The "Miracle of Valerius" had a physical cost that Gary Goffer's modern soul wasn't entirely prepared for.
In his past life, a "hard day at the office" involved managing the bruised egos of millionaires or navigating a tense gala.
Here, "work" felt like his very life force had been pressurized, turned into a liquid emerald, and sprayed across a thirsty desert.
When Levi finally blinked his eyes open, he wasn't in the swaying carriage. He was in a room of heavy, sun-baked stone. The air was cool—not the artificial chill of air conditioning, but the deep, earthy coolness of a cellar.
He tried to sit up, and a groan escaped his lips. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced by frayed rope.
"Don't move, Your Highness. Your meridians are still stabilizing."
Theo was there, his small face pinched with worry as he wrung out a damp cloth. The boy's eyes were rimmed with red, as if he'd been crying or hadn't slept in the three days Levi had been out.
"Three days?" Levi croaked, his voice sounding like sandpaper on glass.
"Three days and four nights, Highness," Theo whispered, pressing the cool cloth to Levi's forehead. "The Prince... he hasn't left the Prefecture. He's been conducting meetings in the next room, but he comes in every hour to check your pulse. He even threatened to execute the Royal Physician when your fever spiked on the second night."
Levi allowed himself a small, tired smirk. Standard Alpha behavior. Protective or just worried about his investment?
"The square?" Levi managed to ask. "The grass?"
Theo's face lit up with a brilliance that was more infectious than any magic.
"Highness, it's beautiful! It didn't wither when you collapsed. It spread! The Iron-Root has reached the edges of the town wells. People are lining up just to touch the soil. They're calling it the 'Jade Carpet.' Even Governor Harlen... he's been seen kneeling in the dirt, weeping."
Levi closed his eyes, a wave of satisfaction washing over him. Validation. The ultimate currency.
The heavy oak door creaked open. The scent hit Levi before the person did—ozone, scorched rain, and something new. A deep, muskier undertone that made Levi's inner Omega hum with a sudden, inconvenient heat.
George Grant stepped into the room. He looked exhausted. His silver hair was disheveled, and there were dark circles under his electric-blue eyes. But when his gaze landed on Levi—awake and lucid—the tension in his shoulders dropped so visibly it was as if a physical weight had been lifted.
"Leave us, Theo," George commanded.
The boy bowed quickly and scurried out, closing the door behind him. George walked to the edge of the bed and stood there, looming. He didn't speak for a long time. He just stared, as if trying to reconcile the "negotiator" from the carriage with the pale, broken man in the bed.
"You're an idiot," George said finally. His voice was thick.
"Good morning to you too, George," Levi rasped. "I see your bedside manner hasn't improved."
"You nearly burnt out your core," George growled, sitting heavily on the edge of the mattress. The bed dipped under his weight. "You reached for my power. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? A Wood-type and a Lightning-type... we are destructive together. Lightning strikes trees, Levi. It doesn't nourish them."
"Except it did," Levi countered, reaching out a shaky hand to touch George's sleeve. "Because I didn't let you strike me. I used you as a conductor. I grounded you. That's what the prophecy meant, George. You're the energy, and I'm the circuit. Without me, you just burn the ground. Without you, I'm just a seed with no sun."
George's hand moved instinctively, covering Levi's. His skin was burning hot, vibrating with a low-level static that made the hair on Levi's arms stand up.
"The resonance," George whispered.
"When our elements touched... did you feel it?"
Levi looked away. He had felt it. It wasn't just magic. It was a biological tether. In the Omegaverse, a "Bonding Resonance" occurred when two compatible elements successfully synchronized. It was a precursor to a permanent bond—a physical and mental bridge that made the two individuals nearly inseparable.
"I felt a lot of things," Levi said carefully. "Mostly the feeling of my soul being squeezed through a straw."
George didn't let him deflect. He leaned in closer, his scent flooding Levi's senses.
"The town is transformed, Levi. But Harlen tells me the local Alphas are... restless. They see the power you wielded. They see the way I looked at you when you fell. They realize that the balance of power in this Empire has shifted."
Levi sharpened.
"Shifted how?"
"Before, I was the sole authority, and you were a decorative burden," George said bluntly. "Now, you are the source of life. The people are already starting to look to you for more than just grass. They want hope. And the nobility... they don't like hope they can't control."
George stood up and walked to a heavy desk in the corner, picking up a scroll.
"This arrived this morning via a Lightning-courier. It's from my mother, the Empress Dowager."
Levi felt a cold chill that had nothing to do with his elemental core. The Empress Dowager was a Fire-type Alpha, a woman known for her ruthless preservation of the Grant bloodline's dominance. She was the one who had arranged the marriage, specifically choosing a "weak" Wood-type she thought she could manipulate.
"She wants us back in the capital?" Levi guessed.
"She wants you back," George corrected him, his eyes flashing.
"She claims your health is too fragile for the 'harsh conditions' of the West. She's ordered an Imperial Escort to 'retrieve' you and bring you back to the North Wing for 'recovery.'"
Levi laughed, a dry, hacking sound.
"Recovery? She wants me back in the cage before I become too popular to lock away. She's realized the 'Jade Branch' isn't a twig she can snap; it's a vine that's going to overtake her palace."
"I told the messenger to go to hell," George said simply.
Levi blinked.
"You did what?"
"I am the Sovereign-Prince of the Western Front," George said, his voice returning to its thunderous resonance. "You are my Consort. My partner. We are not going back until the famine is broken. But, Levi... this means war. Not just with the drought, but with the Imperial Court."
Levi pushed himself up, ignoring the protest of his muscles. He looked at George—really looked at him. This wasn't the man who had ignored him for two years. This was a man who had seen a glimpse of a different future, a future where he wasn't alone in the storm.
"Then let's give them a war," Levi said, his eyes glowing with that stubborn, verdant light. "But first, I need to be able to walk. And I need to know... George, what happens if we stay here? In the West? Away from her influence?"
George stepped back to the bed. He reached down and cupped Levi's face. It was a gesture of profound, terrifying intimacy.
"If we stay," George whispered, "we will build a new Empire. One that doesn't rely on fear. But it requires us to be... more than just 'contractual partners.' The resonance is already changing our biology, Levi. Your scent is becoming part of mine. If we don't complete the bond soon, the 'Bonding Fever' will take us both."
Levi swallowed hard. He was Gary Goffer. He was the man who never fell in love, the man who stayed objective, the man who survived by keeping his heart in a vault.
But as he looked into George's electric eyes, he realized that the "different world" he had woken up in wasn't just about magic and empires. It was about the one thing he had never been able to buy or sell: a connection that was written in the stars and the soil.
"One step at a time, George," Levi said, though he didn't pull away from the Alpha's touch. "First, we feed the people. Then, we deal with your mother. And then... maybe we talk about the 'fever.'"
George smiled—a real, genuine smile that made him look younger, more human.
"Deal."
Two hours later, Levi was dressed in a simpler, more practical tunic of dark forest green, seated at a long table in the Prefecture's dining hall. He was still weak, but a steady diet of the solar nectar and George's presence (which acted as a literal battery for his core) had him upright.
Across from him sat Governor Harlen and three of his top agricultural advisors. George stood at the head of the table, arms crossed, watching the proceedings like a silent guardian.
"The Iron-Root is a start," Harlen said, pointing to a map of the surrounding valley. "But we can't eat grass, Your Highness. We need the wheat fields of the Oakhaven District to revive. If we can get the grain growing there, we can feed the province through the winter."
"Oakhaven is thirty miles away," one advisor noted gloomily. "The soil there is worse than the town square. It's literal dust. We'd need a literal ocean of water to soak the ground before a Wood-type could even attempt a germination."
Levi looked at the map. He saw the geography—the high mountain peaks to the North, the flat, baked plains of Oakhaven to the South.
"We don't need an ocean," Levi said, his mind racing. "We need a canal. But not a canal of water. A canal of energy."
He looked at George. "George, the mountains to the North... they're capped with ice, aren't they?"
George nodded.
"The Frozen Spires. But the meltwater never reaches the plains. It evaporates or disappears into underground caverns long before it hits the Oakhaven border."
"It disappears because the Earth-types haven't built a path for it," Levi said. "And because the Wood-types aren't there to hold the temperature down. Here is the plan: Harlen, you and your Earth-shapers are going to create a deep, narrow trench from the foot of the Spires all the way to Oakhaven. Not a wide canal—the sun would just drink it. A deep, covered trench."
"That would take months!" Harlen argued.
"Not if George uses his Lightning to blast the bedrock," Levi countered.
"And not if I use the Iron-Root to line the trench. The grass will act as an insulator. It will keep the water cool and prevent it from soaking into the dry walls before it reaches the fields."
George's eyes lit up.
"Lightning-excavation. It's violent, but fast."
"And when the water reaches Oakhaven," Levi continued, his excitement growing, "I will be there. I won't just grow grass. I'll use the resonance. George will provide the atmospheric pressure to keep the moisture from evaporating, and I will pull the water from the trench and distribute it through the root systems of the wheat."
The room went silent. It was a plan that required a level of elemental cooperation that hadn't been seen in centuries. It was dangerous, it was untried, and it was brilliant.
"It's insane," Harlen whispered, a slow grin spreading across his weathered face. "It's absolutely insane. When do we start?"
"Now," George said.
The following morning, the expedition set out. Levi rode in the carriage for the first half of the journey, but as they reached the foothills of the Spires, he insisted on mounting a horse. He needed to feel the land.
The first 'blast' was a sight Levi would never forget.
George stood on a ridge overlooking the dry valley. He didn't use a sword; he used his body as a lightning rod. He reached up, calling the static from the dry air, and slammed his fists into the ground.
BOOM!
The earth didn't just crack; it disintegrated. A line of blue-white fire tore through the bedrock, carving a jagged, five-foot-deep trench for a hundred yards in a single strike.
Levi followed behind on his horse.
Every time George cleared a section, Levi would dismount. He would walk to the edge of the smoking, blackened trench and drop a handful of Iron-Root seeds.
With a rhythmic, pulsing glow from his hands, the seeds would explode into life. Within minutes, the charred, scorched walls of the trench were covered in thick, vibrant green moss and grass. It looked like a vein of emerald running through a corpse.
"Faster!" George shouted, his silver hair standing on end from the sheer amount of electricity he was channeling.
They worked until the sun began to dip behind the peaks. They were a machine—Storm and Jade, destruction and creation.
By the end of the day, they had carved five miles.
As they set up camp in the foothills, the air was different. The scent of ozone was heavy, but it was grounded by the smell of the fresh grass Levi was growing.
Levi sat by the small campfire, his hands trembling. He had grown five miles of foliage. His core was humming, but it wasn't the agonizing drain of the town square. He was learning to pace himself. He was learning to breathe with the land.
George walked over, carrying two tin mugs of broth. He sat down next to Levi, their shoulders touching.
"We'll reach the first melt-pool tomorrow," George said quietly. "If the trench holds, the water will reach Oakhaven by sunset."
Levi leaned his head on George's shoulder. He was too tired to be "Gary" right now. He was just a man trying to fix a world.
"George?"
"Mmm?"
"Why did you really stay? You could have sent me back to the capital and finished this war your own way. You don't need my 'Jade Carpet' to kill rebels."
George was silent for a long time. The firelight flickered in his eyes.
"Because for two years, I felt like I was fighting a fire with more fire," George said.
"I was winning battles, but I was losing the Empire. When I saw you in that square... when I felt your hand on my shoulder... for the first time in my life, I didn't feel like a weapon. I felt like a man."
He turned his head, his lips brushing against Levi's temple.
"I don't want to go back to the way it was, Levi. I don't care about the prophecy. I care about the resonance."
Levi felt a tear prick at his eye. He reached up, threading his fingers through George's silver hair.
"Then we don't go back," Levi whispered.
But as they sat in the gathering dark, a shadow moved in the trees just beyond the firelight. It wasn't a rebel, and it wasn't a soldier.
It was a hawk, its eyes glowing with a faint, unnatural orange light. A familiar of the Empress Dowager.
The cage was opening, but the bird of prey was already on the wing.