushed her legs like reminders.

After this... she would die unwillingly for what she believed.

She didn’t know why—what compulsion forced her to the brink—but she did know where she stood now. The wound she casted on herself, flushing her mind clean...In the fire, not behind it. A politician turned soldier.

Clearing her throat, she barked to the nearby knights: "We will target the Empress again. She is still healing." Her voice rang cold as steel. "That bitch will die—from my hands. My hands alone."

Valora looked at her, concern and awe flickering in her eyes.

Claire’s lips quirked slightly. "Impressive," a voice—soft but charged—echoed in her mind.

She paused, nostrils flaring. The air stirred.

The beings who had just brushed against her mind in the dreamscape must have underestimated her. They must have believed she would be an easy bait—an unguarded soul ripe for their whispered promises, their veiled seductions.

Their voices—silken, tempting—tried to curl around her thoughts like smoke, offering power wrapped in honeyed lies. They hinted at her loved ones, at glory, at the kind of strength that bends worlds and commands destinies. A whispered bargain, a seductive invitation to step off the ledge of reality and into a realm where rules bowed before desire.

But Claire was no fledgling lost in the dark.

She was forged in firestorms of power plays, each one a crucible that tempered her iron will. She had learned early how the game was played—not with naïve innocence, but with calculated seduction, manipulation, and a mind sharpened by endless grinding. The poison of ambition had coursed through her veins for so long, it was now indistinguishable from blood itself.

Her resolve was no fragile blossom; it was a fortress built stone by stone through every betrayal, every sleepless night, every moment when giving up would have been easier.

They sought to seduce her—to twist her into their pawn, to weaken the walls she’d so painstakingly built. But the temptation rolled off her like water off obsidian armor. Where others might have faltered, swayed by promises too sweet to resist, Claire stood unmoved—unbroken.

Because in the depths of her soul, beyond the grinding mentality, lay something far more dangerous: a hunger not for their gifts, but for her own dominion. She had no need to bargain for power; she had learned to claim it, to wrest it from fate’s cold hands with sweat, blood, and ruthless determination.

{{{.....impressive....}}}