Chapter 560. I Told Her I Wouldn’t Let Go, and My Forearms Filed a Formal Complaint

Chapter 560: 560. I Told Her I Wouldn’t Let Go, and My Forearms Filed a Formal Complaint

The light in her palm didn’t just brighten; it mutated. The soft, honeyed glow they had worked weeks to cultivate curdled into something violent and sickly.

Sharp, jagged streaks of bleached white tore through the gold like lightning trapped in amber. The temperature in the clearing plummeted for a heartbeat before roaring upward in a flash of searing heat.

William felt the air thicken, turning viscous and heavy, pressing against his lungs like water. The pressure was physical; it pushed against his chest, making every inhalation feel like he was breathing through wet wool.

But it was what he saw behind her shoulders that made his blood run cold. Through the thin fabric of her shirt, two distinct shapes began to pulse lumps of something that shouldn’t exist, thumping in a rhythm that was too rapid, too erratic.

It was the heartbeat of something alien, something ancient, beating in desperate synchronicity with her own terror.

Underneath his boots, the earth began to groan. A low frequency tremor rattled his teeth as the ground itself seemed to recoil from her presence.

"Ellie! Let go of it!" William roared, his voice cutting through the rising hum of energy. "Force it down! Push it back into the well!"

"I cannot!" Her voice broke, ascending into a raw, animalistic cry that tore at his nerves. "Instructor Wade, I can’t!"

"It won’t stop! It’s not coming from me anymore... it’s coming through me!"

William didn’t think; he reacted. His training took over, his body moving before his mind could process the danger.

He crossed the scorched grass in four desperate, lunging strides. He threw himself forward, planting both palms against her shoulders in an attempt to anchor her, to ground her before she became a conduit for something catastrophic.

The explosion didn’t happen with a bang; it happened with a scream of displaced reality.

The wave of light struck him square in the chest like a battering ram made of molten glass. Heat flooded through his arms instantly, a searing sensation flooding his nerves like boiling water poured directly into his veins.

His muscles locked in a violent spasm, his spine arching as the feedback from her power attempted to short-circuit his own nervous system.

At his hip, Aetherion, his blade began to vibrate so violently in its scabbard that the metal chattered against his belt with a sound like breaking bone.

For three terrifying seconds, William couldn’t breathe. His lungs felt fused shut, his vision tunneling into a white haze.

’Don’t let go,’ his mind screamed. ’If you break contact now, the backlash will vaporize her.’

"Listen to my voice!" he forced out, each word a monumental effort that felt like pulling shards of glass from his throat. "Ellie, look at me!"

"You are not alone! I am right here!"

"I am holding you, and I am not letting go!"

"I am going to hurt you!" she wailed, her body convulsing as the energy arced between them. "I can feel it; it wants to burn you away!"

"I’m going to kill you, Instructor Wade!"

"You are not going to hurt me," he growled through gritted teeth, his muscles screaming as they fought to maintain his position against the outward pressure of her mana. "Breathe... With me!"

"Four counts in, four counts out... Do it now, Ellie!"

"Command the air into your lungs!"

Ellie was sobbing now, long, wrenching, body-wracking sobs that shook her entire frame. The light was spattering off her skin in sparks that hissed when they hit the ground.

"I am a monster, Instructor Wade!" she shrieked between gasps. "I am a monster!"

"I am going to hurt everyone I love, and I do not want to be like this!"

"I don’t want to be this thing!"

Desperation drove him. He pulled her against his chest, wrapping his arms around her in a crushing embrace, using his own body as a shield and a lightning rod.

It was the only way to give her a physical reality to cling to. Her power was pouring through him like a torrential river through a narrow, crumbling gate, threatening to tear his own channels apart.

He gritted his teeth so hard he tasted copper, spreading his own mana wide, opening his own internal pathways to act as a secondary reservoir, taking the unbearable weight of her overflow onto himself.

His arms burned. His bones felt like they were vibrating at a frequency that would shatter them.

But he didn’t flinch. He kept talking, his mouth pressed close to her ear, his words steady, quiet, and relentless a lifeline thrown into a hurricane.

"Listen to me, Ellie," he whispered, his voice unyielding despite the agony coursing through him. "Monsters do not cry because they are afraid of hurting other people!"

"Monsters do not weep because they fear their own strength!"

"Monsters don’t have hearts that break for the sake of others!"

He tightened his grip, feeling her heartbeat stutter against his own.

"You are the first person I have ever met who cares so much about everyone else that she is willing to hurt herself just to keep them safe!"

"That is not a monster, Ellie! That is the exact opposite of one!"

"You are not the storm; you are the person trying to survive it!"

The light did not vanish in a single, clean instant. Instead, it died in agonizing, stuttering stages, like a dying star fighting its own collapse.

First, the blinding white retreated, leaving behind a searing gold that pulsed with a sickly rhythm. Then the gold bled into a dim, exhausted amber, flickering like a candle guttering in a draft.

Finally, the oppressive weight of the physical, crushing pressure that had made William feel like he was being buried alive began to ebb.

The ground beneath them stopped its violent shuddering, leaving behind only a faint, residual hum that vibrated in the marrow of his bones.

When the last spark finally dissolved into the air, Ellie went completely limp. The fight drained out of her all at once, leaving her hollow.

William felt his own legs give way as they both sank heavily onto the scorched, blackened grass. Both of them were gasping for air, their lungs burning as though they had been sprinting through smoke.

Each breath was a ragged, desperate thing, torn from chests that felt bruised from the inside out.

William looked down at his arms. His forearms were a horrific map of angry violence, raised welts of crimson skin stretching from wrist to elbow, blistered and weeping where the magical feedback had lashed against his flesh.

He stared at the injuries with a detached, eerie fascination, the way a soldier might examine a fatal wound on a battlefield, weighing the damage with a cold, analytical mind.

The pain hadn’t fully registered yet; his body was still flooded with the adrenaline of survival. He did not loosen his grip on her, holding her close even as the last involuntary tremors wracked her fragile frame.

"You’re still here," she whispered into his chest, her voice broken and hoarse. "You’re still here."

"I told you I wouldn’t let go," he rasped back.

The silence of the aftermath was broken by the frantic pounding of footsteps. Catherine came sprinting across the field, her usual composure shattered.

Her hair was coming loose from its pins, streaming behind her like a banner of war, and she clutched a bucket in one hand and a bundle of wet cloths in the other.

She didn’t call out; she didn’t ask what had happened. She had seen the light, she had heard the screams, and she knew.

She dropped to her knees beside them with a force that kicked up dust. Without a single word of scolding, without a hint of the usual dry wit or academic critique, she began to work.

Her hands were steady despite her obvious terror as she pressed the cool, soaked cloths to William’s blistered forearms. The shock of the cold made his muscles twitch involuntarily, but he didn’t pull away.

Beside them, Aetherion finally fell silent. The blade in its scabbard stopped its death rattle chatter, returning to its deadly, watchful stillness.

William waited until the fire in his arms had dimmed to a dull throb before he lifted his head. His vision was still slightly blurred at the edges, but he forced himself to focus on Ellie.

Her face was a mess; her eyes were swollen from crying, her cheeks streaked with dried salt and fresh tears, and her skin pale beneath the grime of the field. She looked small.

She looked terrified. But she looked alive.

A ghost of a smile, crooked and exhausted, tugged at the corner of William’s mouth. It was a smile born of survival, the grim satisfaction of a man who had stared into the abyss and refused to blink.

"I think," he said, his voice cracking slightly as he looked at the scorched wasteland they had created, "that is probably enough practice for today."