Days had become a blur since he woke up. The boy stood before the door, hand hovered an inch from the knob. With one final breath, he turned on it, letting it open to what laid inside.

Doctors had extracted most of the crystals that covered her face. You could now even see one eye. Hazel replaced by sickening purple. Still, the way her face changed around it showed she smiled when seeing him. They still hadn’t managed to free her mouth.

Jaw clenched, he covered his unease with a smile. He prayed it would be enough to hide his emotions.

“You are alive…” Voice muffled, she adjusted herself on the bed. “They told me you survived. But I thought… you ended up like me…”

Something stuck to his throat, making it impossible to speak. Then the burn, the heat emanating from his very core, followed. The eyes of the bomber juxtaposed over Sam now mangled figure. He felt a wish to break him, beaten until an inch of his life.

Except he already died.

Yeah, I did." He sat beside the bed, taking her hand. The rocks on her skin were uneven, jagged, wrong. “Don’t worry about me, just focus on healing, alright?”

“Healing?” A single tear came out of her eye, hints of red marking it. “Caelan, you and I both know I won’t.”

“Stop it!” His voice came louder than he wanted. “You’re a survivor. You’ll breeze past this with a laugh. Like always.”

“Aberrant Degeneration Disorder.” She spoke the official name like one would spit venom. “We can’t afford the treatment. Hell, I’m amazed they bothered saving me at all…”

“Don’t say that.” Caelan squeezed her hand. He hoped it brought some comfort. “I’ll ask Gramps for help. Fuck, I might even go to my parents if I have to! We’ll find a way.”

“Then what?” Her pupil pierced him like a bullet. “I go through all the pain to last at most eight years?”

“Better than days. And the cure could be found in that time, you never…”

Her voice turned into a yell. Her fingers curled into the sheets, gripping tight enough to tear them. “I can’t go on the show anymore! Or any event, in case I get worse!” breath ragged, she continued. “I can’t have children, or I risk them growing spikes and impaling me from the inside! Hell, I can’t even fuck anymore, or my partners might get sick!”

“Sam, calm down!”

That request might have been the worse thing to say. Her heart rate had a spike, accelerating with each word. “Oh, calm down? You try and calm down knowing your life is over! That for the rest of your short life people will look at you with pity for your horrible fate! Or in disgust for knowing you need to have rocks scrapped out of your skin! Or relief for not being you!”

Caelan didn’t know what to do. Still, he kept talking. “Screw everyone else! You can’t just give up now! We’ll handle it, we always did.”

She pulled her hand away from him, face turned towards the wall. “What can you do? A fifteen years-old nobody with severe mommy issues? Please, you ran away from your problems at the first chance. I bet when you see how hard handling me is, you’ll go running to Grandpa again.”

His fist clenched, nails digging into his palm. A spark of heat flared in his chest, rising, rising—until it snapped.

Caelan didn’t realized it until he heard the noise. It echoed across the room, the sting of a cut on his palm making it concrete. Sam’s head had turned to the side, eye filled with shock. Then, a fire he had never seen before rushed to them. His mind scrambling to understand what he had done.

“GET OUT!” She hit him, so weak he couldn’t register each blow. “DON’T EVER SHOW YOU FACE TO ME AGAIN, YOU DICKLESS BASTARD!”

“Sam, wait, I didn’t…”

An army of nurses rushed in, to prevent her from leaving the bed. He didn’t register the hands pulling him away, his mind stuck in the moment before. Only when the door slammed at his face everything snapped into place.

I hit her!

Nausea threatened to overcome him. He began to hyperventilate, legs shaken by his inner turmoil. He managed to find a seat close by to sit. The world spun around him, fist grabbed at the clothes covering his chest.

How could you?

He had to go back. Apologize, make her understand. But his legs refused to move. Caelan noticed doctors and nurses around him, at the edge of consciousness. Their words felt like coming from the other side of a faraway shore.

Mother was right about you!

With violence, his face got lifted. Green eyes like the deep ocean greeted him. The man who came to speak to him. When he had woken up after the attack. “Breath, son! Focus your mind on that, forget all else!”

He did as instructed. Better than pondering what had happened.

An eternity later, the boy found his voice back. “C-Colonel…?”

“Forget me and everyone else. Just steady your breath. In through nose, out through mouth.”

Once again, obeying the words felt easier. But as his mind cleared, so did the fire in his chest. Everything going on with him and Sam, to untold souls across the globe. All had one source.

The Children of the Stars.

The boy grabbed onto the colonel’s arm. So intense his gaze people around even stepped back. Not the veteran though. “Is the offer from before still standing?”

-----

Caelan almost let out a loud swear. The rope he had crafted for the bowstring snapped under the pressure. An urge to throw the whole prototype into the wall came over him.

With a sigh, he placed it back at the table.

Leopold looked over him, biting his lip. “Hey, can we talk a bit?”

Face at his palms, Caelan felt a surge of fatigue wash over his body. “When did you ever asked me to open your mouth again?”

It took thirty seconds, and a few deep breaths, for him to answer. “Well, forgive me for trying to be nice for once.”

His heart pounded as he bit back his first response. “Leopold, I’m really not up to your usual antics today, alright?”

“Look, this time it’s…”

 Caelan noticed a figure entering the workshop. The view made his stomach drop. “We’ll talk later.”

“Oh, Lady Vaedra!” Falker had been hanging from the ceiling. He worked on painting over the previous landscape he had on it with a more abstract work. “What do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

The woman flashed her brightest smile at him. “My dear, can’t I come to appreciate all the wondrous works of art?” She waved at the mess all around them.

“Not at all. I just thought the idea of ruining one of your precious dresses would refrain you from doing so.”

She placed a gloved hand over his mouth, stepping back in a dramatic fashion. “Oh my, your words wound me, good sir! But I can’t deny my visit relates to your dashing new protégé.”

Caelan expected that from her. Didn’t stop the cold from creeping all over his muscles. “Could you come me for a few minutes, my dear Leopold? I promise you will return to… whatever you concocted there in a minute.”

When the young man got close to her, she wrapped her arm around his. To outsiders, it looked like he escorted her. But Caelan knew the true purpose of the move.

“Three of my agents have gone AWOL.” She spoke in her spymaster voice, but held the expressions and body moves of the vain noblewoman. It felt jarring to watch such a contrast. “All while going after the people you named.”

Caelan felt the seeds of his breath going haywire. He held it back, couldn’t show any weaknesses. Not to the woman holding him close enough to strike at his heart. “You think I had anything to do with it?”

Vaedra waved at a group of students close to them. “As I said, I think many things. And that is indeed one of them.” The grip on his limb tightened. “Even so, I’m giving you some benefit of the doubt.”

His mouth went dry. Leopold said something, but Caelan tuned him out. He couldn’t afford distractions. “How about we stop playing games and just speak plainly for once?”

Five people nearby. Two definitely hers. Maybe three. Escape routes? Limited. If this turns bad, he would have no options.

A crack on the mask showed. For a moment, but he could notice it. “Very well. Explain to me how you aren’t someone sent by the Cult to undermine the Executors?”

“You have me under constant surveillance. I’m sure at least five of the people close by are under you. So pray tell, how could I pass on information to anyone?”

Vaedra gave him the sweetest smile, eyes remaining cold as a blizzard. “You claim to be someone from another world. With regards to you, I can’t help but consider all possibilities.”

Leopold showed up besides him, eyes darted between Vaedra and him. “Caelan, listen to me, something here is…”

“Not now!”

Nausea began to creep into his stomach at that point. “Just call the Headmaster then. Her blessing should clarify things for us. Rather than this endless play.”

She stopped in place, almost causing him to fall. One look at her and he knew his situation would get worse. “She’s unavailable at the moment.”

The entire world stood still around them. “What do you mean?”

She kept her glare fixed on his own the entire time. After some moments filled with tension, she spoke. “There’s been an attempt on her life. No one knows if she might even survive.”

The world shrank around him. A thin ringing filled his ears. He struggled to hear her next words over the sudden roar of his own heartbeat. The image of a hospital corridor flashed. No, I refuse to be that weak again! Falkner’ smile came soon after. “The masters don’t know about it yet, do they?”

“No.” She once again slipped back under the noblewoman persona as a professor passed by. “Only I and a few of her personal servants know. The only reason I know someone tried to assassinate her is the symptoms. They match an odorless and tasteless poison often used by the cult.”

He felt her arm shake, so subtle one could mistake it. The situation no longer fell on her professional role. It became personal. “Vaedra, you have me under constant surveillance ever since the hearing. Hell, I bet even before that, with how Leopold behaved. I would not have be in contact with anyone you didn’t know!”

She gave him a playful push, as if he had told a joke. “That knowledge is the only thing keeping you unrestrained. Or even alive.” A chill ran down Caelan’s spine. “For now, I’ll increase the people watching you and investigate all of it. Know any suspicious behavior from you will have you in chains, understood?”

She broke the link between her arms, leaving him there before he could answer. He could hear Leopold yapping in the distance. The more he searched for answers, the more they slipped through his fingers. This wasn’t in the games.

None of it was.