Argus did not wake all at once.

  Consciousness returned to him in slow layers, like light filtering through deep water. At first there was only weight. His limbs felt distant, heavy in a way that did not resemble ordinary fatigue. Even breathing required a deliberate effort, as though his body had forgotten the rhythm and needed to relearn it.

  Then came sensation.

  The mattress beneath him. The faint warmth of sunlight against his cheek. The lingering scent of crushed herbs and steeped tonics hanging in the air.

  His eyelids lifted halfway before closing again. The light was not harsh, but it felt foreign. He tried once more, forcing his vision to steady.

  The ceiling above him was familiar. The carved molding along its edge. The small crack near the eastern corner that he had once noticed and then forgotten.

  He was in his room.

  Memory followed slowly.

  Lightning. Stone splitting apart. The sharp scent of ozone. The taste of iron in the air.

  His body reacted before his thoughts did. He attempted to circulate mana instinctively.

  The response was sluggish.

  His channels felt hollowed out, scraped thin from the inside. There was no tearing pain, but there was a strange emptiness, as though something vast had passed through and left the vessel altered in its wake.

  A long time to be asleep for such a modest expenditure.

  The voice within him was calm, faintly displeased. It wasn’t addressing him, merely talking to itself.

  Those spells were not of high tier. Yet this body collapsed.

  Argus did not flinch at the internal commentary. The presence had become familiar enough that surprise was no longer its effect.

  His head turned slightly.

  His mother sat beside the bed.

  For a moment he simply watched her.

  Something in her appearance struck him as wrong, though he could not immediately name it. Then he saw it. The faint lines across her forehead had deepened. The skin beneath her eyes carried a darker hue than before. Even the way her shoulders were held seemed subtly bowed.

  It was not that she had aged years.

  But it looked as though months had passed over her in the span of a single week.

  Her hand rested lightly atop the blanket near his own, as though she had not dared to move too far from him.

  Faint sigils shimmered along the inside of her wrist, barely visible beneath the fold of her sleeve. They were subtle arrays, woven delicately into the fabric itself. Calming sigils.

  Argus recognized their structure without effort.

  She had not been steady on her own.

  Her gaze lifted.

  Their eyes met.

  For the briefest instant something flickered in her expression. Not fear. Not horror.

  Relief.

  The tension around her mouth softened. The tightness in her shoulders eased.

  When she looked at him now, there was no trace of suspicion. No memory of the storm that had torn through the courtyard. No reflection of the figure that had stood amid shattered stone and burning air.

  She saw only her son.

  “Argus,” she said quietly.

  Her voice did not tremble, but the fingers that closed gently around his hand did.

  He tried to speak. His throat protested.

  She reached for the glass waiting at the bedside and helped him sit upright just enough to drink. The water cooled his throat, grounding him in the present.

  “How long?” he asked once he found his voice.

  Her gaze held his.

  “Three days,” she answered. “You would not wake.”

  Three days.

  He leaned back slightly against the pillows. The weight in his limbs suddenly made more sense.

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor, hurried and uneven. A moment later Vaeron appeared in the doorway. He froze when he saw Argus sitting upright.

  For a heartbeat he did not move at all.

  Then he crossed the room quickly.

  “You chose an inconvenient time to sleep,” Vaeron said, though the roughness in his tone could not disguise the relief beneath it. His hand settled firmly on Argus’s shoulder, as if to confirm that he was solid and real.

  Argus studied him. Vaeron’s composure remained intact, yet there was strain around his eyes, a tightness in his jaw that had not been there before.

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  “I am fine,” Argus said.

  You are not fine.

  Dravien’s voice was clinical.

  The vessel is weakened. Your channels have been strained beyond their former capacity.

  Argus ignored the commentary for now.

  His mother brushed her thumb lightly across the back of his hand.

  “You frightened us,” she said simply.

  A quiet guilt touched him at that.

  “I did not intend to,” he replied.

  Her lips curved faintly. “Intent does not prevent fear.”

  They did not speak of the battle. Not yet. The silence between them was not empty, but laden with memory.

  After some time, when the weakness in his limbs had lessened enough to allow it, Argus rose from the bed. The act required more effort than he expected. His knees felt unsteady, though he concealed it as best he could.

  The manor halls seemed subtly altered as he walked through them.

  Servants moved more quietly than usual. Conversations hushed when he approached. The atmosphere carried something subdued and fragile.

  He sensed the absence before he consciously acknowledged it.

  At midday, he joined his mother and Vaeron in the dining hall.

  The long table was prepared as always. Silverware gleamed. Dishes were arranged with care. The routine remained intact.

  Yet one chair stood empty.

  His gaze lingered on it.

  He knew which chair it was without needing to confirm.

  He waited for her to enter, though something within him had already begun to understand.

  She did not.

  They began the meal.

  The silence thickened.

  “Where is she?” Argus asked at last.

  His mother’s fingers tightened slightly against the table’s edge. Vaeron lowered his gaze.

  The answer settled into him even before it was spoken.

  “She did not survive,” his mother said softly.

  The words were simple. Almost gentle.

  They struck nonetheless.

  Argus did not react immediately. The mind resisted shaping them into something real.

  “When?” he asked, though the question felt distant from his own voice.

  “That night.”

  The chair remained empty.

  “She was buried yesterday,” his mother continued. “It is our custom to lay our loved ones to rest as soon as possible, so that their souls may move on without being bound by grief. We delayed the funeral by one day in the hope that you would wake.” Her voice wavered faintly. “But you did not. We could not delay further.”

  Already buried.

  The finality of it pressed inward.

  He had not seen her.

  He had not stood beside her grave.

  He had not spoken farewell.

  Memories surfaced unbidden. Her sharp remarks. The cool indifference in her gaze. The way she had dismissed him publicly without hesitation.

  She had not been kind.

  Yet the thought that her voice would never echo through these halls again hollowed something within him.

  He had grown accustomed to her presence. To the sound of her footsteps on polished stone. To the faint rustle of silk when she passed.

  Even if she had treated him worse, he realized slowly, he would still be mourning her.

  Family did not require affection to bind it. It required shared blood. Shared years. Shared space beneath the same roof.

  He lowered his gaze.

  “I should have been there,” he said quietly.

  His mother reached across the table and covered his hand.

  “You were fighting with us,” she replied. “Do not carry what was not yours to prevent.”

  Dravien observed the exchange from within.

  This grief is disproportionate to the bond.

  Argus did not respond immediately.

  “It does not matter.”

  It seems mortality lends weight to even the thinnest ties.

  Dravien considered that.

  Across centuries I witnessed countless deaths. Warriors who had sworn loyalty and fallen. Adversaries who had stood defiantly until their final breath.

  And yet the combined weight of their deaths feels minuscule compared to this single assassination.

  “Humans live knowing that every interaction may be the last. That knowledge sharpens attachment.” Argus replied, though only half his mind was on the conversation.

  It is inefficient and yet at the same time compelling.

  Argus forced himself to take a steady breath.

  “What about father?” he asked after a moment.

  His mother’s gaze softened further.

  “He does not yet know,” she said. “Messages to the southern valleys take at least a week. The terrain is dangerous. Those regions are Mithril rank zones. Couriers do not cross them lightly.”

  Argus frowned slightly.

  “Could a teleporter not be used?”

  A faint, tired smile touched her lips.

  “Teleportation arrays are rare. The kingdom does not grant their use for personal communication, even to noble houses. They are reserved for matters of state.”

  He absorbed that in silence.

  He had wanted to see his father. To stand before him after what had happened. To confirm that he still existed within the same world.

  The desire lingered quietly.

  Throughout the entire meal, the atmosphere remained tense, Argus braced himself for their inevitable queries though none came. He was grateful for that, he didn’t know what he would have said.

  His brother occasionally glanced at him when he thought Argus wasn’t looking, while his mother remained deep in thought, lost in a world of her own.

  “It is only a matter of time before they ask me.” He told himself; he would have to find a decent excuse. Though none came to him as he finished his meal, leaving the hall and entering the quiet comfort of his room

  Alone, the fragments returned more sharply.

  Lightning tearing across the courtyard. Stone splitting beneath force. The sensation of movement that was both his and not his.

  His hands.

  They had struck.

  “They died by this body,” he said inwardly.

  Our hands struck, Dravien replied.

  “It was not my will.” Argus reasoned and yet he knew this excuse was a feeble one.

  You did not resist, though you could’ve. Dravien’s voice echoed his thoughts.

  Argus closed his eyes.

  They had come to kill his family. Mercy had not been an option.

  He did not regret defending those he cared for.

  Yet the thought that lives had ended through his flesh left a subtle unease.

  Who had they been beyond assassins? Had someone waited for them, unaware that they would never return?

  The questions did not absolve them. Nor did they vanish easily.

  When the commander appeared that night, I felt anticipation.

  Argus felt Dravien’s voice faintly edged by irritableness.

  He remembered the smile that had touched his lips then.

  I recognized a worthy opponent. That recognition is carved into what I am.

  “You enjoyed it,” Argus said.

  I did, it is carved on to my very soul.

  There was no denial.

  Reincarnation does not erase nature.

  The instinct to confront strength with strength, to measure oneself against formidable opposition, was not shallow bloodlust. It was an inheritance forged across eras of conflict.

  Yet if left unchecked, it would consume everything else and Argus understood this.

  “I will not pretend that instinct does not exist,” Dravien continued. “But neither will I allow it to dictate our path.”

  Argus felt the truth of that statement settle between them.

  Before he could respond, Dravien’s attention shifted outward.

  “There is another,” he said.

  Argus stilled.

  “One assassin withdrew before the battle concluded. I marked her mana during the clash. I have tracked it since.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In the city. She moves cautiously. She believes herself unnoticed.”

  A quiet tension threaded through Argus’s chest.

  Part of him wanted justice. Another part wanted silence.

  Pursuing her would reopen wounds that had barely begun to close.

  Yet allowing her to remain free carried its own danger.

  Dravien’s instinct leaned toward pursuit.

  Argus hesitated.

  A knock sounded at the door. Argus told the person to come in.

  A servant opened the door, he bowed from the threshold.

  “Commander Kaelion of the Royal Knights requests an audience.”

  The name settled heavily in the air.

  Scrutiny had arrived.

  Argus straightened slowly.

  “I will receive him,” he said.

  As the servant withdrew, he felt Dravien’s awareness sharpen.

  The assassin still breathed somewhere within the city’s bounds.

  The commander stood at his door.

  Grief had not yet settled fully into his bones, and already the world demanded composure.

  Argus drew a steady breath and stepped forward to meet what awaited him.