His image had exploded into a thousand pieces.

Yes, but he could still see it through the cracks that had formed in the glass. An indescribably repulsive person. The spitting image of failure.

She had come to give him the opportunity he had been dreaming of for a decade.

And he'd blown it.

"What are you doing?" That voice sounded like it came from far away, from a different world than his. Who did it belong to? Well, it didn't matter, if he had to ask himself that question it wasn't the voice of his savior, so it didn't matter.

He had heard her voice only once, a long time ago. But he would recognize her instantly, no doubt about it.

Even if he had never heard her in life, he would have recognized her.

After all, she was the only thing that mattered. The only thing.

That was what love was all about.

And now... he had lost her. He had lost everything. If he had to live like this, with no hope, no future, no dreams, it would have been better to have let himself be killed by the

Empire's assassin. To have allowed her to pull the trigger instead of resisting futilely, as if he had something to live for.

Desmond gritted his teeth.

His hand, too, struck the glass again with all his might. The frame shook, the broken glass that was still there fell then, exploding on impact against the sink.

It could still be seen.

Not much, but enough to make his insides churn. He punched her one more time. He felt a sensation as distant as the voice of the person who had called out to him. And, like the voice, he didn't give a shit, he didn't waste time thinking about something like that.

The mirror was shattered. Only a few pieces remained, and they didn't reflect a complete, coherent image.

However, he could still see himself.

In his mind's eye, that desperate, repulsive image would always be reflected.

He couldn't bury it, couldn't forget it.

Therefore, his only option, his only escape, was death, right? Of course it was. He had been very clear about things even before he failed.

That was why he had come to his room instead of immediately going to report this to the headmaster or the first teacher he saw, even though it was urgent and even though the assassin might strike again before fleeing, now that he thought about it, and he was the only person who knew there was an assassin walking among them.

Well, because it wouldn't end the fight.

Because the fight was over for him.

His hand ached. Looking down, he saw that the hand with which he had hit the glass was bathed in blood and with dozens of broken glass stuck in the skin.

Of course it hurt, of course it ended up like that after hitting the glass over and over again.

But what really hurt was the pain inside.

He felt like his heart was going to explode.

He pulled back the broken, bloody hand that could barely move now, preparing to throw another punch.

Someone grabbed his hand, stopping him easily.

Without the physical reinforcement, his hand had been in that state after three or four punches. And, without the physical reinforcement, he was no stronger than a normal person.

Christina had stopped him. She was squeezing his hand with both of hers, not caring about the glass rubbing against her skin.

She was looking at him alone. As if he mattered.

Desmond returned her gaze and slowly, slowly, the world around him came back into focus, to gain reality instead of seeming as thin as fog. A long dream from which he would awaken when his neck burst like a dry twig.

He was trembling.

He had just realized it now, but he had probably started doing it much earlier. That was why he had felt so unsteady.

Normally, he would feel ashamed and try to hide his weakness. But, after what had happened, it was time to admit that that was the only thing he had ever done, exactly. That is, hide the weakness that had always been inside him.

Trying to hide how weak he really was.

Ten years ago, he had died. He had died as a child and that hadn't changed.

Time had not passed for him.

And this was the result. A child pretending to be an adult could only stumble and fall.

The strange thing was that he had lasted this long.

You have to live, those were the only words she had gifted him, it was as his

consciousness faded in the warmth of her embrace. And he lived as she had wished. But if he had known that someday he would have to experience this pain, it would have been better to give up right there. To allow the darkness to claim him.

A person who had nothing should disappear into nothingness quietly, disturbing no one.

It was the natural thing to do.

He moved his hand forward, unconsciously this time. Christina pulled it back, squeezed harder. Desmond stopped when he saw Christina's blood flow.

"Stop, please. Look at me, look at me, okay? And talk to me. What happened to you?"

He had found Amy asleep when he came in. But, of course, she had been awakened by the mess she'd made and at some point had gotten up. Now she was standing in the doorway, looking at them both with fear on her face.

As was Christina. In her expression, in her eyes, there was no concern for herself.

Even though he had come in staggering and with a bullet hole in his stomach that was still bleeding. He had nothing, and yet Christina acted like, if he died, she would lose something. Would that be enough, then?

To be a prized possession of this girl? It would only mean dedicating his life to another woman.

No, what am I thinking? She had saved him. She had given him strength, she had given him a sword and a desire, nay, a reason to go on living. In other words, that woman had saved him in every possible sense of the word.

If it hadn't been for her, he wouldn't be here. She wouldn't have lasted long. So he had no right to give someone else his devotion as if it were something so cheap and insignificant.

That would also invalidate all his effort, his pain and sorrow so far. The tears cried. The blood shed.

From one moment to the next, with his own hands, he would shatter most of his life.

He thought he had nothing, but at least he had that.

Pride and devotion.

There was no one who could take those things away from him except himself. So stay calm. For the love of the gods, stay calm.

"He's been attacked," Amy murmured in a trembling voice. That hell is going to start all over again.

"I know," Christina replied through gritted teeth. "But I want to hear it from his mouth."

Why are you talking as if I'm not here?

Now he felt a little more ridiculous than before, if anything. Still, he let Christina guide him to the bed, tugging his mangled hand gently, where their blood was mingling.

Once there, Desmond dropped back, sitting up.

"Wait a moment," said Christina.

She took a few steps and bent down to pull out a first-aid kit from under his bed. She left it open on one side of him. Inside were bandages, but it was too soon for that.

Slowly and gently, she began to remove the broken glass stuck in his skin.

Desmond made no sound in the meantime.

He was looking at her, absorbed, as if searching for something in her eyes, which were the windows to the soul.

"You are well prepared," Amy said, as if to fill the silence more than anything else. "A few days ago I would have called you paranoid. Now I think I could learn a lot from you."

"Thank you, but it's nothing special. For those who are not lucky enough to have regeneration as their primary affinity or as a side effect of it, learning how to patch yourself up in the middle of the battlefield is essential. Because otherwise you may not survive long enough for a healer to tend to you."

"It makes sense," Amy admitted, nodding absently.

Having finished removing all the crystals, Christina raised her head towards him, without taking her hands off him, to look into his eyes.

There was something strangely intimate in that look.

"Are you all right?" She felt the need to ask that, even though he hadn't uttered even the slightest sound of pain while he'd been working.

Since she had, he felt the need to respond to her effort, her concern.

Even if it was only by nodding, because he still didn't trust himself enough to speak.

Christina washed her bloody hands, mostly with his blood and not hers, then went back, grabbed the bandages and got to work. It was clear what she had done before. That he didn't go around with a first aid kit for nothing.

"This will no doubt be taught to us when classes start, sooner rather than later," Christina continued, as if responding to his thoughts and to the last thing Amy had said at the same time. "It is essential for all students, no matter what affinity they have, after all. As essential as.... communicating with the team. You understand that, don't you, Desmond?"

What a clumsy way to bring the conversation back to the main topic. Even someone like him thought so.

But he couldn't think she would act as usual when she was so worried that her hands were shaking. Surely she thought she had managed to disguise it and, with Amy, he supposed she wasn't wrong.

He, however, noticed it when her hands made contact with his. It was an unmistakable sensation, that slight tremor.

No, it was enough to look at her face to see that she was not her usual self.

But no one would have been able to keep their composure if someone came into their room staggering and bleeding from a gunshot wound.

Although... no, especially if it was a stranger.

He didn't have to get any funny ideas. Consider betraying his savior, like before.

Christina would surely have acted the same way, even if it had been Amy who had had a run-in with the assassin.

"Desmond," she repeated softly, "are you listening to me?"

"Thank you," he replied. But how could such a short, simple word express the gratitude he really felt, for this and for so much else?

It couldn't, of course. Words were not enough.

"For the hand? It's nothing. Lift up your shirt a little, please."

He made an attempt to do so, but it was precisely Christina who stopped him.

"Stop it. You do it, Amy, it's better if he doesn't use that hand as much as possible."

Amy obeyed without saying anything. As she stood behind him and lifted up his shirt, she seemed happy for some reason. No, not happy exactly. Satisfied?

Subtleties weren't his strong suit, certainly not after he'd lost so much blood.

When he was still bleeding.

As Christina busied herself bandaging his stomach wound, Desmond closed his eyes and finally began to speak. He had wasted enough time.

"I couldn't fall asleep, so I went outside to clear my head and train with my gun."

"That 's right. You don't have it, why didn't I notice it before?" Christina muttered almost imperceptibly.

He had a fit of insanity during which he seriously considered telling them the whole truth. Fortunately it passed quickly. Not only would they not believe him, revealing the whole truth would do nothing but get her into trouble. Especially if it ended up getting out of this room, somehow.

It wasn't that he didn't trust them, but.... No. Just no.

"By accident, I ran into two people. At first I thought it was a couple looking for a private moment," he admitted, laughing at himself with a hollow laugh, a poor imitation of amusement, "but then the man fell. I saw the knife and the blood. I went after the woman and managed to catch her. I had her at my mercy, I was so close....."

"But?"

"But she snatched the gun from me and shot me." Like an idiot. If he had been paying less attention to himself and more to the target, things would have been different.

But he had missed that opportunity. Regrets were similarly useless.

"Did you see who it was? Who did she kill?" Amy asked.

"One of the teachers. His name... I don't remember it, if I learned it at all, but I'm sure it was one of the teachers and not a member of the infirmary staff, or one of the workers. As for the woman, I did see her, but not her face was clouded by shadows."

"It's a very dark night, so it's not surprising," Christina said, "I'm not gonna blame you for that."

"What? Ah, no, no. You're wrong. It's just that the woman's face was shadowed, somehow."

"Ah. So you haven't spoken for a long time after coming back not because of shock but because you think it was me?"

Desmond recoiled as if she had punched him.

Perhaps she saw some guilt in his expression, as she frowned, as if taking it as confirmation of her worst thoughts. But it wasn't true. He had not once believed her to be a traitor.

It had only crossed his mind that many people would.

The assassin used what appeared to be shadow magic, though it was surely nothing more than technology after all.

"No. I mean it, you've misunderstood me again. I..." He winced, had Christina squeezed the bandages a little too hard accidentally, or was it because she was angry with him? "I see perfectly well in the dark, just like you. I know very well that it wasn't you. She doesn't look anything like you."

"You can see in the dark? But how... Oh, Desmond. You use it. Physical reinforcement magic in your eyes."

It wasn't another question.

Just yesterday he would have wondered why the two were looking at him like that, but, during the fight with the assassin, he had suddenly realized how terrifying it should and was to fight like that.

Turning his body into a time bomb that could explode at any moment.

An act that could cost him everything even if he won or survived.

So, instead of acting like an idiot and just making them worry more about his life and his mental state, what he did was explain himself, try to comfort them.

Using that magic on his body was such a dangerous thing that even he would have chosen another path had he had literally any other option just as good. But the eye thing really wasn't as bad as it seemed.

"I don't use it on my eyes all the time, only the minimum necessary to gain an advantage, or when strictly necessary. Fighting the assassin blindly would have been a thousand times more dangerous. After all..." He grimaced. "I could see well, and yet I was humiliated, she almost killed me."

I wish she had. A repetitive thought, but one that now lacked its usual intensity. And the image that accompanied it.

"How did she do it?" Amy asked. "I mean, what kind of magic did she use? In a city things would be different, but we're in an academy far from civilization. Even if you haven't seen her face, you should be able to identify her, if only from that."

Yes and no.

"She barely used magic to make it more difficult to identify her. All I know is that, when I cut her with her own knife, the wound regenerated almost instantly, emitting smoke."

"Well, that's very characteristic, in fact, I haven't heard of anything like that. There shouldn't be a problem."

"Only if it's something automatic, not something activated by will. And something tells me that life wouldn't make it that easy for us. Besides, that's not the only magic she used. When she shot me, I didn't realize it until after I was lying on the ground, looking at her, because the shot didn't actually ring out."

"Couldn't she have used one of those things? What are they called? Silencers?" Amy asked.

Because of her proximity, he could feel her breath on the back of his neck every time she spoke. It was very warm. And fast, maybe too fast.

"They don't work like that. They don't silence, they just muffle the sound. Besides, I didn't have one of those on it. Maybe I should consider it, but I wasn't."

"Okay. That's peculiar, yes," Christina said. "At first glance, at least, they're unrelated. Still, we should be able to identify her because of that. If she's stupid enough to come back, pretending nothing happened. But most likely she ran away without looking back. And that you, that Amy and I, all of us, are safe."

Christina finished bandaging his wound, Amy pulled down his shirt.

"She wouldn't run," Desmond said.

Between the pain, the blood loss, and the weight of despair that wrapped around him like a shroud, he hadn't had time to gather his thoughts. But he was very sure of that statement. He didn't think twice, he didn't hesitate.

"Why are you so sure?" Amy asked. "Whichever way you look at it, that's what anyone would do in her position."

His gaze slid between the two of them, trying to figure out how they hadn't seen something that seemed so obvious to him. Well, maybe he was wrong to put Christina in the same bag, since Christina's expression had barely changed.

But he didn't think he was wrong.

Neither about that, their lack of understanding, nor about the assassin.

"Because she has nowhere to run. She accepted the mission knowing she was not going to leave here alive. Just like the many soldiers who shed their blood that day. The only thing she can do before we capture her or worse is to inflict as much damage as possible."

-Wait," said Christina, "Are you saying she's working for the enemy?

Ah, that was the root of the misunderstanding this time. He should have realized it before.

"Yes. The assassin is undoubtedly a monster who betrayed her homeland and spat in the face of the gods themselves. The more I think about it, the angrier I get." He clenched his fists, which were now shaking for a very different reason than at first.

The burning rage that flowed through his veins roused him from the lethargy in which he had been immersed, clearing his head.

"That such a person should exist in this world... is a horror that I should have rectified with my own hands."

And he would have, except that he had judged that his goal was to capture her, that she wouldn't have wanted him to simply kill her, spoiling a perfect opportunity to get information.

If he had allowed himself to kill her, he could have simply snapped her neck.

She wouldn't have had time to take the gun from him, let alone shoot him with it.

"Yes, but... Hold on, please. What makes you so sure of that? Did she say or do anything?"

The main reason was, again, the appearance of his savior.

His chance to prove himself, which she had granted him after a decade of waiting, could not be something so simple as to throw him against someone who had committed murder for personal reasons.

But no, that wasn't the only reason. Not by a long shot.

"If it had been a crime of, say, passion or impulse she wouldn't have acted the way she did. She didn't cry, she didn't apologize, she didn't stare at the corpse. Nor did she take the opportunity to take her anger out on the corpse. She simply turned around, running away from me without making a sound. And if that’s not enough, her face was covered in shadows even before I attacked."

But those were just excuses, credible or not, to justify what he had thought from the first moment.

"Besides, it can't be a coincidence. That something like this happened a few days after the attack, that is, just long enough for everyone to let their guard down a little.

Christina gave it some thought.

"You may be right." She sat up, Amy did the same. "Let's go settle this."

Yes, it was about time. They had wasted too much time when the assassin could strike again at any moment. Mostly because of him. Because of her weakness.

Christina had felt the need to take care of him regardless, but he couldn't blame her for that.

As always, he had only someone to blame: himself.

He left the room as he had entered, walking on his own two feet, with no one to help him. Christina offered it to him, but he politely declined.

Or at least it seemed to him that he had been polite. Maybe to her it seemed rude of him.

He should stop thinking about it or he'd never get out of that hole. But the alternatives with which to occupy his mind were no better. In fact, quite the opposite.

And it wasn't as if he could simply stop thinking or feeling for as long as it suited him. So, well, it was better than nothing.

Besides, it was something he was seriously concerned about, although he knew he should be focused on other matters. Matters of vital importance.

They alerted those on duty, they went to wake up the headmaster, who first asked him a few questions to confirm what had happened and then gathered everyone else. Not the other students, the other teachers and also the infirmary staff.

"Take us to the body," Jacob ordered with a distant look on his face.

He already knew who had died, after all.

The only one who was not present. And he knew him, he was grieving for him. Or maybe

Desmond was thinking too highly of him and he was just worried that this would be another blow to his reputation, after the attack, so soon after the attack.

He didn't know.

He didn't care, he had enough of his own problems.

Besides, there was something that bothered him about Jacob. If someone asked him if he admired the headmaster, he would answer that he did without a second thought.

He was, after all, a distinguished war hero. He had turned the tables on many battles.

He had been unable to end the war, but he had contributed to its pause.

In other words, he aspired to be like him. But, precisely for that reason, he could only watch him from below.

From the ground, with the headmaster on a pedestal. Which might be part of the reason Jacob suddenly didn't seem human to him.

But only part of it. Just as he couldn't connect with normal people, even though they were physically within his reach, Jacob went a step further by being similar to him, but just as distant as other people.

Desmond didn't know, but he supposed he did care, after all.

Because... Because...

Desmond lost his balance. He didn't end up on the ground only because Christina caught him in time. He let her help him because it wasn't the time and because it would be childish to refuse now that it was clear beyond any doubt that he needed someone to help him.

Because he didn't think Jacob could feel the way he was feeling now.

Because it seemed to him that Jacob was scarred on the outside, missing parts, but not on the inside. No, not that.

And what are you basing that on, he wondered.

Nothing. Nothing. He was just hurt and wanted to take it out on someone. He was thinking these things in a poor attempt to make himself feel better by tearing someone down.

As they stepped out into the night, one of the teachers enveloped her hand in flames that didn't affect her, creating something like a torch that enveloped them in a circle of light.

It didn't take them long to reach the corpse.

"Not again," a woman muttered, "I don't know why I expected that....".

A man burst into tears and sought comfort in the arms of the nearest person. Several people, both men and women, joined in the embrace and soon the man was no longer the only one shedding tears.

Jacob stared at the corpse for long seconds, not paying attention to anything else.

"I'll see you later," he said at last, in a soft, almost gentle voice. And he ran his hand over the fallen man’s face, closing his eyes, leaning forward and down, almost falling off the wheelchair in the process.