Season 2 – Chapter 5: No Change At All (Part 6)

  The grove of thorn-trees was silent, a monument to ended screams. In the heart of the crater, Daniel’s focus shattered into single, desperate points: the demihuman boy bleeding into the dirt, and Kyrrha stumbling, her hand pressed to a wound that didn’t clot.

  “He’s bleeding!” Daniel’s voice was sandpaper, stripping his throat raw. He looked at Kyrrha, and a colder fear seized him. “You—you are bleeding too!”

  It was the old terror, reborn in new flesh: the fear of failing someone who had trusted him. The fear of being left, again, with only a corpse for his efforts.

  Kyrrha glanced at her shoulder, at the neat, horrific hole left by Borin’s otherworldly gun. A faint, puzzled frown touched her lips. “Huh. I was wondering why it was getting so cold.”

  Then her knees buckled. She collapsed.

  Daniel was at her side in an instant, tearing cloth, pressing it against the wound. The fabric darkened instantly, soaked through. The bleeding wouldn’t stop. He frantically searched her pockets, her pack—hands slick with her blood and his own ash—for a healing potion. Nothing.

  His gaze swept the burning settlement, the grotesque garden of memory-trees. Even if he found a potion in the wreckage, he wouldn’t find it in time. Time.

  A memory surfaced, sharp and clear: the chamber of stone, his body knitting itself whole under Valerius’s chant.

  “Who healed me?” he demanded, shaking Kyrrha’s uninjured shoulder. Her eyelids fluttered. “Back in the chamber, after the fight with Kaelen’s team. Who was it?”

  “Grandpa…” she murmured, her voice thinning. “Valerius. He can… heal any wound.” A tremor wracked her. “But… the boy… I don’t think… and the clan… two days’ run from here. Not in time…”

  Daniel gripped her shoulders, his burned hands careful but urgent. “What do you mean, ‘two days’ run’? Is there another way? A faster way?”

  With immense effort, Kyrrha’s upper hand moved. She slipped it beneath the torn leather of her top, between her breasts, and withdrew a smooth, palm-sized blue stone. It pulsed with a faint, captive light.

  Before she could explain, Daniel understood.

  “A portal stone,” he breathed. “Will it take us to the clan?”

  She managed a weak, single nod. Her lips formed the words: Just… smash it.

  Daniel took the stone. He didn’t hesitate. His fist, scarred and powerful, clenched around it. He squeezed until the crystal structure shrieked and collapsed into powder and azure light.

  The air before them tore open. A swirling portal of cerulean energy hummed, a window showing the familiar, harsh landscape just beyond the demon clan’s gates.

  Working with frantic, tender care, Daniel used strips of rag to secure the unconscious demihuman boy against his chest. Then he lifted Kyrrha, her four arms dangling, and hauled her onto his back. Every muscle screamed, every burn wept. He was a beast of burden carrying his only reasons forward. He stepped through the rift.

  The world folded and spat them out. The clan’s gates stood a hundred paces away. The air here was clean, sharp with cold stone, free of smoke and sweet rot.

  On his back, Kyrrha stirred. Her voice was a faint whisper by his ear. “You know… back there… when you ordered me to rise… my body just… obeyed.” A pause, a shallow breath. “Like it was waiting for your voice.”

  Daniel adjusted his grip, his steps firm and swift toward the gates. “I don’t remember giving an order. I remember what happened… but not how I did it.”

  “I felt it,” she whispered, her head lolling against his neck. “In my bones. I know now… the feeling that pulled me to you. It’s stupid to say but… it’s like you created me. And I chose my creator… not the world.”

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  A sound escaped Daniel—half a laugh, half a sob, choked by exhaustion and grief. “Pff. Don’t talk nonsense. You’ve lost too much blood. That’s all.” He hoisted her higher, his voice dropping, raw with a truth he couldn’t outrun. “I created nothing. I’ve only ever caused pain. To myself… and to anyone near me.”

  They reached the gates. As they swung open, the scene within was not one of peace, but of grim finality.

  Bodies lay scattered—demons in combat leathers, their weapons still in hand. The ground was dark with spilled life. It was a clean, brutal housekeeping.

  Kyrrha lifted her head, her purple eyes scanning the aftermath. “Looks like Mother… purged the rats,” she murmured, her tone devoid of triumph, only weary recognition.

  The demons who remained—those loyal to Morvana—formed a silent, respectful corridor. Their eyes were not on Kyrrha, but on Daniel. They saw the ash-streaked savior, the thorn-monster of legend, carrying their future on his broken back. They saw the blood, and they saw the purpose. They bowed their heads, not in submission, but in acknowledgment.

  The procession led straight to Valerius’s chamber. Inside, the three pillars of the clan waited: Solmir, his arms crossed, expression grim; Morvana, a statue of controlled tension; and Valerius, whose ancient eyes widened at the sight of his granddaughter.

  No words were wasted. Solmir helped Daniel lay Kyrrha and the demihuman boy side-by-side on the smooth, sacred stone at the room’s heart. Valerius was already moving, his hands spreading over Kyrrha, a low chant beginning as violet light emanated from the stone, pulling her from the edge.

  It was then Daniel turned on Morvana. The fear and fury of the night crystallized into a single, accusing question.

  “You knew,” he stated, his voice flat and dangerous. “You knew I’d come back. You knew what that settlement was—a cancer. A trap. You knew all of it.” He took a step forward, his crimson gaze boring into her green. “So tell me. Knowing that, why did you let her go with me? Are you really that heartless of a mother?”

  Solmir moved, a blur of protective fury, shoving Daniel back a step. “Watch your tongue, boy!”

  Morvana didn’t flinch. She raised a hand, stopping Solmir. Her eyes, glacial and profound, held Daniel’s.

  “She was taken from me once,” Morvana said, her voice so quiet it carved silence in the room. “And given back. Put simply: when she was born, she was dead. Cold. Still. I held her… ready to place her in the earth.” A ghost of that old, unimaginable pain flickered across her face. “And then she breathed. As if the gods themselves were telling me… I do not own her. No one knows this. Only us three.” Her gaze hardened into a spear of absolute warning. “Mention it to anyone, and I will kill you. That is my heart.”

  The revelation hung in the air, a sacred and terrible secret. It reframed everything—her harshness, her reluctant release, the look of severed connection at the gate.

  Valerius’s chant peaked and fell. Kyrrha’s wound was closed, her breathing deep and even. Solmir gently gathered her and carried her away to her tent, leaving the heavy silence behind.

  Now, Valerius turned to the demihuman boy. He did not begin the ritual. Instead, he poured a common healing potion over the wound. It helped, but not enough. The boy’s breathing remained shallow, his pulse a frantic bird against a cage of ribs.

  “WHY AREN’T YOU HEALING HIM?” Daniel’s shout echoed off the stone. “HE RISKED EVERYTHING! WHY NOT?”

  Valerius looked up, his expression one of pained wisdom. “My ritual is not mere healing. It is a reconstruction of the soul. It invades. Our souls,” he tapped the horn on his forehead, “are armored, shaped by it. Protected from such invasion.” His eyes grew distant with regret. “I once tried to save two elf girls with it. It worked… but they were no longer themselves. The ritual rewrote them.”

  Daniel’s blood ran cold. “BUT IT WORKED ON ME!”

  Valerius met his gaze, the full, quiet weight of centuries in his eyes. “Exactly.”

  One word. A universe of implication.

  Exactly.

  The ritual had worked on Daniel because his soul was not human. It was already something else—a patched-together thing, a soul that had been shattered, void-eroded, and forcibly reassembled. A soul that could be invaded and survive because it was, in its very nature, an invader. A monster.

  Something clicked in Valerius’s mind, his eyes sharpening. “Ah. But… there may be a way. With your help, Daniel. There are two paths to guard a soul during such an invasion: the presence of one who is loved… or the presence of one whose will can force the door open, and hold it against the tide.” He studied Daniel, the living question mark. “If you are the one prophesied… you may be the only key. You may be able to enter his soul… and shield him from the inside.”

  Daniel didn’t hesitate. He looked at the small, broken form of the boy who had saved them. “Do it.”

  He lay down on the cold stone beside the child. Valerius raised his hands, and the ancient chant began anew. Purple smoke, thick and luminous, coiled from the stone, enveloping them both. It smelled of ozone and forgotten herbs.

  As the world dissolved into the blank, humming void of the ritual, Daniel’s last conscious thought was not of fear, but of a grim resolve.

  He had become the Unauthorized Man to protect his new family.

  Now, he would become a shield for a single, forgotten soul.

  The thorns within him stirred, not in anger, but in anticipation of a new kind of battle—a war within the fragile landscape of a dying boy’s heart.

  Everything went blank.