Yawn.
"What an awful dream," I muttered to myself still in bed.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Leo burst into the room, his food spilling to the floor with a loud crash. He rushed over, enveloping me in a tight hug and pressing kisses to my face. I tried to hug him back but quickly realized I couldn't.
"You were asleep for 5 days," he cried.
He gently settled down next to me. With a serious expression, he asked, "What happened?"
"I don't remember too well," I said, struggling to recall the events from the day before. The memories were fuzzy and painful.
Leo left the room briefly, and soon Mia and Lia entered. His presence was colder than I had ever seen, his eyes filled with a chilling intensity that seemed to freeze the air in the room. Mia and Lia glanced at me, shock evident on their faces. There was something different about them now—perhaps because they were now level 4.
"What happened?" Leo demanded again, his voice cold and piercing. "Why did she almost die?"
Mia and Lia appeared paralyzed by Leo's intense presence, unable to move. After a moment of heavy silence, Mia spoke up, her voice trembling.
"She ran ahead of us."
"Is this true, Wakaba?" Leo asked, his gaze never leaving mine.
I tried to piece together the memories from before. We had just defeated a lizard woman, and afterward, I had sprinted ahead. My head pounded as I tried to remember, but the memories seemed to blur together painfully.
Before I could respond, Lia broke down, her voice choked with emotion.
"It was never supposed to go this far."
"Go this far?" Leo pressed.
"We let her go ahead of us," Lia cried.
"She was only supposed to come across a soldier, and we would have saved her," Lia said, her voice trembling.
"Why would you do something so reckless?" Leo shot back.
"She made fun of our best friend. We would have saved her…" Lia's voice choked with emotion.
"But we got attacked by 6 lizardmen soldiers," Mia interjected. "Once we killed them, we looked for her."
Leo sighed deeply and told Mia and Lia to leave. Once the door closed behind them, he turned to me.
"Does that sound true?" Leo asked, looking at me for confirmation.
I struggled to maintain composure. "We had killed a lizardman civilian. I ran ahead of them, lost in thought, so it's plausible I didn't hear them getting attacked."
"Did you get the relic?" I asked, my voice more controlled.
"No," he replied quietly. "Someone else must have gotten it."
"But I did find a dragon egg," he continued, his voice trailing off as he handed it over.
The egg was small, almost the size of a fist, and its surface was a deep, mottled green, reminiscent of the lizardmen. I wondered what kind of dragon it could be—its color and texture held an eerie mystery, and I couldn't help but feel the weight of its potential.
"At least we got a dragon egg ," I tried to smile
"You don't have to be strong," he said, pulling me into a tight hug.
.I collapsed against him "It hurts," I cried out, my tears shaking our bodies. "It hurts so much." I clung to Leo, my voice cracking, "I can no longer be a knight."
"But how?" I sobbed, my voice barely a whisper.
Leo looked at me with kind eyes. "Why not learn magic?"
I managed a faint smile.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice filled with regret. "I shouldn't have left you. I shouldn't have gone ahead. I should've—"
"It's fine," I interrupted. "I'm alive, aren't I?"
I wobbled to the bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face. The chill cutting through the haze of exhaustion. My hair tumbled messily over my shoulders, and my red eyes adjusted, the blurry world slowly sharpening as the water dripped from my skin.
I cried as I looked at my reflection in the mirror, my left arm missing.