So Bluenote was a monster, in every sense of the word. Aelius learned that quickly; it was forced into him the moment the man decided to stop testing and actually apply pressure. The invisible weight that had been tolerable before snapped tighter, focused, and drove him down without warning. His leg gave first, his left kneecap shattered under it with a dull, sickening crack that he felt more than heard. The impact dropped him the rest of the way, forced down into the mud as the world pressed in from all sides, ribs tightening, breath stuttering as gravity itself decided he wasn't allowed to stand anymore.
Bluenote stood there like it was nothing. With just a slight tilt of the head, as if he were disappointed the result hadn't been more interesting. And then, the pressure loosened enough to let movement happen again, like he'd already decided Aelius wasn't worth pushing any further this early.
That was a mistake. If Aelius learned Bluenote was a monster, Bluenote was going to learn that pain didn't slow Aelius down. The second the pressure lightened, he moved. His hand slammed into the ground, fingers digging into wet soil as something darker than the rainwater seeped outward from the point of contact. "Plague Gods: Reaping Mire."
The words came rough, but the effect was anything but. The ground answered his spell as if it had been waiting. Soil churned, split, and surged forward in a twisting rush; the mud thickened and darkened as it spread in a widening path straight toward Bluenote. Vines tore free from beneath the surface, snapping up in violent coils, moving fast and erratically, more like striking snakes than anything natural. They writhed and layered over each other, clawing for purchase as they surged forward.
Flower blooms forced their way through the churned earth, petals unfurling quickly with jagged edges, and every single one of them opened toward Bluenote like something aware. Their centers split, stretching, teeth forming where there should have been nothing but soft pollen, snapping at the air as the mire advanced.
Aelius didn't try to stand, not that he could with his knee gone the way it was. He stayed low, weight shifted, one hand still braced against the ground as the mire tore forward under his command. His breathing was uneven, but his focus wasn't.
The mire surged the last stretch, vines snapping up around Bluenote in a tight, violent coil, flowers bursting open right in his face, petals splitting wider as they lunged. Bluenote's gaze sharpened, and his foot lifted and came down. The ground didn't just sink; it folded. The mire buckled inward, soil collapsing, vines snapping as the space they occupied compressed violently. Aelius felt it through his hand, through the connection in the ground, the feedback hitting him like a dull shock up his arm, but he didn't pull back. He pushed.
Half of it stayed where it was, writhing under the pressure, taking it, while the rest bled outward, slipping through cracks, under the surface, moving low and unseen. The visible mass kept attacking, kept drawing his attention, vines lashing, flowers snapping in messy, relentless bursts.
Bluenote stepped through it anyway. Each step crushed more of it down, but he was watching now. Not just standing there letting it happen anymore, his eyes tracked the movement; there were subtle shifts in his stance as he adjusted the pressure in small ways, forcing sections of the mire flat before they could reach him.
Aelius dragged in a breath, chest tight, his arm trembling where it held him up. His knee screamed every time he shifted even slightly, but he forced it aside, let it sit in the background where it belonged. His fingers dug deeper into the mud, feeling for the parts of the mire that had already slipped past.
Behind Bluenote, the ground twitched, just a slight shift in the mud, easy to miss under the rain and the destruction already there. Then it split open, vines erupted upward from behind him, thicker this time, denser, coiling fast, aiming to wrap around his torso and arms in one clean motion. Flowers followed right behind them, snapping open at point-blank range, jaws stretching wide enough to clamp down hard if they landed.
Bluenote reacted instantly; the pressure behind him spiked, and the vines slowed mid-lunge, their movement dragging like they were pushing through something thick, but they didn't stop completely. A few still reached him, still managed to brush against his arm before the force crushed them down, splitting them apart into wet strands that fell back into the mud.
One of the flowers got closer. Close enough that its jaws snapped shut just shy of his shoulder, teeth clacking together with a wet, hollow sound before it was forced shut completely, crumpling in on itself.
Bluenote turned slightly, just enough to look over his shoulder at where it had come from. Then he looked back at Aelius. That small shift in attention was all Aelius wanted. The mire in front surged again, and a cluster of vines shot up low, aiming for his legs to anchor him in place for even half a second. The flowers followed tighter, snapping faster, more precise now, less wild.
Bluenote's foot lifted again in retaliation. Aelius moved first. He shifted his weight hard to the side, dragging himself just enough to change the angle, his free hand coming off the ground for a split second before slamming back down a few inches over. The mire shifted with it, the angle of the surge changing just slightly.
Bluenote's step came down where Aelius had been aiming. The ground collapsed in the wrong spot. The vines hit his other leg instead, not perfect, but enough to wrap around his ankle for a fraction of a second before the pressure crushed them apart. Still, the teeth managed to bite deep enough to draw blood.
Bluenote stilled for half a second, looking down at where the vines had managed to touch him. Then he laughed. "You're trying," he said, eyes lifting back to Aelius, something sharper sitting behind them now. "That's good." The pressure shifted with his words.
Aelius felt it immediately, his arm shaking harder, his body pressing closer to the ground despite himself. The mire around Bluenote started to collapse more consistently now, crushed faster than it could regrow, the hidden sections underground getting pinned before they could rise again.
Bluenote took another step forward. This time, nothing caught him.
Aelius exhaled slowly, his breathing rough but steadying again as much as it could. His eyes didn't leave Bluenote for a second, even as the mire thinned, even as the pressure crept higher.
He shifted his hand again, fingers digging deeper, finding what little ground he still had to work with. "Yeah," he muttered, barely audible over the rain. "You too."
The mire didn't stop when it failed to bite down on him cleanly; it shifted with a kind of ugly intelligence that matched its caster. The ground under Bluenote's boots sagged, then gave, mud folding inward on itself in thick, dragging spirals that tried to swallow his footing whole. It wasn't a clean collapse either, not a simple sinkhole; it pulled at angles, uneven and twisting, like hands grabbing at his legs from below, trying to drag him down where the vines could reach properly. The flowers snapped and lunged in tighter arcs now, their movements correcting mid-strike, jaws closing on empty air only to twist again and come from a different direction, relentless in a way that didn't care about elegance or precision.
Bluenote didn't move at first; he let the mire try to take him, let the vines snap toward him like he was watching something mildly interesting instead of actively trying to kill him. His weight shifted once, just enough to keep balance as the mud dragged at his boots, and then the pressure came back, not wide like before, the ground that Aelius had warped and twisted compressed under that force, the churned mud compacting, the movement slowing, vines forced lower, their strikes losing reach as the space they moved in tightened.
"You're a god slayer," Bluenote said, voice calm, like they were talking across a table instead of through an attack trying to drag him under. His eyes stayed on Aelius, not the spell. "We have one of our own. Tell me, fairy, who taught you your magic?"
Aelius didn't answer immediately. He pushed harder instead, fingers digging deeper into the mud as the mire reacted, resisting the pressure, forcing itself outward again in a thick surge that cracked the compressed surface, vines snapping up once more with renewed force, one managing to coil around Bluenote's leg for half a second before the gravity tightened again and crushed it flat. The effort dragged another breath out of him, sharper this time, his knee protesting every slight shift in his weight as he forced himself higher, not fully upright, but enough to look the man in the eye without tilting his head up.
"Does it matter?" Aelius said, voice rough, as he stood, the ruined kneecap grinding as he pulled magic through it, bone knitting back as he fueled the healing process. "This is a fight, not a social call. One of us is going to die."
Bluenote's grin came slow, like he'd been waiting for that kind of answer. The pressure shifted again, not crushing, not yet, just enough to remind Aelius it could. "Maybe," he said, almost thoughtful. "But your magic feels… different. Cleaner than our slayer." His head tilted slightly, eyes narrowing just a fraction. "Zancrow's is unpolished and weak for the title of godslayer."
"Ha…" Aelius breathed out, something almost like a laugh under it, though there wasn't anything amused in it. "Then tell your slayer to find an actual god… and kill him." His eyes didn't leave Bluenote's, something sharp sitting behind them now. "Because that's how I got mine. Not from a book. Not from some fake lacrima."
For the first time, something in Bluenote's expression shifted. An interest that cut through the casual confidence he'd been holding onto. The pressure around him changed again, the air itself tightening, heavier, more focused, like he'd decided the conversation had reached a point worth pushing further.
The ground around his feet didn't just slow this time; it compressed and was forced downward in a sudden, violent crush that flattened the upper layer entirely, vines snapping under the force, flowers bursting apart mid-lunge. The mud that had been trying to swallow him was driven back, compacted into something dense and unyielding, the movement killed in an instant.
Bluenote took just one step, but it carried weight behind it, the kind that made the air feel thinner, harder to breathe through. His gaze stayed locked on Aelius, that interest still there, sharpened now. "Then you survived killing a god," he said, quieter now, like he was testing the shape of the idea. "That makes this a little more interesting."
Aelius couldn't back up, not without putting the rest of the camp in danger. His hand tightened slightly, fingers curling as the mire tried to respond again beneath the compressed surface, small fractures forming as he forced it to push back against the weight pressing it down.
Bluenote noticed, and the pressure shifted again, pushing down on those fractures yet again, testing how much resistance there was, how far Aelius could push back before something gave.
"Show me," Bluenote said, almost casually, but there was something behind it now, something heavier than before, something that pressed into the air itself. "Let's see how high you can fly."
The mire answered before Aelius did, splitting again under his will, forcing itself upward through the crushing pressure, slower now, but still moving, refusing to stay buried. He drew in a breath that scraped on the way down, chest tight from the weight pressing against him, and then he opened his mouth and let it out in one violent push. "Plague God's: Bellow." The sound didn't come out like a normal shout. It tore out of him, thick and wrong as it surged forward, a wave of force laced with decay and rot, the air itself distorting as it rushed straight at Bluenote.
What Aelius didn't expect was how the gravity twisted it. The moment the sound entered that field, it compressed, tightened, and the spread collapsed inward as the pressure forced it into a narrower, denser line. It didn't slow; instead, it accelerated. The wave snapped forward with a sharp, violent crack, crossing the distance in an instant and slamming into Bluenote before there was any room to adjust or evade. The impact hit hard, the air bursting outward on contact as the force drove into him, carrying the plague with it.
Bluenote was forced back from the hit, and for a split second, the pressure around him wavered, not gone.
Aelius felt that shift the moment it happened and pushed, dragging more out of himself despite the strain, forcing the mire to surge again under Bluenote's feet while the man was still stunned. His breathing hitched, uneven, but his focus stayed locked, one hand still buried in the mud, the other hanging loose at his side as he leaned into it, forcing everything forward at once, not giving space, not letting the man reset.
Bluenote moved forward, stepping straight through the lingering haze caused by the bellow, and the pressure snapped back into place around him as he advanced, and it pressed against Aelius in response, trying to pin his movement down again. Aelius felt the drag settling over his limbs, the pull trying to force him back into that same kneeling collapse, and he answered it just as quickly, dragging more of his magic up from wherever it sat and forcing it through himself. The pressure eased almost completely as Aelus's magic fought against the gravity.
Bluenote closed the distance faster than he should have under his own gravity, boots digging into the ground as he stepped in and swung, a straight strike aimed to test what Aelius would do up close. Aelius brought his arm up, "Plague God's: Aegis." The barrier formed from his magic blocked the attack, and Aelius responded, swinging the arm and using the barrier as a bat to strike Bluenote's torso.
Bluenote didn't pause after the hit connected, but his breathing stuttered for a moment. He stepped in again and grabbed for Aelius, his fingers barely grazing Aelius's cloak as he took a step back to avoid. Aelius twisted and used the momentum to slam his elbow into the man's arm, something Bluenote took without even looking bothered. Aelius could tell the man was physically strong, maybe even stronger than Aelius himself. So he didn't try to overpower it. He leaned into what he had.
"Plague Gods: Carrion Gale." The words came out low as he pulled his hand back and forced the magic outward. There was no room for Bluenote to dodge, so he took it in stride, the air, hitting lower due to the increase in gravity but still hitting nonetheless. The gale hit him, wrapped around him, tried to drag and infect. The spores in the spell were made to slow and hopefully paralyze.
And it didn't work. Bluenote's next strike came in low, aimed to take his balance instead of his head, and Aelius stepped into it instead of away, letting the blow glance along his side as he shifted past it, his shoulder slamming into the man's chest to break the follow-through. It didn't stagger him the way it would have someone else, but it interrupted the motion, bought space for half a second. Aelius used it, twisting his body and driving his elbow toward Bluenote's side,
Bluenote absorbed it but still was slowed for a moment, and his response came immediately, hand snapping out to catch Aelius by the front of his coat and haul him forward into a short, brutal strike that carried more force than the earlier tests. Aelius felt it hit, felt the impact drive through his guard and into his ribs. His breath left him in a sharp rush as his feet lifted slightly from the ground before he wrenched himself sideways and tore free of the grip before the follow-up could land.
He landed unevenly, using the space he bought to take a breath. Bluenote watched him, not making a move forward, both men, both monsters, waiting for the other to move first.
Aelius breathed out slowly and learned that it was a mistake; that little breath of air brought the buzzing back. It had been there for a while, buried under everything else, easy to ignore when there was pressure on his bones and a man trying to break him in front of him, but now that it pushed harder, it refused to stay in the background. He tried to ignore it. Like he had been
Tried to push through it the same way he pushed through everything else, but it didn't respond to force or will the same way pain did. It built instead, dragging at his focus, turning the edges of his vision uneven. His jaw tightened, breath hitching once as he forced more magic outward just to keep himself from being affected by the gravity. A stutter caught in his throat, at a particularly violent stab of pain from his head.
That was all Bluenote needed to see. The wait was over as Bluenote's posture changed, and the gravity field tightened again, not across the whole area, not pressing everything flat like before, but drawing inward, focusing on a single point. On Aelius.
Aelius felt it before he fully saw it, the space in front of Bluenote bending, collapsing inward on itself in a way that made even the rain hesitate. The buzzing in his head spiked as his focus slipped for just a fraction too long, and in that fraction, Bluenote moved. "Black hole."
The force hit all at once. Not like the earlier pressure that pushed down or pinned, this pulled, violently, brutally, dragging everything toward that point in front of Bluenote's outstretched hand. The ground tore free from the earth in chunks, ripped apart mid-structure, vines from his mire snapping as they were yanked out of the soil and crushed together, flowers bursting under the strain before they could even close their jaws. Whole trees uprooted and crushed in the sphere.
And Aelius went with it. His body jerked forward, feet leaving the ground before he could force them back down, the resistance he'd been maintaining against the gravity shattering under the sudden increase in force. It wasn't something he could brace against; it came from all directions at once, pulling him apart and inward at the same time. His shoulder wrenched first, something tearing as his arm was dragged out of position, and then the body as a whole, muscles screaming as they stretched past where they should have stopped. His ribs followed, the pressure folding into his chest as he was yanked closer, something giving under it with a wet, cracking pop that sent a hot rush of pain through his side. Breath tore out of him, not in a controlled exhale, but ripped free as the force crushed in, lungs refusing to pull anything back in under the pressure.
He tried to anchor. Tried to force the buzzing back down and grab onto something, anything, but there was nothing left to grab. The ground itself was being pulled apart under him, dragged into that point, leaving nothing stable to hold to. His fingers clawed at mud that wasn't staying where it was, nails tearing against stone beneath as he was dragged over it, skin splitting where it caught. The buzzing in his head spiked again, louder now, drowning everything else, turning his thoughts jagged and slow at the same time.
Then he hit Bluenote. He was slammed into the space in front of the man where the gravity collapsed inward, his body folding under the force, ribs compressing again, something inside shifting wrong as the pull didn't stop even when he reached the center. It crushed instead, tightening, holding him there for a fraction too long, long enough for more damage to stack on top of what was already breaking.
Blood came up without permission, hot and thick, spilling from his mouth as the pressure finally released enough for his body to be thrown back out of that center. He hit the ground hard, skidding through mud and torn earth, leaving a smear behind him that wasn't just water. His body didn't stop cleanly; it jerked once more as what was left of the pull let go, leaving him sprawled unevenly, his remaining arm not quite responding the way it should, his leg twisted at an angle that made it so he wasn't moving until he was healed.
For a second, nothing moved. Aelius tried to breathe and failed the first time, his chest hitching in a shallow, useless motion that didn't pull anything in. The second attempt came with a wet, broken inhale that scraped down his throat like glass, followed immediately by a choke as blood slipped past his teeth and spilled out over his lips. It tasted thick and metallic, clinging to the back of his tongue, refusing to go away. The buzzing hadn't faded with the impact; if anything, it had grown louder, pressing in on him from the inside, drowning out everything else until it felt like his skull might split under the weight of it. It made it hard to think, hard to focus, hard to even understand where his own body ended, and the damage began. Nothing responded anymore. Every attempt to move felt delayed, disconnected, like signals were getting lost somewhere between thought and action.
Through it all, Bluenote moved closer. His boots sank slightly into the ruined ground with each step, steady, unhurried, like the destruction around him meant nothing. His gaze stayed fixed on Aelius, not with anger or frustration, but with that same measured calm that had defined him from the start. When he spoke, his voice carried easily, cutting through the noise even when Aelius couldn't fully process the words at first.
"Disappointing," Bluenote said, almost idly, like he was commenting on something minor rather than the wreckage of a fight. "I was hoping you'd be able to actually put up a fight. But credit where it's due… You held longer than most."
The words settled somewhere distant in Aelius's mind, registering them without meaning, slipping through the cracks of everything else breaking down inside him. The buzzing drowned them out before they could take hold.
Then something else broke through.
"Leave him alone!" Natsu's voice didn't just cut through the air; it tore through it, raw and furious, and before Aelius could even turn his head, there was impact. A fist slammed into Bluenote hard enough to force him back a step, the broken ground cracking slightly under the shift in weight.
Gajeel came in from the other side, moving with timing that didn't need to be spoken. He had circled without being noticed, positioning himself where Bluenote couldn't immediately account for him, and the moment Natsu created the opening, he took it. His iron-coated fist drove forward with brutal force, striking into Bluenote's side as the man shifted from the first hit. The combined impact forced another step back, a disruption in the perfect control he'd held until now.
Aelius didn't see most of it. His good hand had come up to his ears at some point, pressing hard against the sides of his head like he could physically block the sound out; his stump, cut off just above the elbow, did the same, splattering blood across his face and ear. It didn't work; it wasn't something he could shut out. It was inside him, clawing at the edges of his thoughts, distorting everything else until even his own breathing sounded wrong.
"Aelius… Aelius! AELIUS!" Two voices broke through. His head turned slowly, like it weighed more than it should, like the simple act of looking required effort he didn't have. Shapes came into view first, blurred and unsteady, then faces, barely recognizable through the haze.
Lucy and Levy were there. They were close. Too close. Hands on him, trying to pull him up, trying to keep him upright when his body clearly wasn't interested in cooperating anymore. Their voices overlapped, urgent, panicked, words blending together into something he couldn't fully follow.
His healing had stopped. He felt that more than anything else. It wasn't just the pain, though there was plenty of that, sharp and constant in places he didn't have time to catalog. It was the lack of that brutal, creeping repair he had come to rely on, the quiet stitching of flesh and bone that usually worked in the background. It wasn't there anymore. He tried to push magic into it, instinctively, forcing what he had left toward the damage, but it didn't respond the way it should have. It didn't even move.
"Poison," Levy's voice cut through, sharper than the rest, more focused and filled with panic.
Letters flickered into existence in front of him, glowing faintly as the magic took shape, something tangible, something real. He bit down on it out of instinct, the same reflex that had guided him through countless fights before. Nothing happened. For a split second, he thought his magic had simply failed. Then he felt it. It was moving, but not the way it should. It wasn't responding to him. It was draining, slipping out of him faster than he could hold onto it, like something was pulling it away, bleeding it out of him without giving anything back.
His eyes flicked up, drawn toward the fight despite everything else.
Cana was there now. He didn't see her arrive, didn't know how she got there, but she was there, standing with the others, cards in hand, magic flaring around her. He recognized the pattern even through the haze, the shape of the spell as it formed.
Fairy Glitter. It should have been overwhelming. It should have filled the space, blinding, devastating, something that would have forced even Bluenote to react.
Instead, it looked… Weaker. The light burst forward, striking Bluenote head-on, but it didn't carry the same weight it should have. It hit, it flared, it did something, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
Bluenote lifted a hand, almost casually, and muttered something under his breath. The words didn't reach Aelius, lost somewhere in the noise, but the effect did. Natsu dropped, his body slamming into the ground under a sudden spike of pressure, only to push himself back up almost immediately, teeth bared ferally in the way he always refused to stay down.
Aelius tried to focus on that, on the fight, on anything external, but the moment his injuries crossed whatever threshold his body considered critical, everything came crashing back in on him at once. The buzzing spiked even more somehow, and then nausea followed immediately.
His hand fumbled with the mask, tearing it free just in time before he doubled over, vomiting hard enough that his entire body shook with it. Blood came up in thick, choking waves, more than there should have been, more than felt possible. It splattered into the mud, dark and heavy, mixing with the rain and the dirt until it was impossible to separate one from the other. His body forced it out until there was nothing left to give, until the heaving slowed into uneven, broken breaths that still tasted like iron.
Even then, he didn't stay down. He forced his head up, vision swimming, the world tilting at the edges. Lucy and Levy were still there, still trying to hold him up, their hands gripping tighter as he shifted, but he brushed them off with more force than he should have had left.
He didn't have time for this. Didn't have time to collapse, to recover, to let his body catch up with what had just happened.
Bluenote had moved again. He was standing over Cana now. Aelius could see it, even if he couldn't hear what was being said. The man's lips moved, calm as ever, but the intent was clear in the way his hand lifted, in the angle of his body, in the complete lack of hesitation.
He was going to kill her.
Aelius didn't think. His hand lifted, trembling, the loss of balance nearly sending him back to the ground. Lucy and Levy caught him before he could fall completely, their grip the only thing keeping him upright as he forced the words out.
"Warp… gods… plague apparition…"
The spell should have responded. Space should have twisted, reality-bending under the force of it, and just like Nezhhar, this spell should have stopped Bluenote.
Nothing happened. And for a fraction of a second, there was nothing but the hollow realization that his magic wasn't answering.
He didn't stop. If the spell wouldn't move him, he would move himself. His body protested immediately, every step sending fresh pain through him, his leg barely holding together under the strain, but he forced it anyway. He pushed forward, closing the distance in the only way left to him, ignoring the way the world tilted, ignoring the way his vision blurred.
Bluenote's hand came down.
Aelius reached Cana just in time. He shoved her out of the way, the force of it sending her stumbling clear of the strike. And then Bluenote's hand drove straight through his chest.
The impact was immediate. It pierced cleanly, the force carrying through him as though he wasn't there at all. For a moment, there was no pain, just the sensation of something being where it absolutely should not have been.
Bluenote looked down at him, expression unchanged, unamused, as if even that hadn't been enough to warrant anything more.
He opened his mouth to speak. He never got the chance. A fist came out of nowhere, slamming into Bluenote with a force that broke the moment entirely, sending him flying back across the ruined ground in a way nothing else had managed to do.
Gildarts. The Ace's presence hit just as hard as the blow itself. Aelius saw him, or thought he did, a shape, a figure that carried weight in a way that went beyond simple strength. The Ace. The one person who could step into a fight like this and turn it on its head.
Aelius's body gave out before he could summon another thought. He hit the ground, everything finally catching up to him at once. The pain, the damage, the exhaustion, all collapsed in together, overwhelming what little control he had left. He couldn't feel his limbs properly anymore. Couldn't tell where hands were touching him, even as he knew they were there. Voices reached him, distant, muffled, like they were coming from somewhere far away, but he couldn't make out the words.
His eyes were open, but he couldn't see. Everything blurred together, light and shadow mixing until there was no clear distinction between them.
His mind locked onto a single point, or rather, a single person. Gildarts. The man had stepped in and done what he couldn't. Stopped Bluenote. Saved them. Saved him.
Because he was too weak.
He lost Alaric because he was too weak.
He pushed Vanessa away because he was too weak.
He pushed everyone away because he was too weak.
It settled into him the way rot always did, slow at first, almost unnoticeable beneath everything else, then all at once it was everywhere, threaded through his thoughts, his nerves, his breath, something he couldn't scrape out no matter how hard he tried. It wasn't just the pain, though there was plenty of that, his chest barely holding together where Bluenote had punched through, his ribs grinding wrong with every shallow attempt at air, his leg twisted into something that didn't feel like it belonged to him anymore. It wasn't just the buzzing either, though that had become unbearable, a constant, rising whine buried deep in his skull that made it hard to tell where his thoughts ended, and the noise began. It was the pattern. That was what dug in the deepest. That was what refused to let go.
It kept happening.
Different faces. Different places. Different reasons. But the same end.
Too slow. Too weak. Too late.
He could still see it, not with his eyes, those barely worked now, the world around him reduced to smears of color and movement that didn't quite line up right, but behind them, sharper than anything real. Alaric, the way it ended, the way it always ended, something slipping through his grasp because he couldn't hold it hard enough. Vanessa, the distance, the way he'd pushed her away before anything could root, telling himself it was easier that way, safer that way, only for it to circle back into this hollow space where something should have been. Every single time he'd chosen to stand alone because it was simpler, because it meant he didn't have to rely on anyone, didn't have to fail anyone but himself, and somehow that had still led here, to this, to being dragged through the mud and left broken while someone else stepped in to clean up what he couldn't finish.
Gildarts. Even thinking the name made something twist tighter in his chest. The moment kept replaying whether he wanted it to or not. The hand raised to kill. The inevitability of it. Cana right there, seconds from being erased, and him trying, forcing himself to move when his body had already decided it was done, already failing to keep up. The spell that didn't answer. The magic that slipped through his fingers like it had never been there to begin with. And then that hand through his chest, clean, effortless, like he wasn't even worth adjusting for.
And then Gildarts. someone else. Someone stronger. Someone stepping in at the last second to do what he couldn't.
It didn't matter that they were alive. It didn't matter that Cana hadn't died, that Natsu was still moving, that the others were still there. That should have been enough. That should have been all that mattered. But it wasn't, because it wasn't him. It wasn't his strength that made the difference. It wasn't his power that changed the outcome. He was just another body in the way, another mistake waiting to be corrected by someone who actually knew what they were doing.
The thought dug in deeper, repeating, grinding against everything else until it was louder than the buzzing, louder than the pain, louder than the ragged breaths he couldn't seem to take right.
Saved by the bell.
Saved by someone else.
Saved because he couldn't do it.
Too slow. Too weak. Too late.
Again.
Again.
Again.
His hand and stump moved before he really registered it, fingers clawing up to his head, pressing hard against his skull like he could crush the noise out if he just pushed hard enough, like he could force those thoughts to stop if he applied enough pressure. It didn't work. It never worked. The buzzing only climbed higher, drilling through him, and the thoughts didn't slow; they sped up, looping faster, tighter, overlapping until he couldn't tell where one ended and the next began.
Too slow.
Too weak.
Too late.
Not enough.
Never enough.
His breath hitched, caught halfway, chest spasming uselessly as he tried to pull air in and failed again, a wet choke following it as more blood slipped up his throat, spilling past his lips and down his chin. He didn't even notice it anymore. There wasn't room for it to be noticed. There wasn't room for anything except the noise and the weight of everything piling on top of him at once.
It hurt. Not the kind of hurt he was used to, not the physical kind that he could shove aside and work through, not the tearing muscle or breaking bone that he could ignore because he was used to it. This was different. It crawled through him, filled the gaps, pressed in from every direction at once until it felt like there wasn't a part of him it didn't touch.
His fingers dug harder into his skull, nails scraping against skin as if he could peel something away, as if there was something there he could remove to make it stop. There wasn't. There never was.
It just kept building. The world around him faded further, the voices, the hands trying to hold him up, trying to steady him, trying to say something he couldn't hear anymore. It all blurred into nothing, drowned out completely by the roar in his head. His vision narrowed, tunneled down into something tight and suffocating, the edges going dark while the center burned too bright to focus on.
And still the thoughts didn't stop.
He wasn't even sure when the sound left him. One moment, it was all trapped inside, clawing at his throat, building and building with nowhere to go, and the next it tore free, a raw, broken scream dragged out of him whether he meant to or not. It ripped through his chest on the way out, tearing at what was already damaged, his voice cracking under the strain of it, but it didn't stop.
The air around him reacted before anything else did. The pressure came first, not like Bluenote's gravity, but instead a violent, expanding force that shoved outward from him in every direction at once. The ground beneath him split under it, mud and stone tearing apart as the wave pushed through, throwing back anything close enough to be caught in it. The hands that had been holding him were ripped away, bodies forced back, sliding, stumbling, anything not anchored driven away from the center of it.
The buzzing didn't stop. If anything, it spiked higher, feeding into it, feeding into whatever was breaking loose under his skin. His magic the buzz as well. It didn't come out as a spell, didn't form into anything recognizable at first. It spilled. It flooded outward, thick and wrong, carrying that same rot-laced weight that had always defined it, but now it wasn't directed by him, but someone, or something else.
The ground around him changed. Flesh forced its way up through the broken earth, not like anything that resembled natural life. It pulsed as it formed, wet and uneven, splitting the ground wider as it expanded, layering over itself in thick, shifting masses that didn't settle into a single shape. Veins ran through it, dark and swollen, carrying something that moved beneath the surface in slow, uneven pulses. It gathered around him, and the flesh rose higher, folding over itself, curving inward as it built up around his position, sealing him in piece by piece.
Aelius's body jerked slightly where he lay at the center of it, breath still uneven, still failing more often than it worked, his hands still pressed hard against his head like he could physically hold himself together if he just didn't let go. The flesh around him pulsed in time with something deeper, something that wasn't just his heartbeat, something that felt older than that,.
The cocoon sealed completely. Outside, the world was cut off, separated by layers of living mass that continued to shift and thicken, reacting to anything that got too close with subtle, twitching movements, as if it was aware on some level, as if it recognized intrusion and answered it instinctively.
Inside, there was nothing but him.
And then the buzzing stopped.