When Last Night Didn't End

6.2

"It's not because you goaded us into taking this mission," Cavya stood up, matching Ahrian's height but never her intensity. His eyes bored into me, illuminated by the flickering fire and enhanced by the growing darkness around us. "It's not wrong to aim for the top, but you are wrong in gambling the lives of others in reaching it."

Cavya stalked towards me. "And I have been a fool to not see it."

Before I could retort, he whipped out his rapier so fast I didn't even see it until its tip was inches from between my eyes. "We will have our prices to pay once we get back to Dragnasand," Cavya said. "But you..."

I swallowed against the lump in my throat, staring up at the blazing presence in front of me. Would this be my last night in Solarlume? "You will not come back to us to Mystriae," he finished, not moving his blade from my face. "I hereby strip you of any association with Dragnasand, both the guild and its knights. If I find you anywhere near my adventurers and my guild, I will crush you myself."

"Wait, I—"

"Don't fight it, Kora," Valren said quietly, a pained expression twisting his snout and forming a veil over his eyes. I looked at Ahrian and Yaora, both refusing to meet my gaze. Their heads nodded, as if they're agreeing with my sentence. Nazran. He was going to be on my side, right? The pink-haired spiria gave me a sad glance but made no move to counter Cavya's dictation.

A sense of betrayal made my gut twinge. So, that was it? After all the time we spent together, all they're doing was to throw me under the bus? A chuckle escaped my lips. It wasn't anything close to amusement. Because it's all the same. There was no loyalty or camaraderie with people like me. Someone who made too many mistakes, someone who was too ambitious for what he had been designated to reach in his lifetime—-nobody wanted to be with that kind of person.

It's the same as before, and would continue on forever. Because I was only human and mistakes were my only companion.

The next day, or what felt like the next day, I stumbled into a tavern by myself, void of the crowd I've grown accustomed to having when going to establishments like this. I held up a finger at the person behind the counter. "Terribean ale," I said before freezing in place at the sudden memory it brought.

The face I would never see again and the smile that would never grace anyone once more—those were the moments I associate with the liquor now sliding towards me. I stared down at the sloshing liquid, seeing more than my strained expression. There, I saw memories. The woman who found me in that alley, bought me a drink, gave me a sword and a dagger. Ahrian's words bled from the back of my head. The memory of that night in my room finally made sense.

Mirani loved me. She chose to love me even though I made it clear I wasn't meant to be given anyone's heart. I would wreck her, and now, it seemed like I succeeded. In the worst way possible. Cavya was right. I messed people's lives up by chasing for something that wouldn't ever be mine and being too impatient, discontented with what I could scrounge from the bottom.

I forced myself to grip the cup even though just the saccharine smell of the drink made me want to throw up. Why would Mirani even choose to love someone she didn't know, someone who had too many secrets to hide? And all I did was brush her to the side, too caught up with my own issues and my own grief. My own past.

Did I deserve this punishment then? Was this the penalty I have to pay for being unable to accept how fast people come and go? It's unfair, how one spent a lifetime weaving together the threads connecting them to another, only to be snapped by a single strike of a blade. Some connections take a short while to weave, but the years of friction, tension, and the pull coming from the other side wanting to be free, snaps it nonetheless.