Chapter 546. Everyone Has a Secret Schedule Except Me and My Nosebleed

Chapter 546: 546. Everyone Has a Secret Schedule Except Me and My Nosebleed

When her amber eyes finally met his, red-rimmed and swimming with tears, he spoke with the conviction of a man who would fight gods to prove his point.

"Whatever this turns out to be, whatever this thing is that’s growing out of you, and wherever it came from, it doesn’t change how I see you."

"Not one bit... You think some shards of glass and some wild mana can rewrite your soul? You’re wrong."

He leaned closer, his shadow falling over her. "You’re the girl who made tea for the village kids when nobody asked her to, just because you saw they were cold."

"You’re the one who quietly slips her porridge to Olivia when she’s too distracted to remember to eat."

"You’re the person who spent three agonizing months afraid to heal a single scratch because you were terrified of making something worse, only to learn how to mend wounds ten percent at a time through sheer, stubborn kindness."

His thumb stroked the back of her cold hand. "That is who you are."

"That is your essence... That is your magic."

"It’s not what’s growing on your back, Ellie."

"That’s just... circumstances."

"You are the person who chose to be good, even when it was hard... And that’s the only truth that matters."

Ellie pressed her face deeper into the pillow, and the dam finally broke completely. She sobbed harder than before, but the quality of it had shifted; the sharp, panicked gasps had given way to something looser, more exhausted.

It was the sound of someone who had been holding their breath for years and had finally been allowed to exhale.

William remained motionless. He didn’t offer empty platitudes or hollow reassurances.

He knew that words had failed them both hours ago. Instead, he simply maintained his grip on her hand, offering his presence as an anchor, something solid, something unyielding, something that would not break even if the world did.

But beneath the surface of his exhausted calm, the analytical part of his mind, the part that had survived two lifetimes of slaughter and strategy, refused to shut down. It couldn’t.

The adrenaline was still coursing through his veins like poison.

’This wasn’t an accident,’ he thought, his eyes fixed on the dark corner of the room. ’This wasn’t a disease, and it wasn’t a wound.’

He replayed the surge in his mind: the way it hadn’t torn through her flesh like a cancer but had erupted with the terrifying precision of a clockwork mechanism. It had felt engineered.

It felt like something that had been dormant, coiled within her DNA like a spring, waiting for a specific trigger a specific age, and a specific threshold of mana.

He thought about Clara’s reaction earlier, the way she had asked for time with a calm that bordered on the unnatural, and the guilt that had flickered in her eyes like a dying candle.

’A schedule,’ William realized, a cold dread settling in his gut. ’This isn’t a tragedy.’

’It’s an appointment.’

The silence of the room was punctured by a soft, agonized creak from the doorway behind him. William stiffened, his instincts screaming before his brain could process the sound.

He turned his head slowly.

Clara stood in the doorway, where the frame seemed too narrow to contain her. She was disheveled, breathing in ragged, desperate gulps as if she had run halfway across the kingdom to get here.

Her hair had escaped its tie, spilling across her shoulders in tangled strands, and she clutched a massive, leather-bound tome against her chest like a shield.

Her gaze swept the room with frantic urgency.

First, it landed on Ellie’s tear-stained face. Then, it shifted to the blood-soaked bandages.

Finally, with a horrifying, glacial slowness, her eyes found the gap in the blanket. The faint, ethereal glow of the golden veins pulsing against Ellie’s skin caught the lamplight, revealing the impossible pattern beneath the fabric.

Clara didn’t scream. She didn’t gasp.

The color simply drained from her face as if someone had pulled a plug at the base of her throat. She looked less like a person and more like a ghost haunting her own life.

"So it’s started," she whispered.

The words were hollow, carrying the weight of a funeral dirge.

William pushed himself up from the floor. His legs felt like water, the muscles twitching with residual tremors, and he had to brace one hand against the bedpost to keep from collapsing.

"Started what, Clara?" he demanded, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low register. "What the hell did you know?"

"I..." Clara started, but the words died in her throat.

Her hand flew to her mouth as if to physically prevent more secrets from escaping.

Her grip faltered. The heavy book slipped from under her arm, tumbling through the air before hitting the floorboards with a wet thud.

It fell open, splayed across the wood.

For a split second, William’s eyes caught the illustration on the exposed page. His heart skipped a beat.

It was a charcoal drawing of a figure tall, ancient, and terrifying. The figure possessed hair that flowed like liquid silver and a pair of magnificent, terrible wings made entirely of translucent glass.

Running through those wings were fine, branching veins of light the exact same pattern he had just seen pulsing beneath Ellie’s skin.

Clara reacted with the panicked reflex of someone who had just been caught standing over a corpse. Her foot shot out, slamming the heavy cover of the book shut with such violence that the leather groaned, and she nearly lost her balance in the process.

She stumbled back against the doorframe, her hands shaking so violently they looked like they might shatter.

William didn’t move toward her. He stood like a predator coiled in the shadows, his blood stained shirt clinging to his chest, his eyes burning with a cold, lethal fury.

"Clara," he said, each syllable clipped and dangerous. "I gave you time... I gave you space."

"I gave you every excuse a man could give to let you keep your secrets."

"But I can’t give you any more... Not after seeing this... Not after watching her bleed."

The accusation hung in the air like smoke. Clara looked up at him, her eyes wide and glassy with unshed tears.

"I know," she choked out, her voice cracking audibly in the middle. "I know what you’re owed."

"I know what she’s owed." A fresh wave of desperation washed over her features. "I’ll tell you."

"I swear on my life, Instructor Wade... I will tell you everything."

"Every twisted truth, every terrible detail... But not tonight. Not here."

"And God help me, not in front of her..."

"Tomorrow... Please. Just give me until morning."

William opened his mouth to roar a refusal, to demand justice immediately, but a sound from the bed cut him off.

"Clara...?"

It was Ellie’s voice. It was barely audible, a thread of sound so thin it seemed to fray before it reached them.

She sounded drowsy, her consciousness drifting in the haze of exhaustion and magical trauma.

The transformation in Clara was instantaneous. The guarded, secretive woman vanished, replaced by someone raw and broken.

She scrambled across the room, dropping to her knees beside the mattress with a desperate urgency that made the floorboards creak.

She seized Ellie’s hand with both of hers, pressing it against her own cheek as if trying to transfer her own life force into the girl.

When Clara spoke again, the voice that emerged was something William had never heard before. The clever, composed, almost untouchable Clara was gone.

This voice was thin, cracked, and utterly stripped of every layer of intellectual armor she normally wore. It was the voice of someone who had been carrying a mountain on their back and had finally collapsed under the weight.

"I’m sorry," Clara sobbed, the tears finally spilling over. "I’m so sorry, Ellie."

"I should have told you... I should have warned you."

"I should have found a way to stop it before it reached this point."

"I should have told you everything so you wouldn’t be so afraid."

Ellie’s eyes fluttered open halfway, unfocused and clouded with pain.

"Told me what?" she asked, her words slurring, her confusion mixing with the lingering terror of the transformation. "Clara... what are you talking about?"

"What’s wrong with me?"