Mirage - Shall We Date Wizardess Heart' Fic

Chapter 68: Soul on hold

While Conrad Schuyler tried to mainly do some damage control in the main field, dividing the troops, Randolph dashed ahead. He went inside the tower, ran up the stairs but found no signs of Aurora in the permisses. So, back at the ground floor, he observed thoroughly the outskirts of the East Forest.

Once his eyes caught a glimpse of someone lying on the ground, not far from the tower, his face had shriveled, his upper lip had sunk in, and his eyes were dim. The unknown can be worse than reality, and he had no idea what to expect when reaching the body. 

He slowed the pace; the man was towering over the girl's lifeless body strained on the grass, his chest tight as if he'd run the marathon and his mind a complete blank, like TV static.

Recognizing the small piece of jewelry o her ring finger, Randolph fell onto his knees, his hands shook as he gripped the pasture between his fingers. At first, he had thought of her as being asleep or just unconscious, but reality broke the spell faster than he would ever anticipate.

He gently turned her around, her limbs falling on the ground like a ragged doll, and, for the first time in his life, he felt like his world crumbling down.

Blood. Her blood was everywhere, whenever he would lay his eyes on - her ripped shirt and jeans, spattered across his otherwise clean clothes from having perched over her body and pulled it to him, as well as scattered all around the lawn. His hands, now zealously searching her body for injuries, couldn't find any cuts or wounds on her body, which was relieving.

At once he stretched out his hand and pressed two fingers onto her neck to check her pulse but to his dismay, he couldn't detect any.

"Randolph--!" Conrad Schuyler cried out; he came to Randolph's meeting as soon as he was able to. The offensive arts teacher stopped in his tracks the moment he noticed the body of one of his students motionless, in the headmaster's arms.

A few seconds later, from within the Tower of Sorrow emerged three male students, Luca and Yukiya, dragging a half-conscious ginger-haired boy along with them; his body weight was neatly doled out on each one of their shoulders. They made to the scene at their own strained pace, followed shortly after by a pigtail-haired girl running frantically with worry. The four of them stopped and stared in mute horror at their headmaster weeping on the grass. Since the other teacher was standing between them and the body, all their eyes could contemplate were a pair of bruised legs at one end and a tuft of bloodstained hair on the other end.

"Is she...?" Schuyler's voice trailed off initially. And, when the kneeled man shook his head, heart already shattered into a million pieces, the professor continued, "You're not the one to blame for this," his hand dropping onto the other man's shoulder, giving it a light squeeze."There was no way you could have anticipated this."

He frowned and opened his mouth in an attempt to speak, but when nothing came out, his expression became skeptical.

"NO!" Liz gave a cry, anguished as a pair of arms wrapped around her.

Despite Luca having his shoulder dislocated from the previous fight with the Dark Lord, he still engaged her. His arms tightened around her body thus, restraining her movements. They both slumped to the ground; he propped her up, and she sagged against him, unable to keep from crying and yelling.

Yukiya caught Guy just in time; placing his free hand on his waist, he howled him up in a light-footed motion. He watched absently as his classmate tried to control the school Prefect.