The carriage was a cage of tense, uncomfortable silence.
It was a large, functional vehicle, designed to transport academy students on official business.
Ten of them sat inside, arranged in pairs on opposite benches.
Azrael looked out of the window.
He cast a glance across the aisle.
Kaelen was seated somewhere near Seraphina.
Elvara sat next to Isolde further down the aisle. Elvara appeared nervous while the princess simply smiled, analyzing all present with an impassive air.
Toward the rear of the cabin, Lyra was talking to Orion, the two of them in hushed and serious tones.
He then looked at the person sitting beside him. Selvara.
He muttered under his breath, a quiet sigh of frustration. "Why does it always have to be me who gets dragged into all this?"
Selvara turned her head, her ice-blue eyes fixing on him. "You ran into another problem, huh?"
He didn't respond, just kept his gaze fixed on the passing trees.
"Well," she added, her voice losing its usual mocking tone. "That's what I can expect from a troublemaker. Anyway, I have a question for you. And only you can tell me what I need to know."
Her playfulness was gone. Her voice was quiet, serious, and held a strange hint of sorrow. He remained silent, but he was listening.
"I wanted to know what makes you this crazy," she began again, her voice low, meant only for him.
"What makes you put your life on the line every single time? Are you not scared of death? What makes a weakling like you bet everything on such impossible odds?"
She stopped, then started again, her words more intense this time. "So tell me, Azrael. What makes you you? What makes you the Azrael Ashveil I have seen, not just some person from the rumors?"
He waited for a long time, the carriage rocking gently. Finally, he turned to face her.
"Who said I'm not afraid of death?" he said, his voice a low murmur. "To be precise, I am the most scared one in here."
"There is no option for me that is death," he continued. "I can't afford it. Because my death wouldn't just be my own."
Selvara looked confused. "Then why? Why are you always putting your life on the line? First, the duel with Kaelen. Then the ranking battle. And the demon followers... you were this close to death. Yet you say you're scared, but you run straight towards it."
"Death haunts me, just like it does others," he said, his violet eyes locking with hers. "The difference is, I refuse to let fear decide who I am."
He leaned back against the seat. "And for me, death isn't just when your body stops working, when you vanish from this world. There's another kind of death. It's when you're still breathing, but you're dead inside. When you're not living the life you dreamed of. When the strings of your life are being pulled by someone else."
He shrugged. "Is that a life? No. It's a death, anyway."
"As you said, I have been in countless deadly scenarios. But whenever I am in that situation, I make sure of one thing. If death comes for me, it'll find me fighting for something that matters not hiding in the shadows."
His words hit her. She could feel the truth in them, an answer to a question she hadn't even known how to ask.
"Something that matters, huh?" she whispered. "So what's that 'something'?"
"Something that I can give my life for without hesitating," he said, his voice softening for the first time. "Something I can go to any lengths for. They are like the world to me. The people that I love more than myself."
Listening to his confession, Selvara was completely thrown.
'Love?' A heartless boy like him, the cruel monster from the stories, was going all out for love? 'Who could it be?' she wondered. 'Family? A friend? A girlfriend? No, a girlfriend wouldn't be it.'
Whoever they were, she thought, they were lucky.
"Love, huh?" she said, her voice laced with a bitterness he didn't expect. "So that's what drives you crazy. You have someone, and that's why you're doing all this. But everyone's not that lucky."
Her gaze drifted to the window, but she wasn't seeing the forest. "You say love drives you but not everyone gets that. Some don't have anyone to call at night. Some wake up just to pretend tomorrow won't be worse. They follow orders, hide themselves, and count the sunrises like pay for surviving."
She looked at him, her own pain raw and exposed. "What about them, Azrael? What about the ones who don't have a reason to stand?"
Her voice dropped to a half-whisper, so quiet he could barely hear it over the wheels of the carriage. "Do you know what it's like to live only to escape? To wear a mask so long you forget your own face? I… I see them everywhere. They're not brave. They're tired. They're waiting for something that never comes."
He looked at her, at the Ice Witch of the North, and for the first time, he saw the prisoner inside.
"You're right," he said softly. "Not everyone gets someone to call. Not everyone has a reason that makes them brave. Fear is real. Fear is honest. But being scared and letting fear decide your life are two different things."
He leaned forward, his voice earnest. "Think of it like a game: fear is an enemy you can't erase, only outplay. You don't stop being afraid by pretending you outmaneuver it. You make choices so that even if the worst happens, it happens for something that mattered, not for nothing. That's the logic. Simple, ugly, but true."
He added, his voice dropping as he thought of the endless work on Earth, the constant struggle for their survival. "There was a time in my life when I felt tired. So tired of waiting for a day when I could just be free of all the tension, all the suffering." Read complete version only at novel·fiɾe·net
"But I never lost hope," he continued, a flicker of that old fire in his eyes. "After every brutal, tiring day, I would see the faces of the ones I was doing it all for. And that gave me the power to carry on, to keep the cycle going."
He paused, then added, "And you are wrong again. There is no person who is not loved by any."
"No matter who you are, no matter how much evil you think you've done, there will be someone. Someone who wants you to be alive. Not the dead one I talked about. You just need to figure it out sooner."
He gave his own example, the lie feeling like a strange kind of truth. "I was the evil one. People badmouthed me everywhere. But when I realized the love that my own people had for me, it was too late." He was thinking of the real Azrael, of Sebastian, of the servants who had held a secret faith in the boy he used to be.
"Out of all that," he finished, "there is still somebody out there praying for me."
Selvara's eyes widened when she listened to him. It was like he was the sun cutting through the cold, gray fog of her own life, one where it showed a warmth she had forgotten existed.
Then their carriage suddenly lurked backward, with a loud screech, and the wheels ran on gravel for an instant.
"This is where we register," the driver called. "I'll show you to the guild, come with me."
They all tumbled out of the carriage. This wasn't like the grand, clean streets of the capital; it was a busy little town. The buildings were made of rough-hewn wood and stone, and the streets are part mud, part cobblestones.
The air smelled of woodsmoke, roasted meat, and unwashed bodies.
A galvanizing real life, raw and chaotic as it was, had abandoned the academy. Blacksmiths' hammers rang on an open-air forge.
Merchants shouting their wares from bright stalls. A band of indifferent adventurers, outfitted in shoestring armor, stumbles out of a tavern, laughing boisterously.
They followed the driver through the masses infested on the main street and maneuvered through pushed wagons and shouting children.
Just as they neared a large, sturdy-looking building with a sign depicting a crossed sword and axe-the Adventurer's Guild-suddenly, a loud noise was coming out from a nearby restaurant.
A little guy, probably no more than ten years old, wild and unkempt black hair, ran out the restaurant door clutching a loaf of bread against him.
"Thief! Thief!" yelled a big, angry-faced man with a floury apron as he ran after the kid. "Get back here, you little rat!"