The moment Leon was hurled over the cliff’s edge, tangled with the demon beast, Kasha’s face was all he could see—magnified, filling his entire vision.
And that image had the power to make his heart plummet far more violently than the pain of the creature’s claws tearing into his side.
The distance between them was not small. And yet her eyes, blown wide with terror, her bloodless lips, her pale hand shooting desperately outward—all of it felt close enough to touch.
“Leon!”
Kasha.
But there was no time to call her name. Still entangled with the demon beast, he began to fall. Then, at some point, a brutal impact struck the back of his skull, and the world went dark.
What woke him was pain—immense and absolute. Before he could even open his eyes, the savage pressure grinding into his ribcage sent bursts of white light across the darkness behind his eyelids.
When he finally managed to lift them, he was met with a dense canopy of branches set against a sky the color of blood. Those branches must have been what struck the back of his head during the fall. They had slowed his descent enough to keep him alive.
He felt a rough, coarse texture against his back and turned his head. Beneath him lay the carcasses of the wolf-demons he had cut down during the fight. The monsters he had slain had, in the end, saved his life.
One of them still had its claws buried in his side. Leon clenched his jaw and wrenched the claws free. The wound immediately released a torrent of blood, soaking through his shirt until the fabric clung heavy and wet against his skin.
He allowed himself a single moment of relief—at least he was alive—then attempted to push himself upright. That was when a fresh wave of agony tore through his right arm. His wrist had been bent clean backward, likely broken.
He reached across with his left hand and felt along the bones of his right wrist. He ground his teeth and tried to channel his holy power, but he had lost too much blood—the energy refused to come. Instead the pain only sharpened, and he lost consciousness again.
It was Kasha’s voice that pulled him back.
He forced his eyes open, but his vision kept flickering in and out. Through the haze, he could make out the blurred shape of her—crying.
I’ve made her cry. He needed to hold her, to soothe her, but his arms would not obey him.
Kasha stroked his right arm and wept without end.
“Leon. Please don’t die. I told you not to die.”
Her face was smeared with sweat and dirt—however she had climbed down the cliff—and utterly without color. She looked genuinely broken. He had never seen her so unguarded, so fragile. She trembled as though she were watching a nightmare unfold before her, whispering her plea like a prayer.
“Please… don’t die so senselessly. I’ll do anything. Anything you want…”
I’m not going to die. So please stop crying, Kasha.
He wanted to say it. But his voice would not come.
He gathered every last scrap of focus he had. Drawing together what remained of his holy energy, he managed for a few brief seconds to push through the pain and force words out.
“Alright. So… stop crying.”
“Leon??”
She had thought him dying—so when he spoke, her eyes flew wide with shock. Leon believed he had managed to smile at her.
But in the next instant, the darkness rushed back in as easily as it had before. Even as consciousness abandoned him, the only thing he could worry about was her safety.
When he came back to himself again, the surroundings had changed.
A cave?
Walls on all sides. Faint light filtering in from somewhere. And beneath him—a thin blanket had been laid out.
Did Kasha drag me here alone? How? That couldn’t have been easy work.
Then Kasha stepped back into his field of vision, a woven basket full of herbs in her hands—herbs he didn’t recognize—her face still a mess of sweat and grime, and yet the sight of her filled him with something like relief.
She caught the faint parting of his eyelids, and immediately opened the canteen at his hip. She tilted it to let water pass between his lips.
“Just hold on a little longer, Leon. This time… I’ll keep you alive. I promise.”
This time. As though she carried the memory of having failed to save him before. She spoke those words like a vow, resolute and aching.
He didn’t have the strength to swallow. The water spilled down the corner of his mouth. He wanted to reassure her, but he couldn’t even manage a smile. The shock from his wounds was severe, and the bleeding had not yet stopped. If he didn’t get it under control soon, his condition would become genuinely dangerous.
Then Kasha began to work. Struggling, she unfastened his armor piece by piece, turning him as gently as she could so as not to hurt him. When she examined his injuries, a soft, pained sound escaped her lips.
The sound of fabric tearing.
With great effort, he pried his heavy eyelids open. She was ripping strips from the hem of her shirt to fashion bandages.
She cleaned the worst of the wounds—his ribs and his right arm—pouring water carefully over the clotted blood. Then she ground the herbs she had gathered and placed them with steady hands over the broken skin.
“This is clotroot. The bleeding will stop soon.”
She whispered it as she finished wrapping the bandages around him.
There was something in the way she moved through this place—a familiarity, subtle but unmistakable. The blanket she had laid beneath him, the basket she had used to carry the herbs—these were not things one would simply find lying around.
Surely not.
He recalled a story she had told him once—of a childhood spent hiding inside a barrier with her mother, a kind of fugitive existence.
Is this the cave she and her mother hid in, all those years ago?
He wanted to look more carefully, but his body refused even that small effort. His head was splitting, and he was burning with fever.
Through the wavering edges of his vision, he could make out her swollen eyes and raw, chapped hands. He was desperate to tell her he was going to be alright—desperate, and utterly unable.
He had fought in countless battles and taken countless wounds. But he had never been this badly hurt. The helplessness was so foreign it felt almost surreal.
Why is it that you always reduce me to this state, Kasha?
Then the cool touch of her hand came to rest against his forehead.
“The fever isn’t going down… I’ll have to go back out and find some feverwort.”
Don’t go.
As her warmth lifted away from his brow, all he felt was the ache of its absence.
“Leon, Leon. Are you alright? Can you hear me?”
Kasha’s urgent voice brought him back.
How much time had passed?
The light that had been filtering through the cracks in the cave walls was gone. Darkness pressed in from every direction.
Had she been alone with him all this time, tending to him in this dark?
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to start a fire…”
Her voice, heavy with self-reproach, floated toward him from somewhere in the dark. He was confused at first—then the situation made itself known to his body before his mind fully caught up.
He was shaking. All of him.
The bleeding seemed to have stopped. The fever may have broken. But now a deep, vicious chill had set in. His teeth had begun to chatter.
What a wretched state to be in.
Kasha had wrapped him in the blanket at some point, bundling him as tightly as she could. But the shaking would not ease.
Then her hand found his. She didn’t seem to realize yet that he was awake.
“Leon. I won’t let you go like this. Not this time. I just… I don’t know what else to do.”
There was exhaustion in her voice—and desperation beneath it. Hearing it, something stirred in the very base of his chest, like a force rising from deep within.
He opened his cracked, dry lips.
“What do you mean by ‘this time’… Kasha?”
The sudden sound of his voice startled her. He heard her shift.
“You’re awake? Are you alright? Should I give you more water?”
She tipped the canteen slowly between his lips again. He forced himself to swallow, then—with tremendous effort—raised his hand.
She leaned closer. He reached for her face in the dark, and found it—cupping it in one palm. Small, and wet all over with tears.
“I’m fine.”
“You can’t possibly be.”
Her voice caught with something she was trying very hard to hold back. His trembling hand moved across her cheek in a slow, careful stroke.
“You said it, Kasha. ‘In this life,’ you said. You told me—absolutely, absolutely not to die. Not in this life.”
“…!”
He felt her face go rigid against his hand.
Absolutely, absolutely don’t die. Not in this life.
He was admitting it—that he had, in fact, been awake for the confession she had poured out on impulse the night before the expedition departed.
“H-how… Does that mean—you heard everything? Even about me breaking the seal on the magic stone…?”
Her voice trembled as she asked.
He gave a slow, effortful nod.
A cough tore out of him. It felt as though someone had seized his ribs and shaken them without mercy. His mind reeled.
Leon forced his mouth open again, his voice shaking unsteadily with the chill still raking through him.
“I promise I won’t die… Kasha. In return—will you tell me your story? I don’t want to fall asleep again.”
Hearing his voice, Kasha felt a cold fear clench around her heart.
His life was hanging by a thread. That he had overheard her confession—that no longer felt like something worth agonizing over.
Confessing how she had made him so desperately, thoroughly unhappy in her previous life—telling him the impossible truth of her return through time—none of it felt difficult in that moment.
Even if he thought she was out of her mind—so what?
Leon might die. That alone was enough to make it feel as though her heart were being wrung out by a fist.
She pressed her hand to his forehead again.
He’s so cold.
His voice was growing fainter, and that frightened her. She reached out and shook his stillness.
“Leon, you can’t fall asleep.”
She had the feeling—a certainty, almost—that if he slept now, something irreversible would follow. The darkness felt as though it were flooding in at the edges. But Kasha pressed her jaw shut and held firm.
I will not let you go. Not like this.
She had not fought this hard, for this long, only to lose him here.
Kasha made her decision. Whatever she could do in this moment—she would do all of it. No fear. No hesitation.
She took her hand from his forehead. Then, slowly, she brought her fingers to the buttons of her shirt—and began to undo them, one by one.
