Chapter 48: Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
The Witch glanced down at the thermos in her hand. A pale blue blade hummed once, retracting from the lid. Particles of light drifted apart and vanished into the air.
She set the thermos back on the edge of the desk. Not a single scratch on the casing. Good as new.
The door cracked open. Right. Oswald's little tantrum had blown it shut earlier.
Uriel poked half his head inside. His eyes swept the room in a rapid circuit: toppled bookshelves, ash and shredded paper carpeting the floor, the headmaster sprawled unconscious, and the Witch standing dead center without a hair out of place. Satisfied, he pushed the door wide and slipped in sideways.
His uniform was a mess. Scorch marks blotched the fabric, one sleeve was half-burned away, and his shoulder was caked in soot. He'd adjusted his posture mid-fall, sure, but the fire below was raging, and punching through a wall of flame tended to leave marks.
The Witch hurried over the moment he crossed the threshold. Golden eyes swept over him twice before her hand hesitated near his shoulder, wanting to touch but afraid of brushing a wound.
"Did you fall? Where does it hurt? Let me see."
Three questions fired in rapid succession. She'd dropped the Witch voice entirely. What came out was pure mom-mode—soft, clingy, and thick with worry.
Uriel waved her off and slapped a smoldering scrap of cloth from his sleeve.
"I'm fine. Just the clothes. But hey, at least you don't have to wash pomegranate juice out of them anymore. Time for a new set."
The Witch froze. She stared at his ruined uniform and gave one solemn nod.
"Right. New set."
Uriel stepped past her and looked down at the body on the floor. Oswald Rutherford. Mithril-rank. Former martial tournament champion. Renowned adventurer. Mid-tier operative of the Curse Cult. Headmaster of the Academy. Now he was just a sack of old laundry dumped in a corner, white hair splayed out, a dark pool spreading slowly beneath him. Stone dead.
Uriel watched for two seconds. Nothing flickered across his face. He looked away.
Outside, the fire still raged. Flames had crawled from the teaching building to the clock tower, painting half the sky orange. Shouts and footsteps echoed from below—students calling for help, teachers organizing evacuations, and somewhere in the distance, the low moan of Royal Knight Order horns. Time to move.
"We leave first. Debrief later."
He kept his voice low. The Witch nodded.
She slipped out through the window. Uriel took the fire escape on the side of the corridor. They regrouped in the shadow of the teaching building's rear wall, the Witch already back to being Tian. From there they cut through the old campus along a path the knights hadn't cordoned off yet, vaulted the outer wall, and melted into the capital's night.
---
By the time they reached the inn, it was well past midnight. The glow from the Academy was still visible blocks away, flickering against the glass door of the lobby. A young bespectacled woman at the front desk was standing on her toes, craning her neck to see outside. When the two of them pushed through the door, she blinked—a male student in a charred uniform and a silver-haired classmate too delicate-featured to place as a boy or girl, also in uniform. They looked like they'd just crawled out of an inferno.
"Do you need help? Should I call a doctor?" The receptionist leaned over the counter.
"No thanks. Just a bit shaken up. One room, please."
Paperwork done, Uriel took the key, murmured a thanks, and pulled Tian upstairs. The hallway was quiet. Old wooden floorboards creaked softly underfoot. He reached the room, pushed the door open, stepped inside, and locked it in one fluid motion.
Then he turned, pressed his back against the door, and inhaled deep.
And completely lost it.
"That was SO COOL!"
His voice was barely above a whisper, but the words came faster and faster, tumbling over each other. He bounced on the balls of his feet, then grabbed both of Tian's wrists, eyes blazing.
"The dialogue! Line after line! Absolute cinema! That one about selfishness being fleeting and selflessness being eternal—I literally made it up on the spot, but when YOU said it? Whole different level. It hit different!"
He let go of her hands and started gesturing wildly.
"And then 'You don't know you were wrong. You just know you're about to die.' — EEEGH! How did I even come up with that?! No wait, MOM, how did you DELIVER it?! That tone! I was hiding in the shadows and I got full-body chills! And that smirk! Just that one little—hold on, hold on—"
He stepped back and tried to replicate the smirk. He had no idea how his mom had nailed it so perfectly. His directorial note at the time had been: just go "heh." He pulled up one corner of his mouth and narrowed his eyes. The result looked more like a stomachache. Didn't matter. Mom wouldn't laugh at him.
"'I don't care.' When you said that, the look in your eyes—like the whole world could hate you and it still wouldn't matter. That's peak. That's PEAK. This is the Holy Sword Witch at full power. Everything I designed back then came true. No—it's even better than I imagined!"
He gasped for air, then lunged forward again.
"And the SWORD! The lightsaber you pulled out of the thermos! Pale blue! I want to learn that too! Mom, you HAVE to teach me! Then I can just summon lightsabers anywhere, vwoom vwoom vwoom—you know it's basically a Jedi thing—"
He rambled on until he finally ran out of breath, cheeks flushed, hands still frozen mid-swing in some imaginary lightsaber duel, still muttering explanations about what a Jedi even was.
Tian stood in front of him, listening quietly. Her eyes curved into soft crescents, a faint smile on her lips—the kind of expression only a mother wears when her child is bouncing off the walls with joy. She didn't understand half of what he was saying. But she listened anyway, her attention entirely his, never interrupting his joyous little rant.
"As long as little Uri is happy." Her voice had returned to its usual warmth, the endings stretching soft and sweet. "I had fun too."
She tilted her head, earnest.
"Anything I should improve? I'll work harder next time."
"Yes!"
He dragged a chair over and sat down, launching into a full breakdown.
"First, the timing on the smirk needs a tweak. Too long and it becomes a chuckle—loses all the edge. Too short and it doesn't land. It has to be just enough for them to hear it but not quite see it. So the corner of your mouth moves first, then the sound comes out. Yeah, like what you did, just pull it back a fraction."
"Then the line delivery. Overall great this time, but one or two lines were rushed. The Witch speaks slow and steady. Every word should land like a thumbtack driven into their ear. Uh, bad metaphor... Anyway, no matter what they say, don't rush to respond. Silence is also dialogue."
"And combine it with movement. Like when you say 'I don't care,' tilt your head first. Chin up. Look down at them. Hold it half a beat. Then speak. The movements should be small. The Witch's intimidation comes from restraint."
He gestured for a while, then something clicked. His eyes lit up.
"Right! The art of extreme facial distortion! Mom, do you know what face acting is? It's when a character is completely expressionless most of the time, but at the critical moment they make an exaggerated—"
He looked up at Tian's face.
She was sitting primly on the edge of the bed, hands folded on her knees, her short silver hair glowing softly in the inn's amber lamplight. She listened with full attention, that same gentle curve on her lips, golden eyes steady and serene. Unchanged from start to finish.
Teach HER face acting?
That face. Those eyes.
Uriel swallowed the rest of the sentence.
"...Never mind. Not suitable. Forget I said anything."
He looked down at his uniform—burned through in a dozen places—and fingered the charred fabric at his sleeve. It finally registered that he was covered head to toe in grime. He hadn't noticed during the sprint, but now that he'd calmed down, the mix of ash and sweat clinging to his skin was unbearable.
"Shower first."
---
When he came out, the smoke-stink was finally gone. He towel-dried his hair in three rough swipes, faceplanted into the bed, and the last thing he saw before he passed out was Tian sitting on the other bed, brushing her hair. Then nothing.
When Uriel opened his eyes again, it was past noon.
Horse hooves and street vendor shouts from below dragged him out of sleep. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. Galatina had already changed into her everyday clothes and was sitting by the window, switched back from roommate mode to mom mode, cradling a cup of hot tea and peering through a gap in the curtains. Sunlight leaked through the slit and drew a thin line of gold across her face.
"What are they saying out there?"
"The whole street is talking about last night." She let the curtain fall and turned to him. "The Academy burned down."
Uriel rubbed his temples. Right. The fire. Half the teaching building gone, the auditorium roof caved in, plus the black-clad attackers and the kidnapped students. The fallout was even bigger than he'd expected. He pulled the curtain aside. Sure enough, Royal Knight Order patrols had multiplied on the streets, and a crowd was clustered around the notice board.
He let the curtain drop and leaned against the window frame, already calculating. With the Academy in this state, classes were definitely suspended. Might lose the entire semester. So what happened to his hard-earned student identity? Transfer? Wait for reconstruction? He'd ground for that perfectly mediocre, middle-of-the-pack exam score on pure skill. He wasn't about to let it go to waste.
Uriel scratched his head and sighed.
"...So what the hell am I gonna do about school?"