Episode 7: The Father Runs

  Chapter 022 - To Lose One

  Some Days Ago

  The night was creeping in. The fire was set for dusk in a distant clearing away from the world, crackling low and flicking shadows across Wallan’s face. He used a stick to stir a dried log around the campfire, raising small bits of ashes into the air.

  They had just eaten a “cool-enough” dinner, as Vynelor would say, nothing but a salted root and leftover meat from a domaneer. Vynelor was still munching on the chewy side of the root when he looked across the flames and asked, “How did you find me again?”

  Wallan didn’t answer right away. He poked the coals below the wood, the end of his iron stick sparking against blackened bark.

  “Not the most ideal way, you can say,” he said eventually.

  Vynelor already knew what he meant.

  “The hares we catch and the fish we hook, you always go for the neck or the heart. They all die. So the heart must be important for life,” said the child. “But what about me? You said I was dead. But how? I had a wound on my chest, and it hit the heart.” He pointed to his own chest. “Here. You said it yourself. It went straight through.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “It did.”

  “Then how am I alive?”

  Wallan looked up, his face unreadable. The firelight caught only one side of it, carving bright and contrasting lines from scalp to chin.

  “That is indeed a question, because the blade never missed,” he said. “I saw the wound. It wasn’t just a cut. It was a kill. A clean one. Whoever tried to kill you didn’t fake anything. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  Wallan leaned back, setting the stick down. He sighed and said, “You were in a vessel. Blood all over the inside. No pulse. Not even a spark of magic left in the body.”

  Vynelor blinked slowly. “Then how?”

  “I believe… there’s more to your system than we’ve seen. That redacted marker you say you have, are you certain that it is an Adaptation Path?”

  The boy tilted his head. “Well, yeah. I see it, and it’s under the AP list. It’s just sitting there.”

  “Then that is something new. Adaptation Paths are supposed to be acquired, yet you are the spectacle. These paths never come upon birth. You were either an anomaly or something else… If Adaptation Paths are adaptive, then is it saying you have adapted to death?”

  Vynelor stared into the fire. He didn’t speak.

  Wallan glanced across the flames again. His voice came quieter now. “Truth is, you have died once.”

  He let that sit.

  The crackle of the fire filled the space between them again. Gazing in that orange blaze, Wallan drifted off to distant thoughts. He wouldn’t hear the child say anything if he did speak. He was reminiscing about something that made his eyes darken. With flames rising and smoke joining with the night, he whispered words to himself that the boy could not hear: “No man can overcome death. No one.”

  He bowed his head and closed his eyes. His arms stretched outward—and resting in them was his long-gone son.

  The little campfire carried him back to the past, to the dark nights of PortThorioh, where violence swept through the land and flames raged high. Wallan knelt upon the ground, clad in leather armor and a raw gash across his face. His system could easily heal it in a few minutes; however, it did not do so. It was dormant. Shut down.

  His knees pressed against splintered wood scattered from shattered homes. All around him lay ruins—collapsed buildings, torn tents, smoldering timbers. Men and women were scattered lifeless across the wreckage. One hung skewered on a wooden beam jutting from a cratered house. Fire devoured the region, heat and smoke stinging his eyes and cinders scorching his skin. But even with all this, nothing could draw his gaze from the boy in his arms.

  “Harrick,” Wallan rasped, voice frayed. “Son… your father is home.”

  But the child gave no reply. Blood trickled from his lips. His eyes were shut, his body limp. Across his chest appeared a gaping wound, a blade’s mark that pierced straight through. Crimson seeped through his cotton shirt, staining it with his blood. Wallan knew the truth, yet he shook his head, pleading all the more as if by calling with enough desperation, his son might open his eyes, smile, and share the dinner his father had brought home.

  …

  Wallan ran like the wilderness with Quick Speed activated in full throttle. Branches tore across his arms. Roots reached to grab his feet. He dodged all of them, leaving only minor scratches behind. The forest warped in flickers, paths moving where they hadn’t been. He knew the child went this way—surely, because why was there a mysterious weight coming from that direction?

  One moment, it was there. The next, gone. Something must’ve happened.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  He wasn’t here to wonder who could’ve encountered him, who could’ve done something to him. As long as he saw him alive.

  The path treated him like an unwanted guest. Even though he had been running straight, the path repeated twice now. He saw the same mossy bridge again. Doubts overwhelmed him, but he didn’t stop running. “Vynelor!” he called, letting the name echo through the leaves and beyond.

  Passing the last bit of moss clearing and the weaving branches that blocked him just barely, there was a bare spot, a hollow opening surrounded by bent trees. He went into the small crevice he could barely fit through. Then he entered the open field and looked ahead.

  And then, there he was—Vynelor. Or… so Wallan thought.

  It was nothing but a pool of blood with chunks of deformities sprinkled throughout in white bits. Wallan had to take a second look at that. But his heart dropped. His breathing grew hollow. Skin turned pale. Something was not right here.

  What is that? He was forcing himself to believe otherwise. In his shaken state, he tried convincing himself that it was an animal who just been shredded to pieces. Surely. Surely… But why couldn’t his heart calm down? Why didn’t his eyes look away?

  The barely-registered limbs, the residue resembling that of a human frame, and the half-molten head resting not too far off… This was no animal.

  Wallan stopped breathing. Vynelor.

  He staggered forward, knees crumbling into the dirt beside the boy. The pool crawled up to him, staining his cloak and pants. His hands hovered just above Vynelor’s bloodpool. His lips parted, but no sound came. Life was nowhere to be found.

  “No… No, no…”

  His voice struggled to say anything else. With breath stifled under the weight of his heavy eyes, he reached a hand out and touched the pool. It was cold.

  “Why…” Wallan said, curling his head low. His voice dropped low, shaking. “Nothing ever changes.” He raised his head to the darkening sky, his heart confessing to the unseen world. “Please, not again… Don’t take him from me.” He shouted, “Please! Don’t take my son away! Not again! Not anymore! Magic, summon yourself and bring him back to life! Listen to me! I demand you!” But as those words were sent throughout the surrounding trees and the sky, he was met with nothing.

  And he shut down again, looking at the pool of a child he cherished. His eyes grew dull, the mind drawing back to his faraway memories. “My love, is this why you left me? Is this the reason that I was seen as a criminal, why you desired to banish me? This… This is not—”

  Then something stirred, but just barely.

  A messy chunk of muscle twitched. They squirmed as if alive. Some dug deeper into the pile of blood and flesh.

  Wallan blinked. He looked again. The blood on his hand retracted. Every drop slithered, forcing its way out of his palm and dropping to the floor. The red staining on his knees stripped out and swarmed the uneven block. The whole thing started moving. Everything shifted and rotated as if it had a mind of its own. Deliberate.

  One chunk folded inward, pulling against the other so tightly that it became a muscle fiber. Then more. Tendons shimmered into place like veins of light knitting through the dark. Bones rattled their way into place. The thigh bones lay parallel on the floor, and the collective mass swarmed over them. Flesh wrapped it like putting on clothes, and blood seeped into the fibers like a sponge absorbing water. Volume and shape started to form.

  His eyes widened. A light gasp escaped his dry throat as he tried to process what he was seeing. The body was repairing itself from something impossible, unfolding in front of him. His posture wavered, struggling to remain upright, unsure whether to trust what he saw. But he couldn’t ignore the chance. He dropped the bag from his back and fumbled inside.

  He found the health rune. He cracked it on top of the forming body. The system reacted, flickering brighter and brighter. And then, a pulse rippled through the repairing body, a familiar warmth and hope that came:

  ●System Update ●

  Constitutive Restoration Detected — From the one who once cradled you.

  Health Restorative Rune — Applied

  +Max Health

  HP: 129 / 129

  A flood of light surged across Vynelor’s body, engulfing it, knitting sinew and skin back into place with a gushing sound. It was instant. Skin, which was never in sight, appeared from beneath. They expanded and covered the whole body like a suit.

  Wallan sat back, breath hitching, watching the whole process occur right before his eyes.

  The boy’s HP bar ticked back to full. And more importantly, he saw the boy. For the first time since he found him, the child moved. Wallan didn’t even have time to steady himself. The moment Vynelor’s breath returned and his senses reawakened, he looked around and found Wallan kneeling beside him. Without a pause, the boy’s arms flung forward and wrapped around Wallan’s chest with uncontrolled shaking. His face buried into the man’s shoulder.

  He cried. Deeply. Painfully. The tears ran and ran, staining the man’s clothing without stopping. His chest heaved, scratching at his throat and coming out broken. His fingers clenched the fabric of Wallan’s tunic as if it were his lifeline.

  Wallan stayed frozen in sheer disbelief. The pile of nothing became something, and Vynelor came out and was hugging him. Is this real? Vynelor?

  Then his arms came around the boy. One hand on the back of Vynelor’s head, the other across his shoulders. He pulled him in, holding tight. His jaw clenched. His eyes burned. Nothing could be said. He didn’t tell the boy to calm down. He didn’t give explanations nor questions that bewildered him.

  He just held him, a father grabbing hold of a son.

  The forest around them rustled gently. The last traces of divine light faded into the trees. The ground no longer screamed. Systems no longer flickered. Besides the five, there was no witness to the divine unfolding, not even to his father.

  But none of that mattered. There was only a man and a child, alone in the aftermath, holding each other like it was the only thing keeping the world from breaking again. And somewhere deep within them both, something finally settled.

  The boy’s system flickered into view with static as though it had been returned from a long hibernation. It trembled for a moment, gathering itself, before at last revealing a new temper. Bright inscriptions etched across the screen, glowing as they formed the words:

  ●System Update ●

  New Temperament Unlocked.

  Temperament Slate

  New Temperament: Paincallused

  Exception: Recent events exceeded the thresholds of level 1 and level 2.

  Temperament Slate — 1/7 Awakened

  Paincallused ? Lv. 3: You will get used to it.

  End of Episode 7