Encounter 11: A Father's Love
The healing room breathed in slow, steady pulses. Soft blue light from the embedded crystals washed over the stone walls, rising and falling in time with Rolien's shallow breaths. Dawn had already broken outside. Warm light spilled across the floor in long rectangles, but the air inside still felt borrowed, heavy with the kind of silence that settles after a long night of waiting.
Vermorth Pendragon stood at the narrow window, arms crossed tight across his chest. Exhaustion sat on his shoulders like a wet cloak, yet his eyes stayed sharp. He kept turning the same pieces over in his mind: the strange spirit core, the curse left by that damned sword, the hidden Azura blood that no one had expected, and the doctor's quiet, final count. Three years. Maybe less if the cracks widened.
Edric paced near the bed. Ash from the battlefield still clung to his golden hair. The father's mask had cracked hours ago and never quite sealed again. Every time his gaze landed on the bandaged form of his son, something raw and helpless moved behind his eyes.
"We can't just sit here waiting for him to wake up and tell us how bad it really is," Edric said. His voice came out rough, scraped raw. "There has to be something. Some old ritual. Some artifact. Anything."
Vermorth turned from the window and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I've already sent word to every contact I still trust. This isn't standard mana damage. His core is cracked. It's leaking raw spirit energy like a shattered vessel. Normal healing will only slow the drain. It won't seal it."
Something old stirred in Vermorth's memory then—stories his own father used to dismiss as dusty legends told by men who had lived too long among books. "The Pendragon archives," he said quietly. "There's a vault beneath the main hall. Sealed for generations. My line used to keep things there. Books that weren't meant for regular eyes."
They left a trusted attendant at Rolien's side and moved fast through the quiet corridors. The vault waited at the end of a narrow stair of black stone. The air grew cooler with every step, thick with the scent of aged parchment, preserved leather, and something faintly metallic, like old blood long since dried. Dust motes drifted in the lantern light when Vermorth opened the wards with practiced hands. Shelves rose into the gloom, packed with tomes bound in dragon-scale leather and etched with runes that had almost faded to nothing. Most of the volumes had not been touched in decades.
Vermorth went straight to a heavy chest in the far corner, its lid marked with the Pendragon crest. He pried it open with a grunt of effort and lifted out a single massive volume. The cover looked almost plain until they carried it to the wide oak table and opened it. The pages hummed faintly under their fingers. Gold-inked diagrams of swirling energies filled the margins. Anatomical sketches of draconic forms twisted around ethereal threads. Notes on Aether flows, spirit arts, and the delicate biology of mana itself covered page after page. Forgotten knowledge, passed down through the bloodline and then quietly ignored once the family turned its attention to war and rule.
Edric leaned in beside him, turning pages with careful reverence. "This is deeper than anything in the royal libraries. Look here—comparisons between Azura harnessing and natural-born affinities."
Vermorth's finger stopped on a section describing spirit cores. His breath caught. The text spoke of fractures exactly like Rolien's: cracks caused by cursed artifacts or overwhelming external forces, the core trying to compensate by draining the host's lifespan. And then, buried in elegant script and intricate illustrations of glowing figures, a solution.
"Fairies," Edric read aloud. His voice dropped lower with every word. "They're the key. Born from the world's raw spiritual essence, not learned the way the Azuras harness it secondhand. Their very being resonates closer to pure spirit energy than anything else in this realm. A ritual involving their aid could mend the cracks—channeling their natural overflow to reinforce and seal the core without further draining the host's life force."
Vermorth turned another page. Diagrams showed fairy circles deep in ancient groves, threads of primordial energy weaving through a damaged core like living sutures. Warnings followed. The fairies were reclusive. Protective of their domains. The process demanded absolute trust. No force. Only genuine alliance. Side effects might linger—heightened sensitivity to spiritual flows, echoes of old memories rising without warning—but the text offered real hope. More than three years. Maybe decades, if the ritual succeeded.
Edric straightened. A fierce spark cut through the exhaustion in his eyes. "Then that's where we're going. The Hidden Forests of Death. I'll take him myself. He's not facing this alone."
Vermorth closed the book with a solid thud and nodded. "I wish I could ride with you, old friend. But the council and the border threats won't wait. I'll hold things together here and send what support I can—supplies, maps, a few trusted scouts to the forest edge." He placed a firm hand on Edric's shoulder. "You've got this. Bring him back whole. Luck's with you both."
They returned to the healing room in heavy silence, already making quiet preparations. Rolien remained unconscious, carefully secured inside a reinforced wagon layered with every healing ward they could etch into the wood and metal. The journey to the Hidden Forests would not be easy. Twisted paths. Ancient dangers. Creatures that guarded the fairy realms with tooth and claw and older magics still. But it was the only real chance they had.
Edric stayed at his son's bedside a little longer, gripping the bandaged hand that did not grip back. Somewhere deep inside Rolien, fragments of another life still drifted—Lira's laugh, Rolant's steady hand on his shoulder, the crack of gunfire in distant hills, Hunter Solomon's cold gaze. The sword's whisper had faded under the pull of unconsciousness, but the hard resolve forged in those years on Earth still burned, even if the boy could not yet speak it.
"Easy, kid," Edric murmured. His voice came thick with everything he could not say out loud. "We've got you. We're heading out soon. Fairies might be able to fix what that cursed blade broke."
The two men exchanged one last look. The book lay open on a nearby stand, its secrets waiting. Outside, the world kept turning. Inside that room, a new plan took root—woven from forgotten lore and a father's stubborn refusal to let fate write the final line.
The air still carried tension, but the despair that had nearly crushed Edric hours earlier had begun to yield to something sharper. Purpose. The faint humming of the Pendragon tome on the side table remained a constant reminder: a path existed, narrow and perilous as it might be.
Edric checked the straps securing Rolien inside the heavy transport wagon one final time. Specialized wards etched along the interior lining hummed at a steady, protective frequency. Every bump on the road to the Hidden Forests of Death would try to shake the cracked core further open. These runes would dampen the shock and steady the violent leaks as best they could.
Vermorth stepped up beside the wagon and tossed a thick leather map case and a satchel of high-grade spirit-suppressant elixirs into the front seat. "The scouts I sent ahead have already cleared the primary border checkpoint. You'll have a clear run until you hit the fog line of the outer canopy. Past that, my authority ends and the wild territory begins."
"That's more than enough," Edric said. He adjusted his cloak and clasped his long-time friend's hand in a brief, firm grip. "Keep the council from prying while we're gone. If they realize how vulnerable Rolien's state is right now, the political vultures will start circling."
"Let them try." A cold edge entered Vermorth's voice. "I'll keep the sword poised at their throats until you return."
With a final nod, Edric pulled himself up to the driver's bench and took the reins. A low click of his tongue set the heavy draft beasts moving. Iron-rimmed wheels ground against the cobblestone as the wagon rolled out of the sanctuary and toward the uncharted depths of the ancient woodland.
Inside the darkened interior, Rolien lay motionless. Deep within the subconscious realm where his soul currently drifted, the chaotic storm of memories had begun to quiet. The sharp echo of twenty-first-century gunfire, the cold rain of Manila streets, and the haunting whispers of the cursed blade retreated step by step, pushed back by the warmth of the natural spirit wards surrounding him.
He did not know it yet, but the clock ticking down his three-year lifespan had just met its first real opposition—a father's refusal to let fate have the final word.
To be continued