The walk back to the Thorne estate was a slow, agonizing drag of dead weight. Lucian did not feel the poetic tragedy of a fallen noble, he only felt the sharp, stinging pull of torn stitches in his shoulder and the dull, rhythmic throbbing in his temples.
Every step was a physical transaction, a cost his current body could barely afford.
Beside him, Lily matched his slow pace, her small hand firmly gripping the edge of his uninjured sleeve.
She didn't speak again, honoring her promise of quiet, but her presence was a persistent tether keeping him grounded in a reality he desperately wanted to leave.
By the time the massive, steel gates of the mansion came into view, the sun had begun to dip below the city's high-tech skyline, casting long, bruised shadows across the pavement.
The security sensors chimed, and the gates parted with a smooth hiss.
The courtyard was not empty. A handful of servants, groundskeepers, and minor guards were present, going about their evening routines.
When they saw the pair, the courtyard fell into an unnatural hush. They watched the youngest daughter of the house, usually so pristine and sheltered, covered in grass stains and dust, leading the eldest son who looked like a walking corpse.
His silver-white hair was disheveled, his coat was stained with a fresh, dark bloom of blood, and his golden eyes stared straight ahead with an emptiness that made the onlookers avert their gaze.
Lucian didn't notice their stares. Or rather, he didn't process them. The servants were just background assets in a world he was trying to log out of.
Hans was waiting at the primary entrance. The butler's face was a tight canvas of stress, but seeing the exhaustion on Lucian's face, he bit back the lecture.
He merely stepped aside, gesturing for two medical attendants to step forward.
"I have him, Hans," Lily said, her voice surprisingly firm for a ten-year-old. She let go of Lucian's sleeve and looked up at him.
"Please rest Brother... I'll come check on you tomorrow."
"... Fine" Lucian murmured. It was the only word he could manage.
He followed the attendants up the grand staircase. He didn't look back to see Hans ushering Lily away to be cleaned up. He just focused on the repetitive motion of lifting his feet. One stair. Then the next.
When he finally reached his suite, the family doctor was already waiting, standing beside a tray of sterilized instruments and fresh bandages. The doctor, a man who had spent the better part of the week patching up the eldest Thorne, looked exasperated.
Lucian sat on the edge of the mattress, shrugging off his ruined coat with a wince that he didn't bother to hide, but didn't vocalize either.
He sat in his undershirt, staring at the blank holographic display screen on the opposite wall while the doctor went to work.
The procedure was quiet. The doctor cleaned the reopened wound, applying a stinging antiseptic that made the skin bubble slightly. Lucian didn't flinch. He didn't grip the edge of the bed.
He just breathed in a slow, even rhythm. The doctor threaded a new suture needle, his eyes darting to Lucian's face.
"Young Master, you tore three of the primary stitches," the doctor said, his tone a mix of professional reprimand and genuine confusion.
"The friction from your walk exacerbated the muscle damage. Does it not hurt?"
"...It hurts" Lucian said flatly.
"Yet you make no sound. You show no physical signs of distress." The doctor finished the knot and cut the thread. He stepped back, wiping his hands on a towel.
He looked at Hans, who was standing quietly in the corner, and then back at Lucian.
"Hans," the doctor said, his voice dropping to a low, clinical register. "Given the events of the past week, the accident, the total shift in demeanor, the absolute lack of self-preservation in the training hall, and now this... I have to make a formal assessment. The Young Master is suffering from severe mental instability."
Lucian didn't look away from the blank screen.
"His emotional receptors are completely blunted," the doctor continued, treating Lucian as if he were deaf. "He is displaying signs of profound apathy and psychological shock. The angry outburst you described him having in the Marquis's office earlier today is consistent with a fractured mental state. He is erratic, unable to process pain, and clearly a danger to his own recovery. He needs isolation. Calm, controlled environments. No stress, no visitors, and absolutely no leaving the grounds."
"I see," Hans said softly, his eyes full of a complicated pity.
"I will prescribe a regimen of neural-relaxants," the doctor concluded, packing his bag.
"But mostly, he just needs to be kept indoors and monitored."
Once the doctor left, the room descended back into silence. Hans moved to the bedside table, organizing the newly prescribed vials. He cleared his throat, a sound that seemed terribly loud in the quiet room.
"The Marquis has been informed of the doctor's assessment," Hans said. "He has officially ordered that you are to be confined to your quarters for the foreseeable future. You are not to attend family meals, you are not to enter the training grounds, and you are not to leave the mansion. He believes the... mental instability needs time to settle."
Hans waited for the explosion. He waited for Lucian to throw the tray, to scream about his rights, to curse the Marquis for locking him up like a madman.
Lucian blinked slowly. He looked at Hans, his expression completely unchanged.
"Okay," Lucian said.
Hans paused. "Young Master... you are confined to this room. By order of the Marquis."
"I heard you," Lucian replied, shifting his weight so he could lay back against the pillows. "Close the door on your way out."
It was a punishment designed for a socialite, for a young noble who craved attention and power.
To a man who wanted nothing more than to be forgotten, the Marquis's order was the greatest gift he had received in a hundred lives. He didn't have to make excuses anymore. He was medically required to do absolutely nothing.
Hans stared at him for a long, heavy moment. The butler realized that the doctor was right. The boy he had known was gone, replaced by a hollow shell that didn't even have the energy to care about his own imprisonment.
With a heavy sigh, Hans reached into his inner pocket and pulled out a slim, encrypted data-slate. He set it on the mattress near Lucian's good hand.
"Before I leave," Hans murmured, his voice strictly professional now, "the liquidation is complete. The broker finalized the transfers an hour ago. The funds from the engagement gifts have been successfully routed through three proxy guilds and deposited into the untraceable account you requested."
Lucian glanced at the slate. The screen illuminated, displaying a string of numbers that would make a mid-tier guild master weep with envy. It was a fortune.
It was enough to buy a false identity, a private transport, and a secluded villa on the edge of the neutral zone. It was his Freedom Fund, entirely realized.
"Good," Lucian said.
"You have the means to go anywhere in the world, Young Master," Hans noted quietly.
Lucian looked at the numbers again. It was a staggering amount of money. And yet, as he lay there, feeling the heavy, leaden ache in his bones and the throbbing in his shoulder, he realized a fundamental flaw in his plan.
Having the money to run away meant he actually had to get up, pack, arrange transport, and travel. It required logistics. It required effort.
He was far too tired for effort.
"Just leave it on the desk," Lucian said, closing his eyes.
Hans took the slate, placed it exactly in the center of the obsidian desk, and bowed. "I will bring your dinner later. Try to rest."
The door clicked shut. The locks engaged with a soft, electronic hum, sealing him inside.
Lucian let out a long, slow breath. The silence wrapped around him like a heavy, comforting blanket. The noise of the Thorne family was locked outside.
He didn't have to see Silas's insecurity, or Michael's jealousy, or the Marquis's heavy expectations. Even Lily, with her exhausting innocence, would be kept at bay by the doctor's orders. He was a certified, medically unstable shut-in.
***
For the next two days, Lucian existed in a state of perfect, uninterrupted nothingness.
He slept for twelve-hour stretches. When he was awake, he simply watched the shifting light patterns on the ceiling or looked out the window at the distant city.
Hans came and went like a silent ghost, leaving food that Lucian would occasionally take a bite of just to stop the butler from lingering.
He didn't read. He didn't check the data-slate. He just let the hours bleed into one another. It was boring, it was empty, and it was the closest thing to heaven he had experienced in centuries.
But the universe, as Lucian had learned over ninety-nine lifetimes, abhorred a vacuum. It never let a man sit in the quiet for too long.
On the afternoon of the third day, the electronic chime of his door sounded. It wasn't the soft, polite rhythm of Hans, nor was it the frantic, heavy knocking of his brothers.
It was a sharp, authoritative buzz.
The door slid open. Hans stood in the threshold, but the butler's usual composed expression was fractured with stress.
Behind him stood a woman dressed in the crisp, charcoal-grey uniform of the Hunter Association's Internal Affairs division. She wore a silver badge on her lapel, and her eyes were sharp, calculating, and entirely unimpressed by the opulence of the Thorne manor.
"Young Master," Hans said, his voice tight. "I apologize for the intrusion. The Marquis attempted to block this, citing your medical confinement, but the Association possesses jurisdictional override in matters involving rogue hunter tech."
Lucian turned his head on the pillow. He looked at the woman in the grey suit.
"Lucian Thorne," the woman said, stepping into the room without waiting for an invitation. She pulled a floating holographic notepad from her pocket.
"I am Inspector Vane. I'm here regarding the incident in your family's training hall four days ago."
Lucian stared at her. "The drone."
"Exactly," Vane said, stopping at the foot of his bed. "A Class-A military training drone malfunctioned and targeted a civilian you. The manufacturer is facing a massive lawsuit, but their telemetry data suggests an anomaly. The drone's sensors recorded your vitals right before impact."
She looked up from her pad, her sharp eyes locking onto his dull, golden ones.
"According to the data, your heart rate didn't elevate. Your adrenaline didn't spike. You didn't exhibit a single physiological sign of fear or surprise, and you made zero effort to engage your mana for defense, despite having a documented history of volatile mana usage."
Inspector Vane tilted her head. "I need to know exactly what happened in that room, Mr. Thorne. Because the machine's logs suggest you either knew it was coming and orchestrated it, or you are hiding a mana-suppression artifact that interferes with Association tech."
'So they were suspecting that I did something to the drone...'
He really don't know why the drone malfunctions so he really didn't know what to say about this.
"... I didn't do anything officer... You can even ask the butler I didn't have anything in me when I went there..."
"... I see I apologize for saying that."
Lucian looked at her. He looked at the hovering notepad. He felt the familiar, irritating itch of the world demanding his participation. He had just gotten comfortable.
He had just achieved the perfect, medically sanctioned isolation. And now, bureaucracy was standing in his bedroom.
"And the reason I didn't run away... I was tired," Lucian said, his voice flat and perfectly even.
Vane raised an eyebrow. "You were tired? A lethal drone was flying at your chest at two hundred miles an hour, and your defense is that you were tired?"
"Yes," Lucian replied, closing his eyes and turning his head back toward the window. "It seemed like too much work to move. Are we done here?"