Chapter 36: Those Left Behind
Armored Dragon Calendar Year 417 – Sylphy, Age 10
[Sylphy POV]
The sky had stopped glowing three days ago.
I sat on the hill overlooking what remained of the refugee camp. My knees were pulled to my chest.
The grass was brown and dead for miles around the epicenter.
Nothing grew where the light had touched.
Rudeus was gone. Claude was gone.
Everyone I knew from Buena Village had vanished in that blinding flash.
And I was still here.
"Miss Sylphy." A voice interrupted my thoughts. I turned to find Charles approaching, his scarred face grim.
"The supply count is finished. We have enough food for another two weeks if we ration carefully."
I nodded but didn't speak. My throat had been tight for days.
Charles studied me for a long moment. Then he sat down beside me, his movements slow and deliberate.
He didn't say anything. Just sat there, staring at the same dead horizon.
"How do you do it?" I finally asked.
"How do you keep moving when everyone's gone?"
"Because stopping means dying." His voice was flat. No comfort in it, but no cruelty either.
Just truth.
"Claude taught me that grief is a luxury for people who have time."
Claude. Something caught in the back of my throat that I couldn't swallow past.
I had known him since childhood. Watched him train, watched him prepare.
He had always seemed so certain. So prepared for any disaster.
But even Claude hadn't been able to stop this.
"His tracker went dark," Charles continued.
"Two days before the incident. Either the device broke, or..." He didn't finish the sentence.
Or he was dead.
I clenched my fists until my nails bit into my palms.
"He's not dead."
"I didn't say he was."
"You were thinking it."
Charles shrugged.
"I think a lot of things. Doesn't make them true."
The camp had grown over the past week.
Survivors trickled in from the surrounding areas. Farmers who had been outside the teleportation radius.
Travelers who had been on the roads. Soldiers from nearby garrisons, sent to investigate the disappearance of an entire region.
Arbalest had stepped into the chaos and imposed order.
I watched Mira coordinate the food distribution. Her sharp voice cut through the noise of the crowd.
She had changed in the days since the disaster.
The playful edge was gone from her manner. Now she moved with cold efficiency, solving problems before they could become crises.
"Three hundred and forty-seven survivors in this camp," she reported at the meeting.
"Another two hundred scattered across the surrounding towns. No word from anyone inside the teleportation zone."
"Because there is no inside," Tobias said grimly.
"It's all gone. I walked three miles in before I had to turn back."
"Just dead earth and silence."
The tent was crowded with Arbalest's core members. Charles sat to my left.
Mira stood at the makeshift table covered in maps and lists. Tobias leaned against the support pole, arms crossed.
And me. Sitting there like I belonged.
I didn't belong. I was just a girl from the village.
A girl who could use some magic, but had never fought a real battle. A girl who had spent years training in secret, hoping to impress a boy who was now scattered across the world.
But they had invited me anyway. Because Claude had mentioned my name once.
Because I was connected to him.
"The search parties found more bodies near the eastern border," Mira continued.
"Looks like the teleportation was... imprecise. Some people materialized partially inside objects."
"Trees. Rocks." She swallowed hard. "Each other."
My stomach turned. I had seen one of those bodies.
The image refused to leave my mind.
"Any sign of the leadership?" Charles asked.
"Claude's parents are confirmed alive."
"Roland's organizing survivors in the southern settlements." Mira paused. "No word on Mike. His caravan was scheduled to be in Roa."
Roa. Inside the zone.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
I lay in my tent, staring at the canvas ceiling, listening to the sounds of the camp. Distant voices, the crackle of watchfires. The occasional sob from someone who had lost everything.
I had lost everything too. But I couldn't cry.
The tears wouldn't come.
Maybe I had used them all up in the first two days. Maybe I was just too tired.
Or maybe some part of me still refused to accept that this was real.
Rudeus was alive. I knew it.
I felt it in my bones, in the core of my being, in the place where logic held no power. He was out there, somewhere in the world, looking up at the same stars.
And Claude.
He had survived worse than this. He had prepared for disasters like this.
He wouldn't die. Not from a teleportation spell.
Not from anything.
I sat up and pushed aside the tent flap. The night air was cool against my face.
Stars spread across the sky in familiar patterns, unchanged by the catastrophe below.
My hand found the pendant around my neck. A small piece of metal, enchanted to glow when exposed to mana.
Rudeus had made it for me years ago, during one of our training sessions.
"For when you're lost in the dark," he had said, embarrassed.
"So you can always find your way."
I fed a trickle of mana into the metal. It glowed soft blue, casting gentle light across my fingers.
I wasn't lost. Not yet.
But I needed to find them. Both of them.
The next morning, I approached Charles with a request.
"Train me."
He looked up from the supply manifest he was reviewing. His expression didn't change.
"You already know magic."
"I know how to cast spells. I don't know how to fight." I held his gaze, refusing to look away.
"Claude's organization survives because everyone contributes. I want to contribute more than just being a familiar name."
"Combat training takes years."
"Then we start now."
Charles studied me for a long moment. There was calculation in his eyes.
"Claude mentioned you," he said finally.
"Said you had more talent than anyone in Buena except Rudeus."
The compliment did something strange to my breath.
"He never told me that."
"He wouldn't." A ghost of a smile crossed Charles's scarred face.
"Kid never knew how to give compliments. Always wrapped them in insults or hid them in offhand comments." The smile faded.
"If he's alive out there, he'll need every capable person he can find. When he comes back."
"When," I repeated.
"Not if."
"When." Charles nodded slowly.
"Fine. We start tomorrow at dawn."
"Don't expect me to go easy on you because you're young."
"I wouldn't want you to."
[Narrator]
In the weeks that followed, Sylphiette of Buena Village transformed.
The quiet girl who had hidden in Rudeus's shadow learned to stand on her own feet.
She trained with Charles until her muscles screamed, studied tactics with Mira until her eyes blurred, practiced magic until her reserves ran dry and filled and ran dry again.
The Metastasis had taken everyone she loved. But it had also stripped away the hesitation that had held her back for years.
No more waiting for Rudeus to notice her, no more relying on others to solve what she could solve herself.
If she wanted to find them, she would have to become strong enough to survive the journey.
The survivors called her "the white-haired girl" at first. Then "Claude's friend." Then, as weeks turned to months, simply "Sylphy." A name spoken with respect.
She wasn't the most powerful fighter in Arbalest, nor the smartest strategist. But she trained harder than anyone else, pushed further, refused to stop.
And somewhere, in the corner of her heart where hope still burned, she knew that when she finally found Rudeus again, she would stand beside him as an equal.
Not behind him. Not in his shadow.
Beside him.
[Sylphy POV]
Two months after the disaster, a messenger arrived from the south.
I was in the middle of training. Sweat dripped from my forehead as I practiced the defensive forms Charles had drilled into me.
My staff moved in precise patterns, blocking imaginary attacks, redirecting imaginary strikes.
"Sylphy." Mira's voice cut through my concentration.
"We have news."
I lowered my staff and turned. Mira stood at the edge of the training ground, her expression unreadable.
"What kind of news?"
"Survivors from Roa. A merchant caravan made contact with our people in the east." She paused.
"They say there's a boy on the Demon Continent. A human boy, traveling with a red-haired girl and a Superd warrior."
My heart stopped.
"Rudeus?"
"No name confirmed. But the description matches." Mira's eyes met mine.
"Brown hair. Young."
"Powerful magic. And apparently causing quite a stir wherever he goes."
Rudeus. Alive.
On the Demon Continent.
The relief hit me so hard I had to reach for my staff to stay upright.
My vision blurred with tears that had finally decided to fall.
"What about Claude?" I managed.
Mira shook her head.
"No word. But if Rudeus survived, there's a chance."
A chance. It wasn't certainty.
But it was more than I had allowed myself to believe.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and straightened my spine.
"When's the next caravan heading east?"
"Three days. But you're not ready for—"
"I'll be ready." I picked up my staff again.
"Now if you'll excuse me, I have training to finish."
Mira watched me for a moment. Then she smiled.
A small smile, barely visible. But genuine.
"He'd be proud of you," she said quietly.
"Both of them would."
She left before I could respond.
I stood alone in the training ground, staff in hand, tears still wet on my cheeks. The sun was setting behind the dead hills.
The camp bustled with activity around me.
Rudeus was alive.
Now I just had to become strong enough to find him.
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