The Cursed Extra-Chapter 76: [2.24] Still Fighting

"The hardest battles aren’t against monsters. They’re against the voice in your head that says giving up would be easier."

***

He forced himself to look away from Seraphina’s table. Focused on the cooling porridge in his bowl.

Friendship was a luxury he couldn’t afford. It always had been, even back home. But here it was even more true. People who got close eventually discovered how precarious his situation was. The fraying clothes carefully mended when no one was looking. The meals skipped without explanation. The desperation that clung to him like smoke.

And then came the pity.

Pity was somehow worse than contempt. Contempt was honest, at least. Contempt said "I think you’re beneath me" and meant it.

Pity said "I feel sorry for you" while doing nothing to actually help. And somehow expected gratitude in return.

He scraped the last of the porridge from his bowl and didn’t look at Seraphina’s table again.

The day passed in familiar patterns. Each hour bled into the next.

Combat training came first. The Pit, under Professor Blackthorne’s watchful glare. The massive man stalked among the students like a wolf among sheep. His scarred face set in a perpetual scowl of disappointment.

Rhys’s unorthodox techniques earned grudging approval mixed with sharp criticism.

"Your guard works," Blackthorne growled after watching him deflect a series of blows from a training dummy. "But it’s ugly as sin. You fight like a peasant."

The words were meant as insult.

Rhys had been called worse by things that wanted to eat him. He just nodded and adjusted his grip slightly. Gave the appearance of compliance while changing nothing meaningful about his stance.

He couldn’t afford to unlearn what kept him alive. Not even for a better grade.

Theoretical Foundations followed. A vast lecture hall with soaring ceilings. Windows that let in the grey autumn light.

Professor Delacroix stood at the front. Her ethereal beauty somehow enhanced by her complete indifference to it. Silver hair floating around her as if she stood in water rather than air. She lectured on mana flow patterns in a voice like wind chimes. Beautiful but utterly devoid of human warmth.

Rhys kept his head down and his hand lowered. Despite knowing many of the answers.

Speaking up too often drew attention. Attention led to questions he didn’t want to answer. Where did you learn that? Who taught you? How does a commoner from a border village know anything about advanced mana theory?

The truth was that Elara’s illness had forced him to learn. To understand as much as he could about how mana worked and how it went wrong.

Her condition was mana-degenerative sickness. A flaw in how her body processed magical energy. Understanding the theory wouldn’t cure her. But it helped him feel less helpless. It helped him ask better questions when the traveling healer came to their village. It helped him know when the healer was telling the truth about treatments and when she was just guessing.

He noticed Seraphina’s hand rising to answer questions. Noticed the way Professor Delacroix’s violet eyes lingered on her with what might have been interest.

He noticed, too, that Seraphina glanced his way once or twice. Her expression thoughtful rather than hurt. As if she were trying to solve a puzzle and hadn’t yet found all the pieces.

He looked away and focused on his notes.

History and Politics came last. Yet another vast lecture hall designed to make students feel small.

Professor Aldwin droned on about ancient treaties and trade agreements. Things that felt utterly meaningless when you’d watched your father count crossbow bolts before a goblin raid. Calculating whether they had enough ammunition to survive the night.

The professor spoke of tariffs and diplomatic marriages. As if these things were the foundations upon which civilization rested.

Perhaps they were, for nobles in their comfortable manors.

For the people on the borders, civilization rested on a different foundation. The willingness of ordinary men and women to stand in the dark with sharpened steel and refuse to let the monsters through.

Rhys took notes anyway. The material would be on the exams. He needed good grades to keep his scholarship. Without the scholarship, he couldn’t stay. Without staying, he couldn’t earn the money Elara needed.

The equation was simple. The solution wasn’t.

Evening found him in his tiny dormitory room. Barely large enough for the narrow bed, small desk, and single wardrobe that held his meager possessions. The walls were thin. He could hear everything in the adjacent rooms.

Through those walls, he heard Thomlin Ashworth practicing forms with his masterwork longsword. A blade that probably cost more than his entire village earned in a season of harvest. The sound of steel on air came again and again. Each swing perfect and effortless.

Meanwhile, Rhys’s spear merely creaked when he lifted it. The wood protested even gentle handling with small noises that spoke of approaching failure.

He set the spear down carefully and pulled out the small locket from beneath his shirt. The bronze was warm against his palm from resting against his chest all day. Worn smooth from years of handling. The original engravings faded to mere suggestions of what they had once been.

It had belonged to his mother before it held Elara’s portrait. Passed down through generations of women in their family who had never had much but had always had each other.

Inside was his sister’s face. Painted by the village’s only artist as a gift when Rhys left for the academy. Old Willem had been a soldier once, before age and injuries forced him to set down his sword and pick up a brush. He had offered to paint the portrait for free, saying he owed Rhys’s father a debt from the campaigns.

The miniature was barely larger than a silver coin. Yet Willem had somehow captured everything.

Elara’s face looked back at him. Twelve years old but seeming both younger and older at once. Her pale skin marked by the telltale signs of her sickness.

Blue veins visible beneath translucent skin like river tributaries mapping across porcelain. Too prominent. Too close to the surface. Dark shadows under eyes that seemed too old for her young face.

The artist had captured her smile. Brave and bright. The smile she wore like armor against a world that had given her every reason not to smile at all.

But Willem couldn’t capture how her hands shook when she thought no one was looking. He couldn’t show how she had to pause for breath after climbing even a few stairs. Leaning against the wall with one hand while pretending to admire the view from the window.

She never complained. Not once, in all the years since the sickness first manifested. She never asked why her body was betraying her while other children ran and played.

She just smiled that brave smile and said she was fine. She was managing. There was no need to fuss.

"Still here," he whispered to the portrait. The words had become a ritual. A prayer of sorts. Spoken every night before sleep and every morning upon waking.

"Still fighting."

His calloused thumb traced the edge of the portrait. Careful not to smudge the delicate brushwork.

The bronze was warm. Almost alive.

"So am I."