Chapters 51-52

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Chapter 51

The silence in the camp felt like the world’s breath was held. 

Firelight carved deep hollows in Caesar’s face, and his men stood ringed around the fire, as if waiting for a blood rite.

The only sounds came from the fire crackling and the wind shifting ash.

Caesar Iulius stood by the flames and watched as Lily knelt by Sabinus’s body.

Lily stared at Sabinus’s still form while her throat stayed painfully dry and her pulse hammered in her neck.

She looked at Caesar, who waited for her decision with his arms folded and his eyes unreadable, and she asked.

“You want me to kill him? That’s the price?” 

He nodded while he neither smiled nor frowned, and his voice sounded even and empty when he said.

“That’s the world’s price. If you want to break free, then you must shed the old ties. Show me that you’re not just another noble who cannot let go.”

Lily set her hand on her belt, and she wrapped her fingers around the dagger’s hilt. Every gaze in the camp bore into her because no one moved and no one breathed while she held the blade, and she knew that if she refused or hesitated, both she and Sabinus would die. 

She saw Caesar’s face in the firelight, and she saw that he would not bend, no matter what she pleaded.

Sabinus stirred while Lily’s fingers tightened around the dagger. He blinked, shifting against the cold earth, and groaned when he tried to sit up. His eyes found Lily kneeling over him with the blade drawn and her knuckles white around the hilt. He tried to speak, but confusion and the ache from Caesar’s earlier blow made his voice crack.

“Lily—what are you doing?” His voice sounded hoarse.

Caesar stepped forward, his boots grinding ash and dirt, and his shadow flickered over the fire. 

“She’s making a choice,” he said, not looking at Sabinus but at Lily. “The only one that matters. You die, or you both die. Simple.”

Sabinus’s breath caught, and he looked from Lily to the ring of bandits, his eyes wild and desperate. He made a move to scramble away, but two of Caesar’s men seized him and slammed him down on his back. He bucked, fighting, but one planted a knee on his chest and the other pinned his arms so hard that Sabinus’s knuckles turned white. 

He looked up at Lily with pure horror drawn on his face.

“Don’t do this!” Sabinus shouted. “Lily, please—don’t listen to him. I am a noble! We both are! They can just ask for a ransom! Don’t—” 

Caesar did not wait for more protests. He reached down and seized Sabinus by the throat, silencing him with a single, iron grip. 

Sabinus’s words died in a strangled gasp, his hands clawing at Caesar’s wrist, but Caesar did not even glance at him. He squeezed until Sabinus’s face went red and his eyes bulged with panic. 

The bandits around the fire grinned with wolfish hunger, baring their teeth in the glow, each one eager for blood and not caring whose it would be.

Lily felt the weight of every stare pressing on her shoulders. Her hand clenched so tightly around the dagger that pain shot through her palm, but she refused to loosen her grip. Her thoughts ran wild—she saw herself plunging the blade and felt the hot spray of blood, saw Sabinus’s body arch and shudder, saw the hatred and betrayal in his gaze.

She remembered every hour spent with him. 

If she killed him, she would win her freedom, but she would lose something she could never replace. If she did nothing, they would both die, forgotten in the woods while Caesar’s brutes would play with their dried bones for sport.

A tide of fear threatened to choke her. For a heartbeat she wanted to beg, to plead with Caesar, to promise anything if he would just let them go. But she saw the dead set of his eyes and the greedy faces of the men around the fire, and she knew there would be no mercy. The world had never offered her mercy, and she would get none here.

Her chest felt hollow as she stared at the dagger. She forced herself to breathe, slow and deep, and she watched the blade glimmer in the firelight.

She looked at Sabinus, who fought in Caesar’s grip, and she saw his panic. She forced herself to smile, and the expression cut across her fear like a blade. She reached out and touched his arm, steadying herself so he could see the calm in her eyes.

“Sabinus. Trust me,” she said. Her voice carried through the firelit hush. “Trust me.”

A low laugh rumbled out from the bandits. One leaned forward, grinning so hard his lips peeled back from his teeth. “Trust her? She’ll gut you like a pig.”

Sabinus thrashed under Caesar’s hand, his face turning scarlet as he gasped for air. When Caesar finally loosened his grip enough for Sabinus to speak, the words came out broken and raw with fury.

“Trust you?” Sabinus spat blood onto the dirt. “You’re a snake, Lily. You’re a traitor.” He tried to buck the men off his arms, but they held him down as if he were a child. “This is how you repay me? After everything I did for you? I saved your life! I trained you!” 

His voice cracked and sharpened as he bared his teeth at her. 

“You bitch. You lying bitch. You begged me to protect you. You begged me to get you out of that villa, and I risked everything—my father’s name, my honor, my life. I stood up for you. I stood by you when nobody else did. And this is what I get? This is how you thank me?”

He twisted again, eyes burning as he met her gaze. “Just do it. Go ahead. Prove you’re nothing but another noble whore who’ll sell out anyone the moment you get scared.”

The firelight flickered over his face as he strained to free his arms, and the bandits laughed, goading her on. “Stab him, girl! Gut him! He’s all talk now.”

Sabinus kept spitting venom, choking on anger and betrayal. “You want to be a Champion, Lily? Go on—take it. You won’t be the first to kill a friend for glory. That’s what our kind does, isn’t it? That’s what they teach us. Just get it over with, you coward. If you’re going to be a monster, then be one.”

He glared up at her, shaking with rage and disgust, and Lily felt every word cut into her. His hatred stung more than any threat from Caesar or his wolves, but she did not look away. She tightened her grip on the dagger and forced herself to breathe while Sabinus cursed her name and the crowd watched with eager, shining eyes.

Lily listened to Sabinus’s curses as if they came from a place far away. His voice was thick with hatred and pain, but her mind had already crossed the last threshold. 

She knelt in the dirt by her friend, surrounded by a circle of men who would murder for sport and follow a warlord who’d abandoned every ideal she’d grown up with.

The faces that ringed the fire were hungry, animal. Some bandits pressed closer, expecting blood and maybe hoping to see her fall—hoping to watch the Gens Claudia break itself on this ritual. For them, it was a kind of entertainment, a rite by which an outsider was made a wolf among wolves.

Lily saw it for what it was: a test not only of her will, but of her very right to survive in this world. If she failed, she would die and the story would end here, swallowed by the woods and forgotten. If she acted, she risked losing what little remained of her own soul.

Caesar will kill us. I don’t even know what these bandits do here. But he made it clear. I either kill Sabinus or forfeit my life as well—and my dreams. 

She told herself that she would not flinch, that she would not turn away, and as her heart hammered against her ribs, she realized she knew what to do. She did not believe it—not really. The certainty was the only thing keeping her hand steady.

There was only this single, impossible path.

She tightened her grip on the dagger and pressed the point to Sabinus’s chest, just above his beating heart.

She ignored his thrashing, the desperate heaving of his chest, and the spit that flecked his lips as he called her every name in the world.

She plunged the blade straight down with both hands, driving it between the ribs in a clean, clinical motion. She felt the resistance give way, and the steel bit deep until she felt the thudding pulse shudder against her palm. Blood fountained in a hot rush, drenching her hands and spattering her face. Sabinus arched, mouth frozen in a silent howl as all the air in his lungs rushed out.

The bandits erupted, some laughing, some howling, a savage cheer surging through the circle. In that instant, Lily saw how they believed she had crossed to their side, that she had become one of them in blood and deed.

It was as if she had become a monster to them—one of their own. Their howls were not just for death, but for transformation. In the world outside, power came dressed in banners and crests, but here it was only violence and survival.

She pulled the dagger free, feeling the blade scrape bone, and watched as Sabinus’s life spilled over her knees. 

His chest heaved once, and the firelight caught the fear in his eyes as the world began drifting away. 

The color left his face. 

The light left his gaze. 

His heart gave a last flutter and then stilled.

Lily did not hesitate. 

She immediately activated [Mana Sense]. 

I’m not going to become one of these brutes.

She pressed her hands against the wound, feeling the blood pulse weakly beneath her palms as Sabinus’s body began to convulse in shock. 

Beneath her fingers, she felt the torn edge of the left ventricle shuddering with each faint, irregular contraction. The wound was a ragged slit through the myocardium, gushing arterial blood in waves that soaked the surrounding pericardium and spilled out over the fractured ribs. 

She felt how the pericardial sac had started to balloon with blood, forming a deadly tamponade that would squeeze the heart still unless relieved. 

She sensed the torn intercostal arteries spraying blood into the pleural space, flooding the left lung, collapsing the alveoli and drowning the bronchi with each spasm.

She summoned Mana with a force she had never known, drawing it out of every nerve, every foreign memory, every hidden reservoir of power.

She flooded his chest with Light Magic, letting it burn so brightly that her bones ached with the strain. 

She let the Mana seep into the split myocardium, feeling every ruptured myofibril as it failed to contract, every ischemic patch turning from a desperate pink to the flat, lifeless gray of oxygen starvation. 

She could see the clotted ends of the severed coronary arteries, some beginning to spasm shut, others leaking plasma and platelets into the wound. 

The pleural space filled with bloody effusion, compressing the lung, while torn alveolar sacs gaped open, unable to draw breath.

She wove the Mana into stents, forcing the jagged edges of the wound apart so she could reach the ragged heart and torn vessels. She recalled diagrams—ventricles, atria, the ascending aorta—every detail that, in these alien memories, she had ever read, every textbook illustration, every voice from that other world that had whispered about bypass grafts and emergency thoracotomies and ECMO circuits.

In her mind, she visualized the cell layers: the squamous endothelial lining of the aorta, the elastic lamina, the spiral smooth muscle bands. She pictured the conduction system—Sinoatrial node, Atrioventricular node, Purkinje fibers—each one quivering in a dying rhythm. 

As she stabilized the heart wall with Mana, she watched red blood cells pooling between the muscle fibers and lymph leaking from ruptured capillaries, seeding inflammation.

She built a scaffold of Light Magic inside his chest, pushing through the torn myocardium, creating a crude extracorporeal circuit—an artificial heart, a bridge of Mana to keep his blood moving when his own body had failed. 

She threaded temporary grafts through the shredded arteries, using them as vascular shunts to shunt blood away from the worst tears and maintain perfusion. 

She forced Mana into the collapsed left lung, opening the alveoli, clearing the froth of plasma and blood that clung to the inner lining. 

She saw the surfactant begin to return under her touch, the pale membranes reinflating. She felt the thick clumps of platelets as they tried to jam the wound closed, sensed how the clotting cascade had already started, fibrin netting tying the wound together in a patchwork.

Even while using [Mana Sense] to visualize everything perfectly and even considering her high-level [Mana Shaping], her mind screamed with the strain. Still, she refused to break, working by memory, instinct, and sheer terror.

Sabinus’s body seized and shuddered. His lips went blue. The camp was silent now. Every bandit stared, mouths open, as the Mana pouring from Lily became visible—a column of white-gold light so dense it seemed to burn the night. The air hummed and trembled, and even Caesar stepped back.

What Lily was doing was beyond their wildest imagination. 

They knew the boy from the Gens Cornelia was around Level 50. But that meant that Lily, an unclassed, barely twelve-year-old, was doing the unthinkable. 

If healing Sabinus’s forearm wound had been beyond stunning for her, this was a completely different ballpark. At Sabinus’s Level, he had so much Mana and raw energy making up his body that knitting it together required a whole other power output from Lily. Not even a normal [Healer] at Sabinus’s Level would have been able to heal this kind of grievous wound. 

A ruptured heart? There were few non-mortal wounds that even came close to that level of damage. 

Lily pressed harder, working deeper, using [Life Flow] to knit the muscle back together, forcing cells to divide and fuse, sealing the rupture. She used Light Mana to keep the blood from clotting, to prevent the shredded valves from failing, to create a mock circulation when nothing natural remained. 

She could see the edges of the mitral valve flapping loosely, nearly torn from their anchor points, and she fused the torn chordae tendineae, restoring the valve's function with filaments of Light that mimicked the tensile strength of collagen. 

In the lungs, she drove out the accumulating fluid, coaxed the lining to regenerate, and patched the shredded visceral pleura with a living mesh of Mana.

Please, Sabinus, please, don’t die! 

Her whole body trembled as she forced Mana into the dying body, sweat and tears mixing on her face.

Sabinus’s heart began to twitch. She latched onto the rhythm, pouring more Mana into the sick muscle, working until the scarred chambers held together long enough to beat. 

She watched as oxygen and nutrients once again flowed to the stunned tissue, mitochondria flickering back to life, and the whole cascade of cellular repair reignited.

She temporarily replaced as much of the lost blood with Mana, made it flow through the fake vessels she had crafted. She refused to let go, even as her vision swam with agony and the world grew distant.

Sabinus’s chest rose. 

His eyes flickered open. 

He coughed, spraying blood and phlegm, and then drew a long, ragged breath. 

His heart stuttered, then pounded once, then again, and the blood began to flow in the right direction, through arteries she had woven from nothing but magic and memory.

Lily gasped, her whole body shaking. 

She did not care about the bandits or the cheers or the jeers. 

She pressed her forehead to Sabinus’s chest and wept because she had killed and brought back her friend. 

Caesar stared at her, unable to speak. 

The bandits gaped, some making warding signs against evil, others falling back in terror.

Chapter 52

Caesar’s voice cut through the stunned silence. “Take the boy away.”

Two of the bandits moved at once, rough but almost hesitant as they rolled Sabinus onto a battered canvas litter. His breaths came shallow, raw, but steady now—he was alive, or as close to alive as anyone in that camp understood. They carried him toward the shadows beyond the fire, passing through the ring of men who parted with wary, almost reverent glances for Lily.

“Do not let him die,” Caesar ordered, his tone flat but edged with something new. “If you let him die, I’ll make an example out of both of you.” 

His men nodded, glancing at Lily as if she were some unclean spirit or a priestess risen from a myth.

The way Caesar looked at Lily was hard to decipher.

The twelve-year-old girl had somehow expected that the older brother of Cardinal Tiberius might lose his patience, declare her—and Sabinus’s—life forfeit and kill them.

Yet, he slightly tilted his head as he looked at her.

Something in his eyes told Lily that today, they’d live.

He did not congratulate her. He did not mock her. He stared at her across the fire, his hands loose at his sides, not moving for a weapon and not reaching for comfort. The other bandits still watched, some with awe, some with a twitchy fear that turned their hands restless.

Lily stayed kneeling by the blood-stained dirt, hands still sticky and trembling. Her arms ached, her heart pounded. She waited for her own body to collapse, but, by some divine grace, it did not.

Caesar came around the fire and dropped to a crouch in front of her. He was not gentle, but he did not radiate the same menace as before. He studied her, his jaw working, his eyes steady.

“You just healed someone with a Class, with more than sixty levels over you, if we consider you level zero.”

Lily forced herself to wipe her hands clean on the edge of her tunic. The blood came away slowly. The shaking would not stop. She met Caesar’s eyes, refusing to look down.

“So?” she said.

He snorted. 

“I never thought Lucianus’s daughter was ordinary. But I didn’t think you were this.”

His eyes swept over her—barefoot, bloodstained, shivering but composed beyond what any child had any right to be after almost killing their friend and bringing them back from the edge of death.

“You know what you did?” Caesar asked, voice low.

Lily did not answer. She watched his hands.

Caesar shook his head and, with a hand, dragged her away until they reached a large tent. His, presumably. He threw up a [Light Shield] and turned to Lily.

“That was the purest Life Mana I’ve ever seen. The purity of one’s Mana while channeling a Skill is not affected by their level nor by the Skill’s level. It’s about one’s Affinity. Women have a much harder time channeling pure Light—much less pure Life—because of their stronger Affinity for Darkness and Death. Furthermore, most of the rabble out there doesn’t know what Skill you used and you’re lucky my best men are out. I’m not sure I could have trusted them with this information. Not even them.”

Lily swallowed.

“[Life Flow],” Caesar said slowly. “I’ve seen Lucianus use it, darling. I know what it looks like, I know what it’s supposed to be and do.”

The words landed heavy. He shifted his weight, then leaned in, his breath hot on her cheek.

“I’ve watched your father, the one they called a prodigy for his mastery over [Life Flow]. It’s a pity Lucianus was born in the Gens Claudia because, out of all the Great Skills, he got the one that was the least useful to him and never made it as a Champion. Not that anyone talks about that very often. No one likes to remember how my niece humiliated all the uppity nobles of the Great Families. What an unfortunate time to be born alongside the strongest talent we had ever seen, right?” 

Lily’s eyes went wide because what she just heard was all news to hers.

“You didn’t know, of course,” Caesar smiled wickedly. “Yes, your mother wiped the floor with Lucianus, among others. Her control over the Holy Affinity was…” 

The large sighed and shook his head. 

“My cousin is a fool,” Caesar spat. 

Lily trembled at those words.

He was speaking about the Pope, her uncle. 

“So is my brother. I was ready to support your mother when…” Caesar stopped and looked at Lily with a raised eyebrow. “Your grandmother… Aunt Hestia, what a woman. You should spend more time with her if her mind hasn’t been dulled by being around my cousin.”

“I don’t see her often,” Lily offered this piece of information since she didn’t know what else to say. The conversation with Caesar had taken an unusual turn. He was now talking about family, and she realized—something that in the panic from before had eluded her—that they were related. He was her… great uncle? 

“Was it your father?” Caesar said, nodding at Lily. 

“Huh?” 

“The Great Skill. Your father? Your grandmother?” 

Lily shook her head, not knowing whether she should actually reply to him or not. Honestly, this man was a bandit. He was as much of a criminal, if not more, than she was. 

“Your mother, Dawn’s Mercy, bless her bloody soul,” Caesar laughed and, after taking a seat, slapped his thigh. “She did this without your father’s approval. Is that why you’re riding with the boy in the woods all alone, without any escort?” 

Lily opened and closed her mouth, stunned by the guesswork. 

“When you get trained in the Gens Iulia, darling, they burn your body from a young age with two things,” Caesar said. On one hand, he made a white flame appear. “The [Holy Flame].” And he brought the other hand right below his eyes, scrutinizing her. “And the ability to read people and situations.”

He dropped his hand on his lap and took a pitcher of water. 

“Sit,” Caesar said, and Lily obeyed.

He poured himself a cup, then another, and finally pushed the second across the table to Lily. The water was faintly warm, flecked with ash, but she took it because her throat still burned. She drank in careful gulps while Caesar studied her as though weighing every word.

“You should thank your mother; she didn’t train you in that. It’s less useful than people realize, especially when most of your life is spent fighting Undead and trying not to die at their hands. If I could have chosen blissful ignorance about our situation, I would have, trust me.” 

“Are we really doomed?” Lily asked. 

Caesar let the question hang between them for a long moment. He swirled the water in his cup and stared into the surface, as if he could see the end of the world reflected in its muddy sheen.

“Maybe not,” he said at last. His tone didn’t offer comfort. He didn’t sound sure, but he didn’t sound defeated either. He looked at Lily, and for the first time since dragging her into this camp, his eyes didn’t burn with the same iron certainty. There was a grudging respect, even a flicker of caution.

Lily watched him, not waiting for another answer.

“You saw what I did,” she said. “You think it changes anything? Can I do something?”

Caesar leaned back, folding his arms. 

“I watched you open up your friend’s chest and put him back together. I’ve seen [Healers] with higher Levels than you fail to save a man whose heart got nicked by a blade. But you—” He shook his head, jaw tightening. “I don’t know what you did to get such purity out of Great Skill. If you can do that at twelve, I don’t know what you’ll be when you get a Class, much less if you survive the Champion’s Trial. When I was younger, I thought your mother could change things. You?”

Caesar cackled.

“You’re stronger, better, fiercer.” 

“My mom is—” 

“Your mother is a great woman, darling,” Caesar said, raising a hand to stop her. “I didn’t mean to insult my niece, Princess Adriana. But you were presented with two bad choices. You did something no one would have thought of. No one would have been capable of.” 

He didn’t look away. 

“So maybe not. Maybe we’re not doomed, if people can still do what I just saw.”

“Are you ready to fight not one, but two wars? The Church is just the beginning. What about the Undead? Have you ever seen one up close?” 

Lily shook her head.

“The Pope, my brother, the idiots from the Great Families, including that boy of yours, those are ants. The real monsters? They’re outside the walls. The backstabbing idiots back home are nothing. You hear me, Liliana Claudia?” Caesar pulled closer to her face until she could almost be stung by his beard. “Nothing.”

Lily nodded, frowning, feeling a shiver of fear running down her spine. 

“Anyway, you’re not ready for the Tournament,” he said, blunt as a hammer, pulling back in his chair. 

“I am. I will defeat Lumius.”

“Probably,” Caesar said, cracking his neck. “But, I regret to say, just like your father, you’re not inspiring, yet. Mastering [Life Flow] like you did is incredible—and illegal, but I suspect your mother and grandmother are probably working on that. The problem is that no one will support you. A Champion needs the support of the Great Families to learn their Great Skill. Let’s say four out of five other Great Families were to agree to let you learn their Great Skill as a Champion. The fifth would feel so much pressure, they’d have to cave. So, even if my niece Cassius, that abomination, did what you did at the Gens Aemilia, he could have still forced them to let him learn their Great Skill.” 

“I don’t care,” Lily frowned. “I’ll just—”

He snorted and leaned forward, elbows on knees. 

“You should care. You have power, girl. You don’t have anyone behind you.”

“Sabinus is the heir of the—”

“Gens Cornelia,” Caesar finished her sentence. “Darling, you’re my great niece, correct?” 

Lily frowned and nodded. 

“Correct?” 

“Then, call me Uncle Caesar from now on, shall we? And let your uncle give you some advice that you sorely need.”

“Ok… Uncles Caesar?” 

Lily wasn’t going to argue with a bandit who could probably kill most people in the Papacy of Lumina with a flick of his hand. 

“The boy dropped his mask, didn’t he?” Caesar smiled. 

“What?” Lily frowned.

“The boy. You saw how he reacted. In fact, with all due respect for your efforts. I’d kill him right now if you allow me. You can’t trust him.” 

“Because he insulted me?” Lily frowned. “He thought I was about to kill him.”

Lily had not been pleased by Sabinus’s reaction, but she could definitely understand it. 

“Whan he thought you were about to kill him, when you stripped all his layers to the bone, you saw what he really is, Liliana. He dropped his mask.”

Those words hit like like a lighting bolt, immediately prompting her brain to remember the words she had heard from the tramp on the night of the Gens Aemilia’s marriage. 

“To walk the road of Champions, you’ll harvest two wounds, one deep, one even deeper, and two mirrors. Yet neither will reveal its heart to any face that comes masked. Wear the soul you’ll fear, and the mirrors will open a door no gate can bar—past fathers, past popes, to the throne that bears your name.”

Two wounds? Was the first one to learn [Life Flow]? Wait, was this the second one? But no. It should have been a wound on me… And what did he mean by “the soul I fear?” And what masked face? I’m just…

Seeing his niece distracted, Caesar smiled. 

He watched Lily with that same sharp, half-amused glint. “How old are you now, anyway?” he asked, sudden and direct.

Lily glanced up, still tense. “I turn thirteen tomorrow.”

Caesar’s face shifted, but it was not a softening. He nodded once, decisive. “Thirteen, then. Good.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “You’ll spend some time here before you get your Class.”

Lily’s fingers clenched around the cup. “I can’t. I have somewhere to be—my mother—”

He cut her off with a dismissive wave. “You’ll go where you need to go. But not until after our training. You want to survive in Alba? You’ll survive me first.”

She glared, but Caesar just shrugged, unbothered. “You’re strong, Lily, but you’re not trained. Not for what matters. There are two things I’m going to teach you—two things your father can’t, and your mother couldn’t master. The first is how to fight humans and the Undead. Not [Soldiers], not pampered dueling partners. Real killers. Real monsters.”

He leaned forward, so close she could see the scar that cut through his beard and the flecks of ash in his eyes.

“And the second,” he said, his voice suddenly low, “is how to master the Holy Flame, the Gens Iulia’s Great Skill.”