"If there's nothing wrong with him, then why hasn't he woken up yet? Are you sure he wasn't poisoned?" The voice drifted softly into Jacob's ears, feminine and light, tinged with worry, but it came to him the way sounds do in a half-formed dream, muffled at the edges and soaked in familiarity. He wasn't certain if he was awake or still floating somewhere beneath the surface of consciousness, but he recognized something in the voice, something close to home.

"Yes, as I've already told your parents, there's nothing wrong apart from some heavy mana exhaustion. His wounds were extensive, yes, but they've all been healed completely. He just needs time. He'll wake up when he's ready." This second voice was deeper, rougher, and carried none of the emotional weight of the first. It sounded like a man used to speaking in clinical terms, someone who had long stopped being affected by the emotions of others. Jacob couldn't place it.

"Jessica, leave the poor man alone. He'll wake when it suits him. You should be thankful he even survived that battlefield with whatever pitiful skills he has." That voice struck him like a needle to the spine, sharp, condescending, and instantly irritating. The momentary spike of annoyance startled him, not because it was unwarranted, but because it felt unfamiliar. Irritation. Why did that emotion feel like a stranger inside him?

"Mary!" Jessica's voice rang out, this time laced with anger, and the familiarity in it became undeniable. "I told you Jacob saved my life."

"Yes, yes. With his magnificent swordsmanship and his utterly world-shaking magic, I'm sure. Perhaps you imagined it, young miss." That tone again. The condescension, the mockery. The voice belonged to Mary, Jessica's attendant, and Jacob remembered now why he had always loathed her. Still, the emotion confused him. Why did everything, every feeling seem so far away and yet overwhelming all at once?

'What… what in the world happened to me?' The question echoed somewhere deep in his foggy thoughts, and as he pushed against the haze clouding his mind, Jacob finally forced his eyes open.

To his left, sitting upright in a low wooden chair, was Jessica, her hands clenched tightly in her lap, her eyes red at the edges from unshed tears. Standing behind her, arms crossed and mouth drawn in a habitual frown, was Mary, wearing the same ever-present look of smug detachment. To his right stood a man, older and dressed plainly, carrying a worn satchel at his side. A doctor, Jacob assumed, or perhaps a healing mage. It was hard to say, the world still looked slightly distorted around the edges, like everything had been dipped in smoke.

"Jacob! You're awake!" Jessica leapt from the chair and rushed to his bedside, nearly tripping over the hem of her dress in her urgency. She threw her arms around him in a tight embrace, her face buried against his chest, her voice muffled and trembling with relief.

"I did tell you he would wake up eventually," the doctor, or whoever he was, said, adjusting the strap of his bag as he stepped toward the door. "Now that he has, I'll take my leave. Call for me if there's any trouble." He gave a polite nod to no one in particular and disappeared through the door, his departure barely noticed.

Jacob looked down at his sister, her head pressed against him, her arms refusing to let go and a strange, unnameable sensation bloomed inside his chest. Relief, yes, but also guilt, happiness twisted with shame, and something close to fear. It was all there, tangled in knots, emotions rushing at him with such ferocity and force that for a moment, Jacob felt like his body might collapse beneath the weight of it.

He closed his eyes again, not to sleep, but simply to steady himself, to keep from drowning.

"What happened to me?" Jacob asked, his voice barely rising above a whisper, but even as the words left his mouth he understood that he didn't really need her answer, not anymore. The fog clouding his mind had already begun to lift, slow at first but now with a growing urgency, and the memories came flooding in like a broken dam giving way, surging all at once through the empty spaces in his consciousness, leaving him breathless and reeling in their wake.

Jessica, sensing the sudden shift in his breathing and the tension blooming across his body, raised her head from his chest and studied him closely, concern immediately replacing her earlier relief. "Jacob? What is it? Are you feeling sick?" Her voice was tight with worry, uncertain, careful.

But Jacob couldn't bring himself to speak. His lips parted and then closed again, his mind too crowded for anything as simple as words. The fragments of what had happened returned in vivid detail, the conversation with Samuel and Leah, the sudden attack, the battlefield and its chaos, the feel of his sword, the ache in his limbs, the moment everything had gone dark.

The pieces of his memory, previously buried or disjointed, were now fitting themselves back together, and the shape they formed left a heavy weight pressing down on his chest.

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Worse than the memories were the emotions that came with them, a torrential wave that caught him off guard. It wasn't just that he could feel again, he had gone from nothingness to a storm of everything, and the contrast was almost violent in how it shook him. When the emotions had been absent, he had existed in a cold, quiet clarity, where every decision was logical, clean, distant. But now, his heart was racing with intensity he couldn't control, his breathing uneven, his chest tight.

He looked at Jessica and immediately felt the sting of guilt, the kind that didn't whisper but screamed, and he understood that it was because he remembered. He remembered just how close he had come to letting her die. Not because he wanted her dead, but because for a moment he had found a way to rationalize it, to make it seem acceptable, and that realisation turned his stomach.

But before the guilt could settle, something brighter and sharper cut through it, excitement. It was sudden and unmistakable. He had used magic. Real magic. A true rune. He was, by every measure, a mage now. And he hadn't just used his power idly; he had used it to fight, to protect, to save. He had saved Jessica. He had used his magic for something that mattered, and the pride that rose within him eclipsed his shame, if only for a moment.

Then the tide shifted again. Anger came next, fierce and consuming. His teeth clenched and his jaw tightened as he recalled the conversation with Samuel, the smugness in his voice, the manipulation woven beneath every word, the invocation of old wounds and twisted traditions, the way he had spoken of Lucas like a tool to provoke him.

And Leah too, he remembered her voice, her cold certainty, that unflinching belief that Lucas had to die no matter the cost. His chest heaved again, his pulse hammering in his ears. Across from him, Jessica watched helplessly, unsure whether to speak or simply hold him.

'All the guilt, the self-hatred, the slow-burning loathing that had gnawed away at me for two years…It wasn't born from Samuel's twisted game or some accident of fate, it was built deliberately, constructed with purpose. Because for some reason, someone decided Lucas had to die. And they chose me to do it.'

They had used him, plain and simple, not as a person, not as a brother grieving his loss, but as a weapon, a pawn, a hand they could point at a target and let loose. And now, in the aftermath, they had left him alone with the wreckage, with the shame and the burden of surviving. The cost wasn't theirs to bear. It was his. Always his.

He hated them, every last one of them. Not just Samuel, though his hatred for him burned with an intensity that bordered on toxic obsession, but also Leah, and not just her but the king, the queen, the court, the entire carefully constructed hierarchy of silence and cruelty that had made everything he suffered possible.

Yet even among that crowd of faces, Samuel still stood tallest in his loathing, the hatred Jacob felt for him sharpened to an unnatural degree, as if his brief time under the rune that had stripped him of emotion had simply bottled everything up and now, with nothing to hold it back, it was all spilling over, raw and untamed.

And just as the fire of hatred seemed to steady, anxiety swept in like a cold wind. The memory returned with clear precision, what he had said to Leah, not in vague implication but in direct, unfiltered honesty. He had told the princess of the realm, to her face, that he would try his best to kill Samuel, regardless of consequences, regardless of politics or allegiance.

He had openly spoken of betrayal, not in secret, not with hesitation. And yet, strangely enough, he didn't feel mad for having done it. Looking at it now, he understood why he had chosen to say those words, why he had let them stand. If he was going to work with Leah in any meaningful way, she needed to know what he carried, what his goals were, and whether she would stand in their way. But still, to say it with such clarity, such nerve was not something he would have believed himself capable of. Not before.

Then, like a sudden burst of light through all the doubt, came happiness. It was small, quiet, but it settled in his chest all the same. He had taken the first steps toward repairing the rift between himself and Castor, and even with Elly, fragile as those steps might be. He had no idea what he would say the next time they met, he wasn't even sure he'd be able to look them in the eyes, but something had been done, a beginning had been made, and that mattered.

But joy, like all his emotions now, didn't last long before it was replaced by another. Guilt returned, heavy and unwelcome. What right did he have to be making friends? To be mending things? Hadn't he sworn to suffer, to carry his burden? Two years, it suddenly felt so short, so insufficient, so easily dismissed.

Was that truly all the time it took for his remorse to fade? But deep down, he knew the truth. Lucas had never truly blamed him. Not to the end. And if Lucas had been the one to survive, if their positions had been reversed, he would never have wanted this slow decay of spirit. He would have wanted him to live.

So, yes, there were problems, more than he could count, but there had also been progress. In a strange, roundabout way, Samuel's rune had given him clarity, and though he hated the method, he could not deny that something had shifted in him, something that might not have changed otherwise.

He looked down at Jessica, still holding onto him, her arms wrapped around his torso, her expression uncertain but steady, her worry plain in her eyes. Embarrassment rose like heat in his cheeks and he gave a soft cough, his voice low and uncertain when he asked, "Where's Alex?"

Jessica pulled back slightly, answering quickly, "He and Arthur are training right now."

He gave a small nod, then gently disentangled himself from her arms and stepped out of bed. His body felt stable, if not entirely strong, but he was already walking toward the door.

"Wait, where are you going?" Jessica called, her voice rising in concern as she watched him pull the door open.

He paused at the threshold and looked back at her. He didn't smile. He didn't speak loudly. He just stared for a long moment before replying in a quiet, even tone, "I'm weak… so I want to become strong."

And with that, Jacob stepped through the doorway and left the room behind.

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