Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5699

Chapter 5699: Engineer! II

Thalia unflinchingly...did not let him go.

The spring had returned to what it was, and the steam had come back, and the falls were running down the Elsemountain again as though nothing at all had happened here. Yet her arms stayed locked across his chest, tight, as if he would be gone if she let go.

Of course, she had reason. She had spent that entire conversation frozen, watching an architect stand over the man she had crossed time to reach, unable to move so much as a finger in his direction. There are worse things than danger. Being present for it and useless is one of them.

"That was... an Immense One," she said against his back. "How did they even..."

The question did not finish. In truth, it did not need to!

Then she asked the other one.

"And you. My Provenance, are you really fearful all the time? Do you truly live with fear constantly?"

Noah turned in her arms.

He took her by the shoulders and drew her in, and their noses brushed.

"Yes," he said. "Constantly."

Her eyes moved between his.

"For humans like us, fear was never the enemy. Fear is the oldest teacher our kind ever had. It is the thing that told the first of us to look up at a sky we did not understand and ask what lived in it. It is what built every wall and lit every fire and made a person check the dark before they slept, and every one of those was a small refusal to simply lie down and accept whatever came."

He held her gaze.

"Fear is a drive that makes sure a man does not remain still. It sharpens what love makes soft. It keeps me honest about what I actually am rather than what I would like to be. I thought I gave away my everything of fear and doubt before, but...it was always there."

He shrugged, and the shrug was small.

"Being afraid and moving anyway is what a true human has always been good at."

Thalia looked at him for a long moment.

Then the tears came, and she did not wipe them away or apologize for them or seem to notice them at all. She simply took his face in both hands and started kissing him, small pecks, everywhere, his cheek and his brow and the bridge of his nose and the corner of his mouth, over and over, as though she could cover every part of him that carried something heavy.

"Let me carry some of your fear," she said between them. "Some of your weight."

Another kiss, at his temple.

"In that possible future, I know you carry so much weight. I have seen what it makes of you. Let me carry even a percentage of it for you."

Noah stayed in the moment.

He was not, generally speaking, a man who stayed in moments. Yet here he was, standing in scorching golden water with an unfathomable woman holding his face in her hands, and he did nothing at all except look at her.

Then he shook his head.

"In existence, a man has his duties," he said. "I know you can carry any weight you want to carry. But my job is to bear everything, so that you and many others can live happily without needing to bend your backs."

He brushed a thumb under her eye and took the tear away.

"Do not worry about any weight I carry. I can handle it. I have a grand Provenance, and I have infinite musing to allow me to do so. For me, it is normal."

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