Lennox watched as the younger boy in front of him collapsed, slumping forward, his knees giving away. The petite body folded in his arms, fragile and breakable like a dry twig. The weight of his action finally caught up to him, the alarm tearing through the red haze clouding his vision - a haze pulled over his eyes by his insatiable rage.

Had he killed the boy? 

Thought struck, cold and sudden. He was here to kill anyway. Just not him. 

That bastard Erie was another story altogether. He was itching to pull him apart from limb by bloody limb, before casting his remains into his blue flames. Did he think he could run from them? By sacrificing this little runt?

That utterly delusional cur! 

He would find him, if not today, then tomorrow.

Lennox tugged at the boy’s hair, lifting his head from his chest. The boy barely reached his shoulders, — no doubt sent as a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter. But what he saw next, doused the last of his fury. 

Soft features. Smooth cheeks. A face unweathered by time or war. Barely an adult by Raian standards. 

He held the boy straight, holding him by his arms, the angry red marks stark against pale skin. 

A child, he realised, thought a cold slap against the embers of his anger. Alarmed, he reached for the pulse. It was barely felt.

The rage inside him flared up again, his vision swam with blood. Flames engulfed his fist as he drove it clean through the wall. It collapsed, bringing the whole shed down with it. 

Leo stepped in fast and yanked the kid away from him. 

‘Lennox!’ He ventured carefully, ‘Calm down. The Kid is alive and — and lucky for him, I am carrying a Healing Silvian Seal on me. That would buy us enough time to take him to the infirmary. You have it under control.’

Lennox already had it under control. 

This was not one of the cursed moments when the eternal inferno inside him devoured his reason whole.

No - this time he chose to let the monster slip free, if only for a heart beat. He watched the wall crumble, feeling the rage coil back into the hollow of his chest, leaving him empty and cold. 

Then, almost absently, he chuckled.

‘You have to give it to them.’ He drawled, his voice rough-edged with mockery. ‘They have started using kids as their mules, knowing we would hesitate to strike.’

Leo just shook his head.

‘I doubt that, Brother. Had he been found by the Hunters rather than us…' His gaze darkened, ‘..a quick death would have felt like mercy from Zenos.’

Lennox thought about the smoking pile of Raian trash he had left in his wake. Little tendrils of flame teased along his knuckles, unbidden.

‘They sent three hunters for him.’ Lennox mused darkly. ‘They must be feeling desperate.’ 

Leo allowed himself a smilewhen the boy in his arms stirred, color returning to his face.

‘You and Dazai are not actually making it any easier for them.’

‘Don’t take our names in the same breath.’ Lennox scoffed but a smirk teased on his lips.

Without a word, Lennox scooped the boy up, cradling the frail body with surprising care and watched Leo use another Seal, forcing open a portal. 

“You sure that thing’s stable?” Lennox asked, arching a brow at the swirling portal. “Last time you opened one, we nearly ended up in Anguth.”

Leo shot him a dry look. “That was a... calibration error.”

“Uh-huh.” Lennox cradled the boy closer. “Try not to get us fried this time. I’m already in enough trouble as it is.”

The portal stabilized to reveal the infirmary — and a furious Sister Artha, on the other side. 

“Great,” Lennox muttered, exhaling sharply. “From the fire straight into the furnace.”

He sent a hasty, insincere prayer to Zenos and stepped through, already bracing for the storm.