Chapter 71: The Scars We Carry

  Aeor wasn't sure when he had started finding comfort in the dark.

  It offered a strange, formless peace. Usually, his dreams were chaotic places where he always knew what he was supposed to do, yet the world around him never seemed to make sense. He often wondered if those visions carried a hidden weight, some distant truth he was meant to decipher. But ultimately, it didn't matter.

  Dreams were meant to be forgotten.

  He preferred the quiet, dreamless drift he was suspended in now. A heavy, unbroken sleep. But like all quiet things, it was fragile. The peace shattered with the sudden, frantic rattle of knuckles against wood.

  "Aeor! You are so dead!"

  The voice that pierced the door was high, lacking the gravel of age, and was immediately followed by the flat smack of a palm hitting the timber.

  Aeor jolted upright. His senses scrambled to catch up with the rapid shift, his limbs tangling in the familiar linen of his bedsheets. The air in the room was crisp and mild, carrying the distant, overlapping hum of the capital already awake. He forced his eyes half-open, blinking through the blur as the plastered walls and polished wooden beams of his childhood room slowly took shape.

  "Wha—" Aeor tried to say, but his voice caught in a dry throat, coming out as nothing more than a groggy, jumbled rasp.

  The latch clicked, and the door swung hard, slamming against the exposed timber frame with a sharp crack that finally jolted Aeor fully awake.

  Standing at the threshold was Kaeric. His blond hair was a wild, tousled mess, sticking up at odd angles as if he had sprinted the whole way there. He wore a simple linen tunic that hung a little too loosely on his shoulders, an awkward frame that hadn't yet caught up to his recent growth. He stood with one hand planted firmly on his hip, while the other was thrust forward, a finger aimed in pure, unrefined accusation straight at Aeor's bed.

  "Véurr blast you into the void, Kaeric," Aeor groaned, rolling his eyes as he collapsed back onto the mattress and dragged the thick sheets over his head.

  "I should be the one blasting a treacherous frost-badger like you," Kaeric shot back. "Why did you give Alina our report?"

  Beneath the wool, Aeor froze. A very different kind of chill ran down his spine.

  He knows.

  He lowered the edge of the blanket just enough to peek out. Kaeric was now waving a crumpled parchment in the air like a banner of war, the accusatory finger replaced by the damning evidence itself.

  "Well... you see—" Aeor began, scrambling for a defense.

  "Bah! Save the excuses for Mímarch Vessa," Kaeric interrupted, tossing the parchment aside. "That is, if I let you live long enough to see her!"

  With a battle cry, Kaeric vaulted onto the bed, tackling Aeor into the mattress. A flurry of elbows, knees, and tangled blankets ensued as the two boys devolved into a breathless scuffle.

  "Mother, why did you let this animal in?" Aeor gasped, his voice muffled beneath a pillow and Kaeric's forearm.

  "Considering what I was told, I think I might have to side with Kaeric on this one," a gentle, feminine voice replied.

  The scuffle paused. Both boys untangled themselves just enough to look toward the doorway.

  Daena stood there, a knowing smile touching her features. She stepped into the room, carrying a ceramic bowl of sliced fruit, and casually nudged a pile of ink quills and parchments aside to set it on his desk.

  She didn't stop there. Reaching past the desk, she pushed the heavy wooden shutters open. Sunlight spilled into the room in a bright, golden wash, carrying with it the crisp air and the overlapping, lively hum of Caerenhold's bustling morning streets.

  Aeor squinted against the sudden light, then shot a betrayed glare at Kaeric, whose grip had loosened in his mother's presence.

  "You told her?" Aeor hissed under his breath.

  "Oh, now you have a problem with sharing secrets?" Kaeric whispered back, utterly unrepentant. "If you truly cared, you wouldn't have handed our work over to Alina."

  "You're dead," Aeor declared, lunging forward to tackle him back, sending them both tumbling across the mattress in a fresh mess of limbs and laughter.

  "Enough, you two," Daena said, a soft chuckle betraying her amusement. She turned to leave, pausing just at the threshold. "Don't dawdle. The Mímarium won't wait for you."

  With that, she slipped into the hall.

  Kaeric groaned, rolling off the mattress. "Not having a report to submit is bad enough. I am not giving Mímarch Vessa a reason to skin us for being late, too."

  He swiped a cube of pink fruit from the bowl on the desk, popping it into his mouth. "I'll be waiting downstairs," he called over his shoulder, raising a hand in a lazy wave. "And I am absolutely throwing you under the cart for your betrayal."

  The heavy door clicked shut, his lazy footsteps thudding down the stairs and fading away.

  Left alone, Aeor let out a long sigh, sinking back against the headboard. His mind drifted to the events of yesterday. He didn't regret giving Alina their notes, Kaeric would understand eventually, but the looming shadow of Mímarch Vessa's temper was another matter entirely.

  Pushing the dread aside, he turned his face toward the open window, letting the warm, golden sunlight wash over him.

  He stretched the last of the sleep from his limbs, traded his nightclothes for a clean, thick tunic, and grabbed the bowl of fruit on his way out the door.

  Downstairs, the hearth crackled with a low, comforting fire. Daena stood by the washbasin, humming a quiet, familiar tune as she scrubbed the morning's ironware. Kaeric was perched on the edge of the long dining table, his boots swinging idly as he narrowed his eyes at the crumpled parchment in his hands.

  "Took you long enough," Kaeric muttered, hopping down. "Come on, let's go."

  Aeor popped another piece of fruit into his mouth and set the half-empty bowl on the table.

  "Bye, Mother," Aeor called out, already turning to follow Kaeric toward the exit.

  He reached for the latch.

  "Are you going to run away again, Aeor?"

  His hand froze on the iron handle.

  The words belonged to his mother, but the tone was entirely wrong. The quiet warmth of her humming had vanished. The voice that replaced it sounded distant, hollow, echoing as though it had been spoken from the bottom of a deep, suffocating well.

  A cold spike of terror drove the breath from his lungs. Aeor froze, his hand locked around the iron latch.

  The ambient warmth of the crackling hearth and the distant bustle of the city streets bled away into a suffocating void. All that remained was the frantic, deafening rhythm of his own pulse.

  He didn't know why her words paralyzed him, but a buried truth began to claw at the edges of his mind. A memory of a letter. A piece of folded parchment heavy with ink and a grief so absolute he had simply refused to accept it.

  How could I ever come to terms with that?

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  A horrifying emptiness began to spread through his chest. His mother's face was slipping from his mind. Not just her face, but the curve of her smile, the exact pitch of her voice, the letters of her name. They were dissolving into nothingness.

  Panic overrode his paralysis. Aeor ripped his hand from the door and spun around.

  What greeted him was not the gentle, knowing smile of his mother.

  It was absence.

  Where Daena had stood only a heartbeat ago, a cluster of glowing cerulean motes hung in the air. They drifted upward lazily, burning with a sickly, ruinous light, before winking out into the void.

  The world tilted. His senses dulled into a heavy, suffocating blur, dragging his mind down into the dark.

  "Ae..."

  The dark fractured.

  "Aeor..."

  The scent of aged parchment and chalk dust rushed into his lungs.

  "Aeor!"

  Lyra's voice snapped the world back into place.

  Aeor gasped, his eyes snapping open. He found himself slumped over a scarred wooden desk, his heart hammering against the heavy timber. Hovering just across the table was Lyra, her hair pulled into its usual tight braid, her young face etched with worry.

  "He's been staring at the grain in that wood for the better part of the day," Kaeric noted. He was slouched in the seat beside Aeor, his cheek propped lazily against his fist.

  Aeor blinked hard, his vision swimming. The hearth. The cerulean dust. The letter. He tried to force the fragments together, his heart still racing as the grand, arched stone ceiling of the Mímarium slowly came into focus above him.

  "Everything alright?" Lyra asked, her voice softening.

  "Yeah..." Aeor managed, rubbing a hand over his face to wipe away a cold sweat he hadn't realized was there. "Just... thinking about stuff."

  "Like Alina?" Kaeric snickered before Aeor had even finished the sentence.

  "Shut up," Aeor snapped. He grabbed a thick, leather-bound textbook from his desk and hurled it at Kaeric's head.

  Kaeric caught it with a swift, arrogant snatch, his grin only widening.

  "Let's just go," Aeor muttered, pushing his chair back and standing on legs that felt strangely hollow. "What class is next?"

  Lyra and Kaeric didn't answer immediately. They exchanged a careful, weighted look. Even Kaeric's usual smirk melted away into something uncertain.

  "Aeor," Kaeric said slowly, dropping the book onto his desk. "Our lesson with Mímarch Winterval ended two glasses ago. We only stayed behind to finish our reports."

  Aeor forced his breathing to steady, his gaze moving past Lyra to anchor himself in the room.

  The grand lecture hall of the Mímarium stretched out around him, vast and unnervingly quiet. High, arched windows lined the western wall, filtering the heavy, amber light of the late afternoon. The dying sun cut through a haze of suspended chalk dust, casting long, stretched shadows across the empty chamber.

  Tier upon tier of heavy oak desks swept in wide semicircles, descending in steep steps toward a polished wooden stage at the bottom. Great iron chandeliers hung by thick chains from the vaulted timber ceiling, their candles sitting unlit in the fading daylight. Aside from the three of them, the cavernous hall was entirely abandoned.

  "Are you truly alright, Aeor?" Lyra pressed, her voice gentle but persistent.

  "I'm fine," Aeor muttered, avoiding her gaze as he pushed himself up from the desk. "Just tired. Let's get out of here."

  Kaeric and Lyra exchanged another loaded glance, but Kaeric just sighed and hitched his bag higher on his shoulder. "Let's go, then."

  They started down the steep, tiered steps, their boots echoing in the cavernous, sunlit hall. But as they reached the bottom and turned toward the arched exit, Aeor stopped dead.

  A woman stood at the threshold.

  She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, wearing strange, travel-worn clothes that didn't belong anywhere in the capital. But it was her face that stole the breath from his lungs. Her expression was completely, unnervingly blank, her vibrant green eyes fixed directly on him with a hollow stare.

  A few paces ahead, Kaeric and Lyra paused. They glanced at the open doorway, then back at Aeor, confusion twisting their features.

  They couldn't see her.

  An agonizing, suffocating ache clamped around Aeor's heart. He knew with absolute certainty he had never met this individual before. Yet looking at her felt like staring at a severed limb. A profound, desperate connection tethered him to a stranger he couldn't remember.

  An anchor. A name surfaced from the crushing dark of his mind.

  Zoey.

  The air around her began to shimmer. The same glowing, cerulean motes he had seen earlier drifted into the light, hovering dangerously close to her skin.

  Raw, wordless terror spiked through his veins. He didn't want to forget her. He needed to move, to reach out, to throw himself between her and whatever was trying to tear her away. He needed to fight against...

  Existence?

  A sharp, blinding agony split his skull as the fragile walls of the dream violently buckled.

  Kaeric and Lyra rushed toward him, their faces tight with panic. Their mouths moved, shouting his name, but whatever they were saying was swallowed by a deafening roar. The sunlit world of the Mímarium was drowning.

  Yet, through the suffocating noise, one voice cut through with chilling clarity.

  "Are you going to run away, Aeor?"

  The words drifted down from the tiered rows. Aeor snapped his gaze upward. Sitting casually at one of the heavy oak desks was a skeletal figure draped in dark robes. An undead. It was a nightmare that should have sent him scrambling for the door in sheer, unadulterated terror.

  But Aeor didn't run. A deep, instinctual ache pulsed in his chest, recognizing the quiet, regal composure in her posture.

  Velora.

  "Are you going to forget about us, Aeor?" a masculine voice rumbled from the highest tier.

  Aeor's breath hitched. He turned to look towards the source.

  Dregor.

  Aeor took an instinctive step back. He had never met these people. They didn't belong in Caerenhold. They didn't belong in his life. So why did looking at them hurt him so?

  "He has already forgotten us," another voice echoed from the left.

  Korren.

  "No... please," Aeor choked out, his chest heaving as he fought for air.

  "Look at us!" a woman's voice commanded, cracking with fiery, desperate authority.

  Kayneth.

  "It can't be..." Aeor whispered, shaking his head as his vision blurred with unshed tears.

  "You killed them, Aeor! You let Zura and Barek die!"

  Gurz.

  "I... I tried! I swear it was—"

  "LIES!" Gurz bellowed.

  The shadows in the grand hall began to writhe. The dying amber light flickered and died as, one by one, the hundreds of empty seats began to fill.

  Spectral figures materialized in the dark. Rorick. Serenya. Vaireth. Barek. Erith. Zura. Alvereth.

  The voices multiplied, layering over each other in a deafening, suffocating chorus of grief, anger, and abandonment.

  He had never asked for any of this. He had never asked to hold the weight of their lives, or to be the one left behind. He had never asked for them to suffer and die.

  And yet, despite everything... they had.

  Aeor took another blind step backward, his shoulder slamming into a solid form.

  He spun around.

  Zoey stood there.

  "I remember, Aeor," she whispered softly.

  Before the words could even settle, her image violently warped. A cerulean blade erupted through her chest, painting her in that same light.

  Aeor ran.

  The lecture hall dissolved, collapsing into a labyrinth of dark, rain-slicked streets. A freezing downpour lashed against him, but no matter how fast he sprinted, the nightmare kept pace. The voices pursued him. Their twisted, accusing faces manifested at every corner, blocking every turn.

  Following him.

  Please...

  Cursing him.

  Please...

  Haunting him.

  Please...

  Then, at the end of a long, shadowed path, he saw her.

  Daena.

  She stood waiting, a gentle smile warming her face. As Aeor staggered toward her, the torrential rain began to ease. The deafening chorus of accusations lost its fervor, thinning into the wind the closer he got.

  She opened her arms.

  Aeor threw himself into her embrace.

  Everything froze for a single heartbeat. Then, the nightmare shattered.

  The rain, the streets, the ghosts. It all vanished into absolute darkness and profound silence. The agonizing visages faded into nothingness, leaving him suspended in the void, held solely by the warm, anchoring embrace of his mother.

  "It is okay, little star," Daena murmured, her hand gently stroking his hair.

  The dam broke.

  Aeor collapsed against her, his knees giving out as the tears finally fell.

  "I'm sorry," he choked out, the words tearing through his heavy sobs. "I'm so sorry."

  He cried, having no idea how much time passed. He only knew he couldn't stop, terrified that if he let go, she would vanish like the rest.

  In the safety of the dark, the truth he had buried finally clawed its way to the surface. He remembered the letter. The solitary, heavy parchment that had arrived two years after his parents departed for the Forgotten Lands.

  The letter informing him of his mother's death.

  She had always told him that a time would come when he would have to be strong, when he would have to fight to protect the people he loved. She had done exactly that for him. She had fought, and she had died, to protect him. Because of who he was. Because of what he was meant to become.

  He remembered it all now.

  And yet, knowing the truth did not dull the agony. The scars on his heart did not heal.

  He sobbed.

  In the weeks following that letter, his mind had simply fractured. The grief had been too immense, too absolute, so he had shut it out. He had forged alternate realities, burying himself in denial, retreating so far inward that there came a point where he no longer knew what was real and what was a lie meant to keep him breathing.

  He remained wrapped in her arms for a long time, the silence of the void holding space for his grief until the tears finally ran dry.

  Slowly, Aeor pulled back. He wiped the damp streaks from his face, steadied his trembling breath, and looked up at his mother.

  He truly looked at her for the first time.

  She stood before him, wearing the simple, sturdy clothes he remembered from his childhood, offering him the same patient smile she always had.

  "I am sorry, Mother," Aeor whispered, his voice trembling. "I failed to protect them."

  Daena shook her head, her gaze unwavering. "There is still a way, Aeor. There always is." She stepped closer, though she did not reach for him again. "And if there isn't, you forge one yourself. Never let the confines of what is written stop you."

  A fragile, wet smile crept onto Aeor's face. "There you go again."

  "Go again?" Daena echoed, her eyes crinkling with warmth. "Oh, how I miss the days when you were younger. You used to bob your head and take every word I said to heart. Now that you're a little taller, suddenly it's acceptable to question your mother." She gestured lightly toward his face. "And you used to be so adorable, running around the house on those tiny legs. Now look at you with that sorry excuse for a haircut."

  Aeor let out a watery laugh, feigning offense. "I apologize, Mother. But there weren't exactly many barbershops open."

  "Barbershops?" Daena teased. "That uncle of yours sure did spoil you after I was gone."

  "Spoil me? He made me work the forge for hours on end."

  "Well, clearly, it wasn't enough," she said, crossing her arms with a mock-stern expression.

  Her voice filled the dark, pushing back the cold and wrapping Aeor in a warmth that felt entirely, miraculously like home. They talked a while longer, their words never straying far from the gentle, grounding mundanities of the life they had lost.

  And as they spoke, clarity finally settled over him.

  He had thought his father's words had meant something abstract. A hidden, magical truth he needed to decipher about his Aspect. But the answer was devastatingly simple. Embrace who you are. He wasn't supposed to embrace death. He was supposed to embrace the boy who loved, who grieved, who hurt. The human part of himself he had locked away in the dark.

  Then, the warmth began to slip.

  Aeor noticed it halfway through a sentence. The edges of his mother's form had begun to thin, bleeding faintly into the surrounding void. The words died in his throat.

  "How much more time...?" he asked, his voice breaking.

  Daena just shook her head.

  Aeor swallowed hard. "Is there truly a way to save them all?"

  "Yes," she said softly.

  Aeor absorbed her words. He nodded, fresh tears welling in his eyes as her silhouette grew fainter with every passing second.

  "I... I won't run away again. I am so sorry I ever did," he said, fighting to catch his breath. He paused, looking at the woman who had given him everything. "Thank you for being a part of my life."

  He forced a smile to his lips, desperate for it to be the last thing she saw, even as tears streamed down his face.

  Daena returned the smile, radiant and absolute.

  "I love you," Aeor whispered.

  "I love you too, my little star," Daena said.

  And with that, her form dissolved completely into the darkness.

  As she vanished, Aeor felt a sudden lightness against his chest. The silver amulet he had worn for so long faded away with her, lost to the same quiet void.

  Aeor fell to his knees.

  The grief overtook him again, vast and crushing, as he stared at the empty space where she had just stood. He wept, no longer hiding from the pain, no longer shielding himself behind the indifference of his power. He let it break him, and he let himself feel every jagged edge of it.

  Eventually, when his tears ran dry and his breathing slowed, he pulled himself to his feet. He stood alone, staring into the endless abyss of his own mind.

  "Thank you," he whispered to the dark.

  And with that, he collapsed the void around him, and woke up.

  Chapter 72 releases Friday at 6 PM EST.

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