CHAPTER 255: THE MAN WHO REFUSED TO LOSE

Elisa moved with measured steps, breath short, one hand clenched against her temple. With each motion, the air around her seemed to vibrate—unseen yet tangible: Maggie floated behind, her limp body suspended by Elisa’s power. Her pale face, locked in a dreamless sleep, seemed almost to reproach Elisa for this invisible burden.

Beside her, Zirel walked in silence, his hand resting on the hilt of his weapon, his gaze sharp, always alert. Inès followed, her steps discreet despite her fatigue, her eyes attentive to every rustle in the foliage. Armin trailed slightly behind, his features drawn but without complaint: he brought up the rear like an exhausted yet stubborn guard dog.

The forest stretched around them like a dark cathedral, the gnarled trunks rising like twisted columns. The air was saturated with humidity, every breath like swallowing stagnant water. The light of day died in fragments between the canopy, casting bloody glimmers that gave the woods the look of a battlefield still smoldering.

Elisa felt each second tear another piece of strength from her. Carrying Maggie with her mind was like holding her arms outstretched beneath an invisible weight—a dull, relentless pain stabbing through her temples and neck. But she could not stop. Not until they reached the marker.

"How much longer?" she finally asked, her voice hoarse.

Zirel cast a quick glance at the trees, then at a mossy stone where a half-erased mark appeared: a Tonar symbol, carved in haste, proof others had passed before them.

"Not far," he said firmly. "If the Tonar held, the camp should be just past the river."

Inès quickened her pace slightly, as if to chase away the shadow of doubt. "They held. They must have."

Armin cleared his throat, without conviction. Elisa clenched her teeth. She already sensed that promise would break against reality.

But she kept walking. Because Maggie floated behind her. Because stopping meant admitting their survival was nothing more than a fragile bet. And Elisa refused to let a single crack appear in that illusion of control.

——

The pain had become a familiar presence, a taut string between her temples vibrating with each heartbeat. Every step was a calculation: the expenditure of energy, the stability of the force surrounding Maggie, the precarious balance between endurance and collapse.

"I cannot falter now."

Her fingers pressed against her temple as if to contain the pressure building behind her eyes. Maggie’s weight was not physical but mental—a constant pull, a silent siphon draining her will. Elisa felt every tiny shift in the limp body—the sway of her hair, the way her arm dangled—reminders that life hung by a thread, and it was her mind alone that kept it from snapping.

Zirel, beside her, was a rock. His vigilance was almost tangible, a distinct field of energy, all contained tension and sharpened awareness. At times, Elisa clung to it, drawing fragments of strength from his nearness. He didn’t speak, but his presence was its own language: a promise of protection, an affirmation that as long as he stood, she could afford to falter—just a little.

Inès was a breath of stubborn hope at their backs. Elisa felt her optimism like a faint glow in the fog of her own exhaustion. Naïve, perhaps, but necessary. Armin, further behind, was their anchor—his weariness echoed her own, but his silence said he would hold as long as she did.

The forest itself seemed to watch them, hostile and wounded. The trees were silent witnesses, their bark fissured like weathered faces carved by suffering. The air smelled of overturned earth and dried blood—a familiar signature now. Elisa breathed it in and tasted ash and resignation. But strangely, too, a kind of resolve.

When Zirel pointed out the Tonar mark, a near-painful relief had rushed through her. At last. Then instantly, fear. What if the camp wasn’t there? What if they were just ghosts marching toward a mirage?

"They held," Inès had said, and Elisa had wanted desperately to believe.

But doubt was venom dripping into her mind. She remembered all too well the other camps—hopes dashed, rendezvous unmet, faces that would never return. Maggie was the living proof—or rather, the unconscious proof—of those failures. Her condition the result of trust given too quickly, of a refuge that had turned into a trap.

Never again.

Elisa clenched her jaw, unconsciously tightening her hold on Maggie as if to shield her better. The young woman let out a faint moan—the first sound in hours—and Elisa immediately loosened her grip, heart pounding. Gentle. I must be gentle. Guilt bit into her. Maggie was not a parcel. She was a person. A friend.

"We’re close," murmured Zirel, breaking the silence. His voice was hoarse but steady. He pointed toward a glow filtering between the trees—not the golden hue of sunset, but a warmer, more irregular light. Firelight.

Elisa’s legs trembled, no longer from fatigue but from apprehension. And hope, stubborn as weeds.

They finally emerged into a clearing. But what lay before them was not the organized, secure camp they had hoped for—it was desolation, barely more ordered than the chaos of the forest. Fires burned here and there, surrounded by slumped figures. The wounded. Many wounded. Improvised tents, some stained with blood. The smell was stronger here—tar, charred flesh, and fear.

But there were also those still standing. Tonar soldiers, recognizable by their battered armor and the weary look of hardened warriors. They moved with an economy of motion that spoke of exhaustion, but also determination.

Elisa stopped dead, her force wavering. Maggie lowered gently to the ground, onto a bed of moss and dead leaves. Elisa placed a hand on her forehead, whispering a futile, "I’m sorry," before raising her eyes to take in the scene.

They had arrived. But the trial, she felt, had only just begun.

Elisa stepped into the clearing, her legs still trembling from the effort. Her eyes scanned the shapes frantically, searching for a sign, a raised hand, a healer’s glow. But all she saw were drawn faces, crude bandages, wrappings soaked in blackened blood.

She swallowed hard. No. There has to be someone.

Zirel’s heavy hand pressed on her shoulder, as if to hold her back. "Don’t expect miracles."

She immediately pulled away, her voice raw with urgency:

"Maggie needs treatment. Now. Where is your healer?!"

Heads turned. The awakened of the Tonar, towering even through their wounds, regarded her with tired eyes. One, his face slashed by a fresh scar, limped forward. His dull gray gaze fell first on Maggie lying still, then on Elisa, then on the others.

"The healer..." He stopped, clenched his jaw, then shook his head slowly. "She’s gone."

The words fell like an axe. Elisa felt the pressure in her temple intensify, a furious buzzing in her skull. She wanted to scream. To shake this man until he spat out another answer, a better one.

"No," she said flatly, an instinctive refusal. She crouched by Maggie, running a trembling hand through her damp hair. "Then... then someone else. An awakened, anyone. There must be someone left who can close a wound."

The man looked at her for a long moment, then his expression hardened.

"There’s an apprentice. Barely standing. He won’t manage much."

Elisa’s burning eyes shot up. "Let him do what he can. Bring him."

A murmur rippled through the survivors. Moments later, a young girl approached—not much older than Elisa, her features hollowed by effort, her skin translucent with fatigue. Her fingers trembled, but her eyes burned with stubborn resolve.

"Show me," she said, her voice low but firm.

Elisa stepped back to give her room, her hands clutching her knees. She watched every movement, the girl’s ragged breath, the faint glow beginning to radiate from her palms.

Maggie twitched faintly beneath the diffuse warmth. Not a revival. But a sign.

Elisa’s heart leapt in her chest, her spirit clinging to this fragile flame as though it were absolute truth.

The pale light from the apprentice’s palms wavered like a candle threatened by the wind. Her lips murmured a prayer, or perhaps an incantation; Elisa caught only fragments. Sweat already beaded her forehead, each breath labored as though she were slogging through mud with a boulder on her back.

Elisa leaned closer, her heart hammering. Maggie’s skin regained the faintest hint of warmth, her eyelids fluttering as if pulled back by a heavy dream. But it was fragile. Too fragile.

"This won’t be enough," Elisa muttered through clenched teeth, fists tightening.

Silence fell, as though her words had frozen the air. Then a voice, deep and gravelly, cut through the crowd.

"You’re right."

Elisa whipped around. A man was approaching, moving with the slow weight of a boulder that refused to crumble despite its cracks. His frame was colossal, more like a statue than a man, his dented armor marked by a war from which no one emerged unscathed. But it was his eyes that seized her: dark brown, tired, yet burning with fierce intensity.

"Tonar," Zirel whispered, low. Almost a salute. Almost a warning.

The name cracked the air, and Elisa understood instantly: it wasn’t only a group. It was him. The survivor, the anchor, the one around whom the others had gathered.

Tonar knelt by Maggie, his shadow nearly engulfing her frail body. The apprentice healer looked up at him, hesitant. He placed a broad hand on her shoulder.

"You’ve done what you could. Let me."

The girl nodded, tears glimmering, and stepped back as though freed of a burden too heavy to bear.

Tonar set his hands over Maggie’s body. But instead of the gentle, reassuring glow of healing, a harsh, red-tinged light bled from his palms. Elisa recoiled, breath caught. This was not the healing she knew.

"What are you doing?" she snapped, her instincts screaming.

Tonar didn’t even lift his gaze.

"I’m holding her. Between life and death, sometimes you have to nail someone down on the side of the living."

His hands pulsed, and Maggie convulsed violently, a guttural sound wrenched from her throat. The air grew thick with the metallic tang of blood, almost unbearable. Elisa’s nails dug into the damp earth.

"You’re going to kill her!" she shouted, ready to shove him away with all her strength.

But Zirel stopped her with a sharp gesture, his voice low and hard:

"Look."

Elisa stared at Maggie, eyes wide. Her breath, once ragged, found a steadier rhythm. Her skin lost its waxy sheen, regaining a touch of color. Tonar held the pressure a few moments longer, then withdrew his hands.

Silence fell. Only the fire crackled in the clearing.

Tonar drew in a long breath, his shoulders heavy as if carrying a world. At last, he turned his gaze to Elisa.

"I’m no healer. I’m just a man who refuses to lose again. Remember that."