CHAPTER 220: BLEEDING

Maybe it was the way the lynx watched her... not with animal fear but with something closer to resignation, even understanding. Maybe it was the trap, and how familiar it looked despite being made of iron instead of expectations and duty. Maybe it was simply that she’d spent too much of her life killing things that deserved better.

Or maybe she was just tired of always making the rational choice.

She knelt in the snow, slowly, keeping her movements visible and non-threatening. The lynx growled, a sound like grinding glaciers, and tried to lunge. Its body barely moved, too weak, too damaged, betrayed by injuries and blood loss.

"I know," Eris said quietly, her voice carrying in the strange acoustics of the cavern. "I know you want to fight. I know you don’t want to die helpless."

She set down her torch and blade, both just out of reach but close enough to grab if needed. The lynx’s eyes tracked her movements, wariness mixing with something that might have been hope if animals felt such things.

"I’m sorry," she continued, edging closer, her hands visible and empty. "I’m sorry someone left this here. I’m sorry you had to suffer because of their carelessness or cruelty or whatever motivated them to build something so vicious and then abandon it."

The trap was complex, its mechanism designed to tighten with movement, to punish any attempt at escape. She’d need both hands to work it free, which meant getting close enough to touch the creature, close enough for those crystal teeth to take her throat out if it decided mercy was weakness.

Eris let a thread of fire magic rise, just enough to warm her hands, just enough to generate a small flame between her palms. The lynx flinched but don’t attack, watching as she brought the flame to the trap’s mechanism, melting ice that had formed in its joints, softening metal that had been frozen brittle.

It took time... minutes that felt like hours, her heart pounding with the awareness of how vulnerable she was, how easily this act of compassion could have the story of how the future Empress died stupid and alone in a frozen cave. But gradually, with careful application of heat and pressure, the trap’s teeth began to retract.

The lynx whimpered... a sound so heartbreakingly small from such a massive creature... as the iron pulled free from mangled flesh. Blood flowed more freely now, steaming in the cold, and Eris knew with certainty that the wound was mortal. Even if the creature could walk, even if infection didn’t set in, it had lost too much blood, suffered too much damage.

She’d freed it from the trap, but not from death.

The lynx seemed to understand this too. It didn’t try to rise, didn’t attempt to flee or attack. Instead, it simply stared at her with those luminous blue eyes, and something passed between them... understanding, perhaps, or recognition.

The acknowledgment that sometimes mercy looks like this: not salvation, but the simple grace of dying free instead of trapped.

The great beast leaned forward, its movements slow and deliberate, and pressed its muzzle to Eris’s outstretched hand. Its tongue... rough as ice, cold as winter’s heart... licked across her palm once.

Thank you, the gesture seemed to say.

Then it sighed, a long exhalation that crystallized in the air like a prayer, and died.

Peacefully. No longer trapped. No longer alone.

Eris sat in the snow beside the corpse, her hand still extended where the lynx had blessed it with its final gesture. Tears froze on her cheeks before she realized she was crying... for the creature, perhaps, or for herself, or for every trapped thing that died without someone to witness its passing with kindness instead of triumph.

She whispered a prayer she barely remembered, words in Old Solmiran that her tutor had taught her before everything went wrong. Not her culture anymore, not her gods... they’d abandoned her long ago, if they’d ever existed at all. But the words felt right, felt necessary, a small ritual to mark that this death mattered, that this creature’s suffering and dignity deserved acknowledgment.

The consecrated blade was heavy in her hand as she positioned it carefully over the lynx’s chest. The priests had explained the anatomy, where the Star-Shard would be found, how to extract it with minimum damage to the surrounding tissue. Not that damage mattered now, but habits of precision died hard.

She cut with reverence rather than efficiency, parting fur and flesh and frozen blood until her fingers found what they sought: a crystalline structure nestled against the heart, glowing faintly blue, warm despite being surrounded by cold and death.

The Star-Shard was perhaps the size of her thumb, multifaceted like a gem but organic in its formation, pulsing with residual magic that felt ancient and pure and impossibly sad. She lifted it free and held it up to the light, watching how it caught and split the glow into rainbow patterns.

Beautiful. Like everything in this frozen hell was beautiful in ways that hurt to witness.

Snow began to fall... impossible this deep underground, yet falling nonetheless, drifting down from the shadowed ceiling in patterns that seemed deliberate rather than random. It swirled around Eris in spirals, around the lynx’s body, around the Star-Shard she held, as though something invisible moved through the space, observing, judging, perhaps blessing.

Back at the camp, the priests watched through scrying magic projected onto polished ice... ancient object that allowed them to observe without interfering, to witness the hunt without violating its sacred isolation.

They saw the snow falling in impossible patterns. They saw the spirits... faint luminous shapes that might have been tricks of light or might have been something far older... swirling around the kneeling figure of Eris Igniva. They saw her pray over the creature she’d freed, saw her extract the Star-Shard with careful reverence, saw her close the lynx’s eyes with gentle fingers before standing.

"Aenithra sees her," High Priestess Serah murmured, her voice carrying equal parts awe and uncertainty. "The Frostmother acknowledges her presence."

The other priests murmured agreement, their expressions troubled. This wasn’t how the ritual usually went. Most hunters killed with quick efficiency, took their prize, and returned. They didn’t kneel in prayer. They didn’t cry. They didn’t free dying creatures from traps when killing them would have been simpler.

They didn’t receive what looked suspiciously like divine attention from a goddess who hadn’t been seen in mortal affairs for centuries.

Among the nobles watching the scrying, Bianca Virelya stood rigid with fury barely contained beneath her carefully neutral expression.

She watched Eris receive what looked like blessing, watched spirits dance around her like she belonged in this frozen kingdom more than Bianca herself did, watched the priests murmur about divine favor as though the foreign witch deserved such things.

Rage and jealousy twisted in her chest like living things, feeding on each other, growing stronger with each heartbeat.

This was wrong. All of this was wrong.

Eris wasn’t supposed to succeed. Wasn’t supposed to be acknowledged by Nevareth’s goddess. Wasn’t supposed to look like she belonged here, kneeling in snow and ice with a Star-Shard glowing in her hands like she’d been born to this moment.

She was supposed to fail. To prove herself unworthy. To give Soren a reason to reconsider, to give Bianca an opening to reclaim what should have always been hers.

Instead, she was being blessed.

Bianca turned sharply, her furs swirling around her, and stalked away from the scrying circle before anyone could see her face, before her composure cracked completely and revealed the screaming fury beneath.

She had to inform the Regent Empress. Had to tell Vetra that her second attempt to undermine Eris had failed as spectacularly as the first. Had to figure out what came next, because this couldn’t continue, because if something didn’t change soon, Bianca would lose everything she’d ever believed was destined to be hers.

And in the frozen cavern, miles below and hours away, Eris Igniva stood alone with the dead and the spirits, holding a piece of crystallized magic that pulsed with warmth, unaware that her mercy had just sealed her fate in ways she couldn’t yet imagine.

Sometimes, the most dangerous thing one can do is prove oneself worthy.

Especially when powerful people have already decided you should fail.