Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

[OXI: 102 / 2,500]

The number appears on my HUD like something distant, almost unrelated to me.

I’m on the ground. I know it from the cold of the dirt against my face, the dust sticking to the side of my mouth, the weight of a dormant Eventide in my fingers. The rest comes in pieces. Voices. Footsteps. A patch of ocean sky above the arena. The gray shadow of Zhang Xi approaching too fast for someone so calm.

I try to breathe deep.

The body refuses.

The pain answers first, spread through my abdomen, my arms, the place where OXI was torn out of me by a thrust. That attack always charges a high price. This time, it charged a body already opened, bleeding, and insisting on fighting out of pure stubbornness.

"Dryden!"

Rhayne’s voice enters my head as if it comes through thick water.

Then another line. Closer. More desperate.

"And Veric? Should I go to him first?"

Rhayne knows. She saw this concentrated cut against Freya. She saw it at the Oathring. She knows that blow doesn’t forgive an ordinary defense, and Veric took most of it head-on. Even with Undertow. Even with Azure Dividends.

Zhang Xi kneels at my side.

"I’ve been a healer longer than the two of you have been in Thirstfall." Her voice doesn’t rise, but it cuts through the noise around us. "Let me work."

It’s the first time I’ve seen Zhang Xi sharp. The case is probably serious.

I try to move my hand to the inventory. The gesture comes out weak, incomplete, but the system answers. The remaining LDP vials fall to the dirt near my arm, rolling without force. Glass against stone. A small sound, irritatingly ordinary for a moment like this.

I force my mouth to obey.

"Veric..."

That’s all I manage.

Zhang Xi doesn’t argue with me. She takes two vials, opens the first with absurd speed, and pushes it against my mouth. The liquid goes down wrong at first, nearly makes me choke, and then her hand closes my jaw firmly and tilts my head to the right angle.

"Swallow."

I obey, because the body still recognizes useful orders.

The first LDP enters like cold. The second comes right after, too sweet for the amount of blood on my tongue. Zhang Xi puts both hands over my abdomen before I finish tasting it, and Susanoo’s Love begins to run through me.

Her healing is never as gentle as she is. It has the patience of a river pushing a stone until it believes it should move. The energy enters through the wound, finds open edges, torn muscle, broken vessels, and starts putting the world back in place from the inside out.

My vision clears for an instant.

I see Rhayne.

She’s kneeling near the fallen vials, picking one up with both hands. She rises fast, almost trips, and runs to Veric. He’s on his side in the dirt, Undertow still on his arm, the shield marked by the black scar of Eventide. The broken gladius glints in pieces a few meters off.

Rhayne opens the vial and brings it to his mouth.

I can’t hear what she’s saying.

Maybe she calls his name. Maybe she tells him to drink. Maybe she’s just trying not to cry. The image comes without enough sound to become certainty.

Veric stirs a little.

Too little for anyone to celebrate.

Then his throat works, and the liquid goes down.

Only then do I let something inside me relax.

Pride is an inconvenient emotion when you’re nearly blacking out, but it comes anyway. Veric hurt me. He read me. He forced Memory of Lightwaves and the Hope Art out of me, not by accident, but because he earned it.

I never told anyone, not even myself out loud, that the fight was also a test. I needed to know how far he could go.

Now I know.

If Veric keeps that pace, maybe we can cross most of the tide collapse without being swallowed by it.

Zhang Xi presses her hand harder. "Stay with me."

Her voice arrives clearer this time.

"I’m trying."

"You even look good quiet, when you’re about to pass out."

I almost smile. I don’t have the energy for it.

The healing moves fast. My body accepts another’s OXI without the strange resistance Rhayne carries. Zhang Xi’s current doesn’t have to fight me; it only has to rebuild the damage and keep me from being an idiot for a few more seconds.

The HUD stabilizes, and she gives me one more LDP.

[OXI: 2,191 / 2,500]

[Mild Bleeding Removed]

Zhang Xi pulls her hands away slowly. "Can you hear me?"

"Unfortunately."

She studies my face, then my abdomen, judging the work with a healer’s eyes, not a friend’s. That reassures me more than sympathy would.

"You’re stable. Not whole."

"See to Veric."

"He’s already had LDP."

"Zhang Xi."

She lets out a short sigh, accepts the order, and stands. The gray tunic crosses my vision as she runs to him.

It takes me longer than I’d like to get to my feet. The arena seems to tilt when I rise, so I walk to a bench at the side of the plaza and sit before the world decides to drop me again. The Nomine Gladiatus has already ended.

[Nomine Gladiatus ended.]

[Result: Draw.]

[Experience transferred: 0%.]

I stare at the message until it fades.

Freya is the only one who comes to me.

She doesn’t sit. She stops a few steps off, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the arena where Zhang Xi now works over Veric. Her face holds that same beautiful hardness, but there’s a new line between her brows.

"You pulled the damage at the last moment, didn’t you?"

The question comes low. Almost as if she wants to confirm one theory to avoid having to accept another.

I rest my head against the bench. "I don’t know what you’re talking about. I went all out... or at least nearly dying is what going all out looks like, as far as I know."

Freya lowers her gaze.

The answer hits her in a quiet way. I catch the path her mind took too late. The Hope Art clipped her wing. Against Veric, with that power, it should have nearly taken his arm even behind the shield.

I breathe slowly. "Freya."

She doesn’t lift her head right away.

"It isn’t that you’re weak. That defense... Azure Dividends with Undertow is genuinely insane. It comes close to Rank C, maybe B when he compresses it all like that."

Her eyes return to me.

The relief doesn’t come whole. Freya won’t drop pride or insecurity on the floor over one sentence. Still, the corner of her mouth lifts a little, almost against her will.

"You’re terrible at comforting people."

I let a smirk through. "I’m injured. Psychological care is poor and reduced right now."

She lets out air through her nose, something close to a laugh.

My HUD comm buzzes.

Richard’s voice comes hoarse, urgent, with no room for greeting.

"Come quick. We’ve got trouble."

The bench feels cold all of a sudden.

I look toward the Oathmark, and all the exhaustion of the arena has to wait.

’The bastards didn’t even wait for dark.’

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