Extra is the Heir of Life and Death

Chapter 194: I wanted to connect his lips with mine.

Belle Ardent

When he told me to take off my blindfold, I almost laughed.

Not out loud. Just internally, that quiet, fond amusement that had become second nature whenever Sebastian tried to look serious and failed in the most endearing way possible. His voice had been careful, measured, like he was stepping across thin ice and pretending it was solid ground. I had heard that tone before. Many times.

It was the same tone he used every time he thought he could save me.

Of course, I knew immediately what he was planning. I wasn’t blind to his intentions just because I couldn’t see the world anymore. If anything, blindness sharpened perception in other ways. The way his breath shifted. The way his presence leaned toward me, tense with hope he didn’t dare voice.

Once again, he was going to try to heal my eyes.

Once again, he was going to challenge the curse the Demon King himself had branded into my existence.

It was... cute. Painfully so.

I had let him do it because that was who Sebastian was. The kind of man who would stand in front of an impossible wall and start punching anyway, not because he believed it would break, but because doing nothing was unacceptable to him. The kind of man who saw a tragedy and thought, sincerely, foolishly, beautifully, I can fix this.

I loved that about him.

But I hadn’t believed it would work.

Not truly.

I knew the curse too well.

Three years ago, when the Demon King had taken my sight, I had fought back with everything I had. I had burned my own death affinity against it until my soul screamed. When that failed, I had used Vespera. Not dualflow. Something far beyond it. Something that made dualflow look like a child’s first spark of mana.

Vespera was death refined. Absolute. Final. It was power that erased concepts, not bodies.

And even that hadn’t been enough.

The curse had laughed at it. Quietly. Patiently. As if amused by my desperation.

So yes, when Sebastian asked me to remove the blindfold, I knew exactly what he was attempting.

And I let him.

Because even if it failed, I wanted him to know that I trusted him. That his hope mattered to me. That his efforts, however doomed, were never wasted.

Then he placed his hand over my eyes.

And the world ended.

Pain unlike anything I had ever known tore through me. Not the sharp agony of wounds or the consuming burn of magic backlash. This was deeper. More intimate. It felt like something was being ripped out of me while another force tried to stitch me back together at the same time.

The curse panicked.

I could feel it.

For the first time in three years, the thing inside me wasn’t smug or patient or quietly victorious. It was afraid. Thrashing. Clawing desperately to remain.

And behind it, beneath it, something else stirred.

Life.

Real, insistent, undeniable life.

I clung to Sebastian’s presence like an anchor. His voice, his touch, his stubborn warmth cutting through the chaos. I didn’t pull away. I didn’t scream for him to stop. Even when it hurt more than I thought possible, I stayed.

Because somewhere deep inside, something whispered that this was different.

That he was different.

And then, suddenly, the pain broke.

Not faded. Not dulled.

Broken. Like a chain snapping under too much strain.

The curse vanished.

There was a moment of terrifying emptiness, like standing on the edge of a cliff after the ground behind you collapses. And then light rushed in.

Not metaphorical light.

Actual light.

I gasped.

My breath caught violently in my chest as sensation flooded into places that had been numb for years. My eyes burned. Tears spilled instantly, not from pain, but from shock. From overload. From something inside me remembering how it was supposed to work.

"Sebastian?" I whispered, afraid that if I spoke too loudly the miracle would shatter.

I blinked.

Once.

Twice.

And then I saw him.

For three years, I had known his face only through memory and imagination. I had rebuilt it in my mind over and over again, smoothing details, exaggerating others, afraid that time would erode him into something false.

But reality was crueler and kinder than anything I had imagined.

Sebastian was devastatingly real.

His short black hair fell messily across his forehead, darker than I remembered, catching the light in subtle shades. His golden eyes were wide, luminous, staring at me like I was something holy and fragile all at once. They weren’t just gold. They were alive. Flecked with warmth and resolve and that ever-present defiance of the world that had first drawn me to him.

He had grown.

Not just taller, though he had. His shoulders were broader now, his frame lean and powerful in a way that spoke of hardship rather than training halls. There were faint scars along his hands, his arms. Proof of battles fought and survived.

He was... unbearably handsome.

Not in the polished, distant way of nobles or heroes sculpted for legends. But in the raw, honest way of someone who had suffered, endured, and still chosen to care.

And he was looking at me like that.

Like I was the only thing in the world.

Tears blurred my vision, streaking hot and fast down my cheeks. I didn’t even try to stop them. My body was trembling, caught somewhere between disbelief and overwhelming relief.

He did it.

He actually did it.

Three years of darkness, gone. Three years of enforced blindness, undone by a boy who refused to accept inevitability.

I laughed weakly, a sound halfway to a sob. "You..." My voice broke. "You’re impossible."

He said my name like a prayer.

And something in my chest cracked open completely.

All the restraint I had built. All the walls. All the careful distance I maintained because I didn’t want to burden him with my curse or my past.

Gone.

In that moment, there was only him. Only us. Only the unbearable closeness and the knowledge that I was seeing him again, truly seeing him, not just with my eyes but with everything I was.

Tears continued to fall, but I didn’t wipe them away. I didn’t care how I looked. I didn’t care about composure or dignity or the weight of my title.

The only thought that mattered, the only desire that rose clearly through the storm of emotion, was simple and absolute.

I wanted to connect his lips with mine.