To Be Left Alive

Pain.

Hot searing agonizing pain.

That was what Aesyle could barely use to describe the torture she felt. She could feel it in her core. The pain wasn't in the way mortals understood it. It was erosion. As though some unseen force ripped pieces of her away, grain by grain, until only silence remained in the spaces where the essence in her core used to sing.

Each breath she took scraped like broken coral through her lungs. Her veins, once a serene river of life, boiled now with brackish bile. The water didn't recognize her anymore—and worse, neither did she.

NO!

I will not accept this!

I am the daughter of the Mother of the Sea.

The water is me and I am the water.

You will listen to me.

She commanded as she reached inward for power—and found only echoes. Not silence, but shame. Dull, suffocating shame, as if every mocking current whispered her weakness back to her..

NO.

That silence felt maddening to her. But she couldn't be bothered by the silence when the pain hit her again rolling in like upheaving tides.

She arched, spine contorting, as an invisible tide surged through her body—one that didn't obey the pull of moons or gods. Her breath hitched, then broke, as if even air recoiled from the corrupted rhythm of her being.

Pain came in waves, but not the kind she ruled. This wasn't a sharp stab or a mortal burn—it was disintegration. Like her body couldn't decide whether to bleed or dissolve. Her lungs flooded with phantom salt. Her heart skipped, faltered, then pounded against her ribs as if trying to escape the broken temple it resided in.

The water in the lake around her churned, caught between storm and stillness. Water eddied unnaturally, repulsed and drawn in equal measure. Her aura, once fluid and mesmerizing, now flickered like moonlight fractured on oil.

She reached for the center of lake to call for help. From her sisters, her sanctuary, her self—but they recoiled. The water no longer recognized her.

And that hurt more than anything.

She let out a loud laugh. A laugh with mad eyes and shrunken pupils. A laugh burning with sorrow and madness.

She thought she had experienced pain before but she now understands she was sorely mistaken. She now understood that pain is the only thing she'd ever known and for the longest time she was running from it, trying to find an escape....

But in her current state, where could she run to.

The water was her home but it rejects her. What did that mean for her

A water nymph that can't use water.

Pathetic.

She was then broken out of her reverie by the sound of footsteps and finally she set her sights on the monster responsible for this.

"You." She spat out. Her pupils narrowed into slits.

Aesyle lunged—nails as sharp as glass bared, teeth clenched, a snarl ripping from her throat like the cry of something half-drowned and feral. The ground spun. Her limbs ached. Her body screamed, but she moved anyway.

She would kill him. She would tear his throat open and bathe in—

CRACK.

His boot collided with her side mid-leap. The impact sent her sprawling across the sand, skidding like driftwood. Her bones screamed in protest, and for a second, the sky flipped upside-down.

She lay there gasping, blinking blood and tears from her eyes. The pain had names now—rage, humiliation, and worse: helplessness.

Slowly, shaking, she forced herself to sit up.

"That's all you've got?" she croaked, grinning with red-stained teeth. "Kick a dying creature when it's down? You humans are truly the filth upon the earth."

"Funny you say that, even after gave a peace offering. And what did you do?"

"In your arrogant greed, you sought to still breed despair."He lunged—hands closing around her throat. Her back scraped against the cold stone floor as he loomed over her, his fingers squeezing, squeezing tighter

"Let this be a lesson you will do well to remember in your next life." He spat out. His voice chilly and sharp and his grip began to get tighter and tighter.

Her lungs screamed. She thrashed, weakly, the world narrowing to a dark tunnel. Pins and needles exploded behind her eyes, her limbs twitch she could gradually begin to feel suffocation.

Until it stopped.

She looked at him wheezing, gaspin, choking, trying to force in whatever little air she could, even if her lungs felt like every breath of air were sharp needles pricking her.

Her vision blurry she could still see his face—and something in it had shifted.

She wheezed, each breath razors in her throat. But her voice still held venom

"Go on then—finish it." But he didn't move. In his eyes she could see hesitation.

She let out a dark chuckle.

"What? don't tell me you've suddenly grown a conscience."

She blinked. That look...

Almost like he's talking to someone,.

She thought, brows furrowing.

Not aloud. But his silence was... crowded.

She could almost see it—a silent war unfolding just behind his irises. Like something, or someone, whispered in his mind, clawing against the weight of what he'd just done.

He reached for his sword.

She tensed.

The metal hissed softly from its sheath—half-drawn.

And then—

He froze.

Not like a man pausing to think. Like a man paralyzed by two ghosts pulling him in opposite directions.

His breath hitched. His hand trembled on the hilt.

The warrior she met—the sharp-edged calculating one—had vanished. What remained was a man cracked open. A man A soldier. A soul lost in too many memories.

Then, like a wave collapsing into still water, he stilled. Utterly.

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, they were... calm.

But not empty.

No, there was something else now. A glint beneath the calm. A memory settled behind his gaze.

She didn't know whose face or what he saw, but it softened him. Changed him.

Andravion stepped back, slowly, sword still at his side—undrawn.

He looked down at her, but his gaze wasn't full of rage anymore. It was heavier.

"When we met," he said, voice steady but low, "I gave you a chance. I offered peace. But you chose blood."

His knuckles tightened around the hilt, but he didn't raise it.

"You spat on it. Took lives that were not yours to take. But know this—"

He looked past her now. Beyond her. As though staring at the memories of the men who had fallen.

"They will not die in vain."

His voice rose—not in anger, but in something fiercer. Conviction.

"Remember them."

"For every soul you tried to drown in your bitterness... for every life you broke to feed your rage... remember their faces."

He stepped forward, slow and deliberate.

"Remember Haleel.

Remember the brother who never raised a blade in hate.

The one who believed in honor when all else was stripped away."

Aesyle blinked, startled by the edge in his tone—so calm, and yet it struck like thunder.

"For his sake, I will not kill you. Not because you deserve to live—"

He paused. His voice dipped.

"—but because he deserved to die believing I was better than this."

He sheathed his sword.

His final words cut deeper than any blade:

"Live with it. Live long enough to remember every face of the men you tried to forget."

"Live long enough to remember me. The one who spared you even when you should be rotting."

Then he turned, his cape catching the wind like a wave breaking over stone. He faced his men.

"Grab the sheep and the fruits. We're leaving this wretched place."

The men stunned by the sudden turn of events stood for a while before shaking it off and doing as their Captain told them to.

Slowly him and his men walked away .

She watched them go.

The heartless fuckers still took her last shred of comfort she could hold on to even after spouting bullshit about mercy.

The scream left her throat before she could even realize it . She screamed pulling at her hair, tears pooling down her face.

But as the wind tugged at his cloak like the fingers of fallen ghosts, he never looked back. Not once.

She should've been glad. Should've spat another curse. Should've sworn vengeance with every breath left in her ribs.

But she didn't.

Because the silence he left behind wasn't mercy.

It was a sentence. A sentence of utter desolation and misery.

She coughed, a dry, shuddering sound. Blood painted her lips.

This is what he chose—to leave me like this. Broken. Powerless. Forgotten.

His blade would've been kinder.

Infact burning in Nekharisv flames would've been better than being left alive like this.

She tried to laugh, but it came out as a sob strangled in her throat.

"Mercy," she whispered. "He gave me mercy."

She spat the word like poison

"I should return my thanks." A sick, bitter smile twisted her mouth.

Then, dragging herself across the stone with torn limbs and trembling fingers, she clawed her way to the artifact—the one she had dropped when it all began. Its surface was cold. Silent.

But she could feel it—a residue. Not magic. Presence.

She gripped it with both hands and held it to her chest.

"Please," she whispered. "Please, just... answer me."

Nothing.

No light. No warmth. No echo of her voice.

Her chest rose and fell with panicked gasps. The despair she once fed others now gnawed through her ribs.

"No," she muttered. "No, no, no—don't leave me too."

"You're my last hope. Please don't do this to me.' She sobbed before getting an idea and praying it would work.

She grabbed a shard of rock, pressed it to her palm, and dragged it deep across the skin. Blood welled, hot and blue.

She let it drip onto the artifact.

For a heartbeat—nothing.

Then—

A flicker.

The veins of the artifact pulsed once with pale blue light. Then again. Stronger.

Aesyle froze, tears spilling freely down her cheeks now. Her breath hitched.

Of course. Of course it would take blood. Her mother's magic still lived in her veins—even if it was all that remained.

The artifact flared to life, pulsing with a heartbeat not her own.

And through her choked sobs, she whispered—

"Mother."