Chapter 80: Restraint
Faint, ragged breathing cut through the silence of the dark alley as Bernardo pressed one hand flat against the wall, leaning his weight into it, the other hand cupped over his nose. The bleeding had stopped, but the evidence of it was everywhere, his gloved hands dark and slick with dried blood, the metallic smell of it still clinging to him in the narrow space between the walls. He stared at his hands for a long moment, his mind pulling him back to it against his will. The ferocity on that boy's face. The pure, concentrated hatred that had come off him like heat. The speed. The strength. All of it replaying in slow, grinding detail.
Bernardo had never once doubted his ability. His damage reversal was passive, effortless, as natural to him as breathing, whatever was done to him, he sent back. He had always known it wasn't perfect, that perhaps ten percent of any impact slipped through the reversal and stayed with him, but that ten percent had never amounted to anything worth noting. Until now. He still couldn't fully accept it, that the fraction that had gotten through had done this to him. He pushed off the wall and moved deeper into the alley, his steps unsteady, the disorientation still sitting thick behind his eyes.
*How did he get so strong?* The thought turned over and over. *I almost killed that boy weeks ago. How was he even capable of doing that?*
He worked through the implication slowly, and the answer that came back made something cold move through him. If the reversal hadn't activated, if that fist had landed on him with its full force and nothing had redirected it, he would have been destroyed on the spot. He had seen what Tyler's own body had done when it received the redirected impact.
Launched like a cannonball through a door, through a fence, across an open street, narrowly missing the people standing on it, and straight through the wall of another building. He felt, with a quiet and genuine unease, that he had been lucky the boy had lost consciousness when he did. He didn't want to think about what would have come next otherwise.
He snapped his gaze forward and set his jaw. The sack tied at his waist hung heavy against his hip. He untied it and took it in his bloodied hand, then used his free hand to pull his cloak up and drag it across his nose, clearing away what remained. *I have to get to them. Quick.* He knew where the twins had said they would meet, and he had to reach it fast, because by now, with the destruction and the guards and the noise of it all, there was no question.
They had been caught. And as soon as anyone started asking questions, he and the twins needed to be gone from this town entirely.
He ran, moving through the alleys in long, fast strides, the shadows closing behind him at every turn.
***
Beyond the rooftops and the narrow streets, the sun had slipped past the horizon, bleeding out across the endless green of the valleys before sinking beneath them entirely, pulling the last of the light down with it.
Tyler groaned. His eyes opened slowly, blinking against the dark, and he found himself staring up at the familiar ceiling of the room he once called his. For a moment he lay still, and then everything came back at once and he gasped, pushing himself upright and immediately a numbing, throbbing pain detonated through his skull. He grabbed his head with both hands.
James was standing near the door, his back resting against the wall, watching him. "You're up," he said, and crossed the room quickly.
"How did I get in here?" Tyler said, looking around, his thoughts still coming apart at the edges.
"You were found unconscious inside another building."
Tyler's eyes moved slowly around the room as the pieces tried to arrange themselves. He remembered it, his fist connecting, Bernardo's body thrown backward through the wall with excessive force, and then simultaneously, inexplicably, the sensation of his own face absorbing that same impact, maybe even more, his own body slamming backward, an explosive pain detonating across his nose and mouth like he had run face-first into something solid and immovable.
"Tyler, your face was covered in blood. And from what people saw, it looked like you were thrown directly into the building. People saw you ramming through the door of the house."
James paused. Tyler was staring at his own legs, his expression distant.
"The guards found you before I did. By the time the news reached me, you were already in a cell."
"What?" Tyler's head came up.
"Yeah. A lot of time passed. It's night now."
Tyler blinked. The only light in the room was the small candle on the drawer beside the bed, its flame throwing a thin, warm glow across the walls. He let his eyes rest on it for a moment as his brain worked through everything James was laying out.
"I convinced them to let you go. I told them you were a victim, and you weren't the only one."
"What do you mean?"
"Almost every home in the north district has reported items missing. There were bandits moving through, hitting house after house. The guards said they came close to catching a few of them but didn't manage it."
As James spoke, a fresh wave of throbbing rolled through Tyler's head and he winced sharply, one hand pressing against his forehead as he hissed through his teeth.
"What exactly happened?"
"That man." Tyler's voice was low. "The one who almost killed me in that alley. He was there. In the house."
James went still. "Wait, you mean the thief?"
"Yeah."
"He was in our house?"
"Yeah."
James's jaw tightened. "And he's the one who caused all of this."
"Yes. But that's not all." Tyler looked up at him. "Something happened when I hit him."
"What?"
"I don't know how to explain it. I went in to attack him, and when my fist connected, the exact opposite happened. It was almost as if I had struck myself instead."
"What are you saying?" James said, his brow pulling together.
"It must be some kind of skill. When I hit him, whatever I did came back to me. Like the attack got redirected somehow."
James said nothing. He stared at Tyler, and behind his eyes something was turning over quietly.
He remembered arriving at the scene, how he had pushed through the people gathering in the street and stopped at what remained of his house. The kitchen wall caved in. The door gone entirely. The building across the road with its wall caved in where Tyler's body had gone through it. He had stood there and tried to make sense of the scale of it. *That means that punch was insanely strong,* he thought, his eyes still on Tyler's face. *If the skill hadn't activated, he might have killed that man on the spot.*
"So he got away," Tyler said, his teeth coming together.
"Yeah."
Tyler looked up at him, and something in his expression shifted, a sudden, sharp awareness breaking through the fog. "Damn. I'm sorry, James."
"What?"
"The house. Everything. You're supposed to be leaving tomorrow. What's going to happen? What is the owner going to say?"
"Don't worry about it. I already spoke to him. He knows it wasn't your fault." James moved slightly, settling his weight against the wall. "The story isn't fully confirmed yet, there are guards coming, and you'll need to tell them what happened yourself. But I already gave them my side of it. I told them I had sent you to get herbs. The landlord was there when I explained it. He was furious, but there wasn't much he could do. And you won't have to pay for any of it, believe it or not, he's fortunate the damage wasn't worse. In a world like this, that entire building could have been reduced to nothing."
Tyler nodded slowly, the weight of it settling. "Right."
A knock came at the door.
James turned. "Come in," he said as he went and reached for the handle.
The door swung open and three men stepped through in silver armor that caught the dim candlelight, their builds broad and combat-ready, the kind of frames that came from years of real use rather than training yards. One of them stood a head above the other two, his shoulders filling the doorframe, the muscle in his arms pressing against the joints of his armor in a way that made the whole suit look slightly undersized.
It was this man who spoke first, his voice coming out low and rough, carrying the same gravel as James's but sitting a register deeper. "Kid, we're here to ask you some questions."
James folded his arms and leaned back against the wall as Tyler walked the guards through everything. They listened without interrupting, their expressions giving nothing away, exchanging only the occasional glance between themselves as Tyler spoke.
When he finished, the silence that followed lasted long enough to feel deliberate. Then the muscular man pressed his steel-gloved hand to his chin and said, "Then that skill must increase the output somehow, because there is no way that redirected power was yours alone."
Tyler felt the argument rise in him and let it go. There was no point. They had already decided what made sense to them, and nothing he said was going to move that, and more than anything he wanted them out of the room because their presence was making the air feel smaller.
Besides, as far as they knew, he was a D-rank, and an assassin at that, someone known more for speed than strength. Whatever they were picturing when they imagined his fist, it wasn't what had actually happened.
The man he had hit was likely C-rank, possibly B. That was the version of events they could accept, and he was content to let them keep it.
"Can you give us a description?"
"Sure," Tyler said, and described Bernardo in full the dark brown cloak, the build beneath it, the details of his face, working his way down methodically until there was nothing left to add.
The guards exchanged a look. One of them said they had been given this description before. James straightened off the wall and told them why, that the same man had nearly killed Tyler once already, in an alley, not long ago. The guards stilled at that. They looked at Tyler once more, said what remained to be said, and filed out.
The door clicked shut and Tyler exhaled slowly through his nose.
"See, there was no need to be nervous," James said.
"I don't know. It felt like they were fishing for reasons to put me back in that cell."
"That's just how interrogation works. They apply pressure and watch what comes apart. The fact that nothing did, that was the right answer." A brief silence settled between them. "Are you sure the landlord isn't going to say anything?"
"Trust me. He's furious, but his hands are tied. He tried to find a way to make us pay for it, but when someone is attacked and the destruction follows from that, the victim doesn't carry the liability. It might have worked differently where you come from, but that's how it stands here." Tyler thought about it and found that it actually made sense, a mage whose battle leveled a building wouldn't leave the person they had been fighting facing charges. And when he thought about it clearly, what had happened to him hadn't really been a fight at all.
"So what now?" Tyler said.
"That I don't know. We just have to hope the guards catch him." James's voice carried no particular optimism in it.
Tyler stared down at his thighs, and the dissatisfaction that had been sitting at the back of everything since he woke up moved forward and settled in his chest properly. He had wanted to hurt that man. He had thrown everything into it, and instead of landing it had come back to him, and now Bernardo was somewhere out there and Tyler was sitting in a dim room with a headache. It felt like reaching for something with both hands and closing them around nothing.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood.
"So you can stand," James said, a trace of surprise in it.
"Yeah." Tyler rolled his shoulders, taking stock. His body felt only mildly tender, the damage spread thin across him, all of it, almost all of it, concentrated in his head, which still throbbed in long, slow pulses behind his eyes.
"You've truly become strong, haven't you?"
"Yeah," Tyler said, and his voice had none of the satisfaction the word usually carried with it.
James's eyes narrowed slightly. He let out a quiet breath. "With the wall in the kitchen gone, anyone could walk through it. I'll have to stay here tonight. I already told Lisa not to worry."
"Lisa came here?"
"She did."
Tyler felt the guilt of that move through him, Lisa leaving whatever she had been doing for the festival to come here because of something that had happened in her own house. He looked at James. "What if you go? You and Lisa should enjoy the festival. I'll stay here and keep watch."
"Tyler, you really don't have to—"
"Don't worry about it. I'm the one who caused this. Not entirely, but enough. If I stay it'll be better." He looked at James, and a small, genuine smile found its way onto his face despite everything. "You should enjoy the last festival of Veridia with your family."
James opened his mouth.
"Please," Tyler said, before he could get there.
James held his gaze for a moment, then relented. "Fine. But don't sit here and blame yourself all night. You have a habit of doing that. Don't carry more than you need to."
"Yeah, I know," Tyler said, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. "But you don't have to worry about it."
"All right." James pushed off the wall and moved toward the door. "I'll see you in the morning."
His footsteps faded down the living room and then the room was quiet.
Tyler stood in the middle of it, alone, and the silence settled around him like something that had been waiting. He let his hands drop to his sides, tipped his head back, and stared up at the ceiling.
"God damn it," he breathed.
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