Chapter 667: Try Smiling with a Broken Heart

In the exact center of the magic diagram, two figures now stood where no one had been a moment earlier.

The first was a tall and very old man. Long white hair fell past his shoulders in loose strands, matched by a full white beard that reached his chest.

He wore a simple white-grey robe that looked plain against the carnage surrounding him, the fabric unmarked by the blood that had soaked into everything else in the room. His eyes, however, remained a vibrant, living red that showed no sign of age, weariness, or dimming.

Those eyes moved across the scene with the calm assessment of someone who had long ago learned to separate what mattered from what did not.

The second figure was a beautiful woman. Her hair was a deep, rich blue, and her eyes matched that same deep blue shade.

She wore an elaborate and intricate crimson robe whose fine folds and layered patterns caught the golden light of the diagram.

She stood with her weight slightly on one hip, one hand resting near her waist, and her expression suggested she had already grown bored of the situation.

Benjamin watched the pair in silence for a moment before his thoughts stirred.

[Euclid, the father of magic? Elyndor is playing tricks on my mind again. Back on Earth the name belonged to the father of mathematics.]

He allowed the corner of his mouth to lift in a small, wry smile at yet another strange and deliberate twist of this world that was not the one he had originally come from.

Euclid spoke once more. His tone remained calm and measured as he lifted one hand and slowly stroked the long white length of his beard.

The gesture was unhurried, almost gentle, the way a man might pet an old dog while deciding what to do about a problem in his house.

"Baozhe, you are going to die. What is your dying wish? I shall honor it."

The words were not cruel, but they were not kind, either. They were simply true, spoken with the flat certainty of a man reading from a ledger.

The mother turned her head toward the small girl still pressed tightly against her legs.

The motion was slow and difficult, costing her pain that could not be measured.

Her eyes had already grown dull and empty of light, the life behind them fading rapidly, but one could still see the shape of a smile in her eyes, trying to form on her damaged face despite the way her lower jaw hung loose and misplaced from the earlier wound.

The smile was not for anyone but the small warm weight against her legs, the child who had buried her face in her mother’s clothes and was shaking too hard to speak.

The mother’s final thoughts flowed clearly into Benjamin’s mind once more, quiet and steady even as her body continued to fail.

The thoughts were not spoken aloud. They were not meant for the room. They were meant for Euclid alone, and they arrived in his mind the way a letter arrives in a hand that has been waiting for it.

[Master Euclid... please take my daughter away from this place and raise her yourself. I and my husband had already planned to give her into your care when she was grown, so that she might become the strongest of our clan in time... But misfortune has befallen us before that day could ever arrive.]

The thought ended. The mother’s eyes remained fixed on the old man, waiting. Her body had gone still in a way that suggested she had already begun to leave it behind.

While those thoughts still lingered in the air between them, the second woman turned without speaking a single word.

She walked casually toward the temple entrance, her crimson robe trailing behind her, and stepped outside. She did not look back, nor did she ask what was happening.

Euclid gave a single, deliberate nod. The nod was slow and complete, the nod of a man who had weighed the request and found it acceptable.

"Very well. If that is truly what you want, I will make the necessary arrangements for it." He glanced once toward the little girl, his vibrant red eyes steady and unreadable.

The glance lasted only a moment, but it was thorough, the way a craftsman examines a piece of material before deciding what it might become.

"But... you must’ve known this from the very beginning: I am not one to be emotional or sentimental in these matters. As you have also known for a long time, even I and Forbrennir, my only daughter, do not see ourselves as parent and child in the ordinary sense of those words."

He turned his head slightly toward the open doorway where the blue-haired woman had just disappeared.

Outside, the sounds of violence rose clearly—the wet impact of blades, the short cries of those who still fought, and the clear sense of blood being spilled once more as her hands began their work among the remaining enemies.

The sounds were efficient. They were the sounds of someone completing a task she had completed many times before.

"I will raise her alongside my friends and family," Euclid continued in the same subtle voice. "If it is strength you wish for her above all else, she will gain a great deal of it... in time." He paused, and something in his red eyes shifted, a flicker of honesty that was perhaps the closest thing to kindness he had shown since arriving. "But if fatherly love is meant to form any part of this contract between us, I am afraid that will be impossible. I will not pretend to give what I do not have to give."

The mother’s face did not change. Her smile, such as it was, remained.

Euclid seemed to see that knowledge in her eyes, and he inclined his head slightly, as though acknowledging a fair bargain fairly struck.

"Fear not for her future, however. She will carve her own path in time and find a new family when the moment is right." He raised his voice slightly, not in anger but in the way a man calls across a distance. "Forbrennir!"

The blue-haired woman heard her name called across the distance.

She turned at once and walked quickly back into the temple.

Fresh blood covered her from the neatly tied hair at the back of her head all the way down the length of her elaborate crimson robe to the fancy shoes on her feet.