Erza swallowed. Her throat felt like it was lined with broken glass, each movement a fresh agony. She tried to speak, but the words lodged somewhere between her heart and her lips, refusing to come.
"Then, give or take… he has sixty years left. Maybe less."
Isvarn's voice was gentle, almost kind, but the kindness only made it worse. It meant he was telling the truth. It meant he was not trying to hurt her, only to make her see. But seeing was pain. Understanding was destruction.
The words hung in the air between them, heavy and immovable, like stones too large to lift. They pressed down on Erza's chest, crushing the breath from her lungs, squeezing her heart until she thought it would burst.
Sixty years.
She had lived for nearly two centuries. Sixty years was less than a third of her life. Less than a blink of an eye in the span of dragon years. She had seen empires rise and fall, had watched mountains erode to dust, had stood at the edge of time itself and felt no fear.
