CHAPTER 219: WEIGHT OF A CHOICE

After that, Élisa rejoined her companions.

She noticed that Maggie, ever true to herself, had settled down among the other soldiers, her eyes fixed on the flames—but above all, on the roasting meat skewered above them. One could say without exaggeration that this was the moment she looked forward to most in the day, almost like a sacred ritual.

Élisa let out a discreet sigh and dropped beside her. Without taking her gaze off the fire, Maggie handed her a piece of grilled meat on a stick. Élisa snatched it with a curt gesture and sank her teeth into it with a hunger that made her friend raise an amused eyebrow.

"You must’ve been starving..." Maggie said, her rough voice punctuated by a muffled laugh. "It’s rare to see that much energy for a simple piece of meat."

Élisa chewed, swallowed, then answered with weary irony:

"Let’s just say fatigue gave me an appetite. And more than that... talking with Zirel too."

At last, Maggie turned her head toward her, fixing her with that dark, impenetrable gaze.

"...Talking, huh?" she said, faintly suspicious. "When I saw him get back up and slip off between the trees without a word, I thought of you right away. But I also know you’re big enough to handle yourself."

Élisa hesitated a moment. Zirel’s words still vibrated inside her mind, too sharp, too insistent, like an echo she couldn’t shake off. She tightened her grip on the piece of meat.

"If he’d come to harass me, to pester me, that would’ve been easier. I’d just have to poke a few holes in him. But no... he came to make me an offer."

Maggie raised an eyebrow, intrigued, leaning slightly toward her as if to catch her words through the crackling of the fire.

"An offer, huh?... Well, spit it out. What did that crow in armor really want?"

Élisa drew a long breath. She wasn’t the type to spill everything, let alone recount the details of a private conversation. But this time... Zirel’s words clung to her like an unwanted shadow. So she told her. Without leaving anything out.

She explained the way he had approached her, that too-confident smile, his sentences honed like snares. She described the offer: protection, resources, knowledge, and the promise to cut her free from the invisible chains of the army. The invitation to join the Wind Blossom, one of the three greatest guilds in the world. And then, the details that unsettled her most: the certainty with which he recognized their stigmas, the conviction that she would waste her potential by staying here... and above all, the moment he made it clear the offer was for her alone.

Maggie stayed silent for a long while, chewing her meat slowly, as if she were digesting the words more than the food. Her dark eyes fixed the flames, but Élisa knew her mind was working fiercely.

Finally, a crooked grin slipped out.

"Hm. So that’s his little game... He sniffed out your potential and wants to lure you like some docile prey into his golden trap. Classic."

At last she raised her eyes, her gaze as sharp as a blade.

"And you? Planning to bite the hook?"

Élisa clenched her teeth. She felt that if she didn’t cut it off now, Zirel’s offer would keep seeping through her like slow poison. So she spoke, firm and unflinching:

"No, Maggie. I refuse. I don’t want it. I won’t abandon you, or Dylan. Whatever he promises... it weighs nothing compared to that."

Her declaration cracked through the air like a blade. But Maggie, far from seeing it as proof of loyalty, had that crooked smirk that always came before she broke someone’s illusions.

"Do you think we’d do the same for you if it were the other way around?" she asked without a hint of hesitation. Her voice was calm, but each word carried a merciless edge.

Élisa froze, her eyes faltering.

Maggie didn’t give her a chance to breathe:

"My advice? Bite hard. Not nibble like some sentimental fool—no. Sink your teeth in. Tear. If a guild reaches out, you grip that hand until you crush the fingers."

She tossed a bone into the fire, the flames leaping higher, and continued with icy intensity:

"Especially with your potential. Make them see what you can do, and what you will be able to do. Don’t stay some faceless recruit. Push them to look further than their little offer. Don’t just catch the third guild’s eye... but the second. And the first."

Silence fell, broken only by the snap of the fire, like sparks bouncing against armor.

Élisa remained still, her skewer of meat hanging in her hand. She wanted to repeat her refusal, to hammer it in—that she would never abandon them. But another voice was rising in her, sly and persistent: what if Maggie was right?

Élisa said nothing. The fat from the meat dripped into the fire, hissing and crackling, filling the space where her words should have been.

She wanted to scream, to swear again she would never leave Dylan, never leave Maggie, never leave anyone. But Maggie’s words had driven themselves into her chest like a splinter: Do you really think we’d do the same for you, if it were your chance instead?

Élisa swallowed hard, uneasily.

"You talk like I should turn my back on everything... like I should... sell myself," she muttered, her voice hoarse.

Maggie shrugged, her expression hard, pragmatic.

"Sell, buy, trade... call it whatever you like. I call it survival. Seizing your chance. Not everyone gets the chance to climb that high, Élisa. And when you do—you don’t settle for just surviving in the shadows. You bite."

Her eyes glimmered with that strange light, at once hard and protective, as though she was hurling a cruel truth to force Élisa to harden.

Élisa turned her eyes to the horizon. She thought of Dylan, somewhere in a world unknown, fighting to survive. A tight knot twisted in her stomach.

Would I leave him behind?

And you, Maggie... you push me like this, but if I really left, wouldn’t you be the first to hate me for it?

She clenched the wooden stick until her knuckles whitened.

"I’m not sure I can..." she whispered, her voice trembling for the first time.

Maggie barked a dry laugh, almost mocking but not unkind.

"You don’t have to be sure. You just have to be ready. The rest will follow."

Then she bit into her meat, as if she had said something as ordinary as tomorrow’s weather.

Élisa sat frozen, her thoughts hammering against her temples. For the first time, Zirel’s offer no longer seemed only like a trap... but a door left ajar. And Maggie had just whispered that maybe she ought to walk through it.