Chapter Text
His eyes snapped open, but for a long moment, he couldn't make sense of what he was seeing. Moonlight filtered weakly through the trees, illuminating a scene that looked less like a battlefield and more like a nightmare. Bodies lay scattered across the clearing; some looked peaceful, like they had died quickly, others looked painful and gnarly. Crimson soaked into the grass beneath them, staining the earth so thoroughly that it reflected the pale light like dark glass.
He was lying in the center of it all.
His clothes were drenched. Blood clung to his hands, caked beneath his fingernails, splattered across his arms and face. His knife rested only a few feet away, its blade painted red from hilt to tip.
His breath caught.
"No..."
The word escaped as little more than a whisper.
He scrambled backward until his back slammed into the trunk of a tree. His heart pounded against his ribs hard enough to hurt. Every instinct screamed that he should remember this. There should have been flashes of steel, desperate cries, the panic of battle.
There was nothing.
Just... emptiness.
He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to think. What had happened? How did he free himself? Had they fought back? Had he defended himself, or was this a massacre unprovoked?
The harder he reached for the memories, the further they seemed to slip away, dissolving like smoke before he could grasp them. All that remained was a pounding headache and the sickening certainty that whatever had happened here, he had been at the center of it.
A cold breeze swept through the clearing, carrying with it the distant call of voices.
Searching.
Whether they were friends or enemies didn't matter.
If they found him standing in the middle of a massacre covered head to toe in blood, there wouldn't be time to explain. He couldn't explain. He didn't even know if he was innocent.
His stomach twisted.
Home.
The word surfaced through the haze like a lighthouse cutting through fog.
He had to get home.
Back to the others. Back somewhere safe. Somewhere, he could figure out what had happened before the world decided for him.
Hands trembling, he forced himself to his feet. Every muscle ached as though he'd fought for hours, but adrenaline drowned out the pain. He left the knife where it lay for only a second before snatching it up. Running unarmed through unfamiliar woods would only make things worse.
He took one last horrified look at the carnage.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, though he wasn't sure who he was apologizing to.
Then he turned and ran.
Branches clawed at his clothes as he pushed through the forest, every snap of a twig behind him sounding like pursuing footsteps. His lungs burned, his heartbeat thundered in his ears, his entire frame trembled with injury, and still he didn't slow. Whatever answers waited for him were back home.
He only prayed that when he finally remembered what had happened, he could still bear to live with the truth.
By the time he found a place to rest, the sun had climbed high enough to bleach the world in harsh midday light. Every step of the journey had carved a new ache into his body. Bruises bloomed beneath torn fabric, cuts stung with every movement, and his muscles trembled from exhaustion. He could keep walking if he forced himself to, but he knew it would only end with him collapsing before he ever reached the academy.
He lowered himself beneath the shade of a crooked tree, letting out a shaky breath as his back met the rough bark. For the first time since the fight had ended, he allowed himself to stop moving. The silence felt strange after the chaos. Birds chirped somewhere overhead, and a gentle breeze rustled the leaves as though the forest had already forgotten the violence that had taken place within it.
His body hurt, but rest wasn't a luxury anymore. It was a necessity.
He still had to address what happened within himself and get back to the academy, and stumbling in looking like he'd crawled out of a battlefield would only spark questions he wasn't ready to answer. His friends worried enough as it was. The last thing he wanted was for them to see the blood caked on his clothes and imagine the worst.
He'd need to clean himself up as best he could. Wash the blood from his skin, rinse the dirt from his hair, and patch whatever wounds he could manage with the dwindling contents of his medical kit. He doubted he could hide every injury, but maybe he could make them look like the sort of scrapes that came from an ordinary dungeon expedition instead of a desperate struggle for survival.
He needed to gather his thoughts before anyone started asking questions.
He needed to decide which parts of the truth he could tell and which ones had to stay buried.
He needed to make sure his shaking hands stopped trembling before he faced Juniper. She would notice. She always noticed.
He needed to think about what came next. About the person he failed to kill. About the information he found. About the unsettling realization that killing, something that had once seemed impossible, was becoming frighteningly familiar.
There were too many things he needed to do.
But first, he let his eyes drift shut for just a moment, allowing the warmth of the afternoon sun to soak into his aching body. Just five minutes, he promised himself.
Five minutes to breathe.
Five minutes to pretend the weight on his shoulders wasn't slowly crushing him.
Then he'd get up, put on a smile convincing enough to fool everyone, and recall back to the academy as though nothing had happened.
When Legs warped into the main hall, instinct drowned out every other thought. The world around him barely had time to settle before his mind latched onto a single, desperate need.
gadget .
He needed his dragon.
His baby.
Everything else could wait. The questions, the explanations, and the people undoubtedly waiting for him. None of it mattered compared to holding gadget close. His chest ached with a fierce, almost painful longing, the kind that came from days of fear and uncertainty finally catching up to him all at once.
His eyes darted across the hall, searching for the familiar flash of scales or the eager bob of a head. His heart hammered against his ribs with every second that passed without spotting him.
He needed to hold him.
To bury his face against warm scales and feel the steady rumble of gadget 's contented purr beneath his hands. To wrap both arms around the dragon's neck and reassure himself that this was real, that he had made it through to hold him again. He wanted to scratch the spot behind gadget 's horns that always made him lean into the touch, to hear the happy chirps that only he ever seemed to earn.
He needed that reminder that, despite everything he had done and everything he had survived, there was still one creature in the world who would greet him without hesitation.
Right now, he didn't need words.
He just needed his dragon.
Legundo headed for the one place he was certain he would find Gadget: his room.
It had become something of a refuge over the past few months. Whenever the world became too loud, whenever expectations piled too high or his own thoughts refused to quiet, Leg's room was where everything seemed to slow down. They didn't always have to talk. Sometimes Legundo would simply curl up on the edge of the bed while Gadget read tomes next to him, the rhythmic rustling of pages and soft muttering providing a strange sort of comfort. Other times, they'd sit in silence, existing in the same space until the weight pressing against Legundo's chest eased enough for him to breathe again.
That was all he wanted now.
He would worry about everything else later. The injuries. The nightmares. The guilt clung to him like wet clothes. The impossible future waiting for him beyond the academy walls. All of it could wait for an hour if it meant he could just sit beside Gadget and remember what it felt like to feel safe.
The familiar hallway stretched before him, and his pace quickened despite himself.
Then he stopped.
The door was shut.
Locked.
Legundo frowned, reaching for the handle anyway. It didn't budge.
"...Gadget?"
No answer.
He knocked lightly at first, expecting the muffled chirps of Gadget realizing he was there, papers being shuffled aside next to him, or the shuffle of pawsteps crossing the room.
Nothing.
The silence on the other side felt wrong.
Normally, there was something. The faint hum of the veil. The tactile click of claws on wood. Gadget humming absentmindedly to himself as he read. Even if he was asleep, there was usually some indication that someone occupied the room.
Now there was only stillness.
Legundo knocked again, harder this time.
"Gadget?"
Still nothing.
A cold knot twisted in his stomach.
His mind leaped to conclusions before he could stop it.
Where is he?
Why isn't he here?
Why is the door locked?
The questions spiraled faster than he could answer them. Maybe Gadget had simply left the room. Maybe he was with Gracie in the workshop. Maybe he'd gone to read in the library.
Those were reasonable explanations.
They should have been enough.
Instead, panic bloomed anyway, irrational and immediate.
His breathing hitched as every awful possibility crashed through his mind at once. What if something had happened? What if he'd gotten hurt? What if... what if Legundo had waited too long, and now the one individual he needed most wasn't here because something terrible had happened?
He knew he was catastrophizing. He knew it. Gadget was probably fine.
Knowing didn't stop the fear.
Legundo rested his forehead against the cool wooden door, squeezing his eyes shut as his pulse thundered in his ears. The empty hallway suddenly felt enormous, swallowing every reassuring thought before it could take root.
For the first time that day, he realized just how desperately he'd been counting on finding Gadget behind that door.
Not a plan. Not a solution. Just Gadget.
The thought settled heavily in his chest. He had convinced himself that as long as he could reach this place, as long as he could find him, everything would somehow fall back into place. Gadget always had a way of making impossible situations feel manageable. He could take a disaster, turn it over in his paws, and somehow find the one loose thread that would unravel the whole mess.
But there was no familiar voice calling his name from the other side.
No footsteps rushing toward the door.
No sarcastic remark about him showing up at the worst possible time.
Only silence.
And silence was somehow worse.
Legundo slowly opened his eyes, staring at the grain of the wood beneath his palms. The door was solid, unmoving, indifferent to the panic clawing its way through him. He had faced monsters, enemies, and situations where the odds had been stacked so impossibly high that survival seemed like a joke.
Those things had been easier.
At least with those, he knew what he was fighting.
This was different.
This was standing in an empty hallway with no enemy to blame and no direction to run.
His fingers curled against the door, hesitating for a moment as if he could somehow force an answer out of it. Maybe if he knocked again. Maybe if he waited just a little longer. Maybe he was nearby and would appear any second, rolling her eyes at him for worrying so much.
But the longer he stood there, the more that fragile hope began to crack.
"Gadget..." he whispered, barely loud enough for the empty corridor to hear.
The name felt strange without him answering back.
He pushed away from the door, though the movement felt heavier than it should have. His shoulders sagged as he looked down the hallway, the path ahead stretching into darkness. Every instinct told him to stay, to wait, to believe that he would come back.
But another part of him, the part that had kept him alive this long, knew he couldn't stay frozen forever.
The problem was that he had no idea where to go.
Every choice felt wrong.
Every direction felt like walking farther away from the one person he needed to find.
For once, Legundo wasn't afraid of what was waiting for him around the corner.
He was afraid there might be nothing there at all.