In the months that followed that silent lesson, the burden of life seemed to weigh even more heavily on Orpheus's shoulders. Autumn slowly passed, the winds carrying the chill of the coming winter. The land needed one last tilling before the frost arrived, and firewood had to be stored for the long nights ahead.
Lycaon noticed his father no longer went to the fields as often. His already stooped back now seemed unable to straighten after each session of labor. Dry coughs came more frequently, and his hands trembled whenever he lifted something heavy. The burden of fieldwork gradually shifted to Theona and Lycaon. Mother and son worked from before sunrise until the moon was high, trying to compensate for the lost strength of the family's pillar.
Then one day, the cold rain of late autumn arrived. It was a drizzling, persistent rain that turned the dirt roads to mud and carried a bone-chilling cold. To save the last of the turnips in the field from being waterlogged, Orpheus and Lycaon had to soak themselves in the rain for an entire day.
That night, they both fell ill.
The fever descended like a savage beast. It sent Lycaon's body into alternating states of burning fire and shivering cold. He curled up in the straw bed, his father's old woolen cloak unable to ward off the chill that seeped from his very bones. Beside him, Orpheus was also delirious, his breathing heavy and wheezing.
The small, single-room house was now suffocating with the smell of sickness and the bitter herbal medicine Theona had brewed for them. She was the only one still lucid, moving silently in the darkness, at times placing a damp cloth on her husband's forehead, at others anxiously touching her son's. Her eyes were sunken from lack of sleep, filled with worry and helplessness.
Lycaon drifted in a state between wakefulness and delirium. He felt himself floating in a thick fog, the aches throughout his body making it impossible to distinguish reality from dream.
Amidst the silence of the night, broken only by the steady drumming of rain on the thatched roof and his own dry coughs, he suddenly heard a mumble.
The sound came from his father. Orpheus was curled up, his forehead beaded with sweat despite the cold night. He was having a nightmare.
"No..." his voice trembled, full of anguish and helplessness. "Don't... don't take the girl away..."
Lycaon held his breath. The girl? The fever made his head spin, but the words "the girl" were strangely clear, like a needle piercing the fog in his mind.
"I've offered everything... The best wheat... the fattest sheep... I beg you..." His father's pleas were lost in a choked sob, as if he were reliving some horrific moment. His whole body shook, his hands clenched as if trying to hold onto something. "Please... the girl... she's innocent..."
His mother, Theona, stirred slightly. She didn't wake with a start, but just wearily sat up, a familiar exhaustion etched on her face. She gently reached out, placing a hand on her husband's trembling shoulder, whispering words of comfort that Lycaon couldn't make out. Gradually, his father's body stopped convulsing. He sank back into a heavy sleep, but the look of pain remained on his face, impossible to erase.
Lycaon lay there, his eyes wide open in the darkness. The fever still burned his body, but a different cold, a cold born of truth, was seeping deep into his soul. His father's sleep-talking was like a clap of thunder, revealing a scar whose existence he had never known.
The ghost of the past, on a night of wind, rain, and sickness, had returned, whispering a terrible secret.