A week after his near-death in the river, Aedan woke to sunlight streaming through the cabin's small window.
For a moment, disorientation gripped him: the unfamiliar ceiling, the rough blanket, the lingering scent of herbs and wood smoke. Then reality crashed back with merciless clarity.
The coup. His family's execution. The sword that went through his chest. The fall.
He closed his eyes against the memories, but they persisted, etched into his mind with painful precision.
Each detail remained vivid: his father's defiant final words, his mother's dignified silence, his brothers' futile resistance. And Varius's cold explanation of necessity as he drove the ceremonial blade into Aedan's heart.
Instinctively, Aedan's hand moved to his chest, feeling the bandages wrapped tightly around his torso.
Beneath the dressing, something hard protruded slightly. The sword fragment that somehow remained embedded in his flesh. His fingers traced its outline, a physical reminder that the nightmare had been real.
"You're awake."
The gruff voice startled him. Aedan turned his head to see Kalen entering the cabin, carrying an armful of firewood. The older man regarded him with a mixture of surprise and satisfaction.
"Didn't expect you to be conscious so early," Kalen continued, depositing the wood beside the small stone hearth. "How's the pain?"
Aedan took stock of his body. The searing agony of the sword wound had diminished to a persistent ache, punctuated by sharper twinges when he moved. His limbs felt sluggish, his throat raw from inactivity.
"Manageable," he answered, his voice hoarse.
Kalen nodded, seemingly pleased with the assessment. "Good. Means you might actually survive this." He moved to a crude table where a kettle sat beside various jars and pouches. "Can you sit up? Should try to get some tea in you."
Aedan attempted to push himself upright, gritting his teeth against the pain that flared in his chest. His arms trembled with the effort, muscles weak from days of inactivity. Before he could collapse back onto the bed, Kalen was beside him, a strong hand supporting his back.
"Easy," the older man said, arranging pillows behind Aedan. "Your body's been through hell. Give it time."
The simple act of sitting upright left Aedan breathless and dizzy. He waited for the sensation to pass, studying his surroundings more carefully.
The cabin consisted of a single room with sparse furnishings: the bed he occupied, a table with two chairs, storage shelves lined with supplies, and the stone hearth where a small fire crackled.
Weapons hung on one wall: a sword, a hunting bow, and several knives alongside tools and dried herbs. Everything spoke of functionality rather than comfort.
Kalen returned with a steaming cup. "Drink this. Tastes like horse piss, but it'll help with the healing."
Aedan accepted the cup with shaking hands, inhaling the bitter herbal scent before taking a cautious sip. The taste was indeed foul, but he forced himself to drink, recognizing medicinal herbs from his limited knowledge of healing.
"Thank you," he said after finishing half the cup. "For saving me. For..." He gestured vaguely at the bed, the bandages, and the tea.
Kalen shrugged, settling into a chair near the bed. "Don't thank me yet. Still not sure you'll make it, though you're proving surprisingly hard to kill."
The blunt assessment was oddly comforting after the calculated deceptions of court life. Aedan found himself appreciating the man's directness.
"How long have I been here?" he asked.
"Seven days since I pulled you from the river," Kalen answered. "Conscious only briefly until today. Fever broke yesterday."
A week. An entire week was lost while the world continued without him.
What had happened in the capital during that time? Had the coup been completed? Were there any other survivors from his family?
Questions crowded Aedan's mind, but caution held his tongue. He didn't know this man, didn't know if he could be trusted with the truth.
"You've been caring for me all this time?" Aedan asked instead.
"Not much choice," Kalen replied. "Couldn't exactly take you to town with that wound. Too many questions."
The implication was clear: Kalen suspected Aedan's injury was connected to something illicit or dangerous. Not wrong, but not the complete truth either.
"I suppose I owe you my life," Aedan said carefully.
"Suppose you do." Kalen studied him with shrewd eyes. "Which brings us to the question of who exactly I've saved."
Aedan tensed, his hand instinctively moving to his chest again. The fragment there seemed to pulse in response to his anxiety, a faint warmth spreading outward.
"I told you before I'm no one important," he said, maintaining the lie from their previous brief interaction.
"And I didn't believe you then either," Kalen countered. "Noble-born, educated speech, quality clothing what was left of it. Stab wound from a fine blade, not some common dagger. And timing that coincides perfectly with a coup in the capital." He leaned forward.
"So I'll ask plainly: who are you, and what trouble have I brought to my doorstep by fishing you out of that river?"
The directness of the question left little room for evasion.
Aedan weighed his options quickly.
Complete honesty would put both himself and Kalen in mortal danger. Complete deception might alienate the only person currently standing between him and death. A partial truth, then.
"My name is..." He hesitated, unwilling to speak his true name aloud. "I was a merchant's son from the capital. My father had connections at court. When the... changes happened, those connections became liabilities. Someone wanted to ensure our silence."
Kalen's expression remained skeptical. "A merchant's son who speaks like nobility and carries himself like someone born to privilege? Try again, lad."
Aedan's mind raced. "My mother was a tutor to noble children before she married. She insisted I learn proper speech and deportment to advance in society."
This, at least, contained a grain of truth. His mother had indeed valued education, ensuring all her children learned far more than the military and political training typical for royal offspring.
Kalen seemed to consider this explanation, neither accepting nor rejecting it outright. "And what should I call you, merchant's son?"
Another moment of hesitation. His royal name was too dangerous to use, too easily connected to the fallen dynasty. He needed something new, something that reflected his current state while revealing nothing of his past.
His gaze fell on the hearth, where flames consumed logs to ash.
"Ash," he said finally. "You can call me Ash."
"Ash," Kalen repeated, testing the name. "Simple enough. Doesn't tell me much, though."
"There isn't much to tell," Aedan, now Ash, replied. "Whatever I was before is gone now."
The words carried more truth than he'd intended, and something in his tone must have conveyed the depth of his loss. Kalen's expression softened slightly.
"Fair enough," the older man said. "We all have pasts we'd rather leave behind. I won't press you further for now."
He stood, moving to stir the fire. "But understand this: I live here because I value my peace and privacy. If your presence threatens either, our arrangement ends."
"I understand," Ash replied. "Once I'm able to travel, I'll be on my way."
Kalen snorted. "That won't be anytime soon. Whatever's happening with that wound of yours, it's unlike anything I've seen before."
Ash frowned. "What do you mean?"
"See for yourself." Kalen approached with a small hand mirror, positioning it so Ash could view his chest as he carefully removed the outer bandage.
What Ash saw stole his breath. The wound had partially healed far more quickly than should have been possible, but that wasn't what shocked him.
Around the embedded sword fragment, his skin bore faint, luminous blue lines spreading outward like roots or veins. The fragment itself seemed to have fused with his flesh, no longer a foreign object but something integrated into his body.
"What is this?" he whispered, touching the strange patterns with trembling fingers.
"Was hoping you might tell me," Kalen replied. "Started appearing during your fever. Glows brighter at night or when you're distressed."
He replaced the bandage with practiced efficiency. "Seen System manifestations before, during my time in the Imperial Guard, but nothing quite like this."
Ash's head snapped up at the casual mention of the Imperial Guard. "You served in the Guard?"
Kalen nodded, returning to his chair. "Twenty years. Retired after taking a spear through the leg that never healed right."
He tapped his left thigh. "Served under Emperor Tiberius most of that time. Good man, from what I saw. Shame about what happened."
The unexpected connection to his father left Ash momentarily speechless. This gruff, solitary man had served in his father's personal guard had perhaps even stood watch outside Ash's chambers as a child. The coincidence seemed too great to be mere chance.
"You said... a System manifestation?" Ash asked, steering the conversation away from the emperor. "You think that's what this is?"
"What else could it be?" Kalen shrugged. "Normal men don't survive sword wounds to the heart. Normal wounds don't glow blue and heal at impossible speeds. And you've been muttering strange things in your sleep about fractures and reconstruction."
Ash had only the vaguest understanding of Systems.
They were rare abilities that manifested in certain individuals, typically those of noble bloodlines or those exposed to ancient power sources.
His own family carried the Imperial Light System, though it'd skipped Ash entirely. A fact that'd disappointed his father, although he'd never said so directly.
"I don't have a System," Ash said. "Never manifested one."
"Well, you have something now," Kalen replied. "Question is what kind, and what it means for your recovery."
The conversation was interrupted by a sudden wave of dizziness that washed over Ash. He swayed, the half-empty teacup slipping from his fingers. Kalen caught it before it could spill, easing Ash back against the pillows.
"That's enough talk for now," the older man said. "Rest. We'll figure out the rest later."
Ash wanted to protest, to ask more questions about the strange manifestation in his chest, about news from the capital, about Kalen's connection to his father. But exhaustion claimed him with surprising swiftness, his eyelids growing heavy despite his resistance.
As consciousness faded, he glimpsed again the constellation of broken sword fragments in his mind's eye clearer now, more defined. One piece glowed brighter than the others, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Survival aspect stabilizing. Host recovery - at 18%.
The words came without sound, a knowledge simply appearing in his awareness. Before he could question their meaning, sleep claimed him completely.
***
Kalen watched the young man Ash, as he called himself, slip back into unconsciousness. The boy's breathing remained steady, his color better than it had been since his arrival. Whatever strange power worked within him seemed to be healing rather than harming, at least for now.
"Merchant's son," Kalen muttered skeptically, retrieving the teacup. "And I'm the Emperor's cousin."
The lie had been expected, even reasonable given the circumstances. A stranger waking in an unknown place after nearly dying would be foolish to reveal his true identity immediately.
But the quality of the deception troubled Kalen. The boy had constructed his false identity with practiced ease, weaving truth and fiction seamlessly. That spoke of training beyond what any merchant's son would receive.
More telling were the unconscious mannerisms; the way he held the teacup with perfect formal posture despite his weakness, the precise diction even when speaking simply, the instinctive straightening of his spine when questioned directly.
All marks of high breeding and extensive education.
And then there was his reaction to the mention of Emperor Tiberius came a flash of raw grief quickly masked, a momentary tension in his shoulders. Not the response of a distant subject to their monarch's death, but something more personal.
Kalen moved to the cabin's small window, gazing out at the forest while his mind worked through possibilities. The timing aligned perfectly with the coup.
The wound came from a fine blade, the kind carried by high-ranking military officers or nobility. The boy's age and bearing matched what one would expect from someone raised in the upper echelons of imperial society.
A noble youth caught on the wrong side of the coup? Possible. A member of the imperial court who had witnessed something he shouldn't? Also possible. But another, more troubling possibility nagged at Kalen's thoughts.
The Valerian dynasty was known for its distinctive coloring of silver-blonde hair, unusual even among nobility. This boy's hair was dark brown, but...
Kalen recalled washing river mud from the youth during those first critical hours. The water had run dark with more than just mud and blood. Dye, perhaps? A hasty attempt to disguise a telling characteristic?
"Impossible," he muttered to himself. The official proclamation had been clear: the entire imperial family had perished in the "tragic accident" that necessitated General Varius's assumption of power. No survivors, no exceptions.
Yet here lay a young man of noble bearing, approximately the right age, with a wound that should have killed him, found in the river below the imperial palace on the very night of the coup.
Kalen rubbed his face wearily.
If his suspicions were correct and he prayed they weren't, then he had inadvertently embroiled himself in the most dangerous political situation possible. Harboring any survivor of the imperial family would mean immediate execution if discovered.
"What have you gotten yourself into, old man?" he asked himself.
The sensible course would be to send the boy away as soon as he could travel. Provide him with supplies, point him toward the border, and wash his hands of the matter. Self-preservation demanded nothing less.
And yet...
Kalen's gaze drifted to the weapons hanging on his wall, particularly the sword with its hilt wrapped in the imperial colors, a reminder of his oath of service.
An oath to the Valerian dynasty, not to whatever regime now controlled the capital. An oath he had never formally renounced, despite his retirement.
If the boy truly was who Kalen suspected, and that remained a significant... "if" then duty might demand more than self-preservation would allow.
"One step at a time," he decided, turning back to his unconscious patient. "First, keep him alive. Then worry about who he is and what to do with him."
Outside, a crow called harshly from a nearby tree, three sharp cries that echoed in the quiet forest. An ill omen, according to old superstitions. Kalen had never been one for such beliefs, but in that moment, the bird's cry seemed to carry a warning.
Change was coming, whether he welcomed it or not. The quiet life he had built for himself these past years was ending, just as surely as the Valerian dynasty had ended in blood and betrayal.
All because he couldn't leave a dying boy in the river.
Kalen sighed, returning to his chair beside the bed. Whatever storm approached, he would face it as he had faced all others in his life with pragmatism, courage, and the grim determination that had kept him alive through twenty years of military service.
"Sleep well, 'Ash,'" he said to the unconscious youth. "Tomorrow, we begin your real recovery."
The sword fragment in the boy's chest pulsed once with blue light, as if in acknowledgment of the promise.