Chapter 140. You Gave Me a Chance, and I Finally Know How to Use It
"Aldric." The name left her lips like a prayer and a confession all at once.
Catherine sank to her knees, the damp earth soaking into her uniform as she pressed a handful of hardy, bright blooms against the base of his stone flowers chosen specifically because they were stubborn enough to survive the biting wind and the coming frost.
"I finally read it... The whole journal... all the way to the final page."
Her voice wavered, but she didn’t break. A small, fragile smile touched her lips even as the first tear carved a hot path through the dust on her cheek.
"You’d be insufferable about it, wouldn’t you? So smug, standing there with that infuriating look on your face, telling me ’I told you so.’ I wasted eight years believing exactly what you warned me not to believe."
"If you were here... God, Aldric, you’d never let me hear the end of it."
She moved to the next two markers with a measured grace, her movements mechanical yet tender. The twin stones stood side by side, a silent echo of the bond they had shared in life.
"Rowan... Wren..." She laid flowers for each, her fingers lingering on the rough granite. "I have students now... Real students..."
"There are two of them who fight together the way you two used to..."
"They don’t just share a formation; they share a rhythm, finishing each other’s momentum before the other even realizes they’ve shifted."
"Watching them... it’s like seeing ghosts of what you built together."
"I think you’d have liked them... Actually, no, I think you’d have found some way to compete with them within five minutes of meeting them."
A wet laugh escaped her, quickly stifled by a sob she refused to let fully form. Finally, she knelt before Mira’s stone.
The air seemed to grow colder around her, the silence of the cemetery deepening as her voice dropped to something raw and painfully private. William stood several paces back, a sentinel in the gray morning light, catching every syllable that carried on the still air.
"Mira." Her palm pressed flat against the cold, unforgiving stone, as if trying to feel a heartbeat through the mineral. "You told me, at the very end... you said that staying quiet, that punishing myself with guilt every single day, wasn’t honoring what you all gave me."
"You said I was betraying you by refusing to move forward." Her shoulders shook once, a single convulsion of grief. "I understand now..."
"It took eight years of drowning in my own head and more pain than any human should ever have to endure... but I finally understand."
"I stopped, Mira... I stopped running from the memory of you..."
’I’m not just surviving the aftermath anymore... I’m actually living. "Catherine smiled. "The way you wanted me to."
When she rose, she didn’t look like a broken girl clinging to a tragedy. She brushed the dirt from her knees with steady hands and turned to face all four stones at once.
Her expression was still etched with the lines of loss, but the hollow, haunted emptiness in her eyes had been replaced by something solid. Something forged.
"Thank you," she whispered to the wind, to the names, to the empty earth. "For everything..."
"For the lessons, the pain, and the sacrifice... I used to think I carried your deaths like a millstone around my neck, something that would eventually drag me under."
’But you didn’t give me a weight... You gave me a chance."
"And I finally know how to use it."
William remained a silent shadow, offering nothing but the unwavering strength of his presence. He knew that in moments like this, words were cheap.
Only presence mattered. When Catherine finally turned to face him, the transformation was undeniable.
There was a clarity in her gaze he hadn’t seen since before the world had shattered, not even during the adrenaline-fueled violence of the fight with Corwin. This wasn’t the peace of forgetting; it was the peace of integration.
She had stopped fighting her grief and had begun to carry it as part of her strength.
"Thank you for coming with me," she said, stepping toward him.
Her fingers found his hand, her grip warm and surprisingly firm.
"I wouldn’t have missed it," William replied quietly.
"I mean it, William." She looked toward the distant spires of the academy, where the smoke of rebuilding fires rose into the gray sky. "I don’t think I could have done this alone... Not yet."
"You could have," he said, his voice honest and stripped of any false comfort. "You’ve proven you can survive almost anything standing alone."
’But I’m glad you didn’t have to."
...
The letter from Albert’s office arrived three days later, delivered by a junior administrator who looked like he was approaching William with the kind of reverence usually reserved for holy relics.
The boy’s hands trembled slightly as he extended the parchment bearing the Headmaster’s wax seal, his eyes darting between William’s scarred face and the official document as if expecting it to combust.
William took the letter, breaking the seal with practiced indifference, but as his eyes scanned the dense, bureaucratic prose, his eyebrows shot upward. He read it once.
Then he read it again. Then he read it a third time, just to make sure he hadn’t suffered some strange, sudden, man-activated hallucination.
It was a commendation official, formal, and dripping with institutional gratitude, but the real message was at the bottom. A substantial bonus, awarded specifically for his role in the defense of the academy and the city.
The number listed there was obscene. It was more coin than he had earned in his entire tenure as an instructor, combined with what he suspected he’d earn for the next decade.
"What in the hell am I supposed to do with this?" William muttered to the empty room, staring at the sum as if the numbers might suddenly rearrange themselves into something more sensible.
Word, apparently, traveled through the academy faster than a corrupted mana spike. Within the hour, there was a deliberate, rhythmic pounding on his door before it swung open to reveal Kaela.
She didn’t ask to come in; she simply installed herself in his doorway, leaning against the frame with an expression of intense, faux philosophical consideration.
"You should buy a second sword," she said without preamble. "A backup Aetherion!"
"You know, for when the first one inevitably gets chipped against something impossibly stupid."
William sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "There is only one Aetherion, Kaela."
"Grock spent four years of his life pouring his soul into that blade... You can’t just ’buy’ another one."
"Then commission a new one! Think bigger, Instructor Wade!" She stepped into the room, waving an imaginary sword around. "Different enchantment set."
"Maybe something with fire this time. Or lightning. Or maybe Something that makes a dramatic boom when you unsheathe it!"
"Think of the intimidation factor."
"I don’t think that’s how metallurgy or magic works."
"Fine, fine, boring pragmatist," Kaela rolled her eyes, undeterred. "Or, and hear me out, you could sponsor an official tournament!"
"Name it after yourself... The Wade Invitational!"
"I’d win it, obviously, but the publicity alone would put the academy on the map." Kaela grinned. "We could sell tickets, enchanted snacks, commemorative armbands..."
"I appreciate the confidence in your skills, Kaela, but I am not interested in starting a gladiatorial circus."
Lia appeared behind her like a ghost, passing by the doorway with the measured stride of someone who had been eavesdropping for several minutes.
"His suggestion is marginally less catastrophic than yours," she said calmly. "If you want to actually benefit from the windfall, invest it."
"Property near the academy walls is undervalued right now because of the recent... disturbances."
"Once the new wards are stabilized, demand will skyrocket. Buy land, build secure housing, and let the rent pay for your retirement."
William looked at Lia, genuine surprise flickering across his features. "That’s actually... remarkably reasonable advice."
"Boring," Kaela interjected, crossing her arms. "But reasonable... Ugh!"
"Boring is how you survive, Kaela," Lia countered without breaking stride.
"And how you die of old age before you’ve done anything fun," Kaela shot back.
"You’re both missing the point entirely."
The voice came from Ellie, who had been quietly hovering near the window, seemingly absorbed in a book.
She closed it with a soft thud and looked at William with an expression that was uncharacteristically perceptive. "You’re thinking about the academy, or weapons, or land... But you’re forgetting the human element."
William arched an eyebrow. "Oh? And what would that be?"
"You could take Catherine somewhere nice," Ellie said.
Her tone was entirely casual, as though she were suggesting he buy a loaf of bread rather than addressing the complex emotional aftermath of two people who had nearly died together. "You two have been through hell and back these past few weeks."
"Literally... Neither of you has had a single day that wasn’t defined by training drills, council meetings, or trying not to get eaten by monsters."
"Just... take her on a normal day. Together. No swords, no politics, no impending doom."
The silence that followed was heavy. William looked down at the letter in his hand, the gold-stamped numbers suddenly seeming much less important than the simple suggestion hanging in the air.