Chương 147: What Love Costs

The rage passed as suddenly as it had come, and when my vision finally cleared, I was on my knees, Kaito held gently in my own trembling arms, a wound at his side that no amount of desperate, horrified pressure from my hands could properly close.

"No," I whispered, the single word breaking apart as it left me.

"No, no, no—""Takeda." Kaito's voice was faint, but steady, his hand finding my own where it pressed uselessly against the wound.

"Look at me. Please." [STATUS — Len Fan] Cultivation: Heaven-Reaching Realm, Seventh Leaf Synchronization: 51. 40% Avatar (Kromitos): Heaven-Reaching Realm, Third Leaf — grieving, desperate"Child," the guardian said, its voice raw with a grief I'd never once heard from it before.

"I am so sorry. I tried to reach you. I am so deeply sorry I could not reach you in time." I couldn't answer. Ellia was already beside me, tears streaming freely, her hands joining mine in a desperate, futile attempt to somehow undo what could never be undone.

"I'm sorry," I said, the words shattering as they left me.

"Kaito, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean—""I know," Kaito said, something almost peaceful settling into his fading expression despite the pain still visible in it.

"I know you didn't. I don't blame you, Takeda. I never could."

"Why," I choked out.

"Why didn't you fight back? You could have — you're strong enough that you could have—""I couldn't hurt you," Kaito said simply, his voice growing fainter with every word.

"Not even to save my own life. I made my choice three years ago, and I've never once regretted loving you enough to make it. I won't regret this either." He drew a slow, unsteady breath, his grip on my hand tightening with whatever strength remained to him.

"Listen to me," he said.

"Please. This matters more than anything else I could say to you right now."

"I'm listening," I said, my voice barely a whisper.

"It was the only way to save the world," Kaito said, each word deliberate, final, carrying the full weight of three years' private conviction now spoken plainly for the last time.

"I believed that then. I believe it now, even like this. Whatever that thing actually was, whatever it actually wanted — I still believe, with everything I have left, that stopping you from crossing that threshold protected more lives than my choice ever cost. I need you to know that I made it with my whole heart, not despite loving you, but because I loved you, and everyone else, exactly that much."

"Kaito—""Find it," he said, his voice barely audible now, his eyes finding mine one final time with a clarity that cut through everything else breaking apart in the room around us.

"Whatever it actually is. Whatever it actually wants. I never learned its true name, Takeda, but I believe you're the only person who might actually be capable of finding out. Promise me you'll find out why. Promise me it wasn't for nothing."

"I promise," I said, the words tearing out of me raw and broken.

"I promise, Kaito. I'll find it. I'll find out everything." His hand went slack in mine, his eyes finally closing, the peace that had settled over his final words remaining even after everything else had gone still. I don't know how long I knelt there, Ellia's arms wrapped around me, Kromitos humming low and grieving beneath my ribs, before I finally found the strength to move again. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"I am so sorry, child," the guardian said quietly, once the worst of the silence had passed.

"I do not have words adequate to this loss. I only have this — whatever comes next, I do not believe you face it any less loved for what happened here today, however much grief and rage clouded the moment it happened."

"He gave me a promise to keep," I said, my voice hollow, exhausted, entirely wrung out.

"I intend to keep it. Whatever it costs me to find the truth, I owe him that much, after everything." Ellia held me close, saying nothing, simply present, the way she always had been through every impossible moment this remarkable, difficult journey had asked either of us to survive. When she finally spoke, her voice was gentle, careful not to press too hard against a wound still entirely too raw to properly examine.

"We'll bury him properly," she said.

"Give him that much, at least, before anything else. And then, when you're ready — not before — we'll start looking for whatever actually did this to both of you."

"Thank you," I said, and found I had nothing else left to offer beyond those two small, insufficient words. We laid Kaito to rest three days later, beside our parents, in a quiet cemetery overlooking the healed, sunlit city he had loved enough to make an unbearable choice for. I said nothing at the grave beyond his name, unable to trust myself with anything more, and Ellia stood beside me the entire time, steady, present, asking nothing of me that I wasn't yet ready to give.

"He loved you completely," the guardian said quietly, once the small, private service had finally ended.

"Whatever judgment history eventually renders on the choice he made, I do not believe love was ever absent from it, even at its most terrible. I do not say that to excuse what happened, child. I say it because I believe it is true, and because I believe you deserve to carry that truth alongside the grief, rather than instead of it."

"I know," I said quietly, watching the fresh earth settle over the last physical trace of the brother I'd lost twice now, in two different lives.

"I think that's what makes this so much harder to carry. Loving him, and grieving what he did, both at once, neither canceling the other out."

"Do you regret what happened?" the guardian asked carefully.

"The rage itself, I mean. Not the grief." I considered the question honestly before answering.

"Yes," I admitted.

"I don't think I'll ever stop regretting it. I spent two years learning patience, learning trust, learning to face even the hardest truths carefully rather than reacting to them blindly. And in the moment it mattered most, all of that failed me completely."

"It did not fail you entirely, child," the guardian said gently.

"It brought you this far. It taught you enough to grieve properly now, rather than simply burying this the way your brother once buried his own guilt. I do not believe two years of genuine growth undo themselves in a single terrible moment. I believe, rather, that moment is now part of what you carry forward, alongside everything else this remarkable journey has already taught you."

I let myself feel the full weight of that impossible, tangled grief a moment longer, Kromitos settled into a slow, mournful hum beneath my ribs, and understood, watching the wind stir gently through the cemetery's quiet trees, that whatever answer waited at the end of the promise I'd sworn, I intended to carry my brother's memory honestly into every step of finding it — not as a villain, and not as a hero, but simply as a man who had loved too much to know how to choose rightly, and paid for it with everything he had left to give.

Ellia took my hand as we finally turned to leave, the cemetery's quiet settling behind us into memory.

"What do you need, right now?" she asked gently.

"Not tomorrow. Not the search. Just right now, today." I considered the question honestly, turning it over the way this remarkable year had taught me to turn over even the hardest truths.

"Time," I said finally.

"A little time, before we start chasing anything else. I don't think I can carry both the grief and the search properly at once, not yet."

"Then we take the time," Ellia said simply, echoing words I'd heard from her, from Dororo, from an entire alliance across two remarkable years, more times than I could properly count.

"However long you need. Whatever comes next will still be there once you're ready." I held onto that promise as we walked back through the healed, sunlit streets of a city that had no idea what price had just been paid within it, Kromitos quiet and grieving beneath my ribs, and let myself, for the first time since the rage had finally broken, simply grieve — honestly, completely, without rushing toward whatever answer still waited, patiently, for whenever I finally found the strength to go looking for it.