Cameraman Never Dies-Chapter 274: Oh, a New Cameraman

Ash drifted slowly through the air, catching the light like dying embers that had forgotten how to fall. The ground was cracked and blackened where Eleyn's fire had touched it, scorched so deeply that even the ether lingering beneath the soil recoiled from the heat. The scent was wrong. Burnt metal. Burnt flesh. Something older than either.

Judge lay where he had fallen, his body twisted at an angle no living spine should allow. His fractured face was half-buried in the dirt, blood darkening the earth beneath his cheek. The faint glow from the cracks in his skin had faded, leaving him still in a way that did not invite hope.

Eleyn knelt beside him.

For a brief moment, she did nothing.

Her hands hovered just above his chest, trembling, as if afraid that touching him would confirm what she already knew. The flames that had once roared around her were gone now, reduced to a dim, erratic flicker that barely clung to her fingertips. They pulsed unevenly, responding not to her will, but to the storm breaking quietly inside her.

She could not protect those close to her.

Again.

Her breath hitched, shallow and sharp, like her lungs had forgotten how to draw air properly.

She pressed her palm against Judge's chest anyway, as if stubbornness alone could summon a heartbeat. There was nothing. No warmth. No rise and fall. Just the cold resistance of a body that had already crossed the line she had sworn, long ago, never to let him reach.

Her shoulders sagged.

"I am sorry," she whispered, her voice barely carrying beyond her own ears. "I please don't hate your mother for what she is about to do."

Behind her, Mina sat motionless.

What remained of her was barely recognizable as human. Her head was burnt to a crisp, charred to the collar of her coat by the golden flames.

The bandages that once wrapped her so meticulously had fused into blackened threads, hanging uselessly from her shoulders. Yet somehow, impossibly, her body still sat upright, propped against a half-charred tree.

And her eyes were open.

They stared forward, glassy and unfocused, yet unmistakably aware. Whatever mechanism allowed her to persist in this state was failing rapidly, but not fast enough to spare her from witnessing what came next.

Eleyn did not look at her.

She could not afford to, lest her emotions spiral out of control.

Slowly, deliberately, Eleyn reached into the inner pocket of her ruined dress. Her fingers closed around something solid, textured, familiar in a way that hurt. When she drew it out, it caught the light of the clearing, reflecting not brightness but depth.

Half of a card.

Its surface was a strange fusion of gold and black, not layered but interwoven, as though the colors had been braided together at a level too fine for the eye to fully follow. The gold shimmered softly, warm and steady, while the black absorbed light entirely, swallowing reflections. The edges were jagged, torn unevenly down the middle.

Eleyn stared at it for a long time.

Her expression hardened.

This may have been hesitation, or a calculation layered over grief, resolve forged through pain so old it had fossilized into instinct. She had always feared this moment might come, but had never expected it. She had prepared for it in silence, in secret, because preparing aloud would have meant that she would have to see someone else die.

Because what she was about to do required a dead person, a person close to heart.

Her gaze shifted back to Judge.

"Of course," she murmured softly. "All four of you have the other half."

She placed the torn card gently against his chest.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the air around Judge shuddered.

A faint glow bloomed beneath his skin, not from the cracks this time, but from deeper within. Something responded, something long dormant and waiting. From his sternum, the matching half of the card emerged as if drawn out by an invisible hand, phasing through flesh and bone without resistance.

It slid into place with the piece Eleyn held.

The moment the two halves touched, the card became whole.

Runes ignited across its surface instantly, far too intricate to follow with the eye. They were not etched so much as revealed, lines of meaning unfolding over one another in fractal layers. Some burned with gold light, others sank into the black, vanishing as soon as they appeared, leaving behind an impression rather than a mark.

The card pulsed once.

Twice.

Ether surged inward from every direction, drawn toward the card with terrifying force. The scorched ground vibrated, loose stones lifting into the air before dissolving into raw energy. Even the lingering afterimage of the blood moon seemed to warp, bending toward the convergence point.

Eleyn exhaled slowly.

She straightened, clutching the card between both hands now, and for the first time since Judge had arrived, her expression softened with acceptance.

"Resurgas," she said quietly.

The word was not shouted, nor was it commanded.

It was offered, a plea toward the dead.

The card responded immediately.

Its glow intensified, the gold brightening to a brilliance that hurt to look at, the black deepening until it seemed to tear holes in the air around it. The runes flared, then collapsed inward, folding into the card's core.

And then the card began to vanish.

Its edges dissolved into threads of light that drifted upward and sank downward simultaneously, as if the card was being pulled apart by opposing absolutes. As it disappeared, Eleyn felt something within herself loosen, then tear.

She staggered.

Her breath caught, a sharp gasp tearing from her throat as golden ether began to leak from her skin, slipping through her fingers like sand she could not hold. The sensation was not pain, exactly.

It was release. The slow unfastening of everything that made her solid.

She bent herself toward Judge.

"Hey," she whispered, forcing a smile she barely managed to hold. "Don't look so surprised when you wake up. Know that your mother always loves you, and please don't blame yourself; it... it is my wish." 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Her hand trembled as she reached out, cradling his broken head with a tenderness that contrasted violently with the devastation around them. Carefully, reverently, she brushed blood and dirt away from his face, ignoring the way her fingers were already starting to come apart into shimmering fragments.

"You did well," she said softly. "You always do. Just like your father, your brother, and your sister. Love them, Judge, just as much as you love your mother."

She leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead.

It lingered only a moment.

Then Eleyn's body began to fracture completely, her form breaking apart into countless shards of golden ether that rose into the air like fireflies caught in a sudden wind. Her outline blurred, then dissolved, until nothing remained but drifting light that slowly faded into the clearing.

She was gone.

Judge's body glowed.

Light spread across him from the chest outward, washing over torn flesh and shattered bone. His wounds sealed, skin knitting itself together with a precision no healer could match. The fractures in his face smoothed over, the unnatural cracks disappearing entirely. His body straightened as if guided by invisible hands, restoring alignment down to the smallest detail.

The glow intensified, then slowly dimmed.

It was impossible to tell how much time had passed. Seconds, perhaps. Or minutes. The clearing remained still, as though afraid to intrude on the moment.

Then Judge inhaled.

It was a sharp, sudden breath, like a man surfacing from deep water. His fingers twitched, curling into the dirt beneath him. His eyes fluttered, then opened fully.

The world rushed back in.

Pain flared briefly, then vanished, replaced by a strange, hollow clarity. He pushed himself upright slowly, disoriented, the memory of death still clinging to him like a fading nightmare.

"Mom—"

The word caught in his throat.

He looked around.

The scorched clearing. The shattered ground. The absence where Eleyn should have been.

And then he saw Mina.

Her body was still sitting, impossibly upright despite the ruin inflicted upon it. Her charred form leaned against the tree, her remaining eye fixed on him. The expression etched into what remained of her face was unmistakable.

Defeat.

Not anger or denial. Just... a hopeless understanding.

Judge stared back at her, his breath uneven, his heart pounding with a life that felt… heavier than before. The weight of what had been taken, and what had been given, settled over him slowly, crushing and inevitable.

Mina's body trembled once.

Then completely vanished, it only took a second. One moment she was there, the next moment, she had been gone.

The clearing finally exhaled.

And Judge, newly alive, sat alone amid the ashes, the cost of his resurrection pressing down on him harder than death ever had. He caressed his new, smooth face as his head hurt from using the principle of nihility.

He touched his chest; there, he felt a pulse; his heart was busily keeping him alive. Though he did not share the same enthusiasm for being alive.