He counted his steps for the first three minutes.
Not deliberately. His mind did it automatically — the part of him that needed something to hold onto while the rest of him managed the inventory of everything that was wrong. Left arm against his body. Hood up. Don't favor the ribs too visibly. Move like someone who has somewhere to be, not like someone who is deciding whether their legs are going to keep working.
One step. Two. The city's evening noise surrounded him — mana lights flickering on in sequence along the elevated district's streets, the distant sound of a restaurant's door opening and closing, someone somewhere laughing at something. Eclipse City doing what it did every evening, completely indifferent to the state of one person moving through its edges.
He found that useful. Indifference meant nobody was looking.
He had to stop once.
A quieter street three districts from the academy — narrower, less lit, the kind of passage that existed between main thoroughfares and served mostly as a shortcut for people who knew the city well. He found a wall and leaned against it and breathed.
The ribs made breathing a negotiation. He'd learned the specific angle — shallow, controlled, the minimum expansion that kept him functional without triggering the sharp complaint that came with full lung capacity. It was manageable. Everything was manageable if you broke it into small enough pieces.
His communication artifact was in his pack. He'd registered it at the guild that morning — this morning, though it felt like a different day entirely. Brand new. Nobody's information in it yet. He hadn't had time to exchange contacts with anyone before walking into the ruins.
He kept walking.
The elevated district was harder.
Wider streets. Better lighting. More people even at this hour — nobles returning from somewhere, academy staff finishing late shifts, the specific foot traffic of a district that didn't really empty until well past midnight. He moved along the edges where the light was thinner, timing his crossings, keeping the hood where it needed to be.
His left arm had stopped reporting its condition with any specificity. It had moved past the stage of detailed complaint into a general sustained wrongness that he'd filed under deal with later and left there. The ribs were more insistent. Two of them — possibly three — had opinions about every step he took and were not keeping those opinions to themselves.
He counted intersections instead of steps now.
Four intersections from the academy gate. Then three. Then two.
The gate was visible from the last corner — the academy wall, the lit entrance, the attendant's desk with its logbook. Fifty meters. Maybe sixty.
Simple.
He turned the corner.
Valeria Frostborn was thirty meters away.
He registered her before she registered him — the pale blue hair catching the gate's light, the specific posture of someone who had been moving at purpose and had slowed slightly. She was coming from the eastern approach, the direction of the lower city gates, hunter's gear dusty from field work. Late training. Solo gate run. Exactly the kind of thing she did in the evenings when the academy's schedule allowed it.
She hadn't seen him yet.
He kept moving. Straight line to the gate. Sign the logbook. Get to the infirmary. In that order.
She turned her head.
Thirty meters. The hood was up. His gait was controlled — he'd been managing it for forty minutes, he knew what it looked like from a distance. Someone walking carefully. Someone tired. Nothing specific enough to —
She slowed.
Something had registered. He didn't know what. The angle of the left arm maybe, held too still against his body. The specific quality of careful movement that was different from tired movement. Whatever it was, something had crossed the threshold of her attention and stayed there.
He kept walking.
Twenty meters from the gate now.
She changed direction toward him. Not running — fast, purposeful, covering ground with the efficiency of someone whose assessment had shifted and who was now moving on the result of that assessment rather than the original one. Her eyes were on him the whole way.
Fifteen meters.
Ten.
The gate lights were brighter here. He was fully visible — the hood, the arm, the blood that had dried in his hair and along the side of his face that he hadn't been able to do anything about, the way he was breathing.
Her expression changed.
Not panic. Valeria didn't panic. But the specific controlled stillness of someone who had just seen something that required the full application of their composure to not react to visibly.
Five meters.
His legs filed their final report.
The assessment was not favorable.
He went down — not a dramatic collapse, just his knees deciding they had contributed enough and the ground arriving with the quiet inevitability of something that had been coming for the last kilometer. He managed to keep the left arm from taking the impact. Small victory. He was on his side on the stone path three meters from the academy gate, and the gate attendant was already on his feet behind the desk, and Valeria was already there — down to his level, her hand on his shoulder, her face in his field of vision.
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
She didn't ask what happened. Not yet. She just said his name — quiet, steady, the way you said someone's name when you needed them to stay present.
"Lysander."
He considered the sky above the gate. Then he considered that looking at the sky required more effort than it was worth and looked at her instead.
"I'm fine," he said.
The specific pause that followed had a quality to it.
"...You are not fine," she said.
"Relatively," he said.
Something moved at the corner of her mouth — not humor, something more complicated than that. She was already looking at the gate attendant who had risen from his desk and was moving toward them with the expression of someone about to make noise about this.
"Infirmary," Lysander said. Quiet. Direct. "Just the infirmary. Not — " he stopped, breathed carefully around the ribs. "Don't make it a thing."
She looked at him. Reading it. Understanding what he was asking — not just the destination but the specific quality of getting there. No announcement. No crowd. No questions tonight that he didn't have answers for.
Her eyes moved to the gate attendant, who had reached them and opened his mouth.
"I have him," Valeria said.
Three words. The tone behind them was not a suggestion. It was the specific register of someone who had grown up giving directions that were followed without question — House Frostborn, Board Rank 4, a name that carried weight in every corridor of this academy. The attendant closed his mouth.
"He twisted his ankle returning from approved external training," she said. Flat. Certain. The lie delivered with the complete confidence of someone who had decided it was true and expected the world to agree. "I'll take him to Healer Elyra. Log him as returned."
The attendant looked at Lysander.
Lysander looked back at him with the specific expression of someone who was not going to contradict what had just been said.
The attendant logged him as returned.
Valeria got her shoulder under his good arm — efficiently, without ceremony, the way she did everything — and they moved through the gate.
The courtyard was mostly empty at this hour. The few students crossing it glanced over and looked away. A Frostborn walking someone to the infirmary was not remarkable enough to stop for.
They were halfway across the courtyard when she spoke again. Quiet. Not looking at him.
"You're going to tell me what actually happened."
Not a question.
"Eventually," he said.
Another pause.
"...Acceptable," she said.
He almost smiled. It cost too much. He filed it for later.
They reached the infirmary door.
He made it through it.
Then his legs stopped cooperating for the second time that evening and he went down properly — not the careful managed descent at the gate, just down, the infirmary floor arriving with finality.
The last thing he heard was Elyra's voice somewhere above him, sharp and immediate, already assessing.
Then nothing.